Chamber and committees

The delivery of round-the-clock urgent care at Portree Hospital is the responsibility of NHS Highland. However, the Scottish Government is assured that 24/7 urgent care was restored at Portree Hospital on 16 August 2024.

The adoption of the recommendations contained in the Independent External Review of Skye, Lochalsh and South West Ross Out Of Hours Services is the responsibility of NHS Highland. The recommendations were fully accepted by NHS Highland following the publication of the report in 2018.

The requested information is not held by the Scottish Government.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information. Whether VAT applies to a visitor levy is a decision for the UK Government.

The Scottish Government is clear that any local authority thinking of introducing a Visitor Levy needs to consider the potential VAT implications that it would have for relevant businesses in their area.

The Scottish Government does not collect information on the age profile of scanning equipment held by NHS Boards. As holding bodies, NHS Boards are responsible for the management of their infrastructure assets and for identifying maintenance and replacement requirements.

A Scottish Government amendment to the Housing (Scotland) Bill will, if passed, confer a new power for relevant bodies to share information in connection with their new duties to prevent homelessness. This should help decision makers plan better services but will also mean that those seeking assistance do not have to share distressing information on multiple occasions with different services.

The Scottish Government published updated information sharing guidance in September 2022 as part of a suite of refreshed ‘Getting it right for every child’ (GIRFEC) policy and practice guidance, which is intended for practitioners and service leads in services that work with children, young people and families. This guidance promotes lawful, fair and proportionate information sharing that complies with all relevant legal requirements. The Scottish Government will continue to work in partnership with stakeholders to better understand local challenges around GIRFEC implementation, including information sharing, in order to strengthen its consistent, high-quality application across Scotland.

The National Care Service Bill, as introduced, contained two critical provisions, section 36 (information sharing) and section 37 (information standards), within part 2 of the bill to support our data and digital infrastructure across health and care in Scotland. Section 36, as introduced, sets out the power of Scottish Ministers, by way of regulations, to establish a scheme for sharing information in order that public health and social care services can be provided efficiently and effectively. This will allow safe, secure and efficient sharing of social care and health data across relevant care settings, including with the individual and will ensure up-to-date information is available to those who support and provide care.

We have provided local authorities with over £65 million since 2020 to fund community mental health and wellbeing services for children, young people and their families. This investment will continue with the baselining of £15 million per annum funding into the local government finance settlement from 2025-26.

The community-based supports and services are focused on prevention and early intervention, promoting positive mental health and wellbeing, and tackling emotional distress. Supports and services are available in every local authority area, and more than 300 have been put in place across the country, including supports for trauma, anxiety and depression. Local authorities have reported that nearly 83,000 people used the supports and services between July 2023 and March 2024, including more than 10,000 family members and carers.

In addition, we continue to provide £16 million a year to local authorities to ensure that all school pupils aged 10 and above have access to school counselling services, and local authorities have confirmed that services are in place across Scotland. We have also supported school staff to understand and recognise the range of mental health and wellbeing concerns that young people may experience through a professional resource, which complements 2021 guidance to support whole-school approaches to mental health and wellbeing.

The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) service specification highlights that all children and families should receive support and services that are appropriate to their needs. For many children and young people, such support is likely to be community based, and should be easily and quickly accessible. We continue to work with NHS boards to monitor the service specification’s implementation, to improve services and support for children and young people and their families.

We continue to invest in mental health services for children and young people and we have directly allocated £123 million to NHS boards and integration joint boards for a new enhanced mental health outcomes framework in 2024-25. The framework provides a single, flexible funding stream to support continued improvements and better outcomes across a range of mental health and psychological services in line with the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, including CAMHS. The priorities for the funding this year are to continue delivering improvements in CAMHS, psychological therapies, eating disorders and neurodevelopmental services, as well as ongoing innovation and service reform for mental health services.

The following table shows the number of children in households with a homelessness application and where there is one or more associated temporary accommodation placements in a calendar year since 2021.

Number of children on homelessness applications where there is at least one associated temporary accommodation placement in the year

Notes:

• Data for 2024 is only available up to 30 September.
• Children on the homelessness application may or may not enter associated temporary accommodation placement(s).
• There may be duplication in the number of children, for example, if the same child is linked to more than one homelessness application, either within the same reporting year and/or across multiple reporting years.

The Scottish Government is committed to reducing the number of households and time spent in temporary accommodation and we are taking a number of actions in line with the report’s conclusions. The best way to reduce the number of households with children in temporary accommodation is by preventing homelessness before it occurs. The homelessness prevention measures in the Housing (Scotland) Bill will make the prevention of homelessness everybody’s business and will ensure people get the help they need earlier to remain in their homes.

To minimise the harm caused to children who stay in temporary accommodation for long periods, we are supporting local authorities to increase the supply of social and affordable homes of the right type and size, including larger properties suitable for families.

We have provided funding of £80 million over this year and next, 80 per cent of which has been targeted to five local authorities with the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures.

Whilst data from 1999 is not held by Scottish Government, the Improvement Service’s annual Instrumental Music Survey of local authorities contains data on the number of pupils that participated in instrumental music lessons from academic year 2013-2014 to 2023-24.

The most recent Instrumental Music survey published in January 2025 confirmed that uptake in 2023-24 was the highest proportion of the school roll participating in IMS since 2017. Page 9 of the document contains a table with the number of instrumental music pupils per authority from 2016-17 until 2023-24.

In order to access data from 2012-13 you can access the 2021 Instrumental Music survey report.

The National Bairns’ Hoose Governance Group had five meetings between February 2023 and June 2024.