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Since the publication of the Women’s Health Plan on 20 th August 2021, there has been progress towards the implementation of some of the short term actions within the Plan. For example, a menopause platform on NHS Inform was launched in October 2021. This is the first phase of work to establish a women’s health platform on the NHS Inform website. A network for menopause specialists in Scotland has also been established and meets regularly.

As noted in the Women’s Health Plan, an update will be published annually to detail progress made towards the implementation of the actions included within the Plan. It is also planned to produce an implementation report in 2024 - 25 to describe progress made in the time since August 2021, analyse the impact of the Plan and consider lessons learned.

On the 2 October 2019, my predecessor confirmed that the Scottish Government would introduce legislation in this parliamentary session to entitle all children whose school start is deferred to access funded early learning and childcare in their deferred year.

The legislation required, an affirmative Scottish Statutory Instrument (SSI) under the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, was laid on 7 December 2020.

Last year, to progress the implementation of this policy and allow us to develop an evidence base for our evaluation, five pilot authorities were funded to offer an additional year of funded ELC to all children who choose to defer entry to primary 1. These authorities were: Angus, Argyll and Bute, Falkirk, Scottish Borders and Shetland Islands.

To allow us to expand our evaluation of the impact of the legislation, five additional authorities have been selected to receive funding to implement this policy from August 2022.

These authorities will be: Aberdeen City, Clackmannanshire, Fife, Glasgow City, and Stirling. The Scottish Government has committed £8.9 million to support this early implementation.

The evaluation of the experience in pilot authorities is being undertaken to monitor the impact of the policy, inform assessment of likely uptake of the entitlement and inform wider implementation of this legislation.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-03702 on 29 October 2021. 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 .

We are working closely with colleagues in Public Health Scotland to develop systems that will collect key data to inform service planning, delivery of clinical standards, and improvement across Scotland. In the first instance we have commissioned an audit of prevalence for neurological conditions from primary care system and we anticipate this data collection will begin during 2022.

We are also working with the Neurological Alliance of Scotland to distribute the first national patient experience survey specifically for people with neurological conditions.

Public Health Scotland collects waiting times data for neurology, which informs current practice in relation to service improvement. We are aware that the pandemic has impacted on waiting lists for neurology clinics and are currently implementing programmes to mitigate this situation. We are working with NHS boards through the Centre for Sustainable Delivery to implement more efficient ways of working such Patient Initiated Review and Active Clinical Referral Triage. These can be applied in various neurological conditions.

Regarding the cost of treating neurological conditions, service areas within NHS health boards carry their own budgets and associated financial improvement plans to manage and improve efficiency of their spend across specialties. Neurology spend data is collected as part of the annual Costs Book exercise published by Public Health Scotland, and we continue to work with health boards and consider data issues as part of this.

We know that schools play a key role in supporting children and young people’s mental health. We continue to support our local authority partners with £16 million in funding to ensure that every secondary school across Scotland has access to counselling services, which our local authority partners have confirmed is now in place across Scotland. Counselling can help children and young people explore, understand and overcome issues in their lives and improve resilience, including responding to loss and grief.

During the planning of the counsellors in schools provision, the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and Counselling and Psychotherapy in Scotland advised that the requirements for working with children under the age of 10 is very different to that for older children. This is why our commitment is only for children aged 10 and over. Schools and education authorities have the capacity to identify specific measures to support children under the age of 10. For example, some local authorities may have staff trained to deliver ‘Seasons for Growth’, a programme widely used in primary, secondary and special sectors across Scotland to support children and young people suffering from loss and grief.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all people living in Scotland with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) are able to access the best possible care and support, and benefit from healthcare services that are safe, effective and person-centred.

The NHS Recovery Plan, launched in August, sets out the Scottish Governments key headline ambitions and actions to be developed and delivered now and over the next 5 years, backed by more than £1 billion of investment. Scottish Health Boards are in the process of implementing their remobilisation plans for 2021-22, with an initial additional £80 million dedicated to supporting waiting times already provided this year.

