 Good morning and welcome to the 16th meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. We have no apologies for today's meeting. Our first item of business today is a decision to take agenda item 3 in private. Are we all agreed? Thank you. Moving on to our next item of business, we are going to hear from two panels as part of our inquiry into addressing child poverty through parental employment. In the last weeks, we have held evidence sessions on issues around childcare. The focus of our first panel today is the provision of education and training. Barriers to accessing education and training was a strong theme in our recent call for views, and such barriers can in turn prevent access to the workplace and work progression. I welcome to the meeting of our first panel, Kenny Anderson, director, SWAP West. Keith Robson, senior public affairs manager at the Open University and representing Universities Scotland and their joining us in the room. We have Sharon McIntyre, head of SEAG Operations, Skills Development Scotland and Jackie Gilbreath, principal and chief executive officer of West Lothian College and representing colleges Scotland, who are joining us remotely. We are delighted to have you here. A few points to mention about the format of the meeting before we start. Virtual witnesses and members please wait until I or the member asking the question to say your name before speaking. Please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn your microphone on before you start to speak. You can indicate with an R in the dialogue box in BlueJeans if you wish to come in on a question. Don't feel you have to answer every single question, and if you have nothing new to add to what's been said by others then that's perfectly okay. Can I ask everyone to keep questions and answers as concise as possible? I invite members to ask questions in turn as agreed in our brief. The first one, I believe, that's up is Katie. I'd like to ask about the role of lifelong learning. What you think the role of lifelong learning is in addressing child poverty and whether you think there's an overlap with a just transition to net zero and training people for green jobs. There's obviously quite a lot of different parts of that and I don't know if either of the witnesses in the room would like to respond first. Good morning, thank you for the invitation to come along today. University of Scotland, I think, in our submission, gave some evidence around the importance of lifelong learning and the opportunities to students. In terms of poverty, it improves the ability to gain employment, to progress in employment, to provide for families. I know that at the open university we've got a wealth of anecdotal feedback from students and they wanted to be a positive role model for their children, wanted to show them that they could study and work. 74% of our students are working whilst they study with us, but across the sector we've got universities with a positive role to play. Net and just transition is obviously an area that needs to be developed. Of the 19 universities, there will be different institutions playing different roles, some up in the north-east, others will have different courses. I think that previous committees have highlighted that on a high level we're very good at talking about the need for just transition and green jobs, but that's what that means, so a clearer definition. We can make sure that the curriculum is correct and that we look at supporting people through access courses, getting into university or colleges for the first time, and gaining that confidence in making sure that there's a pathway so that you can be on the right course for the right jobs and support their families. I can come in as well, convener, on that. Within the Scottish Wedding Access programme, I think that I'd take a slightly different perspective, which is the perspective from the students who we work for and their main students with no or few qualifications. The opportunity to return back to education is their main point of learning because they have no or few qualifications of their kind of formal time at education when they were younger, which was perhaps not as successful as they would have wanted it to be. Having those opportunities within the system to return back to education is kind of key to them, so they seek from that perspective as their chance to get back into education and to take those opportunities. I think that's linked very clearly to poverty because those who haven't done well at education are often those who are residing within those social and economic areas of disadvantage. The fact that they are looking for education to be part of their solution in order to return back to education is something that I think we as a society and a system should be very much encouraging. Most of our students are looking to return back to education to gain a really good degree that's going to give them good employment in the future. I think that the challenge for us across the board is actually making those jobs of the future visible and attractive to people when they are returning back. Currently, when we speak to our students about the type of jobs that they are interested in returning back and studying and why they want to return back to degree study, it is often what they would see as kind of safe and secure jobs such as health, nursing, teaching and education. I think that the challenge for us is to say to them that jobs in engineering, social science are just as important and that they are just as able as anybody else to return back to those jobs. I don't know if there's an indication from anybody online if they'd want to come in, convener. Obviously, we're particularly interested in child poverty and being a student can be quite a difficult period. When we're talking about formal education, that can be quite a difficult period for parents. I don't know if there's an indication from anyone online. Jackie, I believe, would like to come in. Good morning and thanks for the opportunity to represent College of Scotland today. I think that the key thing about lifelong learning is giving people opportunities at different points in their lives. For example, I think that colleges are really good for that. I'll give you a very quick example about West Lothian. We've got communities in West Lothian where there's quite entrenched unemployment and quite a long history of families who have struggled to get in food employment and stay in employment. For a lot of people who are in the community, it's really important to reach into the communities and to give them opportunities to have short courses that then ease them into a course like the ones that Kenny was talking about, the access to nursing or whatever it happens to be. One way example we've got at the moment is that we're running courses in Blackburn Partnership Centre, which is where the GP and the other community facilities are based. With a group of women who have not been in education, who have got children, there's a crush on sight which makes sure that they can be happy that their children are looked after. Every single one of those women who have taken part in that taster course for childhood practice has actually taken up a full-time college course come August, but they would never have contemplated coming into the college before they took part in that course in the community. It's challenging for colleges in those financial times to