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We support our local authority partners with £16 million in funding to ensure that every secondary school has access to counselling services.

Local authorities provide six monthly reports to the Scottish Government on the impact and effectiveness of school counsellors. A summary of the reports is published on the Scottish Government website . The overall picture on improving children and young people’s outcomes is positive.

Officials are also working closely with the Counsellors Co-ordinators Network to ensure ongoing engagement with education authorities on the provision of school counsellors.

School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools may have in place to support the health, emotional and social needs of children and young people.

As outlined in the answer to question S6W-18598 on 15 June 2023, the 2023-24 budget for skills and employability programmes has been confirmed.

The Scottish Government continues to offer free and impartial advice to all employers and individuals affected by redundancy through Partnership Action for Continuing Employment, PACE, which has local teams ready to respond quickly when situations arise and assist businesses to try and minimise the risk of redundancy before it happens.

All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The Scottish Government is committed to delivering a balanced budget with a focus on the renewed missions set out recently by the First Minister - to tackle poverty; to build a fair, green and a growing economy; and to improve our public services.

In 2023-24 this includes up to £108M to deliver employability services for those individuals who need it most to enter and progress in work, we remain committed to supporting a mixed economy of provision across public, private and third sectors to support delivery across Scotland.

In the unfortunate event of any employees facing redundancy, the Scottish Government will always offer and provide support through our initiative for responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment, PACE which aims to minimise the time individuals affected by redundancy are out of work.

As members of the PACE Partnership, STF will be familiar with the local support available to its members and the swift response it offers to support both employers and employees dealing with redundancy and working with them to try and minimise the risk of redundancy before it happens.

The full-time equivalent (FTE) number of Educational Psychologists since 2007 is shown in the following table.

The most up-to-date data on Flexible Workforce Development Fund (FWDF) spend for Academic Year 22-23, as provided by the Scottish Funding Council to the end of March 2023 and Skills Development Scotland to early June 2023, (rounded to nearest thousand):

The then Minister for Public Health, Women’s Health and Sport Maree Todd MSP raised the consultation on alcohol advertising and promotion with Neil O'Brien MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care at a bi-lateral meeting on 1 March 2023.

Ms Todd set out the importance of taking action to reduce alcohol-related harms in Scotland, indicated that the consultation on alcohol advertising and promotion had issued and was live and highlighted that a UK wide approach on some areas of alcohol policy would be beneficial.

The 2023-24 budgets for employability programmes, including No One Left Behind and Fair Start Scotland were confirmed by the Deputy First Minister on 25 May, with Grant Offer Letters issued to local authorities on 30 May for No One Left Behind. The budget for Individual Training Accounts has now been confirmed and the scheme will re-open during the week commencing 19th June 2023.

We are currently considering the budget for the Flexible Workforce Development Fund in 2023-24 through colleges and the Open University in Scotland and will provide a further update once budget discussions have concluded.

The Ministerial Strategic Assurance Group was established as part of the refreshed system wide governance for the Deposit Return Scheme in Scotland (DRS) for the implementation stage of the programme. The function of this group is:

• To provide collective strategic assurance of successful DRS implementation.
• To hold all stakeholders mutually accountable for requisite actions.
• To build consensus on issues where there is conflict in stakeholders’ positions.

? To drive down the number of outstanding operational issues.

? To manage resolution issues escalated to the Group.

Chronic lymphocytic leukaemia is categorised into 3 stages. Generally, if a patient has stage A, the condition is monitored and treatment is not recommended. This is because there is no benefit in receiving treatment at this stage, and it can cause significant side effects.

The Scottish Government has made available £3 million of funding to the Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD), hosted in NHS Golden Jubilee, to support implementation of the optimal lung cancer diagnostic pathway. CfSD is responsible for supporting the design and delivery of optimal cancer diagnostic pathways in NHS Scotland, and has been working with Boards across Scotland to enhance current services and direct investment to the areas with greatest need.