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Professor Anna Glasier is Scotland’s independent Women’s Health Champion, and her remit encompasses all of the aims of the Women’s Health Plan.

There are many other issues and conditions that are important to women and their health, and there is a range of work under way to help women affected by dementia.

This includes the Scottish Government’s New Dementia Strategy, published in May 2023. The Scottish Government is also working together with COSLA and a lived experience panel, which includes women with a diagnosis of dementia, to agree priorities for the first delivery plan for the strategy, which will be published in January 2024.

The priorities for any future Women’s Health Plan are not yet determined. Consideration for future areas of focus and priorities will be informed by evidence and developed in collaboration with women and girls, a women’s health lived experience group, clinical experts and relevant stakeholders.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally. Public Health Scotland (PHS) monitors and publishes weekly prevalence and surveillance management information data on laboratory confirmed reports of norovirus. All published reports can be found here .

PHS also publish a dashboard by board detailing the number of hospitals and wards closed due to norovirus. The latest dashboard can be found here .

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all students with a long term medical condition or additional support needs are supported as they study in further and higher education. Colleges and universities are autonomous bodies with responsibility for the management of their own student support services.

In March 2023, the Scottish Government ran an endometriosis public awareness campaign in partnership with Young Scot, targeted primarily at increasing young people’s awareness of the condition.

Following the campaign a post-evaluative survey ran to measure the impact of the information on the audience. Key statistics are as follows:

• 82% of young people agreed or strongly agreed that they are more informed about the symptoms of endometriosis
• 71% of young people agreed or strongly agreed that they are more informed about how to support someone with endometriosis
• 74% of young people agreed or strongly agreed that they would know where to get support or what steps they could take if they thought they may have endometriosis
• 97% of young people who visited young.scot/Endometriosis found it useful or very useful

The Scottish Government recognises the disruption and harm that retail crime does to both businesses and the individuals who work there. We support the work of our Justice partners to tackle this, including through the innovative Scottish Partnership Against Acquisitive Crime strategy. This strategy is led by Police Scotland, together with other organisations, including retailers, and outlines a partnership approach to the prevention, deterrence and enforcement of a range of crimes including shoplifting.

The Criminal Proceedings National Statistics for 2021-22 were published on the 24th October 2023. These include the first partial year of activity for the earliest opening period under the Act (from August 2021 to March 2022). Due to this, some caution should be exercised in interpreting the figures. Over August 2021 to March 2022, 26 individuals were convicted in court where the main charge was a crime or offence under the Retail Workers Act. The type of sentences received included custodial (13 individuals), community-based (9), a financial penalty (3) or another sentence type (1).

The Criminal Proceedings National Statistics for 2022-23, which will represent the first full reporting year of activity under the Act (from 1st April 2022 to 31st March 2023) will be published in 2024. Separate to this, data about the number of charges (not people) resulting in a conviction has been extracted from the management information used to publish the Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services Criminal Disposals Dashboard (Source: Scottish Government Justice Analytical Services Criminal Disposals Dashboard ). This shows there were 543 charges under the Retail Workers Act that received a criminal conviction in court from August 2021 up to March 2023.

As set out in the Women’s Health Plan , we are committed to developing a menopause and menstrual health workplace policy for NHS Scotland, as an example of best practice and to promote equivalent efforts across the public, private and third sector. This policy and its supporting guides will launch at the end of October.

It aims to provide a supportive environment, where staff (in a predominately female sector) can perform at their best, in a way that supports their wellbeing and ultimately helps staff retention.

Line managers and workplace adjustment guides will also be published to supplement the policy. These guides will be available to all staff across Scotland, not just NHS Scotland employees.

Additionally, Endometriosis UK run the Endometriosis Employer Friendly Scheme and a number of employers across Scotland have signed on to the scheme. In addition, the Endometriosis UK website also hosts resources for employers and employees on how to support those with endometriosis in the workplace.

The Endometriosis Referral Care Pathway for Scotland was published by the Centre for Sustainable Delivery in January 2023 and distributed to NHS Scotland Boards.

Private investment has always been a critical element of woodland creation delivery with public investment through grant support being necessary to reduce the up-front costs, given the long period before financial returns from forestry. Land prices and the financial attractiveness of forestry investments are affected by a range of factors of which grant rates are just one element.

Grant rates under the Forestry Grant scheme were set in 2014 and haven’t been increased since then. At that time the rates were set at a level to contribute 80% of the cost of planting and looking after trees until established. As a result of inflation since 2013, grant rates in 2023 now contribute a lower proportion of costs, in the range 50-60%.

Where woodland creation projects are receiving significant private sector investment, for example through sale of carbon credits, the value of the contribution from forestry grants can be reduced further.

Other UK countries and Ireland also offer comparable, or higher grant rates for woodland creation compared to Scotland.

The Scottish Government did not provide any funding directly to Relationships Scotland Family Mediation Highland in 2022.

Relationships Scotland operate a network of 21 Member Services across Scotland, including Relationships Scotland Family Mediation Highland.

In 2022, the Scottish Government provided Relationships Scotland with core funding via the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention and Adult Learning & Empowering Communities third sector fund; and with grant funding to provide child contact services.

The priorities for any future Women’s Health Plan are not yet determined. Future aims and priorities will be developed in collaboration with women and girls, including our lived experience stakeholder group, clinical experts and relevant stakeholders alongside the most up-to-date evidence base.