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The Scottish Welfare Fund is a discretionary scheme administered by local authorities. The purposes for which the Fund can be used are set out in legislation: to provide occasional assistance to people to help meet immediate short-term needs, and to support people to establish or maintain a settled home who would otherwise be in prison, hospital, residential care or be homeless or otherwise living an unsettled way of life. The process through which decisions on applications are made is set out in Statutory Guidance. This is developed by the Scottish Government in conjunction with local authorities, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) and other stakeholders.

There is a comprehensive and robust process in place to enable applicants who are unhappy about the outcome of their application to have the local authority’s decision reviewed, firstly by the local authority itself and secondly, if necessary, the SPSO.

The Social Care Staff Support Fund has been put in place to ensure that eligible social care workers receive their expected income and do not suffer financial hardship during the coronavirus pandemic. Full details of the eligibility criteria, categories of eligible workers, circumstances in which the Fund can be accessed, and how to apply can be found in the published on the Scottish Government’s website.

The decision to follow up with customers of any individual pub, restaurant or other business is for the local Incident Management Team dealing with a cluster or outbreak, on the basis of their professional risk assessment. Contacts are traced from information collected and made available to NHS Test and Protect by Incident Management Teams. This allows NHS Test and Protect to contact those who may have been exposed to the virus in a particular setting, and request them to take appropriate steps to prevent potential onward spread.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on the individual decisions made by Incident Management Teams undertaking a risk assessment during the handling of each cluster or outbreak.

Official Statistics on Fair Start Scotland are published quarterly as part of the Scotland's Devolved Employment Services Statistical Summary Release. These include numbers of people starting work and sustaining employment for three months, six months and one year; and is broken down by how many were disabled people. The most recent statistics, covering up to the end of June 2020, was published on 26 August 2020, and can be found here:

The Scottish Government recognises that COVID-19 and the decrease in oil and gas prices has had a significant impact on both the oil and gas sector and the North East of Scotland, and this has unfortunately led to a number of redundancies across the sector and more may yet follow as the UK Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme comes to an end. We are providing support to any individuals affected by redundancy through our Partnership Action for Continuing Employment, PACE initiative.

The Scottish Government has committed £100 million in 2020-21 to support those looking for work or at risk of redundancy to retrain and get back into work. This package of support will include a job guarantee for young people, a new national retraining scheme and more funding to provide immediate assistance and advice if people are made redundant. I shall seek to ensure that the sector is aware of all opportunities for support for individuals arising from this funding, for example in supporting transition to alternative employment, through a £25 million economy-wide National Transition Training Fund, having learned from the previous oil and gas specific £12 million Transition Training Fund, now closed, which operated successfully to support oil and gas sector workers during the last downturn in oil and gas prices.

Fair Start Scotland, our employment support service for Scotland, is a vital element of our approach to helping people back into work as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Fair Start Scotland aims to support a minimum of 38,000 individuals, including those who face the greatest challenges accessing the labour market. The service provides flexible support, taking into account personal circumstances and removing barriers to accessing work.

The Scottish Government is already providing support to those who are facing financial hardship, through Crisis Grants from the Scottish Welfare Fund. Crisis Grants can be used to support people and families on low income who find themselves in an emergency (such as losing their job) or disaster (e.g. a fire or flood). The budget was more than doubled in response to the pandemic and over £6.9 million has already been awarded in Crisis Grants between March and June 2020

The Scottish Government will continue to work closely with the UK Government which retains many of the key levers required to support the sector, including delivery of a North Sea Transition Deal. This will add support to our own £62 million Energy Transition Fund, launched in July, and developed with input from the Oil and Gas and Energy Transition Strategic Leadership Group that I Chair. We recognise it is critical that both Governments are doing all that we can to protect jobs and minimise any negative impact of COVID-19 on groups particularly affected by the pandemic and I want, for our part, to reassure those working in the sector that is exactly what the Scottish Government intends to do.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that children and young people, including those with disabilities, get the support that they need to reach their full learning potential.

The Equality Act (2010) places a legal duty on education authorities, colleges and universities to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to ensure pupils and students with disabilities are not disadvantaged.

Education authorities also have duties under the Additional Support for Learning Act 2004 (as amended) to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils, supporting them to overcome barriers to their learning and fully access learning opportunities at school.

The Scottish Government funds a range of services to provide advice and support to children, young people and their families. This seeks to ensure that they are fully informed of their rights to additional support at school and can access support and guidance to be involved in any decisions that are made about that support.

To provide specialised support for individual students with specific educational support needs, colleges can access the Scottish Funding Council’s (SFC) £50.5m Access and Inclusion Fund to help them to achieve parity of outcomes for all students. This allows colleges to provide support measures for students who need extra resources such as staff or equipment.

In order to support universities in making ‘reasonable adjustments’ the SFC’s University funding model includes a Disabled Students Premium to recognise additional costs that universities may face. Further, students can also apply for Disabled Students Allowance, a non-income assessed allowance to cover any extra costs or expenses a higher education student might incur while studying, which arise because of their disability.