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Scottish Government Ministers and officials are aware of the current challenges faced by NHS Tayside in meeting waiting time standards set out for child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS).

NHS Tayside are receiving additional support which includes providing access to professional specialist advice, making sure that they have robust improvement plans place and are continually monitoring their implementation. Regular and structured engagement with NHS Tayside at both Ministerial and official level is continuing. This is in addition to requesting formal quarterly written updates.

In addition all Boards have been asked to submit trajectories setting out a timeline for clearing long waits. These will be updated annually and used to inform further targeted improvement work to ensure all Boards meet CAMHS waiting times standards.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S6W-25599 on‎ 4 March 2024. 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 .

Child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) workforce data is publicly available in NHS Education for Scotland (NES) Turas Data Intelligence at: NHS Scotland Workforce Data .

This also provides data on staff joining and leaving rates by each Health Board.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-25428 on 4 March 2024. 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 .

Public Health Scotland defines ‘start of treatment’ as “when a patient’s treatment starts noting that not all people who are referred go on to have treatment. Some people attend an assessment appointment, need no further treatment, and so are removed from the waiting list. Some people are offered treatment but decide not to go ahead.”

Most children and young people attend a first appointment for assessment and there are three main outcomes of that first appointment:

(i) The child or young person needs no further treatment from CAMHS but is provided with personalised and meaningful signposting. At this point the reported waiting time is stopped and they are removed from the waiting list;

(ii) Some children and young people are offered treatment but decide not to go ahead. At this point the reported waiting time is stopped and they are removed from the waiting list;

(iii) Treatment is offered and accepted; and either treatment begins at this appointment and the reported waiting time is stopped, or a treatment appointment is offered and the reported waiting time stops when that treatment appointment happens.

The waiting time to the start of treatment will depend on the complexity of each individual case, the specific intervention that has been recommended and the availability of professionals trained to provide that intervention. All children and young people offered treatment in CAMHS should meet the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) referral criteria and receive support in line with the CAMHS National Service Specification.

Government does not fund North East Edinburgh Counselling Service directly from its mental health programme budget, therefore no objectives have been set.

Further to question S6W-21835, I can confirm that no further working groups have been established since October 2023 within the Education and Skills portfolio.

I can confirm that all of the working groups listed in that answer are still active. However please note, one additional group was missed in the original PQ response. Therefore the current active working groups are as follows:

The Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy (SSLN) was replaced with the more comprehensive Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels (ACEL) data collection as part of the development of the National Improvement Framework for Scottish education. This was partly in response to advice from the OECD following its 2015 review of Scottish education which said that said the sample approach of the SSLN did not give national agencies enough evidence - “The light sampling of literacy and numeracy at the national level has not provided sufficient evidence for other stakeholders to use in their own evaluative activities or for national agencies to identify with confidence the areas of strength in the years of the Broad General Education across the four capacities of CfE."

The SSLN did not provide any detailed information for local authorities and schools about the progress of individual children. The ACEL data provides the attainment levels of every child in Scotland at key stages in primary and secondary school, and provides detailed data at all levels of the system, allowing schools and local authorities to better target improvement activity. Moving to ACEL data also empowers teachers, placing primacy on their professional judgement as the key indicator of children’s progress prior to national qualifications.

The Scottish Government and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) engage regularly with colleges, which, are key anchors for the transition to Net Zero, acting as both community enablers and demonstration hubs in cities and regions.

SFC’s College Infrastructure Strategy , published in November 2022, describes the Scottish Funding Council’s approach to determining future investment in Scotland’s college estate and other college infrastructure. The strategy sets out the collective approach between SFC and colleges to develop an Infrastructure Investment Plan (IIP) for Scotland’s colleges. The plan, which will cover the period from 2024-34, will identify infrastructure investment need including investment for net zero.

At the present time, the Scottish Government collects and maintains data annually in respect of Child Protection in Scotland. This data is collected and published as part of the annual Children’s Social Work Statistics Official Statistics publication. Each Scottish Local Authority is asked to submit a return providing information on the children who were involved in the Child Protection process during the year. This includes the following information on Child Protection.

1. Number of Child Protection Investigations and outcomes of the investigation.

2. Number of Child Protection Case Conferences (also known as Child Protection Planning Meetings). This includes the type of Case conference (i.e. Pre-Birth, Initial, Review, Transfer In) and the type of concern(s) identified at the Case Conference (e.g. domestic abuse, parental substance misuse). This also includes the child's primary known/suspected abuser at the time of the Case Conference.

3. Number of children on the Child Protection Register.

4. Number of Child Protection registrations and de-registrations.

5. Sociodemographic details on each child involved in any of the above (age; gender; ethnic group; religion; disability).

In addition to this, the Children and Families Analysis Team also collects and publishes monthly Management Information data in respect of Child Protection in Scotland. This data is collected and published as part of the monthly Vulnerable Children and Adult Monitoring Report data collection and publication. This includes the following information on Child Protection concerns and interventions:

1. Number of child protection concerns and child wellbeing concerns.

2. Number of inter-agency referral discussions.

3. Number of children on the Child Protection Register.

4. Number of Child Protection registrations and de-registrations.

5. Number of registrations where domestic abuse was recorded as a significant factor.

6. Number of referrals to the Reporter on offence and non-offence grounds.

7. Number of arrange Hearing decisions and number of Hearings held.

8. Number of Compulsory Supervision Orders granted.