Patients who are not registered with a dentist can access emergency and urgent dental care via the Public Dental Service.

The Scottish Government also has a range of programmes to support those in vulnerable groups to maintain and improve their oral health:

• 'Childsmile' our flagship programme designed to reduce oral health inequalities and improve oral health among children;
• 'Caring For Smiles' for dependent older people over 65;
• 'Smile4Life' for people experiencing homelessness;
• 'Mouth Matters' for people with experience of the justice system;
• 'Open Wide' for adults between 16-64 years of age with additional care needs.

More information on our oral health improvement programmes is available online at: Oral Health Improvement – Scottish Dental

Local authorities oversee the delivery of education, and they have a statutory duty to identify, provide for, and to review the support that they provide for pupils with additional support needs in their local community. In the context of the rising number of children with additional support needs the Scottish Government is investing an additional £29 million for additional support for learning this year. This is in addition to the record spend of over £1 billion by local authorities in 2023-24. The additional investment will include an allocation for local and national programmes to support the recruitment and retention of the additional support for learning workforce. We continue to invest £15 million a year in pupil support assistants.

The Scottish Government remains committed to an all-age careers information and guidance offer that supports all people, including young people who are at risk of leaving school with no or few SQA qualifications to progress rewarding careers.

Under the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 every young carer has a right to a personalised support plan, called a young carer statement. The process of producing the statement must include identifying the young person’s needs, such as support to pursue further or higher education and secure employment.

The Scottish Government recognises the importance of young carers being identified in schools so that they can be supported in achieving their educational and wider goals. This is why we fund an Education Officer post at Carers Trust Scotland to work with Education Scotland, the General Teaching Council for Scotland, and the Scottish Qualification Authority on improving young carer awareness, identification, and support in education. This has led to an accredited e-training module to help education staff understand, identify, and support young carers. This e-training module has recently been refreshed to add information about supporting young carers in their transition into further or higher education or employment.

Additionally, we have funded Young Scot to provide information for young carers facing transition periods in their life, including moving into further or higher education and employment Young Carers Transitions – Young Scot. Skills Development Scotland also highlight to career advisers the additional support young carers may need at this pivotal time.

The Scottish Government recognises the significant barriers faced by unpaid carers, including young carers, in accessing employment and fair work in the labour market. This is why unpaid carers have been identified as one of our key cohorts for support and why we have made a Programme for Government commitment to provide employability support to meet the needs of all parents or carers on a demand-led basis.

Our National carers strategy sets out the importance of all employers being flexible and supportive of carers in the workforce and outlines our commitment to fund and promote the Carer Positive employer accreditation scheme. There are now more than half a million employees working in 290 Carer Positive organisations across Scotland.

We are working to ensure holistic wrap-around support is available throughout our support services. No One Left Behind is our approach to delivering an all-age, place-based, person-centred model of employability support in Scotland. Services are voluntary, aiming to support individuals (including paid and unpaid carers) towards the right job at the right time. The No One Left Behind: employability strategic plan 2024 to 2027, published September 2024, outlines our priorities for devolved employability services moving forward, and reaffirms our commitment to continuous improvement and expanding reach of our services, including young carers.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) licences and regulates 345 sewer networks operated by Scottish Water, carrying out compliance inspections on a rolling basis and monitors Scotland’s water environment.

Through its Improving Urban Waters Routemap, Scottish Water is taking action to increase overflow monitoring of the highest priority waters and tackle debris and spills by committing up to £500m to improve water quality.

SEPA’s most recent assessment of Scotland’s entire water environment is that 87% has a ‘high’ or ‘good’ classification for water quality, up from 82% in 2014. However, we are not complacent and seek ongoing improvement and continue to work closely with SEPA and Scottish Water to monitor and improve water quality.

The Scottish Government is determined to limit the amount of rainwater entering sewers to reduce overflows, and in 2024 we published an analysis of the responses to a public consultation which asked the public for their views on how we achieve this, available at https://www.gov.scot/publications/water-wastewater-drainage-consultation-analysis-report/.

In 2023-24 spending on additional support for learning reached a record high of over £1 billion. This includes a continued investment in pupil support assistants, by providing authorities with £15m each year, specifically to support schools and authorities to respond to the individual needs of children and young people.

In 2025-26, an additional £28m will be invested in additional support for learning, to support the recruitment and retention of the ASN workforce at a local level. A further £1 million will be provided to support national initiatives to help recruit and train more ASN teachers.

Funding to local authorities has also been increased this year to £186.5 million, as part of our agreement with COSLA to restore teacher numbers to 2023 levels.

The Scottish Government fully condemn all forms of prejudice including sectarianism, racism and religious bigotry.

That is why we have consolidated legislative protections aggravated by protected characteristics, including race and religion, through the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 to support Police Scotland to deal with prejudice and discrimination and why we are currently working closely with Police Scotland and Scottish football authorities to assess the effectiveness of football banning order legislation.

Separately, we have invested over £5 million of funding since 2016 to tackle sectarianism through community based projects in schools, colleges, communities and workplaces. Organisations such as Nil by Mouth and Fair Play Foundation will continue to work with football clubs from grassroots to senior football in 2025-26 and Sense Over Sectarianism will continue to engage with Police Scotland to ensure the ‘Pitchin’ In’ programme is available for officers to use in schools to help develop pupils decision making and steer them away from prejudicial behaviour.

Since the publication of the consultation analysis, the Scottish Government has announced its intention to regulate canine fertility businesses, with the work to draft the required legislation underway. We continue to explore with the local authorities the feasibility of introducing licensing schemes for dog groomers, commercial dog walkers and livery providers. We will be commencing work to revoke existing animal boarding and riding establishments legislation at the earliest opportunity, with a view to regulating instead under the animal licensing framework introduced in September 2021.

The Scottish Government does intend to bring forward new legislation to regulate canine fertility businesses. Draft regulations will be laid before the Scottish Parliament for its consideration in due course.