 Good morning and welcome to the 15th meeting in 2015 of the Health and Sport Committee. I would ask everyone at this point, as I usually do, to switch off mobile phones as they can often interfere with the sound system, but you will also note that some officials and members will be using tablet devices instead of hard copies of our papers. Our first item on the agenda today is a decision on taking business in private, and I invite the committee to agree that we take item 6 on today's agenda in private. Can I have the committee's agreement? Thank you. We now move quickly to agenda item 2, subordinate legislation. We have six negative incidents before us today. The first incident is national health service free prescriptions and charges for drugs and appliances, Scotland amendment regulations 2015, SSI 2015-160. There is no motion to annul, and the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has not made any comments on the instrument. Do any of the members have comment? In that case, has the committee agreed then to make no recommendations? The second incident is certification of death Scotland act 2011, authorisation of cremation death out with Scotland regulations 2015, SSI 2015-162. Again, there has been no motion to annul, the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has drawn the attention of the Parliament to the instrument. The details, of course, are in your papers. Do any of the members wish to make any comment? There is no comment. Can I put it to the committee that we agree to make no recommendation? That is agreed. Thank you. The third incident is certification of death Scotland act 2011, application for review regulations 2015, SSI 2015-163. There has been no motion to annul, the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has drawn the attention of the Parliament to the instrument. The details again are in your papers. Is there any comment from members? There isn't. Is the committee then, therefore, agreed to make no recommendation? The fourth incident is certification of death Scotland act 2011, consequential provisions order 2015, SSI 2015-164. Again, there has been no motion to annul, the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has drawn the attention of the Parliament to the instrument. The details again are in your papers. Is there any comment from committee members? There isn't. Is the committee then, therefore, agreed to make no recommendation? That is agreed. Thank you. The fifth incident is certification of death Scotland act 2011, post mortem examinations death outwith United Kingdom regulations SSI 2015-165. There has been no motion to annul, the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has drawn the attention of the Parliament to the instrument. The details again are in the papers. Is there any comment from committee members? There isn't. Is the committee then, therefore, agreed to make no recommendation? There isn't. Thank you. The sixth and final incident before us this morning is the registration of births, deaths and marriages Scotland act 1965, prohibition of disposal of a body without authorisation regulations 2015, SSI 2015-166. There has been no motion to annul, the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has drawn the attention of the Parliament to the instrument. The details again are in the papers. Do we have any comments from members? We have no comments. Is the committee, therefore, agreed to make no recommendations? That is agreed. Thank you. We now move to agenda item number three, which is our main business of today, two evidence sessions on carers Scotland Bill, the second of which will be by videoconference. Last week, of course, we heard evidence that focused on adult carers and today we will focus on young carers. The normal way we deal with this is to introduce ourselves in this format. My name is Duncan McNeill. I am the MSP for Cread and Inverclyde and the convener of the Health and Sport Committee. I am Sarah Davis. I am the director of East Laudain young carers. I am Bob Doris MSP for Glasgow and I am deputy convener of the committee. I am Mike McKenzie MSP, Highlands and Islands region. Good morning. I am Dennis Robertson MSP for Aberdeachill West. I am Margaret Murphy. I am the chief executive of Edinburgh young carers project. I am Annette Milne MSP for North East Scotland. I am Louise Morgan. I am the co-ordinator for the Scottish young carers services lines. Rhoda Grant, Highlands and Islands MSP. Richard Lyle, central region MSP. James Marshall, development manager at Stirling carers centre. Richard Simpson, Mid Scotland and Five MSP. Thank you all for your attendance this morning. We will go direct to questions and the first question is Dennis Robertson. Thank you Dennis. There is a perception that there are a great number of young carers who have not been identified that are actually providing care. There is also the perception among various groups that some of the young carers that are identified are given very little in the way of support. Does the bill help to identify additional carers who currently are unidentified and do you think that it will help with the level of support that carers need? Any volunteers to pick that one up? I know that, within the Government response to the consultation, it said that there seemed to be plenty of measures within the bill that would help to identify young carers. I do believe that having a piece of legislation such as the carers bill and hopefully the carers act as it will become will help to promote general awareness of carers and young carers. I think that one of our real concerns generally is the identification of young carers. That is one of the most substantial problems that we have in trying to overcome the difficulties of providing support to young carers. We cannot support them unless we identify them. The knowledge of the carers bill and the specific young carers statement will help to promote the identification of young carers. I know that the official Government figure at the moment is 44,000 young carers in Scotland. Within the alliance, we have upheld the belief that the figure is much nearer 100,000 young carers, which has come out of survey work that we have done in schools. However, we are very happy to accept the new recognised figure back to which the Government is promoting of 44,000, which is a significant increase on the 16,701, which was previously the figure that was universally accepted. I am content that the bill or the act will help to promote the identification of young carers. We welcome the bill and we think that it will improve the identification of young carers. I suppose that our concern is what will happen when they are identified and will they be offered a young carer's statement or not? At the moment, they can have a young carer's assessment, but we find that very few are done. It is almost impossible to get one, when you ask for one, people do not know what they are. Will young carers receive a young carer's statement? That is our main concern. I would like to explore how we identify some of our young carers who are providing care that we are missing at the moment. I accept the Government figure, but there is a perception that there probably are more young carers providing care. How do we then try to find out those young carers? Do we do it through the name person, guidance teachers? How do we do that? If we can get a statement, that is fine, but we need to identify the carer in the first instance. I am still a little bit cautious about how we identify some of our young carers who are providing an extremely important role in a family. Sometimes that is the case for siblings, parents or whatever, but they are not being identified. If they are identified, do we have the appropriate resources to meet those specific needs? I recognise that most of the submissions are saying that we should have national guidelines as opposed to local guidelines. Maybe that is just your thoughts there. Hi, I think that we have to start where the young people are, and that is within the schools. To raise awareness across all the schools, young carer organisations could be going in or making the guidance staff, making the head staff aware that there are young carers there and providing them with a bit of support as to how they can identify that. A lot of the young people and young carers are not—nobody in the school knows that they are young carers because they may well not be having any additional support needs. They just might be getting on with it. I think that a lot of the young carer organisations across Scotland are trying to do is to try and start where the young people are. That is raising awareness to staff across the schools, but also to do pupil awareness sessions. It is a bit about taking the stigma away from young carers. If they feel that they have other pupils or peers that are supportive to the needs of young carers and are aware of what young carers do, they are more likely to put their hand up and say that they are a young carer. I do not believe that every young carer needs to have a specialist support service to go to a dedicated young carer agency. They can potentially survive quite well by just having that acknowledgement that they are a young carer and that they get a level of flexibility within the school. That might be all they need, but the fact that they have the opportunity to say that they are a young carer and get additional support within the school that they need, that is what they are looking for. You have to start at the school, but you also have to equip the school to be able to handle that as well. If all those young carers are coming out and saying that they are a young carer, how is the school going to deal with that? That is about giving them a bit of knowledge on how to identify them in easy support or flexible support that can also help with that, but also giving them the knowledge of what else is around about out there, like organisations like ourselves. We also need to go and do a bit of work with the universal services and other youth projects. Wherever young people actually go, there has to be a level of awareness within those projects as well about what a young carer is and how we can identify and support them. I totally agree with Max that we have to go where they are and where we see projects working in schools and delivering awareness raising. We know that the young carers in those schools are receiving recognition of what they do and any support, on-going support, that they subsequently need. We find that young carer services lose funding and they lose those workers to go into the schools. We see a drop in the amount of support that schools that we would already class as young carer aware drop their performance in supporting young carers. I would say that we need to keep that momentum of presence in schools. We need to make young carer workers available to young carers in schools. Max put forward the point that not necessarily all young carers want to go to a service, and that is definitely true. They might not have the time to go to a service, so they might prefer to go home and have some time to themselves. That is all about choice, but it is about equipping our school staff to know what to do when a young carer is identified, what are the other services that they can signpost them to and what kind of support can they also deliver within that school? Where we see that done, it is normally done very well. I know that Stirling has a good model for that. I know that Edinburgh does as well, but the point that I would like to make is about GPs. If we want to explore the schools aspect of things first, we can come back to the part that GPs have to play in all this about