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The National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain endorsed the Report in its entirety at their meeting on 26th June 2019. At the same meeting, it was agreed to establish a Chronic Pain Patient Reference Group to help ensure that a wide representation of the lived experience of chronic pain is taken in to consideration and informs service improvements. It is envisaged that this group, along with other patient involvement, will provide a patient perspective to help coproduce information about chronic pain self-management guided by the Scottish Government Health Literacy Action Plan 2015 – 2025 and other stakeholders, including NHS Inform, to help ensure that it is appropriate and widely accessible.

Developing strong links between primary and secondary care, as well as acute and chronic pain services, in order to create a clear model of care, is one of the seven areas identified in the Chronic Pain Specialty Group's Design Workshop Report, as most likely to make a difference to people presenting with Chronic Pain. As such, it will also receive particular focus as part of the next steps and implementation plan associated with the report, currently being drafted. Part of this will be to identify how people living with chronic pain can inform themselves, take ownership of and be supported to self-manage their condition, including involvement in decisions about their medication, guided by the Chronic Pain Prescribing Strategy (2018) along with raising awareness of what self-management is and what options are available to them.

Making information about Chronic Pain self-management widely accessible as well as widely used is another of the seven areas identified in the Chronic Pain Specialty Group's Design Workshop Report, as most likely to make a difference to people presenting with Chronic Pain. As such, it will receive particular focus as part of the next steps and implementation plan associated with the report, currently being drafted, along with helping to make people aware of what self-management is and what options are available to them. This plan will be devised in consultation with stakeholders.

Our Stroke Improvement Plan (2014) sets out a comprehensive programme for further reducing the number of deaths from stroke and improving stroke treatment and care across the whole patient pathway including rehabilitation.

The Scottish Stroke Care Audit (SSCA) monitors the quality of care provided by the hospitals in all Health Boards by collating data collected by the stroke Managed Clinical Networks (MCNs).

To improve services effectively the Scottish Stroke Improvement Programme recognises the needs to set clear aims which have been established through the Scottish Stroke Care Standards (2016) and the priority actions from the Stroke Improvement Plan. The Stroke Improvement Programme Lead and Scottish SSCA National Clinical Coordinator work closely with NHS Boards to ensure key priorities from the Stroke Improvement Plan are implemented and monitored.

12 out of 18 (67%) social landlords report that they have met the minimum site standards for Gypsy/Traveller sites. The following table provides a breakdown by local authority/Registered Social Landlord. The Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) continues to monitor, assess and report on landlords’ achievement of and ongoing compliance with the minimum site standards. SHR is engaging with landlords to ensure that progress is being made on sites that do not currently meet the standards.

The Scottish Government supports a number of third sector organisations through the £750 million Attainment Scotland Fund. Local Authorities and schools are empowered to decide how they use this funding to support young people living in poverty with many Local Authorities and schools choosing to invest some of this funding in services offered by the Third Sector, including Barnardo’s Scotland.

We recognise the varied and valuable contributions third sector organisations such as Barnardo’s Scotland make to tackling the poverty related attainment gap. Through a National Third Sector Engagement working group, the Scottish Government works collaboratively with Education Scotland and the third sector to develop opportunities for their further engagement in the Scottish Attainment Challenge. Schools guidance has been developed which provides advice on engaging with the third sector to help improve outcomes for young people. This is available from: https://education.gov.scot/improvement/Documents/
sac79-sac-and-third-sector-partnerships.pdf .

Recent Scottish Government evaluation of the Scottish Attainment Challenge highlighted that collaboration continues to feature strongly and that collaborations with the third sector continue to be valued by Challenge Authorities. Local Authorities also reported their encouragement and support for schools to collaborate with third sector and other partners in planning and implementing Pupil Equity Funding. The Challenge will continue to enable young people to benefit from the important interventions the third sector can offer. The evaluation report is available here:

https://www.gov.scot/publications/
evaluation-attainment-scotland-fund-interim-report-year-3/ .

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that eviction for rent arrears is a last resort and we have robust measures in place to help tenants in arrears sustain their tenancy wherever possible. The number of evictions in Scotland accounted for only 0.4% of social sector tenancies in 2017-18.

The Scottish Government notes the publication of the Shelter Scotland report, Evictions by social landlord in Scotland 2016-2018 with interest. We will be discussing the recommendations in the report with Shelter and consider what action, if any, needs to be taken.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that eviction for rent arrears is a last resort and we have robust measures in place to help tenants in arrears sustain their tenancy wherever possible. The number of evictions in Scotland accounted for only 0.4% of social sector tenancies in 2017-18. L andlords need to have legal remedies to deal with the small minority of tenants who won’t engage with them to resolve their arrears.

Tenancy sustainment forms part of the Rapid Rehousing Transition Plans that each local authority has provided to the Scottish Government. We are identifying ways to work with social housing providers to use all opportunities to support housing sustainment, and we will specify expectations resulting from this work in the Homelessness Code of Guidance.

The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport met the Chair and Chief Executive of the Professional Standards Authority on Tuesday 6 November 2018 and discussed the programme at that time.

The Authority’s acknowledged expertise lies in the field of regulatory and governance standards. It has no statutory role relating to operational issues such as recruitment and deployment of specific professions.

Counselling and Psychotherapy in Scotland (COSCA) are a professional body for counselling and psychotherapy in Scotland and they maintain a voluntary register of practitioners and organisations in Scotland.

When we published ‘Every Child, Every Chance: Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2018-2022’ we made a commitment to invest £0.5m in flexible family learning with Gypsy/Traveller families over the lifetime of the Plan (2018-2020). This will build on additional funding of £275,000 (2018-20) to STEP to strengthen the delivery of education to children and young people in the Gypsy/Traveller community. This work is underway and – alongside engagement with Gypsy/Traveller communities – will inform how the Child Poverty Delivery Fund money will be spent over the next three years .

The Scottish Government has provided funding for a new Gypsy/Traveller National Development Officer at STEP to help improve educational experiences and outcomes for Gypsy/Travellers. Working closely with the Traveller Education Network, the post holder will support local authorities to test out, learn from and share innovative models of education provision. The National Development Officer took up post on 27 May 2019.

PATH Scotland has received funding of £35k for each of the years 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 through the Promoting Equality and Cohesion Fund. This funding supports the Developing Management and Leadership Skills (DMLS) in Public Life, Education and Employment Programme, which has been developed as a positive action measure to address the absence of minority ethnic men and women in leadership roles at all levels of public life, education and employment.