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The role of the Scottish Government is to provide policies, frameworks and resources to NHS boards in order that they can deliver services that meet the needs of their local population. Within this context, it is for clinical audit and local clinical governance structures to monitor how well clinicians and NHS Boards are complying with existing clinical guidelines and to ensure that new and emerging evidence and good practice guidelines are considered at regular intervals.

NHS Boards take decisions on whether to adopt technologies based on evidence of their safety and proven clinical and cost effectiveness.

The Scottish Government is currently undertaking the development and assessment of the preferred option for improvements at Sheriffhall Roundabout. This is due to culminate in 2019 with the publication of draft Orders. Delivery of the scheme itself can only commence when the scheme is approved under the statutory procedures and thereafter a timetable for construction can be set.

Further consideration of the rationale to improve traffic flow on the Edinburgh City Bypass will be considered as part of the review of the Strategic Transport Projects Review, in line with commitments made in the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal.

In Autumn and Winter 2017-18, the Scottish Government will engage with stakeholders with a view to developing a new suicide prevention action plan for publication in 2018. The key themes of the existing Suicide Prevention Strategy namely improving responses to distress, improving the NHS response to suicide, talking about suicide, and developing the evidence base remain pertinent to continuing efforts to reduce the suicide rate; we continue to work with stakeholders to implement the commitments under these themes.

The vaccination of NHS staff against seasonal flu is an occupational health responsibility of NHS Boards. NHS Boards provide high level data to Health Protection Scotland on flu vaccine uptake amongst their healthcare workers, and this allows an estimate to be calculated.

Flu uptake rates for healthcare workers by NHS Board are available for the 2011-12 flu season onwards and can be viewed at: http://www.hps.scot.nhs.uk/resp/seasonalinfluenzavisualisation.aspx. It is important to highlight that calculating uptake of vaccination by NHS staff is complicated for a number of reasons. NHS Boards use different occupational health systems, there are limitations within the data provided by NHS Boards to Health Protection Scotland and some staff will be vaccinated through the core vaccination programme by their GP due to risk factors.

It is the responsibility of Integration Joint Boards working with partners and commissioned services to deliver and to manage all aspects of the resources, including staff, which are required to deliver the services.

Attracting and retaining the right people, and raising the status of social care as a profession, is key to delivering quality care. We have taken action to protect social care services, including investment for paying the Living Wage to adult social care workers.

We are working with COSLA and other key partners to deliver major reforms to adult social care and on a jointly owned workforce plan, both of which will support collaborative work on workforce issues.

This information is not held centrally.

The most recent figures, broken down by service area for the 12 months up to June 2017, are in the public domain.

This information can be found at http://www.retis.scot.nhs.uk/wheelchairquality.html under ‘Quality Ambition Data’.

Information on whether every pupil is able to access water when at school is not held centrally. The Nutritional Requirements for Food and Drink in Schools (Scotland) Regulations 2008 require schools to provide access to fresh, plain drinking water at all times. It is for local authorities to ensure they are fulfilling their duties as set out in the Regulations.

The Scottish Government does not hold this data.

We are aware of a number of different approaches to supporting young carers in schools across Scotland. This includes dedicated young carer workers from the third sector working across a number of schools in an area.

The Scottish Government is working to support young carers to continue with their education in school, college or in university and not to lose out due to the demands of their caring role. Under the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 every young carer will be offered or will be able to request a young carer statement from 1 April 2018. The young carer statement will set out each young carer’s personal outcomes so that their eligible needs are supported to enable them to continue to care, if they so wish, and have a life alongside caring.