identification. James, do you want to come in? Yes. It is just picking up on both Louise and Margaret's points. In terms of schools, I think that Louise is totally right. We need to work closely with the schools to equip them to be able to support young carers within their daily lives. We as a service, as an organisation, have a specific dedicated young carers education worker. That is one post working with 47 schools within Stirling Council. In order to work closely with the schools, what we do is we identify within each of the schools are schools' young carers co-ordinator, almost the champion within that school, who will link to themselves and the school for the young carers so that they have a point of contact within their daily lives. As well within the identification side of it, the awareness raising within the schools is crucial. We carry out a range of awareness raising activities and what we do is we get the young people to fill in an evaluation form where they can self-identify at the bottom as a young carer. In terms of the early and preventative support, that is where we are finding that we are identifying young carers at the earliest possible opportunity. When we receive referrals from the likes of social services, it tends to be when the young person is at crisis point. So it is imperative that we work with, as Margaret rightly said, we work where young people are and it is imperative that we work with schools in relation to the identification of young carers. Talking about identification and support, there is a middle step now, which is the key to bridging that or giving the answer to the things, is the statement. So when the young person has identified the statement or what used to be the assessment that goes through to understand the young carers needs at that time is going to be the critical stage in making sure that the direct support that the young person wants is there for that young carer at that time. I think that the identification, and I am going to just come on from Louisa's point there, is schools. I think that there is lots of great work happening out there that could be rolled out across and the numbers and the numbers raising in Edinburgh certainly come from the schools project that I know of is showing that. I do think that GPs, hospitals and condition-specific units is a key target place to get those young carers directly linked in at an earliest possible stage, especially when the consultation looked to guidance through stages of caring. So when you look at some of the terminal illnesses that young carers deal with, so you've got young carers on all different sort of spectrums of caring, and especially relating to terminal illnesses, if we can get them referred or a sort of identification process in place to have them referred through these units where they're getting picked up by professionals, and that will certainly help to identify some young carers that make up perhaps a majority of the hidden young carers that we're not seeing at present in the services. I'm just wondering, convener, if the witnesses feel there's a role for using the social media in terms of the identification and again for support, in terms of peer support, so using whether it'd be dedicated to Facebook or some sort of notice board for young carers. So if they're not wanting to go to maybe formal groups or carers forums, for instance, that they maybe got a social media network that they can use, would you support something like that? And is it available? Thanks again. Certainly coming from this, I work with young adult carers, 16 to 20 years old in our project, and certainly from that perspective, I do think that there's a need for almost a virtual support in place. Sometimes I'm responding in emails to young carers out there in Edinburgh who just want that, I've got this issue with this, where can I go. So I do think a sort of modernised interactive service online that can give that direct instant support to young adult carers would really be vital. I mean, these are young carers at crisis point that still won't want to come into the project, but do just want to have that email communication. So I definitely think there's room in scope for that and would definitely support young adult carers. Just following on from some of Dennis's questions, can we have an idea or some of the good practice that is actually taking place in terms of, you know, some school, some areas, but not others in whatever I mean. I think sometimes the committee can be helpful in that if we identify some practices, challenges, maybe some others who are not doing as much or whatever. But Louise, who I think mentioned the care aware principle and you know how that is operating locally and I see James Wharton in there as well. Louise? I would like to say that we probably have two examples of good practice in schools with us this morning. Certainly Sarah, I don't know so much about what you're doing in East Lothian just now, but I know that Edinburgh and Stirling are shining examples of what can happen in schools. I mean, I believe in Stirling, there's even, sorry, I don't want to take James' thunder here, he maybe wants to talk about it, but they actually developed a young carer class to be part of the curriculum in one of the secondary schools. Certainly I know Stirling of Old in terms of what the history is with the development of that and as I said, that did show for me that you have to keep that presence there or you lose it because you had every school on board at one point and then lost the worker and the whole thing went to pot. So I would say Stirling, Edinburgh, I could tell you, I mean, I could, you know, if I got a list in front of me I'll say yes, that one, that one, that one. For instance Aberdeenshire, they appointed or seconded a secondary school guidance teacher to the young carer service to develop resources that could be used throughout the local authority area in the schools there and I think again that's another model of what a way to do it, actually taking somebody from it. Is carer aware, is it an accreditation, is it a badging that the schools in the area would pay, is it an accreditation? Sorry, whenever I said, you know, what we would call them carer aware, I think what we meant was, informally, we would know that we'd visited that school and that they'd already had training. We don't yet have any kind of carer aware in a badging, if you like, or award, although that is something that carers trust is looking into in England at the moment and looking at different standards of carer, young carer awareness within schools and that might be a route that people want to go down but we have, generally, I have information about who works in schools and where that has gone well so if you would want to visit anything, any service like that, then get in touch and I can put you in touch with who would be. James, you wanted to be in this subject. Yeah, I think I'll just pick up on two points there. We'll mention the good practice example that Louise mentioned there about the young carers class. I just want to start off by saying in relation to the carer aware, I mentioned that we work with all the local authority schools and part of that is that the school appoints a champion school young carers co-ordinator. In addition, the school also signs up to a charter of action that has various areas that they agree in relation to supporting young carers and that charter is displayed within their reception areas for people's parents, general public to see so it's not a badge as of such but it's a recognition of the partnership between ourselves and their commitment to supporting young carers. In relation to a good practice example, I just want to mention a high school within Stirling who identified a need within their school, identified the high number of young carers and that the caring roles have a detrimental impact on their school attendance attainment and therefore due to this they established themselves with support from ourselves as a young carer service, a dedicated class. Now that class is within the school curriculum and the idea of it is that it gives young people peer support but it's also building their skills, building their experience. They for example did a lot of work around cooking. A lot of the young carers part of the caring responsibilities are the main cook for the household so they developed a lot of work around that and as a result of that the outcomes for the young carers themselves were that we had increased attainment, increased attendants and increased enjoyment level in the school and they felt that the school was more aware of the caring role and that they could interact with their school at a higher level in relation to that. Weas, you want to come back on that? I really just wanted to say in terms of raising awareness that we had a national campaign a few years ago aimed at the younger young carer age group and this group was highlighted at the young carers festival in that most services were providing support to those young carers aged eight and over but what was happening to the under eight year old and how do we begin to recognise those young carers? How do we explain what being a young carer means? That is half the trouble. You're a young carer, what does that mean? I look after my goldfish. It's very difficult for very young children to comprehend what being a young carer means when it sometimes just means being part of a family. We had some money from the Scottish Government to develop two national mascot figures, which we called Eric and Tracy. Each service in Scotland had mascot figures, which they were invited to take out to primary schools to make it more of a very young person friendly project to try to raise awareness of, here's Eric, he's 10 years old, he looks after his brother, this is what he does and here's Tracy, who is in a different caring role, looks after her mum but she's only eight or whatever. It was very much aimed at the younger children and unfortunately we only had about a year of funding to do that. Again, it was about trying to sustain something that could really have made a big difference. Eric and Tracy are still talked about but I think we would probably like to maybe look at how we could make a campaign like that work better. That recognition about two mascot figures, I mean I come from the age of the Tufty club and Tufty was synonymous with crossing the road and road safety, so sorry about that. Maybe I shouldn't be at a young carers meeting, but that whole value about having a figure that you see and you immediately think young carer. Yeah, I just want to go on what James has said as well. I think the good practice is definitely having somebody identified within the school young carers coordinator, so that's definitely something that's key. I think what's also key is providing some sort of toolkit, if you like, for the schools and the staff within the schools to be able to either take some lessons and work with them with their class. What Edinburgh has started to do, and that takes to go into primary schools more now, because we are all across all the secondary schools, but what we're finding now is that we need to get into the primary schools. We've now developed a toolkit specifically for primary school children and for the staff to be able to, because it's all around about more sole play and about how to identify what's happening in the household, their role within the household, what's their siblings doing, and who do they care for. We're starting to explore that type of work, and we're getting a lot of very, very, very little young carers, like age five, age six, that's actually being identified, and what we're doing is we're then bringing them on to our main