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The Scottish Government continues to fund Partners in Advocacy with £295,00 per year to deliver the My Rights, My Say, Children’s Service. This service supports children aged 12-15 to access advocacy and legal representation to enable them to be fully involved in decisions about their education and to exercise their rights under the Additional Support for Learning legislation.

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all students with a disability, long term medical condition, or additional support need, can access further and higher education and are fully supported throughout their studies. It is for institutions to make decisions on their intake, but they are required under the Equality Act (Scotland) 2010 to provide equal opportunities and prevent discrimination.

Details of all ministerial visits can be found on the Parliament website, available at the following link - Ministerial engagements, travel and gifts - gov.scot

Scottish Ministers have visited Skye House on several occasions since 2017 as part of routine engagements to meet patients and thank staff for their work.

The Scottish Government's Marine Directorate operates a 24hr on-call cadre of Spill Response Duty Officers (MD-DOs). The role coordinates the environmental and public health response to any pollution event, or potential pollution event, in Scottish marine waters. Duty Officers are contacted regularly about incidents in Scottish and wider UK waters through the circulation of POLREPS (Pollution Reports) and SITREPS (Situation Reports). On Monday 10 March 2025, The MD-DO was included in the circulation of a SITREP from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, detailing the initial circumstances of the allision between the vessels MV Solong and the MV Stena Immaculate. The MD-DO was informed at an early stage that there was little or no risk of pollution in or close to Scottish waters and that information was passed to Ministers. Further updates were circulated from the UK Government's Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and also shared with Ministers. The final update was shared on 13 March 2025, when the incident had stabilised and the emergency response was well established.

The Scottish Government is clear that temporary accommodation should be of a high standard and households living there should receive good quality support services that meet their needs. That is why the Scottish Government published the temporary accommodation standards framework in 2023. The framework sets out the physical, location, service and management standards to ensure that temporary accommodation is of good quality and is safe, warm and affordable.

Most households with children are placed in suitable temporary accommodation in the social rented sector. However, the Unsuitable Accommodation Order (UAO) was extended in 2020 to ensure that no homeless household has to stay in unsuitable accommodation, such as hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation, for more than seven days.

The numbers of households and time spent in temporary accommodation is too high, particularly for households with children, and the Scottish Government is taking decisive action to increase housing supply. 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. This funding is to increase the supply of social homes of the right type and size – including larger properties suitable for families – where the need is greatest. To date, this has supported local authorities to bring 1,000 homes back into use through acquisitions and to reduce the number of empty social homes.

The service standards in the temporary accommodation standards framework states that local authorities should assess the needs of all members of the household. Assessments should be followed up with referrals and support to enable the household to engage with the relevant housing, health, education, social care service and independent advice services.

The temporary accommodation standards framework also states that local authorities should offer support to enable households to access information and appropriate services, including counselling, substance use, mental health, domestic abuse, medical, dental, optical and money/welfare advice services.

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

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 Scottish Government does not collect information on the amount spent by local authorities on school bus journeys for pupils travelling to school.

Increases to the timelines relating to the Land and Buildings Transaction Tax Additional Dwelling Supplement were introduced with prospective effect from 1 April 2024, following a process of consultation.

The Scottish Government made clear in the initial December 2021 call for evidence and views on the Additional Dwelling Supplement that any changes arising from the process would not be made retrospective. The subsequent consultation on draft legislation published in February 2023 confirmed that the proposed changes, including to the relevant timelines, would have prospective effect only.

In this context, the Scottish Government has not considered backdating the 36 month time limit to claim an Additional Dwelling Supplement repayment to 1 October 2022.

The Scottish Government’s Continuing Care and Aftercare policies provide the framework for supporting young people transitioning from care on to more independent living. Through the Local Government Settlement, the Scottish Government funds local authorities to provide this support.

Continuing Care enables eligible young people from age 16, living in foster, kinship or residential care to remain in their care setting with the same level of support until their 21st birthday, maintaining and building on the strong and positive relationships developed with their carers and offering a pathway to safe, sustainable and affordable accommodation. Aftercare provision is available to all young people leaving care from age 16, regardless of their care setting, and enables them to request support, assistance and advice, based on individual need, from their local authority up to age 26, and beyond in some cases.

The type of accommodation that a young person leaving care is provided with should be informed by the Aftercare pathways assessment and plan, undertaken with a holistic and person centred approach. The pathway plan will set out the type of accommodation which best meets the needs of the young person and how this is to be obtained. Some young people will need more support than others on a range of matters and therefore the provision of suitable accommodation should also be accompanied by appropriate levels of support, bespoke to the individual needs of each young person.

Care leavers in receipt of Universal Credit Housing Element or Housing Benefit who find that their benefit does not cover all their rent can apply to their local authority for a Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP). DHPs can also be used where local housing allowance (LHA) rates for benefits recipients in the private rented sector are insufficient.

The Scottish Government provides a broad package of financial support for those leaving care. Section 30 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 sets out financial assistance available through Aftercare.

A Care Experience Bursary of £9000 is available for care experienced young people in Further and Higher education. In addition, a Summer Accommodation Grant of up to £1,330 is available to support Care Experienced students with their accommodation costs through the summer break. Some institutions may also offer discretionary support for childcare and travel costs or rent guarantees for private accommodation. The ‘Care Leavers Council Tax Exemption’ means that young people leaving care are not liable for Council Tax until their 26th birthday.

Work is also currently underway to develop the Care Leaver Payment. The Care Leaver Payment as currently proposed will provide a one-off payment of £2,000 to young people leaving care, with the intention of helping to reduce some of the financial barriers young people face whilst transitioning into adulthood and more independent living.

Following the publication of the analysis of our ‘Moving On’ from care into adulthood consultation on the current and potential package of support for young people leaving care, work is underway across the Scottish Government and with our partners to ensure that our response to the changes called enables young people to access the support they need to thrive in young adulthood