reach into communities and do that, and part-time courses perversely are actually more expensive to run, but it's really important that we do it, and I think I really welcome the Wither's report review recommendation that there should be more funding for part-time students, but also that the system should have more funding for providers of part-time courses because it really makes the difference. Thank you. Okay, thanks Jackie. I believe that Sharon wants to come in on that. Yes, please. Good morning, Sharon McIntyre, Head of Careers Information Advice and Guidance at Skills Development Scotland. I'm pleased to be here today, panel representing Skills Development Scotland. I just want to come in on the back of the other speakers, but take a bit of a different approach to the importance of lifelong learning to our economy and skills. So, at SDS, we very much see lifelong learning as being imperative to tackling skills shortage in the economy, and we know there across a number of areas. In terms of the national strategy for economic transformation, we are very much focused on building, working with partners who have already spoken around achieving a stronger and seamless lifelong learning ambition, so that makes it easier for our people in communities who are looking at upskilling, looking at how they can retrain and create a much more decor future for them and their families. It's absolutely critical. Lifelong learning is about inclusive communities as well as it is about personal fulfilment and critical to the economy from our position. In terms of our role, we work with adults, we are a knowledge national career service that sits in SDS as a national skills agency. We work with adults across Scotland every day, helping them to navigate the options around their lifelong learning. We work very closely with colleges to access the courses that Jackie talked about. In terms of the transition to next year, it is imperative that that is seen as an opportunity and an economic lever. We have opportunities in our Green Jobs Workforce Academy, which is housed within my world of work. First speaker talked about the visibility of jobs and people being able to see what's out there and where is absolutely critical. We want to ensure that my world of work is being used to the optimum in that way. We have an opportunity finder there that tells anybody where opportunities are, in particular green skills opportunities. It also helps people to understand what skills they need to be able to take up these jobs and where the availability of courses and funding is. For us in Skills Development Scotland, lifelong learning is an absolutely critical facet of our learning and education system. Thank you. Thanks, Sharon. I believe that Katie wants to come back in. Are there Scottish Government policies that make it easier to provide education and training to low-income parents? Are there policies that she thinks are a barrier and are making it more difficult that need to be addressed? I don't know if there's anybody online that would like to come in first. Jackie. Thank you. Thank you. There have been some policies that have definitely helped. For example, the funding that we at colleges received this year and last in the young person's guarantee in the national transition training fund enabled colleges to do many more short, sharp courses that were focused in the community. For example, we have a three-week skills boost course running right now with adults in the community linked in with NHS Lothian. At the end of the three weeks, they will get a guaranteed interview for band two jobs in NHS Lothian. Those courses are made possible with that funding, but unfortunately that funding finishes this year. It's a challenge for colleges to be thinking about how they can use the funding that they have to meet all the different demands that they have, but certainly those policies in recent years have been helpful to colleges. It will be interesting to see what the Government comes out with in terms of more flexibilities for colleges in these really difficult times. I suppose for my college that the key thing is that we're all living in really difficult financial times all the public sector. For me it's about partnership working. There are many partners in West Lothian who we're all aiming to do to help the same people. It's about how we best work in partnership. We've created a partnership hub in our campus and we've now got 14 local and national partners co-located with us to help people in the community to connect into courses, whether they're short courses or later on full-time courses. There have been some policies that have helped. Thanks Jackie, do you want to come back in? Yes, I don't know if there's anyone else online particularly on any problems, anything that the committee needs to be aware of that needs to be addressed where there could be improvements in policy. Can I invite Sharon to come in on that? Yes, thank you, Katie. In terms of feeding and building on what Jackie said we agree that there are some policies and some strategies that do support. For us, the recent lifelong learning strategy is a fantastic approach to building that strength and it is very much focused on partnerships and we very much see ourselves in that partnership space. In general, there could be a focus around targeting a lot more just in terms of giving the situation we're in with the cost of living crisis and the focus on poverty, which is, as we know, not really child poverty. It's around poverty in the widest sense in our communities and also across regions and nationally. I think that if anything, we would see a benefit in policies and I mean in a wide sense being more targeted around what our priorities are. Especially in that lifelong learning space where we know those people and households are most at risk how they can be supported by a policy in essence. The real work is in terms of the delivery and the practice and even if there was an opportunity to be more targeted in practice I'll give you an example of that in terms of how we work in schools. We work in schools through a needs matrix and what we do is we have a targeted approach to those young people who are from households that may be struggling. We use SIMD, data equalities, data that's driven by an evidence space and intelligence space and then that's validated with the school so we work very closely with the school around focusing on young people that should be our priority for a career service that year and that's done every year and updated during the year as well because circumstances change in households. Having benefitting from a very partnership-orientated, targeted programme in school which means we're seeing the young people who, when we're talking about parental employment it's their parents, their parents and carers that are impacted. We look at the post-school space and it's more a universal and demand-led and again that's absolutely of great value but there is also room to learn from some of the targeting needs driven programmes and I know there's quite a few out there run by the third sector so in terms of SDS we're very closely working in partnership with the third sector on those targeted programmes that we can see they're delivering especially around where young people aren't attending school at the moment so what's going on with those young people and their families and how can we support them as a partnership? So it was more a