Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally.

Schools and education authorities use a range of strategies and programmes to support children and young people with mental health issues and this will involve many teaching and other school staff.

The Scottish Government is committed to promoting and supporting children and young people’s mental wellbeing. Through wide ranging commitments in the 2018 Programme for Government we set out a £250 million package of measures to support positive mental health for children and young people.

One of the commitments is to enhance support and professional learning materials for teachers on good mental health. We are currently assessing the wide ranging suite of resources and approaches that are currently available to support primary and secondary teachers and will undertake further consultation with key third sector bodies as to what further resources may be required.

Additionally, following a thematic inspection of the delivery of Personal and Social Education, including how positive mental health is encouraged, we published the ‘Review of Personal and Social Education’ in January 2019. The Review included a recommendation that the Scottish Government work with partners in local government, Health Boards and the third sector, to provide guidance and support to schools on the spectrum of mental health and wellbeing services that are available to meet the needs of staff and children and young people. This work is ongoing and is due to be complete by March 2021.

Education authorities and schools have responsibilities to identify, support and develop the mental wellbeing of pupils. Every child and young person should have access to emotional and mental wellbeing support in school.

The Scottish Government and Education Scotland provide guidance and support to schools and local authorities to help them carry out these responsibilities.

For example, Education Scotland recently launched ‘The Compassionate and Connected Classroom and Community’ resource and coaching for practitioners to help them support upper primary aged children. This helps children to cope with challenges and adversity and develop their confidence, resilience, compassion and empathy. Almost all authorities have now received the two day coaching session.

We increased the numbers of radiology trainees by 26 between 2014 and 2017. In 2017 the Cabinet Secretary announced an additional £3 million for a further increase in the number of radiology trainees in Scotland by at least another 50 by 2022.

We are investing £4m in the Scottish Radiology Transformation Programme to improve diagnostic imaging capacity across Scotland, and improve IT connectivity.

A number of NHSScotland Boards have invested in training for radiographers, extending their roles to include image reading, ultrasound examinations and some diagnostic procedures.

In 2018 NHS Scotland Boards ran an international campaign to recruit up to 32 consultant grade radiologists. Since the campaign, many Boards have also recruited Radiologists via local recruitment methods. In many cases these Boards have retained these doctors following their CCT and have been able to offer them a Consultant-level position.

We are working with the Scottish Cancer Taskforce, who are feeding into the development of the Integrated Health and Social Care Workforce Plan.

The Scottish Government will circulate updated guidance on workforce planning to Boards alongside the Integrated Health and Social Care Workforce Plan in 2019.

We cannot provide this level of information back to 2007. The current corporate system that records correspondence from members of the public was developed in 2012 and we are unable to provide detailed information on communications raised by members of the public.

How Good Is Our School ? 4 has a strengthened focus on equality and wellbeing across the framework since mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing has a significant impact on children and young people’s success in school and beyond school.

Quality indicator(QI) 3.1 Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion focuses on the impact of the school’s approach to wellbeing which underpins children and young people’s ability to achieve success. It has a clear focus on ensuring wellbeing entitlements support all learners to maximise their successes and achievements. It has a strong focus on how well schools support mental health of children and young people.

HM Inspectors of Education in Education Scotland are committed to continuing to review and develop our approaches to school inspection and, in doing so strengthen further the role of inspection as a positive tool within Scottish education to help drive improvement in quality and performance across the system. Evaluating the effectiveness of our quality frameworks, such as How Good is Our School? 4th edition (HGIOS?4) is part of that commitment.

HGIOS?4 has a strengthened focus on equality and wellbeing across the framework since mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing has a significant impact on children’s and young people’s success in school and beyond school.

Quality indicator(QI) 3.1 Ensuring wellbeing, equality and inclusion focuses on the impact of the school’s approach to wellbeing which underpins children and young people’s ability to achieve success. It has a clear focus on ensuring wellbeing entitlements support all learners to maximise their successes and achievements. It has a strong focus on how well schools support mental health of children and young people.

Our priority is to make the most of two major commitments – the implementation of the Carers Act and ongoing reform of carer benefits, including the introduction of a new Young Carer Grant.

The Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 has established new rights for all carers in Scotland and takes a personalised approach to identifying individual’s needs for support. We are working to ensure that all carers, including young carers beyond the age of 16, are aware of their rights under the Act. To help us monitor the uptake of support under the Act we are running a Carers’ census data collection exercise. For more information on this please see the answer to S5W-24097 on 17 July 2019.

The Young Carer Grant, which can be applied for annually, will provide eligible young carers with a payment of £300 to help them access life opportunities that are the norm for many other young people. It will be paid from autumn 2019. We are developing a monitoring and evaluation framework to monitor the grant’s impact on the quality of young carers’ lives. We will continue to engage with carers and organisations, which will provide further opportunities to refine our monitoring approach. Scottish Ministers must also bring forward legislation to annually uprate by inflation the value of the grant and other carer’s assistance.

We have also committed to introduce free bus travel for recipients of the YCG during financial year 2020-21.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The principal threat to water voles in Scotland comes from non-native American mink. For this reason, strategic mink control is generally considered to be the most effective means of helping Scottish water vole populations.

Various mink control measures have been put in place, for example during the Cairngorms Water Vole Conservation project (2007-2009), the Scottish Mink Initiative (2011–2015) and most recently through the current Scottish Invasive Species Initiative. All of these projects have been supported by Scottish Natural Heritage, both in terms of finance and staff resources.

The Trossachs Water Vole project, which is a partnership between Forestry and Land Scotland, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park Authority and the Forth Rivers Trust, is helping water vole populations in the area to continue to expand through the monitoring of their population, creation of suitable wetland habitat and control of the numbers of American mink in the area.

As a result of these measures, water voles numbers are recovering in various locations across Scotland, including the Balmoral Estate on Deeside, Invermark, Glen Doll and Caenlochan National Nature Reserve and several other localities elsewhere in the north east of Scotland.

There are other expanding water vole populations in the Central Region that do not require any mink control. Forestry and Land Scotland work as a partner in the Seven Lochs Heritage Project, which has one of the main water vole populations at Easterhouse in Glasgow. The Project will focus on identifying, surveying and managing key water vole sites to better understand the distribution of riparian and fossorial (grassland) water vole populations in the Seven Lochs Project area. The project will also create areas of suitable high quality habitat and habitat networks, and work on education and raising awareness of water vole populations, their national significance and future conservation needs.