We will publish a National Workforce Strategy by the end of the year, to further support the remobilisation and recovery of health and social care services and set out priorities for recruitment, training and retention. We anticipate that the Strategy will be used by workforce, service and financial planners from across Health and Social Care at all levels.

We are aware that the pandemic has impacted on waiting lists for neurology clinics and are currently implementing programmes to mitigate this situation. The Centre for Sustainable Delivery (CfSD) is working closely with Neurology services to support the adoption of Active Clinical Referral Triage (ACRT) and Discharge Patient Initiated Review (PIR) approaches within Neurology. Both ACRT and Discharge PIR support better access for patients based on clinical need and can be applied in various neurological conditions, including MS.

The recent Scottish MS Register report noted that despite the challenges presented by COVID-19 during 2020-21, 87% of newly diagnosed people received contact with an MS specialist nurse within 10 working days of diagnosis and over 99% of people were contacted within 10 working days of an MS nurse receiving the referral.

We have invested £1.4m over the past year, through our Neurological Care and Support Framework, into innovative projects which improve the care and support of people with neurological conditions. This includes over £300,000 on projects which improve the health and wellbeing of people with MS in Scotland, including better integrated care and supported self-management.

Should an incident reported to Police Scotland involve criminality then this will be recorded and investigated by Police Scotland, and therefore be included in the Recorded Crime in Scotland National Statistics published by the Scottish Government. The recorded crime statistics include several types of crime in relation to the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015 as detailed below.

In 2020-21, Police Scotland recorded:

• 92 crimes of slavery or forced labour (under sections 1 and 4 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015)
• Zero human organ crimes (under section 1 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015)
• 23 crimes of immoral traffic (under section 1 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015, section 22 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2003 and section 11 of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995)
• 1 breach of Trafficking & Exploitation Order crime (under section 32 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Scotland) Act 2015)

Through our Affordable Housing Supply Programme (AHSP), nearly £328 million is being made available to the Highland and three Island local authority areas over this Parliamentary term to support the delivery of affordable homes.

Within the AHSP there is a strong focus on enhancing energy efficiency through incentivising delivery of new homes which meet a higher ‘greener’ standard.

We have also committed to new homes delivered by Registered Social Landlords and local authorities being zero emissions homes by 2026.

The Scottish Government provides Sustrans with funding to maintain and extend the National Cycle Network (NCN) in Scotland, with £4.065 million this financial year alone. And where the NCN interacts with the trunk road network, Sustrans and Transport Scotland work in partnership to ensure the best possible outcome is achieved for specific projects. Intentions to explore improvements to the National Cycle Network in the south west are included within Sustrans Scotland’s 30 year National Cycle Network Plan. See link: Paths for Everyone - Sustrans.org.uk

Also, the South West Scotland Transport Study, published in January 2020, included a recommendation to develop the Strategic Active Travel Network in the South West of Scotland. This option included proposals to better connect communities to key destinations, including cycle paths parallel to trunk roads and improvements to the National Cycle Network. This intervention is currently subject to detailed appraisal as part of Phase 2 of the second Strategic Transport Projects Review (STPR2).

Once complete, STPR2 will inform strategic transport investment in Scotland for the next 20 years, including decisions on new active travel infrastructure. STPR2 will conclude later this year, with publication of recommendations for investment and be followed by the appropriate statutory consultation period.

Further the government’s answer to question S6W-01541 by Shona Robison on 10 August, my officials have now received a complete response from members of the Building Standards (Fire Safety) Review panel.

Of those responses:

• 1 member of the 2018-19 panel (21 members) and 3 members of the 2020-21 panel (26 members) had a role in designing BS 8414; and
• 1 member of the 2018-19 panel (21 members) and 3 members of the 2020-21 panel (26 members) have worked for organisations that carry out BS 8414 fire tests on behalf of commercial sponsors.