general point Katie around targeting I think is something we would observe as being a priority and an advantage at this time given the climate we're in. First off with the University of Scotland hat-on I've referred to paid 5 hour submission which references that in terms of higher education student support is primarily focused on full-time and I think that's picked up in the SPICE briefing as well which we didn't specifically reference part-time students playing more to my strengths with the open university perspective 68% of our students receive the part-time fee grant so if you as an individual are earning less than £25,000 a year for most of course you'll be eligible for the part-time fee grant which is administered through SAS so that grant came in in circa 2013 and we've seen that it's been a huge boost in supporting people to come back into education 20% of our students don't have standard university entry qualifications but what we're finding now is an increase in students and only yesterday as I was leaving the office one of our senior advisers contacted me they'd done a quick triage and yes in the last few days we've had three calls from students saying I'm not sure I'm going to be able to continue someone looking at either pausing their study with us or something like that dropping out because of the cost of living crisis and the fact that the part-time fee grant threshold has never increased since it was first introduced now with inflationary costs and wages going up they're now going over that threshold and they'll no longer be eligible for the fee grant so they're having to seriously consider when they can afford to continue with their studies so that policy is extremely positive but it needs reviews and the current circumstances of that opportunity is still going to be available to people another one I would quickly mention is it upskilling fund that was a very positive fund but I think I might be right I can double check and confirm I think that might too be coming to an end but I'll make a note and confirm that afterwards that allowed people to access short courses in terms of getting them back into a workplace re-training or upskilling We benefit from the policies in respect of fair access and the focus on fair access from the Scottish Government we receive our funding from that pot of money from the Scottish Funding Council so that has certainly helped us and we've received that money direct from the Scottish Funding Council since 2011 and that's provided us with a lot of certainty looking at the history of our organisation in terms of how we've worked when we've been more reliant on project funding that's been a little bit more difficult for us so that policy has certainly helped us in an organisation in terms of strengthening the work that we do through our colleges and giving them the assurance that that work will continue into the future there are elements in respect of the fact that we live in a country where we have free tuition fees for our students to have that certainty when they are progressing to university they should never underestimate in terms of their thinking and that comes up time and time again when we talk to our students about why they have returned back to education we had an interest in one when we looked at our evidence of our students who are parents and the ages of their children and we've got that evidence for over 30 years and I always quite like it when my stats are quite boringly reassuring in terms of what I do every year we did notice around about 2011-2012 that we began to see evidence of the fact that there had been universal childcare for three-year-olds because the normal age of a child for students returning back before that time was five where we saw that beginning to reduce to three which was an interesting one for us because it was not necessarily something that we had expected at that time but it made sense later on if I can just quickly say that in terms of this work that we do it does require an infrastructure there so no matter how well our programmes run we need a really strong college infrastructure and within that we need an infrastructure of childcare so that our students have got really good childcare facilities and we need an infrastructure of transport so that they can get to their colleges well so you know I appreciate that one of the aspects that this committee in particular is grappling is where there is implications across a broad range of policy fields which has an impact on poverty and we would hope that education would be seen as part of that infrastructure but we don't always have all the answers because that requires a little bit more of a holistic approach Project 12 in the National Strategy for Economic Transformation includes developing a stronger simplified lifelong learning system including support targeted at those who need it most to what extent do you expect low income parents will be the main focus I don't know if Kenny would want to come in on that I mean that's probably for other people to say whether or not they would be the main focus I very much hope that they will be I think we really benefit in Scotland from having the Scottish Credit Qualifications Framework I think that's come up in the last two reports that they have and that allows us as an education system to be able to look at those that we feel that we have to target and where those resources should go into for myself there are kind of key elements in terms of people returning back to education which looks at them being targeted at those with looking to have development within SCQF levels 4, 5 and 6 so some of the aspects that Jackie spoke about, some of the pre-access programmes that our college partners run are really helpful for us in terms of ensuring that students will be successful when they return to that level and for me it's less about simplification actually having a lot of diverse routes that meets the needs of a diverse range of adults because not all adult students are the same is really important but if there can be that focus on those students then we'll start to see the benefits of that second Keith, do you want to come in on this one? No, I don't think I would add to what's been said I don't know if any of the online witnesses are indicating that they have anything to add my final question is how we can ensure that a diverse range of education is available, I know there's been a number of references both to green jobs but also to some of the more caring professions that perhaps low income parents look to but how do we ensure that there truly is a diverse range of opportunities available to low income parents and also maybe the opportunities that the economy needs but also maybe lead to well paid employment I don't know if any of the witnesses in the room would like to come in maybe Keith? I think increasingly we're going to have to see greater collaboration and partnership so that each of us could probably give some really good examples and have some have been done already between the sectors between different institutions I attracted that idea of the partnership hub at Westlaw then college that sounds quite positive and quite interesting as a sector we do look to provide opportunities and each of the institutions will have good relationships with colleges in their own locality with Open University is obviously a national university so we have students in every parliamentary constituency and region