programme, but we're also providing, like, after-school clubs for them as well on a fortnightly basis, so that we can start this socialisation and interaction with their peers and things like that, and then trying to get the family a bit of support that's required within there as well. So, this is a bit like a pilot, if you like, so Edinburgh are more than happy to provide any findings, initial findings about how that's going for the committee in the future. Okay, Sarah, and then I think that Rhoda has won a question. We work with primary age young carers and their families, and what we try and do, and I think it's important talking about the high schools, is that when a child is moving into primary six, primary seven, is that we start looking at their transition to high school and making sure that the high school is aware that they're going to be a young carer, and that the family's aware and that they've got homework support, and that their reading, writing is up to the standard of going to high school, because a lot of young carers seem to slip under the radar, and it's only when they get to high school that they find that they've got problems with reading, writing, maths. So, I think that transitioning to high school is a really important thing to be considered, maybe in the young carer's statement that might be something to put in there. Rhoda? Can I ask a resupplementary just on that, before we move on to my question? Everyone's talking about education in school. They're young carers who are preschool. Louise Morgan mentioned the role of GPs, which kind of jumps out of me as being the one group of people who should be able to identify all carers, because they know where. I was wondering if Louise could maybe say something about that. I'm afraid what I probably have to say isn't very positive. When we consult with young carers at our annual young carers festival, and we do that yearly, we ask about how much support are you getting from universal services such as education, health and social services. Young carers have said year on year that GPs are very unlikely to be a source of identification or support to them. Most of them say that my GP doesn't know that I'm a young carer. I think that, certainly, I was reading the guidance for the Children and Young People Act, and there was an example in there that GPs, when they do diagnose someone with a condition, then they should be asking about the children in that family and discussing with them what impact will that have on your children? Obviously, nobody knows yet what the impact is going to be, but to begin that conversation and recognise that there are potentially children and young people in that family who are going to become carers. If we are asking GPs to perform that duty, then we could hope to see a rise in identification of young carers. However, how long will that take? The GPs may require the training around that to realise that they are not identifying children and young people. Certainly, the Young Carer Authorisation Card, again, we are talking about an initiative that is within a health setting, that is something where GPs could be identifying young carers and looking at them being issued with a Young Carer Authorisation Card. There is a lot there that could be done from a health point of view. That is a key stepping stone identifying young carers. I certainly know that, in Edinburgh, I have got a great relationship with Craig Miller GP practice, and often I have supported young people going along. It can be dependent on the individual GP that is taking on that young person's case, as can be the case across lots of things in schools with teachers. I think that there is a case for young people supporting someone with drug and alcohol issues, and I think that, quite often, young carers can be thought of as heroes. However, when it comes down to drug and alcohol issues, that sort of hero label kind of gets taken away and there is a stigma attached to it. I think that Edinburgh Young Carers Project was looking at the schools training, the CPD, the continual professional development training that we are doing for teachers. Could that be modelled, which it could be modified and tweaked slightly, and be provided to GPs locally so that they have all got at least the knowledge and awareness? I also noticed that there were comments about a carers register that GPs would possibly keep if young carers sort of wanted to identify with that. I think that that is going to be a key piece of identifying these hidden young carers. GPs' traditional role is actually diagnosis and treatment. Although they have a holistic role for the patient, they do not often have it for the whole family, and they do not have any social work in the practice. However, I wonder about a drug and alcohol group, because I think that that is a very big group. I just wonder about the connectivity to the drug and alcohol services and whether, in fact, you have considered additional training for them, because they do tend to be more connected, certainly in Glasgow, where they have an integrated service and West Lothian, where I work, with an integrated service. What about training for them or identification from that end? I would probably speak better than me. I have been off the territory for a year, but I know that, since I came back, there was talk about doing what with GPs. We have two drug and alcohol workers in our project who work with young carers, and one of them has certainly come from a drug and alcohol service, but I will pass it over to Mags. If Mags knows, have we been any talk about that in the last year? Have we delivered any training to drug and alcohol services? We are funded by the local drug and alcohol project in Edinburgh Council, so we have a funding now for two drug and alcohol workers who are working specifically with young people who are caring for a parent with problematic drug and alcohol use. What we have found over probably the last year—we have been doing this work for about six years—we have now got a bit of funding to allow us to extend that work and develop that work, and what we have found is that it is probably about definitely about a half of the young people who are coming through our doors now are affected by caring for a parent with problematic drug or alcohol use. Because of what Loas had mentioned about the stigma attached, there has to be a slightly different approach taken for those young carers. That is about when we go into the school, yes, we do raise awareness that those are issues that young carers can deal with, but it is about the appropriate level of support that they require. I am a hero when I am going home to care for mum. It is a bit about how your mum is an alcoholic, she is a drug addict. There is not that level of sympathy or acknowledgement of the trauma. That is the problem that we are finding with young people. It is the trauma that they go through and experience, and nobody really knows how that trauma comes out. It could be behavioural, it could be lots of different things, but we definitely need to look at how that type of caring affects a young person, because there is the kind of knock-on thing after it. An example that I had for one of the young people that we were working with was that mum was in recovery and all the services and support services around that family were happy because mum was doing a great job. She was in recovery. However, the young person, the young carer was very resentful because what they said was, mum, you have no idea, you cannot remember the life that I had for the last five years. You are in recovery, but you did not remember. You do not remember what I had to go through. I think that is the type of trauma and stuff that we have to definitely concentrate on, that kind of group of young people. We also work with our local drug and alcohol partnership, and they are very traumatised, these children. When their parents get better, they get angry. It is like they can relax, is it not? They have a go at their parents, so you have to deal with that. However, we have a training programme that we have used with the organisations in our local drug and alcohol partnership. Back to Richard's basic point, there will be a care plan for the national health service and services for those who are having problematic lives and addiction to drive their alcohol or whatever. However, there will not be a care plan for the carers, are there? It has been identified as having a carer in roll within that family. It would be unusual. Possibly if the young carer had been referred to a young carer's support service, they would probably have some kind of support plan for within that service, but they may very well not be on the social work services. As a case work sort of thing, and somebody took an interest in some of that years ago, there was that sort of gap that the social work services were to support the person with the addiction. The health service support the person or the GP, but there was no wider concept that was a family that was or carers. I do not think that has changed over the years, has it? I really do not think so. I mean, I certainly saw Becker research who is the main research on young carers issues in the UK. He did find that where there was social work service input into a family, for instance, that the children and young people in that family were more likely to be recognised as young carers and therefore have some support put in and therefore suffered or had better outcomes at school, et cetera, because they already had some kind of support there in the family. Unless that support is actually already in and the young people are identified as carers, then there is not necessarily anything there for them. Was that a concept? Was that a reactive or was it planned and preventive? In terms of case work experience, it was more reactive is when the house burnt down, they got the services rather than trying to manage it. If they were managing and they were showing some resilience, they were allowed to go on with it, but if the house burnt down, then there is, you know, it's just a lack of planning. I mean, I'm just confirming it. I think it has changed over many years here, Richard. Just one final point on this identification issue. There is a committee sitting at the moment, there's a working group sitting at the moment, trying to develop a single-shared assessment for drug and alcohol. It's called DAISY. Don't ask me why, I don't know what the acronym stands for, but it's working on it at the moment. I just wonder whether, included in that data collection system, there is going to be identification of young carers, because if there isn't, that will be a very serious omission. I think that you're quite right, I think identification. I guess that your initial question was, could training be delivered to drug and alcohol workers and drug and alcohol services? Yes, it could be done, and that could happen easily with, I guess, minimal funding, because we have the training in place for teachers and that could be tailored relatively easily. As far as a working group, DAISY, I wouldn't be the person to answer that question, but I think that you're quite right. I think that it's quite a relevant point that there should be something in there around identifying young carers within them families. I'm sure that the committee can write to the ISD about that. I've got another supplementary from the net milling, and then I'll get back to Rhoda, but you started all of this, Rhoda. It's the panel working, the round table working, that's the discussion that we're having here this morning. Very, very good. I suppose that's followed from Richard Simpson. Do we have any idea the sort of scale of the problem that a