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We continue to monitor the impact and effectiveness of the Young Patients Family Fund (YPFF) and keep this under review.

As set out in our current guidance “Included, Engaged and Involved Part 1: Promoting and Managing School Attendance,” Local Authorities are expected to have robust processes and guidance for children who do not attend school, from the first day they are absent until they are re-engaged with education. I have expressed concerns about the impact of COVID-19 on attendance and in order to inform our policy response, I have asked Education Scotland to undertake work to better understand the current barriers and challenges experienced by schools, children and young people and their families which influence school attendance. I expect to receive the findings of Education Scotland’s work later this year. This work will provide examples of effective strategies that are supporting improved attendance, and clarity on what further support or intervention is required in areas where attendance is not improving.

The findings from our forthcoming Behaviour in Scottish Schools Research, which will be published in November, will also provide important information on the extent to which pupils are disengaging from learning, which we will consider alongside the Education Scotland work.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on all NHS services to an extent, including abortion services.

The Scottish Government is committed to improving access to abortion services and the Women’s Health Plan includes a range of measures which aim to achieve this. Several abortion-related actions within the Women’s Health Plan have been progressed, including:

• making telemedicine consultations a permanent option for patients,
• continuing to allow women under 12 weeks’ gestation to take mifepristone and misoprostol at home where that is clinically appropriate and also now allowing women to take mifepristone at home at later gestations in certain circumstances,
• ensuring patients are offered the progestogen-only pill with their abortion medications, and
• working with stakeholders and Gillian Mackay MSP to introduce the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill into the Scottish Parliament.

The Scottish Government commissioned NHS National Services Scotland (NSS) to develop a specification to deliver a national service for abortions between 20 to 24 weeks gestation within Scotland. NSS has been discussing its specification with NHS Boards and is also exploring other delivery options for the service. We anticipate that the long-term action within the Plan to review the provision of abortion services in Scotland will be considered as part of the forthcoming review of abortion law.

Payment reform will be implemented on 1 November 2023. Therefore, it is not possible at this stage to make an assessment on the impact of payment reform on the recruitment of dentists in Dumfries and Galloway and the level of deregistration of adult patients from NHS dental services.

The main purpose of payment reform is to improve access to NHS dental services and thereby reducing the number of deregistrations. This will be done by replacing the existing care and treatment fees with a new set priced at levels that we believe will incentivise dentists to provide a full range of NHS care and treatment.

The great majority of abortions in Scotland are early medical abortions, where one or both medications are taken at home. These patients do not require bed spaces. Only a small minority of abortion patients require inpatient treatment, mostly as a day patient.

Whilst factors, including access to a bed, may sometimes cause a delay, Health Boards do their best to ensure patients can access abortion treatment as quickly as possible.

During the first trimester, all mainland NHS Boards within Scotland are able to offer surgical abortions, although access to surgical abortion is limited in some Health Board areas.

Currently no Health Board in Scotland is able to provide second trimester surgical abortions; if a patient is unable to access a medical abortion locally in the second trimester (over 20 weeks’ gestation), their Health Board will refer them to a service in England for treatment.

The fee per item system of payment affords the opportunity to robustly monitor and evaluate payment reform, building on existing statistical publications. Officials are presently working with partners on the precise details of the data monitoring programme. Evaluation will be a future consideration, once the new system has bedded-in.

Government recognises that it is important that reform is supported by evidence demonstrating the reality of the position on the ground, in order to support the Scottish Government commitment to sustain NHS dental services.

Further to the response to S6W-21420, we continue to develop delivery plans including consideration of the funding and reporting procedures.

This is not a reduction in the Scottish Government's funding awarded to Creative Scotland. Over the last five years, the Scottish Government has provided over £33m to Creative Scotland to compensate for a shortfall in National Lottery funding. As a result of rising costs and pressure on budgets across government, we are unable to make up the ongoing shortfall this year.

The Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture asked the Creative Scotland Board on 27 September to use £6.6m of their reserves to ensure all payments to regularly funded organisations are met in full. I am pleased that the Board approved this approach and will make up the £6.6m shortfall from their funding reserves, which total £17m. This will mean that the regularly funded organisations will not receive reduced funding this financial year.

Subject to the usual Parliamentary processes we will provide the National Lottery shortfall funding of £6.6m to Creative Scotland in 2024-2025.

The 2023 “Brush Up” campaign aims to deliver key messaging to the public using a variety of media, community and partnership channels.

Additionally, dentists will be able to offer a review examination as often as necessary to any patient where it is clinically necessary to do so. There will be no charge to the patient for the review exam.