but we work with all of the colleges outside of the UHI network so we've got articulation agreements, we've got strong partnerships and increasingly we'll have to look with the third sector we've been having discussions with SWAP about how we can look closer but I think if we're going to meet some of those challenges as funding reduces then there is an imperative and greater collaboration Kenny? I believe Jackie and then Sharon but can I just remind everyone to be more succinct and concise with your responses we've got until round about 10 past 10 before our next panel Arraith, thank you for bringing in Jackie OK, thank you Colleges a very significant proportion of students at colleges are from low-income families and I absolutely would argue that we have to continue to make sure we support more low-income families and in terms of lifelong learning young people inspire the parents the parents can inspire the young people colleges across Scotland just now are celebrating success of those students that Kenny talked about levels 4, 5 and 6 in the SCQF and the story is that you hear you see adults who have gone through learning and you see their children with them and you can see that there's a positive story there to tell but you also see parents coming with their children and then the parents starting to think I wonder if this is for me and many of those parents have never been inside a college before so I think that it's really critical that we continue to focus on those families and go with that because we've been cut across West Lothian and it's absolutely cutting off the opportunity for low-income or anybody in these outlying communities to come into college even though it's just a few miles away so those buses not being available at all or else not being available at the right time are absolutely denying people in our communities the opportunity for lifelong learning Kate, thanks Jackie can I now bring in Sharon thank you yes thank you in terms of the diverse range of options I think it's really critical we talk about work-based learning options so the role of employers in this space and the critical focus on intelligence as well in terms of local market information I think the evidence and the role of employers absolutely critical in an integrated approach in community so the employability hubs that's also something that we support in Jackie's area and nationally and are developing much more integrated hubs in our cities and communities but I have to make the point I think it's imperative employers are included in that and that work-based learning opportunities are part of that diverse portfolio of accessible options for our parents in low incomes thank you thanks Sharon I'm now going to bring in James can I ask Sharon first how can we develop apprenticeships and other work-based learning for low income parents am I okay to come in hi James so we so as you know yes we have apprenticeships that start at school based and up to graduate level so they are open to all so including low income parents we don't actually have an eligibility around low income parents particular so they are universal but we do very much focus as I talked about earlier even at a school level on encouraging young people to look at apprenticeships as an option and support parents and carers in understanding what apprenticeships are and how they could be of value to them and not only to them but also influencing their young people James we've got a parent carer strategy in place at Skills Development Scotland which is all about how we look at different ways of engaging parents in particular low income parents to support the range of opportunities that's underpinned by our adult all-age careers advice as well so we do support parents low income parents in the round in apprenticeships as one of the pathways that is open to them Is there any measurement of participation of the low income parents appearance in general into apprenticeships We do obviously measure and collect information on take up and placements that's something I would need to follow up with you on James if that's okay I don't have to hand Yeah, yeah that'd be helpful if you could go back to the committee on that one I wonder if anybody else want to come in and either of those two points No, if not I'm happy to move on Thanks James Right, okay This one again probably coming back to you I'm sorry It's about the individual training account being caused when will it be reinstated and what impact is its absence having Yeah We are launching the ITAs in July actually James so that's just being approved with Scottish Government There has been a delay in launching just really due to budget discussions the challenges around that working with Scottish Government we have now agreed an approach and will be launching access to a total of 6000 ITAs from next month that's for the 2324 for those learners that applied they will go forward into this new launch and will be able to take up an ITE through that process In terms of the pause we we've still not stood still in terms of supporting those learners through a range of information we provide through my world of work and our CIEG helpline as well as an all-age service around funding opportunities learning opportunities and in my world of work our website there is a extensive list of opportunities there for learners so we feel that where a learner had expressed an interest we still have been able to support them and deliver a service and also even in that time we've looked at the criteria underneath the ITAs and we're working very closely with the Scottish Government in exploring some of the kind of cap around the salary in there which we feel needs explored again so it's given us a chance to look at how we can improve the ITE as well but that's been launched very soon James so could you not reassure me to some extent but that negatively or severely negatively because of the pause in this ITA? Yes, I can James I am confident enough that we have a range of other services and support in the learning space and we have that one-to-one guidance through our adult career service I have to ask you this then Okay Why the ITA if you've already got things in place then you say that you've adequately supported and aren't losing out if it's not there Is that a good question James? So it's actually about a wider visioning opportunity that we see and it's under N set as well so that focus on empowering people with their own skills being able to use a fund in a way that they can create a range of options from a funding base so that the empowerment of people to be able to drive forward a focus on their own skills and that could be from a variety of places that they look at developing their skills and that comes back to discussions we've been having around a future potential of a skills wallet that would be a kind of empowered approach to people in communities, especially low income parents in particular who could use a skills wallet entitlement to make sure they're taking up learning that actually suits their interests and their career goals so that actually we think that ITA is an important tool to be able to help people navigate their own careers as you know in the national career service we're very much built around career management skills focus where we are people to drive their own careers to support their own pathways to reaching that dream job and those career management skills are necessary to the way