portion of young carers, in fact, are affected by drug and alcohol abuse? Only in my project I've seen an increase from a third to a half, so I don't know the kind of figures, I don't have those figures across a country or across a city, but I know that it's increased from a third to a half. Louise? I would say from the surveys that we've done throughout the young carer services, it tends to be about a third, but again there is the issue about not declaring that this is one of the central points of why they're caring in a family, as well, that they're presenting to services as I'm looking after my mum who is depressed or something else, but the alcohol or substance misuse issues is left unsaid and maybe isn't uncovered until later. Do we get to know the family better? I'm going to put some of the issues that have been made that we need to be able to identify what caring role a young carer is having. We're sort of drifting into the sort of drug and alcohol and that's very important because there is a need there, but it's a multiple sort of complex area in terms of caring. Do we need to identify, do we need a register in terms of the types of the caring role? Is it because our mum's depressed or is it because they've got a sibling with complex disabilities? What are the reasons that they are caring in the first instance? Maybe that's the information that we need to try and identify. Moving on a little to the support that is available to young carers. The bill talks about stopping the young carers role for preschool-aged young carers. Although I think that's understandable, I wonder why that stops once a child goes to school because they're still very young. Should we be looking at stopping the caring role for all children to allow them to learn and be educated or is that just simply not feasible? Again, I'm going to come back to key research theory, so relating the theory to practice and then hopefully implementing it into policy. Jo Aldridge is another key theorist in young carers. I've been having an email communication with her about a path that we were developing for the service for young carers who come through our service. She would suggest that young carers from her research often want to exit the care role when it becomes too burdensome, when it becomes long-term or disproportionate to their age and maturity level, in which case I think that the support and the assessment, but whatever tools we're using to assess the caring that we do, we have to understand that is that caring disproportionate to their age, to the maturity level and how much of that is it realistic that they can take on without having a dampering, a hamper to their childhood, because some of the caring roles that young carers do can make them feel closer, can have a real positive impact, can make them independent in the ability to think outside of the box and be creative. However, part of it, for young carers at school, is looking at exiting it when it becomes too burdensome and having the right measures to address that and look at it individually. When you come to young adult carers 16 to 20 years old, there's something about ensuring that caring is not the only or main outcome of living in families affected by parental illness or disability. Quite often, when young carers can be pushed into or feel that only career option available for them is to continue caring or to go into a caring role of career. It's actually just trying to level the playing field, so they have other options and I think part of that is removing the majority of the caring responsibilities so that they can choose what works for them in a balanced lifestyle. Anyone else? The lesson of interest about the types of service provision we'd like to put in place to support young carers, I apologise for making it much more dry looking at the bill and the specifics of the bill, because I feel like that's the kind of framework behind which we used to support all that. I take on board quite well about how you identify young carers and the health service and GPs was mentioned, schools were mentioned. You've also got, for example, wonderful youth group providers across Scotland who young people might open up to and reveal their caring role to, so I think it's a cross-society responsibility we've got, but it's the structure you then feed into once that's identified. I was just wondering in terms of when we have a young carer statement and I assume we get that structure right and you feed in. We also have an existence under the Children and Young People's Scotland Act 2014, the obligation to produce a child's plan when there's a need for targeted intervention for wellbeing needs to be met. I'm just wondering if the bill is clear enough as to when you provide a young carer statement and then you seek to provide services, whether they're of a general nature or a specific nature, and when that snowballs into the provisions that exist in the new Children and Young People's Scotland Act 2014 to provide a child's plan. I'm a little bit confused myself looking at it, but the bill has got to get the infrastructure right, whether on the face of the bill or in guidance, so this is the dry part of the morning's evidence session and the key thing is service provision, but we have to get the structures right to channel young people as individuals through that structure to get the service provision, so how would you see the young carer statement working and how would that interact with the child's plan and obligations under the 2014 act? I think that it's important to start by saying that for a lot of young carers, their caring role and the impact of that might be their only specific wellbeing need, and therefore it's important that they have something that's tailored for them as a young carer. In answer to your question, I think that the young carer statement must interlink and fit in really well with the current GERFEC assessment process and also the subsequent child's plan. However, as I've said, we do agree that not all young carers have additional wellbeing needs but that requires a child's plan, but where there is a child's plan in place it's important that the young carer statement is developed in addition to this, so that there's a document with a specific focus on the young carer's needs as a carer. As we're talking about the young carer statement, in addition to that, what we feel should be included in the young carer statement itself is anticipatory and future planning to be incorporated, emergency planning to be incorporated within this. I'll just give an example. We often know that caring can be a barrier to young carers' future education or employment aspirations. In order to ensure that we have the relevant support and services in place to alleviate those barriers and ensure that the young carer can reach their full potential, we need to be looking at that future planning of the emergency and anticipatory nature. Thanks, James. Any other responses to Bob's question and to James's? When I read about the provision of a young carer's statement, we certainly welcomed that. It sounded to us like what young carers had said in the consultation had certainly been listened to and acted upon. It was something that young carers themselves asked for. They quite distinctly said that a child's plan wasn't necessarily for them. I think that one of the objections to it has been the language of the child's plan, when some of them felt much more responsible than a child might be. However, my interpretation of it would be that the national strategy for young carers, which has run from 2010 to 2015, has said that all secondary schools must record young carers on their database. I would be expecting that young carers who were recorded on a database in a school would then be entitled to have a young carer's statement. For many of them, that would be very light touch. It would almost be a recognition that they had a caring role. I think that it's about the anticipatory planning. It's about when that caring role, which is maybe okay at the moment, becomes more burdensome, having more of a negative impact on the young carer's life. That young carer has more of a fast track, if you like, back to support and services being brought in or services being available to them. I would say that there is certainly not exclusive to each other. I could certainly say that a young carer's statement could be very helpful to a young carer, where there may be the need for the full-blown child's plan, but you could be on a waiting list or a warning list. Should that be necessary for you and be brought in to help you? I think that it's in the bill, but we need a bit of clarity about how the young carer's statement is going to link with the child's plan, because I don't think that we can all say that this is the way that it should happen, but I don't think that there is the level of clarity that is required to give the guidance to make sure that it actually happens. That's really helpful. I mean, it's encouraging that you see it, it can dovetail and fit together very well, but a bit of clarity would be welcome, and that's helpful. Another thing in reading of the bill, there's a thing about reviewing a young carer's statement and a young carer's plan. I'm guessing this, but I suspect that it's true that a young person may not wish a young carer's statement or a young carer's plan. They might not want to open up about the caring role that they have, this, that and another. I'm just wondering, given the fact that if someone says, yes, give me a young carer's statement or a young carer's plan, it would be reviewed. Should the provisions be in place for a young person and say, no, I don't want one to go back in three months or six months or nine months in one year and re-offer it rather than the statutory body, which would be the local authority, ticking a box and saying, you know, young person A was offered this, they refused it, statutory obligation done. Should there be something about having to go back to the young person, you know, as they grow and get more mature and get more significant problems or get more comfortable in acknowledging the young carer's role they have? I think that Ms Rackliff mentioned that depending on the type of caring role they have, they may feel stigmatised in that caring role and there's a variety of factors there. So I wasn't sure whether in the bill I spotted something to say, you should go back to the young carer if they don't accept one. I'm just wondering if you think there should be something along those lines in the bill. It's a risky one. It's a complicated one because if young people are given the sort of respect to say that, no, we don't want one, as long as they've had the full understanding, the stigma is removed, going back in three months or so might be a bit patronising. However, I do think that one of the things that would help with the young carer's statements in agreement with James is about this emergency planning. I think that this is going to be a key part of the immediate support that young person can have from a carer's statement. So if carer's statements are happening, if someone is responsible for them and we currently know that the carer's assessments have happened ad hoc, I've put in numerous requests and there's no timeline to it, I think that at this statement stage if an emergency plan could be gone through really quickly as part of the statement so that they have something initially from that statement to work with in case of emergency or making them clear that if they want a review or if they change their mind. So I guess what I'm saying is the statement could be offered. Young people could take the statement and then part of that statement is given them an