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Information about the Scottish Government’s steps to reform or modernise these public bodies is included below.

(a) Scottish Enterprise

As our national enterprise agency, Scottish Enterprise is focused on delivering a programme of support to help businesses to start and scale, increase and improve productivity, access finance and attract investment, develop new products and services, enter new markets, and positively impact on their communities. Through its missions-based approach, Scottish Enterprise focuses on targeted areas and opportunities with the greatest potential for transformational change and impact on Scotland’s economic growth Scottish Enterprise’s workforce innovation specialists can offer businesses tailored guidance to help build workplace culture across areas like workforce planning and organisational design.

(b) Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council

On 22 January 2025, the Minister for Higher and Further Education; and Minister for Veterans announced the next steps in delivering plans to simplify the post-school funding body landscape. Changes will include funding of apprenticeships moving from Skills Development Scotland to the Scottish Funding Council, as well as moving all student support funding within the Student Awards Agency Scotland.

On 5 February, the Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill was formally introduced to the Scottish Parliament. On 6 February, the Minister for Higher and Further Education; and Veterans announced the introduction of Tertiary Education and Training (Funding and Governance) (Scotland) Bill to Parliament.

We are pressing ahead with the proposal to consolidate all post-school provision funding within the Scottish Funding Council and all student support funding within the Student Awards Agency Scotland. This Government committed to bringing learner support funding together in one place, and funding for apprenticeship provision together in one place

None of the changes we are bringing about are a reflection on the performance of any individual organisation, indeed there is strength and depth across all our public bodies. Skills Development Scotland will continue to play an important role working to Ministerial priorities across the skills system, particularly their ongoing careers delivery role. We will work with Skills Development Scotland regarding their remaining functions and will set out further details in the coming months. All of our public bodies will have to transform to meet the needs of the system following these changes.

The Scottish Funding Council will be a fundamentally different organisation. This change means that all apprenticeships will be overseen by the Scottish Funding Council. This will also result in Student Awards Agency Scotland taking responsibility for all further education student support funding, with the Scottish Funding Council no longer involved in this process.

(c) Scottish Social Services Council

Last year, following Scottish Government investment, the Scottish Social Services Council launched their ‘Futureproofing Programme’, an ambitious programme of streamlining and modernisation to registration services which have brought in efficiencies and multiple improvements which benefit the registered workforce, including those working in early learning and childcare. More information on the Futureproofing Programme can be accessed here: Registration is changing - Scottish Social Services Council.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-37815 on 4 June 2025

The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that all eligible children have access to high quality early learning and childcare (ELC) in order to receive the support they need to reach their full learning potential, and to give them the best possible start in life. The Scottish Government and local government have worked in close partnership throughout the delivery of the 1140 expansion, underpinned by a joint policy framework and a multi-year funding agreement.

Questions about the scrutiny of ELC services should be directed to the relevant bodies:

• Local authorities are responsible for meeting their statutory duties in relation to funded ELC. 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.
• Under section 53 of the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010, the Care Inspectorate has statutory obligations to carry out inspections of all ELC and school age childcare settings that are registered with them. The Scottish Social Services Council is the regulator for the social work, social care and children and young people workforce in Scotland.

In 2016, prior to the expansion, it was estimated 11,000 people (9,000 full time equivalent workers) would be required to deliver the transformative early learning and childcare (ELC) expansion.

The Scottish Government recognises that the single most important driver of the quality of a child’s early learning and childcare(ELC) experience is a highly skilled, highly qualified workforce.

The Scottish Social Services Council published their ‘Have Your Say’ Workforce Wellbeing Survey 2025 report on 22 April 2025. The survey aims to capture the experiences of people working in the social work, social care and children and young people workforce, to inform the development of national policies and strategies on how best to support the workforce, and to inform national workforce planning. We are considering the findings of the report carefully with partners.

I have been considering the Mother and Baby Unit Options Appraisal from NHS National Services Scotland. This has been impacted by financial restrictions, which have limited capital spending on new developments in Boards.

As those pressures may begin to ease somewhat, the Scottish Government would hope that the Options Appraisal could be published in coming months.

According to the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001, the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) is responsible for producing and publishing data and intelligence on the social services workforce in Scotland, including the early learning and childcare workforce. As an Accredited Official Statistics provider (meaning they comply with the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) Code of Practice for Statistics) they publish a number of reports that may be of interest to you.

The first is the yearly “Scottish Social Service Sector: Report on Workforce Data”. This report combines administrative data from the Care Inspectorate with data collected by the SSSC directly from local authorities to form a comprehensive picture of the paid workforce employed in the social service sector in Scotland. The report includes data on headcounts and staffing in the sector. The report also clarifies that it is not possible to calculate turnover as the annual collections do not capture data on staff who join and leave a service wholly between the reference dates. The alternative measure of staffing change to turnover used by the SSSC is the stability index (SI) which measures the proportion of staff who have been retained from the previous year and is contained within this report.

The SSSC also publishes an annual “Workforce Skills Report”, which looks at the current provision of qualifications for the adult social care, children's residential care and early years workforce, and demand for those qualifications. It also looks at barriers to undertaking qualifications.

You might also wish to note that the SSSC publishes an annual “Staff vacancies in care services report”. This report is jointly published with the Care Inspectorate, and provides data on vacancies reported by care services as at 31 December each year. It presents data on the number of registered care services with a vacancy, the number of actual vacancies that services say they had using whole time equivalent (WTE) data, and data on the reasons why services have reported that vacancies are hard to fill.

Finally, in April 2025, the SSSC published the “Register Leavers Survey Report”, which gives an insight into leavers from the social work, social care and children and young people workforce. It examines who is leaving the SSSC Register, why and where they are moving to. This report is based on data from 2,003 people who left the Register between August and December 2024. This is the first collection of this data, but the intention is to continue to collect this to gain a deeper understanding of why people leave the sector.

The Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) publishes annual statistics on referrals. Data on referrals going back to 2003-2004 is available on the SCRA website here: Online Statistical Dashboard - SCRA.

If this is not sufficient for your purposes, and you require data going back further, requests for this information can be directed to SCRA.

While we work with NHS Health Boards through planning to make best use of existing NHS resources and capacity, we will continue to consider use of the private sector in a structured and prioritised manner. However, it is for local NHS health boards to determine how they use the private sector and to agree any contractual arrangements.