that they actually navigate that pathway and ITA for us are that empowered approach to the traditional service delivery that we support around that I hope that helps just to give some flexibility around the learning process that's great I have one more question and Sharon I won't ask you it you've done enough I was going to start off with Kenny and if any of the others would like to respond that would be great should there be specific workplace training and upskilling funds targeted in companies? I mean our programme is very much in and around academic development James and that's we're looking to provide them with that provision because they feel that that is their need and requirement I suppose my answer would relate to always trying to bring it back to what the actual needs are of the adults who you want to work work with and the one thing that we I suppose we always find when we're talking to our students is that they're a really diverse bunch and what I would never want to have as a position where there was a policy that would shoehorn in people into one option we realise and swap swap isn't always the best thing for all adults we're looking to return back to education I think it's got benefits for a number of them what I suppose I would prefer to see is a kind of more diverse approach where if somebody is looking to regain and get back into the workplace that they have an opportunity to attend a local college that's going to be able to provide them with that options if they are looking for an education response that's going to take a longer period of time, that's going to engage colleges and universities that they have the opportunity for that as well for me it's the options of choice and having those choices there and that investment that provides that those choices can maybe be able to go into that in a little bit more detail than I've been able to answer for you James Well there you go Jackie, it's just passed a ball for you so let's see you're running it Sorry can I just remind everybody to be trying to be more succinct and concise with our responses here because we are running way behind time and there's a lot of other members who want to come in with some questions as well thank you Okay thank you, I'll try and do that I absolutely think that we have to have the flexibility to support work-based learning for those in low income families both who are in work and who are out of work so you know that ITAs are really vital too but it runs out during the year and many people who are in low paid jobs and for example the care sector want to up skill and want to do the job that they're doing but also to progress in their job and very often they rely on things like ITAs so I think colleges have the flexibility and the ability to tap into other resources to provide more of that is absolutely necessary Okay, thank you Okay, convener Thanks very much I promise, convener The two different perspectives on that we do a regular business barometer our next one's out at the end of the month and last year we found a bit of a disparity between what employees said they wanted in terms of upskilling and reskilling and what employers thought so if you were looking at targeted funding for low income parents you would think quite carefully about what the needs are I think that that might be better focused on things like the part-time fee grant and actually some sort of maintenance grant or access to maintenance loan for part-time students I think whether it's whether you're with the open university or if you're a part-time student you don't have the same ability to access funding you do if you're a full-time and that funding is vital to getting people to be retrained Okay, thanks Thank you for that Okay, I'm going to bring in Miles now Thank you, convener Good morning to the panel Thank you for joining us here and online today I'm going to try to merge my three questions in relation to course structures and delivery models and to what extent course timetabling and structures can be made more flexible in order to accommodate a more diverse range of students now I know the majority of students on swap are parents and so flexibility around childcare we've heard already but I just wondered in terms of the 2022 national strategy for economic transformation it did highlight some of the need for flexible provision so I just wondered what the panel's view was in the examples of where we've seen changes so I mentioned swaps I'll maybe bring you in first, Kenny Thanks, Miles, on that I'll try and be succinct, but something's very difficult so apologies, convener we're pretty passionate about the work that we do there's some very simple and straightforward measures that most of our college partners will do which is provide flexibility for people to drop off their kids and then get into classes and not have that kind of structure we expect you to be there at nine o'clock because our partners are incredibly good at sorting out their timetable so that students can not only look after their children but also work and I think one element that is there particularly those that are the committees trying to focus on is that they aren't juggling childcare and work and our colleges will be flexible in terms of that we are looking this is probably very much post the pandemic and reflecting on the pandemic in terms of trying to be as flexible as we can with learners around blinding face to face and online looking at two-year provision of an access programme my colleague Leslie with small piece has got a really innovative piece of work that they're doing with the NHS up in Grampian and Moray college where health practitioners who are working with the health board will have the opportunity to study over two years so they're not going to lose their hours so just really helpful bread and butter aspects that make lives easier for students that's helpful I know the majority of courses I think Keith for open universities is also able to be provided online so is that also providing flexibility and with the pandemic that change in learning as well is maybe the future as well time and time again we hear from our students about how our provision allows them to be fit around their work and their caring responsibilities so they can study we've got a very handy study calculator a very useful Excel spreadsheet where you work out all your different commitments in a week, in a day and then think about, I mean it's very basic but actually in a stark way we got taken through as a staff team another day helped students think about the commitment that is required but as an institution our model is very flexible and suits your needs obviously I would draw attention to page 2 of the University of Scotland committee news from Scotland submission and looking at innovative work such as the University of West of Scotland give students their timetable a prospective timetable within 24 hours of enrolment so they can make arrangements so they know in advance there's no last minute planning and then both at Glasgow Caledonian and at university other projects are on going to ensure flexibility and to make students needs thank you one of the things we have heard as a committee as well is around urban and rural Scotland different issues for people especially around travel and island communities as well West Lothian part of my region isn't necessarily that rural but I'm wondering Jackie if you've already raised the issue of transport