Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to reducing the need to practice restraint and seclusion in secure care. The wellbeing and safety of children and young people is paramount. The Scottish Government is clear that restraint should only be used in exceptional circumstances.

The use of restraint was a focus of the joint inspection carried out by the Care Inspectorate and the Mental Welfare Commission in August 2025. St Mary’s Kenmure has undertaken efforts to improve the experiences and outcomes for young people in its care since the inspection, including improved governance around practice, ensuring that the use of restraint and seclusion is more visible and subject to greater scrutiny by the Board of Trustees.

In November 2025 St Mary's Kenmure reported that it had achieved an 85% reduction in the use of restrictive practices and an 80% reduction in the use of restraint over the previous year.

The Scottish Government ran a public consultation on the future of secure care between January and April 2026. We expect to receive independent analysis of the consultation responses and outputs over the coming weeks. Consideration will be given over the autumn to next steps and action to be taken. Future Government action will also be informed by the findings from the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and other key information sources.

There are appropriate channels where issues and complaints can be raised and addressed independently, both through St Mary's Kenmure’s internal complaints process and complaints raised directly with either a placing authority, or the Care Inspectorate.

The care manager for the child must be notified immediately when a formal complaint has been raised in any aspect of the child's care.

Independent advocacy is also provided to every child residing at St Mary's to enable them to express views, raise issues, make complaints or representations to ensure that their rights are promoted and upheld.

St Mary's, like all secure centres, is inspected at least once a year on an unannounced basis. The Care Inspectorate has a responsibility to ensure that the service is upholding, protecting and promoting the rights of children. The Care Inspectorate inspectors are responsible for working alongside the secure providers to ensure that children get the care and support they need while living in secure.

As work is undertaken to enhance secure care in Scotland, consideration of the CPT’s findings – including those on children’s confidence in internal complaints processes – alongside a range of other evidence will be taken into account.

As previously stated in the Scottish Government's response to the Freedom of Information request FOI/202400419507, the then-Deputy First Minister did not engage with or accept the offer of a donation to a charity of his choice from the CEO of the WAVE Trust: https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400419507/ The meeting was arranged entirely independently of this offer.

The Scottish Ministerial Code already clearly sets out the standards expected of all members of the Scottish Ministerial team. Paragraph 3.22 of the Code notes that ‘…Ministers should not accept gifts, hospitality or services which would, or might appear to, compromise their judgement or place them under an obligation to people or organisations that might try to influence their work in government.’ It is the personal responsibility of each Minister to determine how any activity would engage with the terms of the Code, based on the circumstances around any specific event or interaction.

PSD Scotland publishes data on the number of nursing graduates and available posts by reporting the percentage of students that have completed pre-registration education by field of practice each year and the number of vacant posts by NHS Board and sub-job family broken down each quarter, NHS Scotland workforce | Turas Data Intelligence

The use of temporary staff in an organisation as large and complex as NHS Scotland will always be required to ensure vital service provision during times of unplanned absence, sickness and increased unforeseen activity, with the majority of spend on temporary staff directed through the NHS staff bank. These are NHS staff, on NHS contracts at NHS rates of pay.

In keeping with our commitment to direct as much of our resources as possible towards frontline services, the latest workforce statistics demonstrate the significant progress made to reduce NHS Scotland’s reliance on agency workers, with a 39% reduction in nurse agency usage alongside a 4% reduction in medical agency usage delivered across 2025-26.

Investing in staff wellbeing supports retention rates, reduces absenteeism and helps foster a more sustainable workforce.

NHS Boards are responsible for determining the workforce needed to deliver services safely and effectively, and have worked with us to prepare for the reduced working week.

The impact of the reduced working week is reflected in NHS Boards workforce plans, which considered the factors required to maintain safe service provision.

Recruitment of newly qualified nurses is informed by workforce planning undertaken at local and national levels, and we will continue to work with NHS Boards to ensure an appropriate nursing workforce supply.

I refer the member to the answer to question S7W-01456 on 20 July 2026. 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 Funding Council collects data on the number of students who have graduated from pre-registration children’s nursing courses across Scotland.

There are no pre-registration neo-natal programmes available in Scotland. Instead, qualified nurses can undertake a specific neonatal qualification post registration course known as Neonatal Care - Qualified in Speciality.

The Scottish Government values the contribution of the NHS Scotland workforce and is committed to supporting those who choose to pursue a career in nursing. We want to help more people who are trained in Scotland to work in NHS Scotland upon graduation. To do this, we have committed to an NHS Job Guarantee for all graduates for medicine, dentistry, nursing, and other NHS professions in Scotland with a guaranteed position for a minimum 3-year contract, so they can put their training into practice.

Further detail on the proposed job guarantee will be set out in further detail in due course.