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I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37806 on 4 June 2025.

The Care Inspectorate report data publicly on their Data Store which may be able to assist with this question or alternatively the Care Inspectorate could be approached directly for a response.

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

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37806 on 4 June 2025.

The Care Inspectorate report data publicly on their Data Store which may be able to assist with this question or alternatively the Care Inspectorate could be approached directly for a response.

The Care Inspectorate is the independent scrutiny body and regulator for care services in Scotland. It regulates and provides scrutiny of the quality of care in Scotland (including in Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) settings) to ensure it meets high standards and to promote the safety, protection and wellbeing of all service users including children in ELC settings.

The Care Inspectorate publishes an annual report with their national findings on the availability and quality of registered daycare of children and childminding services for children and families across Scotland. The most recent report was published on 24 September 2024: Early Learning and Childcare Statistics 2023.

Figure 14 on page 19 provides an overview of the number and percentage of services holding evaluations of weak or unsatisfactory in all assessed key questions or quality themes by service type, at 31 December 2021, 2022 and 2023.

The Care Inspectorate report data publicly on their Data Store which may be able to assist further with this question or alternatively the Care Inspectorate could be approached directly for a response.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-38451 on 20 June 2025.

The Care Inspectorate report data publicly on their Data Store which may be able to assist with this question or alternatively the Care Inspectorate could be approached directly for a response.

This information is not held by the Scottish Government.

The Care Inspectorate report data publicly on their Data Store which may be able to assist with this question or alternatively the Care Inspectorate could be approached directly for a response.

Access to NHS treatment is based on clinical need, however we recognise that service children should not be disadvantaged when accessing the NHS as a result of their parent’s service in the Armed Forces.

We regularly communicate the Covenant legal duty and paying ‘due regard’ to all NHS Boards via the NHS Armed Forces and Veterans Champions, who are responsible for ensuring its implementation.

Additionally, the General Practice Armed Forces and Veterans Recognition Scheme aims to raise awareness of the health challenges that veterans and Armed Forces families face as a result of military service.

I regularly meet with youth organisations such as Youth Scotland, YouthLink Scotland and Scottish Youth Parliament.

The First Minister of Scotland and other Scottish Minister’s also regularly meet with youth organisations. This includes a summit on 12 June attended by the First Minister of Scotland that brought together experts and grassroots youth organisations to discuss how to tackle youth violence.

Information on Ministerial engagements is published on the Scottish Government website and can be found at: www.gov.scot/collections/ministerial-engagements-travel-and-gifts/. The engagements are published three months in arrears.

The information requested is not held centrally. The Scottish Government does not collect or hold data about the condition of early learning and childcare (ELC) settings. Owners and managers are responsible for building management and for ensuring the safety of their premises. Statutory requirements for the fitness of premises to be used for the provision of ELC are set out in Section 10 of The Social Care and Social Work Improvement Scotland (Requirements for Care Services) Regulations 2011.

The Scottish Government monitors trends across the whole childcare sector, drawing on data published by the Care Inspectorate. In recent years the Scottish Government has published financial sustainability health checks and the Sustainable Rates Review, which considered issues relating to financial sustainability.

As part of the evidence gathering phase of the joint Scottish Government and COSLA Sustainable Rates Review, local authorities reported that “they had seen very little evidence of funded services in the private, third or childminding sectors reporting to them that they had been under financial duress or of services closing due to financial sustainability pressures”.

Under the Business Sustainability criteria in the National Standard for funded ELC, providers are required to demonstrate to the local authority that they are financially viable. If a service delivering funded ELC was at risk of closure due to financial difficulties, they would therefore be obliged to make their local authority aware.

The Scottish Government continues to work closely with the sector representative organisations and as part of this engagement we regularly receive updates from these organisations regarding pressures faced by their members. The representative organisations will often highlight any concerns in reports which draw on the responses from members to surveys (and these reports are usually available on the organisations’ website). For example, Early Years Scotland recently published a report highlighting the potential impact on providers as a result of the UK Government’s changes to Employer National Insurance Contributions.

The Scottish Government does not hold information on how many providers have withdrawn from offering funded early learning and childcare (ELC), or their reasons for doing so.

Information on the number of private, and third sector childcare services delivering funded ELC in each local authority in September each year is captured through the ELC census. This information is published as part of the Summary Statistics for Schools and is available in Table 1 of the Additional early learning and childcare statistics spreadsheet. It is important to note that there may currently be additional services delivering funded ELC that were not doing so at the time of the Census. Table 1 also includes information on the share of ELC registrations that were in private and third sector services (Partnership Centres) in each year.

Table: Number of Partnership Centres (private and third sector services) providing funded ELC