emergency plan. The second situation could be the statements offered that young person doesn't want the statement. However, an emergency plan could then be offered as well, just as a matter of course, because the emergency plan could say if you change your mind or if you are in a need, the caring situation changed, you can then contact and have a statement. So giving them the option and ability to request the review instead of putting the onus on social services in three months, because I worry that that could be more damaging. I don't know what other people's views are on that. Get about the three-month figure, I'm just wondering whether there should be a follow-up trigger somewhere down the line. I'm not wed to three months or one year or two years, I'm just asking floating the question whether there should be a review at some point. No, no, I completely understand that. I just, part of me thinks that if we can empower the young person to request that, but I understand that it's complex. I know Louise is kind of looking at what you're doing. Louise and then James, I think. I was really just going to agree with you, Lois, and agree with you that that would be complex, but it might be about when you make the original offer to make it clear to the young person that the offer maybe remains open. I don't know how practical that would be for local authorities. In terms of looking at some kind of trigger as well to review the circumstances, if you do that on a timeline basis, that's quite dangerous, because you could miss critical life events in the family or whatever. I'm not quite sure how you do it, but I think it would be great that young people could come back and say, actually, I would really like to take up that offer now. James, you've got the final word on that. Yeah, I think I agree with Louise. I don't quite know how you would do it, but I think we're a big believer in empowering young carers and empowering them to the choice and the right to ask for that, inevitably, young carers statement. I think in terms of the actual review of the statement itself, in the bill it states that the statement will look at whether the support provided in the first place has resulted in positive outcomes for the young carer. As well, we talk about a caring journey and we acknowledge that the young carer's caring role goes up and down the level of caring, the impact that has on them. I think that any review should also be looking at that as well, looking at whether their needs have changed, not just whether they've obtained personal outcomes from the support received, whether they need additional support or whether that support needs to be detailed to meet their needs at that time. Richard Simpson I wanted to take up the issue of the emergency planning because that's something that I feel very strongly about. In fact, meeting carers before the last election, that was the main thing that they were concerned about and indeed the First Minister at the time did say that everybody would have an emergency plan. I just wonder whether that should be specified almost separately. I mean, when if someone accepts the need for an assessment and exceeds to that request, then it obviously would be included in that. But it may be that people would accept that even if there isn't a full assessment and full support that an emergency plan should be put in place, and that could be separate and almost allow people to go back in. I think that my personal experience of fear that carers have is that they often deny the need for support and feel that they're coping well, but they have a worry in the back of their mind about what happens if. We do a young carers assessment, just our own young carers assessment, with the young carers who we work with, and we ask them what they're doing in an emergency. It's become clear that you need two emergency plans. You need an emergency plan if the carer goes into hospital or is unable to care due to illness, but with children, especially those who are living in a single parent family, you need an emergency plan for if the person that the young person is caring for goes into hospital and then the child has no one to look after them. I think that that's really important, so we sort of have two emergency plans in our assessments. Anyone else in response to the Richards? I think that that's a key point. I think that we have an assessment. We do a thing called a footprint, which is the idea of assessing the young person's journey throughout the service. That gets reviewed every six months while the young person is with the service. I certainly think that we don't have something called an emergency plan, but we definitely give young people support numbers. I think that an emergency plan in relation to caring role and how to support the young carer moving away from the care and responsibilities and services with the knowledge that they could access it again if needs be, because, as James said, the caring role does dip, ebb and flow and dips ups and downs. What we find sometimes with young people is that we don't want them to become too dependent on the service, whereas some young carers could quite happily live without our services, but they're worried about access again, so part of that is incorporating an emergency plan with saying that you can just call up and be re-referred. I think that that would support carers feeling confident to go on without services. If they're making sense there, it makes them feel less reliant on the service because they know that they can access it, which I think is a big fear, because sometimes they struggle to get the support in the first place. I'm going to offer the opportunity for those members who haven't had the opportunity to ask a question at this point. Annette? Yes, I noticed some of the concerns expressed about the young carer's statement having a coffee, having to go to the named person. Can you make any comment on that? Do you think that that should stand? Should that be changed? Or what are the advantages and disadvantages of that? We're quite concerned about that. We think that it might put young carers off. I think that it will depend on the relationship that they have with the named person. Since the named person is going to be involved with the child's plan, you don't know what might be going on with that. It's also that we work very closely with families. We have a holistic approach. I think it's very important to work with the whole family. Your child would have a young carer's statement. It would be sent to the named person, but the parent wouldn't know. The gatekeeper of the information is the young carer. It's the young carer who decides whether the parent sees it. That's far too much pressure on the young person. It might cause problems within the family. It might put the young carer off asking for a young carer's statement. I know that I can understand why it's in there that maybe the young carer doesn't want the parent to see the statement, but I wonder if there's some way around it. We do young carers assessments. We don't necessarily show the parent. We're led by the young carer, but we have a family discussion around everything, so everybody feels included. It seems very bold that it's going to the named person and that's it. Is there more comment on that? Anyone else? Everyone agree with Sarah? Agree with it. When we had the meeting with the Alliance, there were lots of young carer projects around that. We raised the same concern that it could be a catch-22 situation. If you share this information with the named person, if the young carer does not want the school known about their caring situation or did not have a positive relationship with the named person, it's just more or less backing up what Sarah is saying. I think that a few of the young carer projects around the table were worried about that as well. Just to say that we have highlighted that in our written response to you. It was certainly a worry of many of the young carer projects who were there at the consultation. I think that there were various opinions that young carers themselves should be the gatekeeper of whether or not the statement was made known to the named person or not. People thought that, in terms of empowering the young people, that that should be the case, but it could very well be the case that the young carer was too young to make that kind of decision without realising what kind of impact it may have on the family. I think that it is something that maybe needs further consultation with young people. I am really not sure, because in terms of consultation with young carers, if you like, that aspect of the bill has not really been put to them for consultation. I agree with Louise. I think that there needs to be more consultation around this with young carers themselves. We have found very much the opposite within Stirling. When we do an assessment, we will complete a single agency child's plan based on the support that is then going to be offered to that young carer with the young person's consent. I think that that is the key point here with the young person's consent, and it is explained to them. That is sent to their named person and discussed with their family, so that everyone around that child is clear and aware of the support that is going to be offered. I think that the key and crucial point there is that it is discussed and that it is with the young person's consent. I have a couple of supplementaries in this, so the grant and the Dennis Robertson. I will just remind people that we are in the last 10 minutes of this session. I can understand what people are saying, because of the detail that might be in the statement, but surely if a named person, especially when a child is in school, which is normally the head teacher, should be made aware that that child has a caring role. A lot of young people tell me that the school is unaware that they expect them to have home working on time, they expect them to turn up on time, and they expect them to be turned out the same as everybody else. At the very least, surely the school should be informed that this person is a young carer and that they need to make exceptions and allow them to carry out that role and support them in it. Maybe not knowing the detail of what is going on at home or the support that the child is getting, but surely they need to know that. I am going to take the two supplementaries, if that is all right, and allow the panel to respond. Dennis? It is still on the same theme, and I agree entirely with what Rhoda Cymru is saying there, but I will go back to James' point. Is it a question of trying to ensure that we provide the most appropriate information and understanding to our young carers so that a named person does not become a threat to them as it should not be? It is there as an enabler, it is an empowerment, it is there to support. As Margaret said earlier, we have toolkits, maybe the name person is part of that tool kit. James, you want to respond and we will take others from the panel? I think that just picking up on Rhoda's point, it was actually a headteacher reason that we have developed that process in sending the information to the schools. It was actually a headteacher who contacted us and identified that she was unaware of the number of young carers in a school. As an organisation, we were supporting young people out with school, but she was saying that she was wanting to be aware of how many were within a school, so that she could provide appropriate support on a daily basis. That led to us sending the plans on. We have seen a positive response to that. It comes down to the point that was made there, working with the named person and equipping the named person in relation to raising