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No One Left behind and Fair Start Scotland are integral parts of the employability support landscape in Scotland and aim to support individuals, including veterans and their partners, to overcome barriers through person-centred tailored support, enabling them to access and sustain fair employment.

No One Left Behind supports those transitioning out of military service, to deliver local place based approach to facilitate easier alignment of employability support with existing local level support services including housing, health, justice and advice services to ensure that individuals can access the holistic packages of support that they need to move towards, into and to sustain employment.

Fair Start Scotland, our national employment support service, offers 12 to 18 months of tailored, person-centred pre-employment support, along with up to 12 months of in-work support available for individuals and their employers. Support includes access to workshops and guidance utilising the transferrable skills that people leave military services with.

In addition, The Veterans Employability Strategic Group brings together members from the UK and Scottish Government, agencies, Local Authority employability representatives, third sector organisations supporting veterans and employers with a specific aim to work together to enable smoother transition for those leaving military service and settling in Scotland. The need to ensure smoother transitions has been a focus of successive Scottish Veterans Commissioners and thus a priority for the Scottish Government and its agencies.

Greater partnership working between UK , Scottish and regional local partners has led to greater collaboration. For example, Skills Development Scotland (SDS) works closely with colleagues in the Career Transition Partnership (CTP) who are the Ministry of Defence’s official resettlement provider and are responsible for delivering the career and employment support as part of the transition from military service.

They have a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Defence, and CTP colleagues are aware of SDS as a referral route for clients requiring impartial career guidance. SDS Veterans leads have also delivered sessions to SDS colleagues and armed forces champions that inform colleagues of the CTP offer and the support available to service leavers from CTP for up to 2 years post discharge.

The Scottish Government has engaged directly with representatives from NHS Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships to develop, deliver and subsequently assess workforce, finance and service plans in 2022-23. Scottish Government guidance on the production of three-year workforce plans, issued in April 2022, set out expressly how and where medium-term workforce planning should make assessments of changing local service demand as part of analysing any local staffing gaps and pressure points, alongside setting out the actions that health boards and health and social care partnerships are taking to address identified issues.

For the Academic Year 2022-23 there are currently 1003 paramedic science students taking part in Scottish-Government commissioned education degree programmes.

The Preparing for Work in Health and Social Care in Scotland Programme was developed by the NHS Scotland Academy and was launched on the 17 December 2022. Within the programme there are 8 training modules, supporting those new to the Health and Social Care employment to deliver safe, effective, person-centred care.

The resources are designed to support local induction and are subject to regular review to ensure quality and currency of content

Yes. The Scottish Government has analysed the three-year workforce plans produced by Health Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships. An analysis of key themes and emerging national priorities was subsequently discussed by the National Workforce Forum, which brings together senior government officials from across Health and Social Care Directorates, and representatives from Health Boards and HSCPs. This work has informed the establishment of a suite of priorities for national coordination and action in 2023-24.

The Scottish Government has engaged directly with representatives from NHS Boards and Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) to consider workforce planning capacity and capability across services. We remain committed to building a culture of continuous learning and improvement in workforce planning, including through the guidance we developed to support the development of health board and HSCP three-year workforce plans. We have been exploring, with stakeholders, formal qualification and accreditation opportunities, we continue to take forward these discussions with partners in further and higher education, alongside the provision of in-house training.

As part of the 2021-22 Programme for Government (PfG), the Scottish Government committed to increasing the number of available medical school places by 500 over the lifetime of this Parliament. As part of this commitment we are also doubling the number of places reserved for widening access students from 60 to 120.

We are in the process of delivering this commitment following the creation of 200 additional places which have been distributed between Scotland’s 5 medical schools in the academic years 21-22 and 22-23. The next tranche of 100 will be delivered in 23-24, and the allocation of the final 200 places remain under consideration.

The information on how many additional Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) staff has been recruited by the Scottish Government in each year since 2007 is not centrally held.

The information on CAMHS workforce staff in post can be found in the following link: CAMHS | Turas Data Intelligence (nhs.scot)

The Employee Turnover tab gives the number of joiners and leavers from year ending March 2012 to March 2022. Data for preceding years are not available.

Joiners are employees who are in post as at 31 March of a particular year and were not in post at 31 March of the previous year.

Leavers are employees who were in post as at 31 March of the previous year and not in post at 31 March year of the present year.

The Centre for Workforce Supply within NHS Education for Scotland was established in November 2021.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-13366 on 20 December 2022. 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 .’