being one of the major barriers so wondering if there's anything you want to add around that as well absolutely because good bus routes is really important and the bus routes are not great and we're having lots of representations but I know that local politicians, local council and others including the college and our student association have lobbied the bus company and there's promises they'll address that I just wanted to add something to the question you asked about flexibilities in learning so for many parents who've not been in education and who've returned some thinking about those women I talked about earlier they've usually had bad experiences of education they're usually very isolated in their communities and coming together in person is absolutely critical for building up their confidence and the value and motivation for learning so we absolutely do a lot of online learning for students who want that flexibility especially for those that are in work but for those that are in very low incomes and who are isolated in communities it's really important to give them the opportunity to come together and during the summer for example five weeks over the summer break in our college we've got 60 ESOL students coming in so that they can connect with each other as a community there's a creche on campus and they'll be able to take part in their learning so that they can take part in courses so the online is important but for this group of people it's really important to think about the in person too I don't know if Sharon wants to come in if not happy to hand back, Kamina Sharon, would you like to come in on that? If you're on mute I'm now going to invite Marie to come forward with some questions Thank you, convener, and good morning panel thanks for your time this morning How does the financial support available to students in Scotland compare with the rest of the UK? Is there any type of student supporting other parts of the UK that we should replicate in Scotland? Let's pop that out to anyone who can answer it In Wales we've had the diamond funding which has dramatically increased the amount of part-time students primarily signing up with the open university but that's bespoke to the system in Wales which by far is the largest partner shameless plug for the institution reflects the situation in Wales but that gave some grants that hadn't been there before and you saw quite a significant increase in part uptake but what they didn't have prior was anything equivalent to the part-time fee grant that we had but it was less about tuition if it was more about a support grant so it's certainly one model we've flagged up to several servants in the past Thank you for that Anyone else want to come in? I don't know the answer to the question but I know that Colleges Scotland have done some work recently comparing against the other nations in the UK so I'm pretty confident we could get you an answer to that one I think for me there's also the issue of universal credit universal credit is a major barrier to families both in work and out of work in terms of engaging in learning because of all the conditions and all the impacts it has on their benefits so that's a really big issue across the UK but I'm sure Colleges Scotland will get that information to you Thanks Jackie, that would be really helpful Swap submission says Sharon would like to check the comments sorry Sorry just to come in very briefly on in terms of reducing the financial costs so a bit of the another side of the coin and coming from a student perspective but school based we've greatly valued the free bus travel so that's really made a difference to finances and families and that pressure and support also we're influencing UCAS we're working with UCAS around the fees to make UCAS applications as well so it's just to let you know from a CIG point of view we're focused on reducing financial barriers as well as promoting methods of support Thank you Swap submission obviously says that unexpected crisis are a reason for students not being successful How can you be improved? Crisis support for parents students for example would better links to money advice or the Scottish welfare fund would be helpful Yeah, Mary I think one of the elements when we have students in college student support systems are really good they've got that finance I feel kind of confident enough provided students have the confidence to get in touch with us to kind of talk about these issues a lot of them stem actually from challenges and difficulties that there are in respect of universal credit as Jackie had mentioned earlier on and one particular challenge that we often have is that colleges are great with the discretionary funds but sometimes those discretionary funds can cause difficulties with people who are on universal credit and when that challenge is oh my goodness that balance of things going wrong that's where those issues can cause difficulties I think that's less of an advice and information problem and one where if we could really get stuck into the benefits system we can actually start to do some good and how should that be reformed to remove the barriers and the cliffed edges any kind of examples in terms of in terms of finance universal credit is a benefit where we're presuming that we're trying to get people back back to work they shouldn't be out of work and they should get back into work I would hope that when you know the kind of Scottish Government looks at their benefits and certainly the evidence in terms of that has been good so far that that presumption of going into education and education being a good thing as part of the principles may be something that provides usefulness and from a student's perspective just knowing the work that they're doing is really good for them when they come across all the different systems that they're engaged and involved with as they try and navigate their time through study they don't want additional stresses they just want to be able to focus on their study so once we have them in the system and there is investment in student support that should be sufficient for them to get that proper advice that they require there is sorry convener I promise I'll be succent but there are also issues over in terms of how we get people into the system the guidance that they're receiving in respect of money and some of the benefits that they actually have in becoming a student and getting involved in the system and that may be where there's opportunities married to work more in partnership with some of those agencies that you were speaking about earlier Jackie you've already touched on the universal credit anything else you'd like to expand on just to say that the cost of living has been a huge crisis for students and for families and colleges across Scotland have done amazing things actually to try and mitigate it most of us provide a free hot breakfast and a free hot lunch for our students to make sure that they've got at least something to keep them going during the day but the partnerships are the critical thing here there are lots of third sector and public sector partners and that's why we've created this hub they come on campus, they work with our student funding teams they point people to funding that they can access we get them for help parents how they can get free uniforms for their children how they can even get help at Christmas for presents so partnership is fundamental in these difficult times