awareness of young carers and young carers issues. As I said before, we are working with the young carers, so that they are aware of the role of the name person and the linkage there as well. Where else? Do you want to... Yes, please? Sarah, do you want to come back? Really, just to say, I think that I am sitting here with two hats on, maybe hearing from all the young carers services in Scotland or a majority of them, and I think that there is a bit of a divide sometimes about your point, Rhoda. Certainly, we would be saying to our services, I am sure, that we would be encouraging young carers to make their school aware that they were a young carer because of the support that could be made available to them, but we still have some young carers who say, I do not want them to know. This is about our family business and I really do not want them to know. I think that you have the kind of pushes and pulls of what is wanted, but I think that there is that thing about responsibility, about if people know then that you are a young carer. That is not necessarily going to be publicised, but we can take responsibility for looking at what happens when things don't go so well for you. I can see the kind of tensions here within this one. I think that another difficult point is that, if you like, the name person isn't really, I know that it's been working in Highland for some time, but nationwide we haven't really seen it in practice. I think that on also this young carer statement is a new idea, so I think that in terms of how that is going to work, it might be difficult to predict and how often will this circumstance arise that the young carer doesn't want the name person to know, so I think that I'm really not quite sure. I think that it would be beneficial for the teachers, the high school headteacher to know that a young person is a young carer, and we would certainly encourage a young carer to let us tell them or let them know in some way. One thing about just the name person and the young carer, initially getting a copy of the young carer statement, is that a lot of parents feel very bad that their child is a young carer. If they are kept out of the loop in that way, I think that that's just going to make them feel marginalised and a lot of people have mental health problems and stuff, it's just going to make them feel that they're not worthwhile. It could be that the child is not caring for the parent, it could be that they are caring for a sibling. It just needs to be looked at a bit to work at how you can do this in the best way for the young carer, the family, the school and just so that everybody can be happy and all working together and not feeling that they're being left out in any way. It needs to not come down to a duty, I think that empowerment of the young carer would get the best possible results. I think that it will come down to professional practice because often within a child protection case, for example, if a young person came to you and there's a child protection issue, you would inform the young person of the people you have to tell in the family, but part of that process is letting the young person understand why you're doing it, what's the result of that. I think that the difference with this is that there should be a choice for the young person to say no, but you'd rely on the professional practice and the professional doing the carer's statement to support that young person to understand that it should be a positive thing that's happening. I would say that within the bill it's possibly not a duty but encouraged that the information should be shared with the lead person if that's not the lead person. However, it should be the young person's choice but for seeing it in their best interests. I think that it's the professional delivering that but it should always be the young person's choice unless, if it does get shared without the young person's consent, the concern then is that the young person disengages and then has no trust and then that relationship is broken down with the support services. I think that that's the risk that you run with making it kind of mandatory. I think that with young people and adults that would be the case there but I do think that you're right. I think that it is sharing the knowledge and the awareness would only help but I don't think that it can be mandatory. Good question, Annette, and a good discussion that came from that so if you're on to the committee you can take some of that and other considerations. Are there any other questions from any committee members who have not spoken? Are there any additional questions from members at this point? There isn't. I thank you then on behalf of the committee for your attendance and participation this morning. All your written evidence that you provided, which will be important to us in the progress of this bill and we look forward to working with you through the progress of this bill. Thank you all very much indeed. Thank you for your attendance this morning. I was suspended at this point to change round and thanks. I might have a little bit to go through first but thank you. May I resume the meeting that observant among you will have noticed that our convener has left today's meeting and I will therefore be convening the remainder of the meeting so I am not Duncan McNeill I think is the point I'm trying to make here. So we move to agenda item 4 which is the second of today's evidence sessions in the Carers Scotland Bill and this will be a video conference in many requested members avoid interrupting the witness and each other and to speak clearly when answering questions. Can I therefore formally welcome Marjorie Jagger, manager Sky and Le Calche young carers. Welcome Marjorie. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to have you and for once the technology is working we like this and we're going to go straight to questions and as previously agreed we'll take our first question from Mike Mackenzie. Mike. Thank you convener. What I wondered if Marjorie could perhaps outline for the committee any special challenges that she feels are presented to young carers by virtue of the fact that she operates in the Highlands and Islands and in a predominantly rural area and so just in general terms any special challenges and secondly any implications that the bill has for young carers in a rural area. The geography you know for a rest by break our young carers from going to Inverness which is the nearest city you're talking about a six hour travel journey there and back so you know rest bike can just be for about three four hours in a day although it's fast as a day trip. The biggest concern we have is the cost of the transport and how that affects our service delivery because it does reduce our ability to deliver more flexible service because rest bike is probably the key thing that young carers make a real difference to them particularly rest bike within their own peer grouping. A lot of young carers have said in the past that they don't access funds so much for their individual needs because they feel quite isolated going away for a break. They would rather have the support of other young carers so they can support each other and learn from each other and be with trusted adults so we have the additional cost of taking groups away as opposed to supporting young carers just to access funding for going away. Thank you. The other kind of issues yet the other kind of issues we have in skyline harsh particularly that affect more is maybe the confidentiality. Young carers small communities you know people tend to be very into the other people's business so the issue of confidentiality is not really a priority for young carers and who that lean person is in their lives and the trust that they have in them so it can take a long time to build back trusting relationship with the family as well as the young carers themselves. Thank you very much. I'm very grateful for that. Any else on that mic? Are you finished? No, I'm content with that convener. Now only because he caught my first off at Dennis Robertson then off to Rhoda Grant after that Rhoda. Good morning, manjari. Just follow on from mic and I hope that it actually pertains to both rural and urban settings. With regard to a young carer maybe taking part in just local activities you know being a young person just growing up in that whether it be a small community or urban maybe wishes to go to scouts, guides, play football, go to youth groups that sort of thing. Do you feel that there's a role to offer support even on a temporary basis to enable young carers to go and just be young children and enjoy the other activities that other young children and young people enjoy? Yes, we certainly promote that although we do find a barrier for a significant number of young carers that they feel that they under-achieve in those activities because they maybe aren't able to commit to that regular attendance to maybe you know achieve their badges to the same level at the same speed as their peers and quite often they can feel a bit overwhelmed by that and disengage from the activities and then that's why we find you know that they engage more and come back to us to say they want young carer services to deliver the service where they don't feel that level of under-achievement in the local community. Do you think that the bill in itself could be improved to enable that to happen? How do we empower those young people to live those lives that maybe other children and young people live within their communities? What would you see that we need to do within the bill to make that happen? I'm not sure whether it can be made within this though but the one thing that young carers consistently tell us is that they feel and we are made to feel that they are under-achieving. They believe that through maybe being protected characteristic in quality law that that would allow them to have that positive discrimination so that then they wouldn't be feeling that they've got to measure up against peers where they feel are at a much higher attainment level than they are and they would feel that that support would be more empathetic to their needs. Okay, thank you. Dennis Rodigrants. Hi Marjorie, can I just quickly refer back to an answer that you gave earlier about a lack of privacy, lack of confidentiality in a rural area. Does that make it easier to identify young carers, given that people in schools, people in support groups like yourselves, people dealing with young people would almost know someone's family circumstances and be able to identify them? In some, in smaller schools certainly, I think they are more aware more quickly. We find that most referrals actually come through with families themselves because of the community network. We find these families that are in the same clinics together, attending some of their appointments and they talk together and then share about perhaps the young carer service. Our other big referrals are actually young carers themselves who will share the information to the peers in schools they will recognise other young carers probably more quickly than any professional will and they are very good at supporting and advocating for a young carer and taking them along to find out more information or taking them to their guidance teacher and acting as a peer support. We find that that is probably the most effective way because we find that they do not feel that the service has been pressured on to them, they are actually coming towards us for that service so they engage and trust, build trust with us very quickly. Okay, that's really interesting. Can I ask about the bill and the role of preschool carers where it says there should be a duty to stop the caring role