The Scottish Government continues to provide £16 million per year to ensure that all secondary schools have access to school counselling services.

Local authorities have confirmed that all secondary schools in Scotland have access to counselling services. All school pupils aged 10 and above have access to the service.

It is up to local authorities to decide how to deliver the service in their area to best suit the needs of their children and young people.

School counselling is just one of a range of services that schools and authorities have in place to support the mental health of children and young people.

It is for individual local authorities to decide whether they wish to declare a Housing emergency and to outline their reasons for doing so. The Scottish Government has asked individual local authorities who have declared housing emergencies to share specific actions that they are taking in response.

As stated previously in answer to S6W-28153 on 25 June 2024, there has been an expansion of 68 posts in Clinical Radiology specialty training since 2014. Clinical Radiology is a competitive specialty which has historically filled at 100%. The 2025 expansion process is currently underway and will conclude later this year. This will consider the need for expansion in all medical specialties, including clinical radiology and clinical oncology, with the overall aim of ensuring Scotland has a sufficient supply of trained doctors coming through the system to meet anticipated future demand.

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 .

Any form of violence against women and girls is abhorrent and we recognise that minority ethnic women can experience culturally specific forms of abuse and violence, including from perpetrators outside of their immediate family.

We have established a network of experts to support and inform our work to address violence against BME women and girls, including consideration of any further action that may be required. This group will ensure the voices and needs of BME women are heard, and the specific issues they face, such as extended family abuse and honour-based abuse, are effectively tackled.

The Scottish Government has been increasing the number of available specialty training places for junior doctors in clinical interventional radiology training programmes. Since 2014 we have funded the creation of 10 additional posts in Clinical Interventional Radiology. The 2025 expansion process is currently underway and will conclude later this year. This will consider the need for expansion in all medical specialties, including clinical radiology and clinical oncology, with the overall aim of ensuring Scotland has a sufficient supply of trained doctors coming through the system to meet anticipated future demand.

More junior doctors are joining NHS Scotland than ever before, with more than 1,100 recruited throughout 2023, according to data from 26 March 2024. A total of 1,231 posts were advertised during the 2023 recruitment cycle and 94% filled successfully.

We are currently refreshing the Scottish Government’s Forced Marriage Statutory Guidance. To support the launch of the refreshed guidance, we are producing resources for professionals and the general public to raise awareness about forced marriage. We are working with key partners and sector experts to ensure these resources are effective and widely disseminated across public bodies.

Forced marriage disproportionally impacts minority ethnic communities, which is why we continue to work with our newly established network of experts to inform our work to address violence against BME women and girls, including work to tackle forced marriage.

It is vital that survivors have access to support services which is why we fund Scotland’s Domestic Abuse and Forced Marriage Helpline. Additionally, through our Delivering Equally Safe fund, we support organisations such as Shakti Women’s Aid, AMINA, Saheliya, Hemat Gryffe Women’s Aid and the Multi-Cultural Family Base to undertake vital work to tackle forced marriage.

The Scottish Government has no current plans to amend the Forced Marriage etc. (Protection and Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Act 2011. Forced Marriage is illegal in Scotland and there are protections under civil and criminal law for any victims or potential victims.

Section 11 of the Forced Marriage etc. (Protection and Jurisdiction) (Scotland) Act 2011 imposes a duty on Scottish Ministers to give guidance on the effect of Part 1 that Act. Section 11(3) states that a person exercising public functions to whom guidance is given under section 11 must have regard to it in the exercise of those functions.

The statutory Forced Marriage Guidance, which is currently being refreshed, outlines the responsibilities of relevant public authorities for developing and maintaining local procedures and practices to enable their practitioners to handle cases of forced marriage effectively. The guidance makes clear that staff may have limited opportunity to speak to a potential victim and as such, must be aware of their responsibilities when they come across forced marriage cases.

Operational matters such as decisions around clinical space, office space and picture archiving and communication system access are the responsibility of individual health boards.

a) The Scottish Government recognises the need for active measures to improve retention across the health and social care workforce, which is essential to ensure confidence in longer-term modelling of a sustainable future medical workforce to meet future clinical service demand.

Retiring employees who wish to continue in employment that is suitable to them and the service are supported by the Retire and return provisions in the NHSScotland Retirement Policy . In addition, the NHSScotland Flexible work location policy and NHSScotland Flexible work pattern policy provide staff with a range of flexible working options to help them to balance their lifestyle whilst maintaining and promoting the best possible service to our patients and service users. We will continue to consider ways to increase staff retention alongside health boards.

b) As stated previously in answer to S6W-28159 on 25 June 2024, The Chief Medical Officer met with the Royal College of Radiologists on 14 December 2023 and the Deputy Chief Medical Officer met with them on 16 May 2024.

We will continue to engage with them through their representation on the Oncology Task and Finish group that is developing a sustainable operating model for NHS Scotland oncology.

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 Government/Cancer Research UK funded Paediatric Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) in Glasgow has been involved in a number of initiatives aimed at maximising the number of opportunities for children and young people with cancer to participate in clinical trials.

The Glasgow Paediatric ECMC leads the Northern Paediatric ECMC Network that includes all Scottish Principle Treatment Centres (PTC’s), together with centres in the North of England and Northern Ireland. The Network holds weekly Regional Relapse Discussion Panel (RRDP) meetings which facilitate the identification across an extended geographical area of clinical trials suitable for individual patients.

This approach has been extended to clinical trials in the Teenage and Young Adult (TYA) patient cohort, with the Glasgow ECMC a participant in the UK ECMC TYA Network. This group is currently actively considering the development of a UK-wide national complex case TYA multi-disciplinary team (MDT) approach to enable availability of early phase trials across as wide a patient population base as possible.