but structurally I totally agree with Kenny we have to address the universal credit system because that's a huge barrier but I think colleges are doing really well with the funding that they're getting and also the funding they're pulling in from partners to support students who are in dire need at the moment anyone else want to come in before I hand back to the convener back to yourself thanks very much Mary I'm now going to invite Paul to ask him questions thank you very much convener and good morning to the panel I'm particularly interested in information and advice that's provided to people who are looking to get back into education and training particularly obviously parents with a low income and maybe start in terms of the kind of university space obviously the open university has a dedicated help line that our advisors people can speak to and do you feel that that works quite effectively in terms of those people who are looking for that information and advice and what more can be done in that space yes our colleagues work extremely hard and that was particularly challenging during the pandemic trying to make sure that students were supported at a difficult time I think when students are aware of those services they're well supported the challenge like any advice line is getting information out there so people are aware of it we do that through our partnerships with the colleges with advertising there's always more to be done to improve nobody should rest in their laurels but I think once they reach that touch point then the service is good to make sure people are aware they can phone up in the first instance and just simply inquire or come through our website they get taken through a series of steps I wonder for other members of the panel in terms of I suppose your own sphere of influence do you feel that obviously the challenge is getting the information out there so what methods have you employed in terms of being able to tell people who have so much going on in their life in terms of the demands on their time that they can have access to these opportunities if I could come in first I mean one of the most hardest thing that an adult has to do when they're returning back to education is pick up the phone and speak to somebody to begin with we within SWAP we're very much reliant on our college colleagues we ask students how they find out about SWAP and for us it's that kind of community engagement that colleges will have to allow them to find out about SWAP and information and advice and guidance has also got to be trusted so there has to be an element that that is regarded as an organisation that I can go to that they're open, that they're going to spend time and they're going to talk to me on that so that investment on that first point of contact is really essential for us in order then to bring people in one of the things that we will often do is that after colleges the next way in which people find out about SWAP is actually through their family and friends and those that have been through the programme again because of that trusted element of it so we actually will often ask our students to kind of do our marketing for us but that's useful because if that's somebody from my background that's being able to return then that's far more likely to have an impact than a leaflet or a newspaper article or anything else and social media's actually probably been more beneficial for us in terms of getting those sort of messages out than kind of maybe more of the standard ways I don't know I don't know if Sharon can hear I don't know if Sharon can hear is okay? Yes, sorry I can hear you now Yes, just to echo what other members have been saying our focus of course we've got the my world of work in terms of that online presence and that function there so we can support you directly online we've got our CIG as well which has qualified advisers at the end of the phone so if that is a preferred way of engaging with us that we are there help line at the ready we also have of course colleagues will know our centres and community venues and integrated employability hubs across Scotland to engage and share information social media is critical for us and we've been looking at how we move content on to platforms like TikTok we've just trialled on Instagram Q&A there was a lot of young adults participating in that we've also got new marketing material where it's got a quick reference code so if you just stand it with your mobile then you'll be able to advise through that means directly so we're constantly looking at ways that we can improve the way we deliver information advice and guidance thank you I believe Jackie would like to come in I won't repeat what other people have said but I think the key a really important thing is for people in communities any organisations that they engage with are able to tell them about what's available to them so the partnership hub is talking about our partnerships with community learning and development with DWP with Skills Development Scotland having those partners working closely together means they will pass on that information and I'm delighted to say that Skills Development Scotland will be joining our partnership hub very soon and the open university you're very welcome to come along and talk to us about you two being located on a campus this committee provided opportunities for that synergy we're always glad to do just on that point perhaps my next question was that partnership working and you mentioned Jackie there, DWP and I suppose the job centre plus space do you feel that advisers in that setting are doing enough and are trained well to to share I suppose these opportunities and be I suppose supportive in saying actually we can take you through and get you the right information and advice that you need we're trained in their own skillset the key thing is if the more they know about the local college the more they know about Skills Development Scotland then the better advice they're going to give people so I think colleges across Scotland are really good at those relationships and it's not about you go over here for that particular advice you come over here for a different piece of advice if you've got them all in the one space it can really make a huge difference about connecting people to education because you can sort out the funding the childcare, everything else what happens to be you can sort it all out with the thought that the partner is coming into the same space so I think they have got the skills it's just about connecting them with everybody else I imagine that provision might look different in different parts of the country so it might be helpful for us to reflect on what good looks like in that space I wonder if I can just finally Before you do can I just believe that Sharon would like to come in Of course Thank you I'm delighted to be working with you in Open University but the point around the partnership is absolutely critical so we've got strategic agreements with Social Security Scotland and AWP so we share continued professional development learning together so that's upskilling each other when we're in front of a customer we have to make sure that we are able to offer a range of supports that go much more out with our own services so it's just to let you know there's a framework underneath that as well to review Thank you Thanks, convener very interesting this committee's been particularly interested in