for preschool carers? Do you think that that should be the case for children in school or indeed is it feasible to stop altogether the caring role of preschool children? I honestly don't think it is feasible to stop that role at all and I think we run the risk of then becoming a hidden young carer rather than coming forward for support because you'll find these preschool young carers can quite often become the pictures and carriers perhaps for people with disability, maybe in wheelchairs or they can be the emotional supports for adults with mental health and it's very difficult to measure you know that level of support but it has got an impact and for these young carers they will do that naturally that grow lost into that role and they would see that as part of their natural family dynamics that they would provide that support. If they felt they were going to be judged on that then I think that's when you're more likely at a very early stage to start shutting down youngsters coming for support and the families accessing support and I think it's more important to have recognition that that role is there and developing and likely to develop further as they mature and so that early intervention work I would say would be more beneficial to the young carer and their families. Okay, thank you. Okay, any other MSPs in the net millen? Hello, there were some concerns expressed in our previous session about a young carer's statement, a copy of that having to go to the named person. Is that a particular problem you've spoken about confidentiality and so on? Do you see that as a particular problem in your part of the world? No, I wouldn't say. We've been in operation now for 15 years and in that 15 years we've never had a young carer or family decline permission for us to inform the schools that this is a young carer and the family and I think the key to that is that the family and the young carer both see benefit associated to that and I think as long as that benefit is promoted and is realistic then they will see that actually yeah it's in the benefit and best interest to do that and families will look at the best interest of the young carer. So if we're going to the named person I think the other issue is how much information is disclosed. If you're looking at impact of the caring role in young carer and the care in the family would be much more comfortable with that rather than disclosing you know how many hours they perceive they're caring for in a day or a week and what particular tasks they're doing they would see that perhaps as a way in which you work for the same but they would be able to recognise the impact and with guidance I think most professionals would recognise the impact of the caring role. Thank you that's very helpful. Can I perhaps ask you Marjorie a similar question that we asked previous witnesses given evidence and that is can you maybe give some examples of good practice or or best practice in your area where service and support for young carers exists because obviously there's a structure behind this bill but the policy intent is to improve the position and support for young carers across Scotland so can you be a point to some some good examples of something that does happen that you could put on the record here this morning? Certainly in regard to working with your GPs then we set up a few years ago a flagging system with a green for the GPs because again there's a confidentiality issues that GPs were wearing off you know identifying young carers how they would approach that with families so what we did was with our young carers that we had on our membership was share with them the benefits of the practices knowing that they were a young carer and we now get families the parents and young carers to give sign consent for their notes to be flagged within the GP practices so it doesn't matter which GP or which clinic they're appearing in their notes there's an automatic flagging that there's a young carer who could benefit from perhaps additional time or additional you know explanation that might be more around the caring issues in their lives as opposed to just looking at how you present those physical symptoms. I think that's an excellent example and it was something that was raised about improving that partnership with GPs and indeed the wider NHS in the in the earlier system just wondering one of the things that was also raised in the earlier session was the benefit of peer support for young carers something that perhaps I think you said initially can be more challenging given the distances involved to get that people around the same table to do that peer support I'm just wondering in terms of what we're doing just now the technology just now the IT technology social media and multimedia platforms that have you had any opportunity to roll out some service and support in relation to that or do you think that's an area that maybe needs more more work and more progress? The young carers themselves say from all the years that we've been monitoring this that face-to-face contact is what has the biggest influence in their lives and getting guidance and support from face-to-face contact and information as well is what works best to them because then they can enter into discussion if they know where that discussion is going to be held and action plans can be developed from that. Social media we've actually developed more concerns rather than you know rather than I suppose seeing the opportunities there because we're seeing a number of our young carers being targeted online and appropriately and some of those young carers are very vulnerable and virtual relationships can seem very appealing because they can maintain them just within their household. What we try to promote with them is that they connect with people they know and they can trust because unfortunately we have had predators targeting young carers. Marjorie, thank you for putting that on the record I think that's good to give a balance to the opportunities around social media but obviously not at the expense of quality face-to-face contact and you've highlighted some of the dangers so thank you for putting that on the record. Dennis Robertson wants to follow up on some of that. If I may convener, Marjorie, again acknowledging that connectivity can be a problem sometimes in some of our more remote and rural areas, face-to-face would you acknowledge that face-to-face using technology like Skype for instance is useful in terms of we have a distance or the cost of travel that that can be a barrier that if we have the technology and obviously if the equipment is available that face-to-face could be through for instance using something like Skype. I would see that as being more useful as a stepping stone towards the ultimate of face-to-face regular contact with those young carers because again it's limited ability to really get to know that young carer what we do is observational work with our young carers so we can see and recognise when pressure is starting to build up on them, when anxiety is increasing, these things you don't tend to see over a presentation, over virtual you know communications with them and we also respect breaks for us and young carers aren't all about just having a break, having fun, that's an element of it but it's also about observing you know their personal safety levels, their risk-taking behaviours and their peer integration levels and so we can develop then action plans based on by working with the young carer and we then have the evidence to support them to encourage them to actually engage in that action plan and see the benefit for themselves and motivate them to achieve their potential. I acknowledge what you're saying Marjorie and I accept the fact in terms of social media that could be predators for someone who are more vulnerable but we can set up private pages to enable peer-to-peer support on a private page. Do you think that that in itself can be useful just as a support? I think as I said maybe a stepping stone support to you know fuller support for them and it may be for some young carers particularly those that maybe you know don't need the specialist service support then absolutely it should be explored and seen you know if that is of benefit to them. For a lot of young carers in local areas as you say the connectivity is an issue and quite a lot of them actually don't have coverage in their areas and a lot of young carers in our area don't have landlines because of the cost of the lines so they will have mobile phones that really they just use in emergency circumstances unless they're in an area which is usually the central area unfortunately where they do have a connectivity. I accept all those points and I think it's something that you know we need to try and improve on to again ensure that connectivity is there as a lifeline for people. Thank you Dennis Marges. Can I just put on record that I think you've made an excellent point in getting the balance right with technology because I'm a city MSP for Glasgow and if young carers in Glasgow are able to get that face-to-face meeting I would completely understand why in terms of equality of service you're keen to make sure that in your part of the world they can get that as well so I think you're absolutely right to be persistent in relation to that. I obviously see opportunities for technology but it shouldn't displace that equality of service that I appreciate you're seeking to have. Can I maybe move on and then ask another question now just in terms of how the bill seeks to handle the transition from young carers to adult carers and the kind of support around that. The bill sets out that a young carer statement would remain in place until after a person's 18th birthday and until such time as a adult carer support plan is put in place I'm just interested to know whether you think that that's an important part of the bill and it is of course an opportunity for you maybe to make some more specific comments on how you feel in your part of the country that transitions are handled just now. Yeah certainly I think the young carers statement is a really positive move because child's plans at present you know are targeted towards the top end of young carers who are more vulnerable but even there you know we've done a recent audit and it shows that 70 percent of young carers who believe would benefit from child's plans actually have them in place so 30 percent haven't. There's also quite wide use of level one forms which is to just register you know some additional responsibilities but seeing that young carers are managing coping well and there's just initial recognition that there's additional support need there. We're then finding that you know if they do go on to get a child's plan that the step down from that isn't really in place so once they come off that child's plan if it's decided that it's no longer required we don't believe that the level one is sufficient so having the statement I think would provide much more security and I think stronger support mechanisms for the young carer and transition time absolutely into adulthood I think there's been a major gap there for a long time that needs to be closed and that would be one very useful way of doing it. When we're talking about transition though I would also like to flag up the real need for transition when young carers are going through bereavement because quite often you know we work with young carers for 15 months after bereavement because they're not just losing the person that they love in their lives but they're often losing their purpose and their role within the family some of them are actually losing their homes some of them are losing their schools and some of them are losing losing their friends so we would say that that's when actually more intense support should be in place for them also those young carers who are going into care local authority care that there's some transition support in place there again because it's not just the loss of the family and although they can be still getting connection with the family they're also losing that care role and that can add almost like an additional bereavement process for them. I can actually thank you for putting on record something I don't think the committee has particularly looked at in terms of transition planning and that is when you lose a loved one you've been providing the caring role for that loved one that they're no longer there that's not something we've particularly looked at as a committee but we did some evidence on in the earlier session was the idea of emergency planning and anticipatory planning and if you've got a loved one who has a life shortening or terminal condition the planning that is then put in place by the local authority and the health board and others to provide support as you say bereavement counselling or whatever needs to be put in place and you mentioned that 70 percent you estimate of its 70 percent of young carers have been identified where where you are is there much evidence of that kind of anticipatory planning going on at the moment yeah it's difficult to quantify and I think that is the issue for us that I think there will always be you know some hidden young carers out there and part of that can be because of family culture and you know we do have traveling families in the area as well so there's all that there's also you know young carers who are home educated now they are not picked up by the school they're not seen by the school nurses they're not seen by many services at all especially if they've never registered in school and we you know see them as very vulnerable young carers because they don't get monitored by other services and support mechanisms in place to the same level okay and in terms of I did ask two separate questions here I don't think I was as focused and I don't think I was as focused as I could have been so that that's quite helpful in terms of identifying young carers and actually think it's a strength that you've managed to identify 70 percent I suspect what you're doing there is better than we're doing in other parts of of the country and maybe some of that work around gps and flagging might might be an explanation for that so whilst I know you're keen to identify every young carer you appear to be doing well there I was asking about and it's very difficult to quantify so I'm not looking for numbers but if you're aware of where there are young carers who maybe have a loved one who does have a terminal condition whether there's any plan takes place to ensure before tragically the inevitable happens that support is put in place to anticipate the needs for the like of bereavement counselling and additional support does any of that take place at the moment do you think yeah it certainly is kind of wrong shady it does but I think I need to clarify first the 70 percent apologies if I wasn't clear on that I was saying that 70 percent of young carers that we've identified and worked with have child's plans in place okay that we believe should have child's plans in place not that we've identified 70 percent of young carers in our area because I don't think you know I don't think we could see any kind of figure on that because it is an unknown that means so apologies for that no I think that that was my misunderstanding but thank you for correcting me on the record in relation to that so we've got some certainty I appreciate that now just in terms of and I won't ask again it's just in terms of because I don't think we've explored the area of transition and anticipatory planning for for whether there's a terminal illness just to clarify there is some evidence of that taking place is there yes we do do pre bereavement support and we start that about a year if we're fortunate enough to engage with that family of young carer in time then we do work with the family of that young carer to prepare things like you know memory boxes in advance making positive memories for that young young carer so that any special wishes they have to work with the family to achieve things within their family before that death that those are achieved if at all possible and that young carers will give them opportunities to creative art particularly to give the messages to maybe mum dad or brother and sister that they nearly have problems verbalising at home but they'll create that in a safe environment and then share to the level that has made such a difference that some young carers have actually the parent has asked for those possessions to be put in their coffins with them when they are died and that I don't think you can undervalue you know the difference that makes to the whole family thank you for that margin I am going to give you the last word on a second margin but I just want to make sure that any of my MSP colleagues have got any further questions see Dennis has indicated if someone else could you catch my eye now it'll be your last opportunity to get in so Dennis Robertson thank you Marjorie and I fully endorse what you're saying about the aspect of memory boxes etc when we talk about loved ones are you aware in terms of if we're looking at whether it be a parent or sibling are you aware in terms of the carers how many are supporting young siblings as opposed to supporting parents and again this would sort of move on towards the bereavement as well consistently for quite a number of years the majority of young carers are supporting mothers predominantly and then you know fathers for about 20 or percent and then it's a smaller group I would say that are supporting siblings because usually they do have the parental support in place there so they're not so often the primary carer when it comes to sibling support but they can very often be the primary carer when it comes to supporting the adults or adults in the family we had 19 young carers supporting more than one person in the family that could be either both parents or a parent and a sibling and I think the impact of that sometimes isn't recognised but also the impact that it has on carers of they themselves have a condition or a disability or chronic illness and sometimes that can be you know addressed in additional support needs but the uncare element is under recognised so that the impact isn't really addressed we've found in schools that although all the schools know that they have young carers and who they are within their schools that only 20 percent of them are actually recorded on the pupil database that additional support needs as being young carer and I think that's an issue that we're hoping that the young carer support statement will help to address with us and finally convener for me one thing that came to mind when you were talking mandatory is are we aware in terms of the travelling community and the young carers that are involved within the travelling community yet not to the level that we should be or would like to be but we certainly have had you know people from the travelling community that have come but more those that have settled even for a short periods of time in the area who have come to us and built trust through their own community with even just having one or two on our membership who are maybe were previous travellers that are now settled they still have those networks and they still connect with each other and so they will you know if they see the benefit help to promote you know refer all to the service travellers always take their travellers even if they become static they still because of that culture they will still class themselves as travellers okay thank you Dennis there have been no other bids from MSP colleagues to ask questions Marjorie as I said I want to give you the last word so are there any thoughts or reflections or or hopes that you have for this bill or indeed things you would like to perhaps see changed within the bill that you would like to put on record before we close this particular evidence session Marjorie? Okay I think for us as a small independent charity up in Skine of Hull I think access to funding is you know a key issue for us you know we get about 30 per cent from local authority in support the rest as well as delivering our services we have to fundraise we have to do our applications and do our reports and I think that reduces you know our capacity and for with local authority there are several service level agreements at the moment we're seeing that on an annual basis that doesn't allow us the time for planning and we are always having to look at contingency plans in case the funding is reduced and it has been stand still for a number of years which again you know is really a reality a reduction for us and we would like to see you know more equity of service provision across Scotland and particularly across Highland as a very rural area because there is only two specialist young carer services within the Highland and that's Skine of Hull and up in Sutherland and I think you know that is a huge identifier need for more resources to go in to to Highland to actually start up services that would make a significant difference in the lives of these vulnerable but you know very very difficult to say out for young carers very very special children who don't ask for much but give so much to others. Marjorie, I'm glad I gave you the opportunity to put all that on the record at the end I think it's quite important when we look at our evidence for this bill all that remains left for is on behalf of I think my fellow committee members as well to thank you for your excellent evidence this morning to the committee so can I thank Marjorie Jagger for taking the time to give evidence this morning and we'll say goodbye to you now Marjorie and we'll move on to the next item on the agenda thank you very much thank you a pleasure thank you so as indicated we'll now move on to agenda item five which is consideration of petition PE1550 by Andrew Muir on behalf of Psychiatric Rights Scotland calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to set up a public inquiry into historical cases of abuse of people detained under the Mental Health Scotland Act 1984 and the Mental Health Care and Treatment Scotland Act 2003. This was referred to us by the Public Petitions Committee at the end of March in order that we may consider it in the context of our scrutiny of the Mental Health Scotland Bill. In doing so, the Public Petitions Committee also wrote to the Scottish Government seeking its views on the petition. The Scottish Government response was received yesterday afternoon and circulated to the committee. You will have seen the paper from the clerks which recommends that we consider the information contained in the petition and the response from the Scottish Government when it is received in the context of our scrutiny of the Mental Health Scotland Bill at stage 2, following which the petition would then be closed. Before I seek your agreement for that approach to our work in relation to the petition, can I ask members if they have any comments to make? Okay, there are no comments to make. Can I reiterate that we will look at the issues raised within the petition during our stage 2 scrutiny of the bill in due course, after which the petition will be closed if we get committee agreement. Can I ask the committee if they are agreed? Okay, thank you. As previously agreed, the committee will now move into private session and I will pause briefly to allow at this point the public gallery to clear.