childcare and using particularly the two-year-old option that's been rolled out to two specific families as a means to get people back into education and training and I wonder to what extent have you engaged in that space because we know that there have been challenges in terms of identifying families and getting them the right kind of holistic support but we know that there are family centres for example across the country and that model has worked on the partnership hub approach that we were just discussing there so have you had much engagement in terms of the kind of 1140 hours and the roll out to two-year-olds to get into those parents I don't know I was a little sharon has any views for the more co-ordinating role from SDS Yes, so where I would say that we were most influential is through community planning partnerships and we know there has been a particular focus on childcare schemes vouchers, the promotion of places in particular subgroups and CPPs that we are on so our role is instrumental in supporting the solutions to where a customer level childcare is an issue and the flexibility of childcare is incredibly important for us we are still seeing that childcare sufficiency as an issue nationally and I do think that that's something that you've been looking deeply into and where we can work again in partnership we do to support especially working with the PVI sector so not just local authorities but private and voluntary sector providers of childcare I think that's really important and I think that those partnerships are critical I also think that there's a perception of hidden costs around the wraparound of childcare as well that I think would help as well in terms of take up and understanding what the situation households are actually in so it's not just a simple kind of matching in of childcare that suits the needs of the employment aspect it's wider than that and we're getting a lot of information back from the local discussions we're having, the regional discussions around the childcare sufficiency element and that's something we are focused on in partnership thank you Dave Jackie with lights coming in absolutely and colleges obviously are very critical in developing the childcare workforce to meet the increased provision that's available and that happens across the country our partnership with the councils early learning and childcare team is really critical both in raising visibility of communities across the area about what childcare provision they're entitled to and is available but also in ensuring that we can then support the providers in terms of people who will end up working for them so those women I talked about earlier in Blackburn I've got no doubt that a good number of those will end up working as practitioners because there's so many jobs actually available in that area really quickly if that's okay and this is a perspective that we have from our students who are parents is they allowed to see it from what is their support mechanism that they're going to require for childcare which is broader than just childcare providers so it's ensuring that they've got their support mechanism within their family and their friends returning in particularly for a number of our single parents it's actually the support that they'll have from their broader family that's there as well so we quite rarely spend a lot of time talking about childcare providers but it's actually broader than that for students we're looking to return back to education thanks Kenny okay thanks very much I've just got a question a last question here before we finish up I'm going to put it to Keith Kenny and if Jackie would maybe like to come in on this as well would be what will the impacts be of the tightening of college and university budgets on provision for adult returners and student parents and particularly low income parents as well and if I could ask Keith that question first of all I think if the budget continued to be reduced then it's probably inevitable to have a reduction in opportunity we're seeing across the sector job cuts so that there will be fewer resources available within colleges and their universities potentially fewer opportunities courses not perhaps being run that would otherwise have happened and I think obviously wider part of the wider bit is that student financial support if the part time fee grant threshold doesn't get increased then there will be fewer opportunities for people to access education via that route that otherwise had been a vital lifeline for them okay thanks Keith Kenny we're a college based programme so we're always really concerned about the capacity in terms of our colleges for running our programmes swap access programmes require a lot of engagement involvement from our college partners because we asked them to deliver more credits as part of that programme because we're getting people ready quickly in order to progress on they are and I say this with love in my heart sometimes a challenging group of students to work with they're well liked and well liked to teach traditional challenges as well now what we see is a real commitment to swap and that work across all our colleges but people like Jackie have to balance the books and my job is to kind of navigate that with some of the senior teams that are looking at that we have a quick example one of our most popular programme is access to nursing and our nursing numbers are actually really consistent and good and a lot of the information for universities has actually been more from schools than it has been from adults but I'm beginning to worry about our capacity for delivering the amount of programmes that we'll need to deliver in our colleges in the future if things continue to go the way they go we deliver access to nursing and it's been great speaking to those students over the year and how folk are all on it virtually all now going on to university and become nurses and that's fantastic and we're taught the committee to continue to do that in fact we've seen double the applications for those places for next year so undoubtedly for colleges it's really hard with the type financial situation that we face and colleges are very agile we'll change and we'll try and do our best and we absolutely will focus on those in most need but it's really critical I think for Government to think about other areas for colleges and it can get funding from we'll help tackle poverty we'll help achieve the economy that we want as a Scottish Government but there are other pockets of funding that could support colleges not just from the education budget and I would encourage the Government to look at that to see how we can support people in communities to get the careers and the jobs that make them happy and content that brings our panel evidence session to an end and I'd like to thank the witnesses for the evidence they have given here today and I will now briefly suspend the meeting till I for the setup of the next panel so thank you very much indeed welcome back and we're now going to hear from our second panel on employability programmes expanding employability provision is a key proposal in the Scottish Government best start bright futures and the context of the current budget pressures it is unclear what progress has been made so far and what the role of employability programmes is in the current tight job market so I welcome our witnesses for this second panel David Stewart regional development manager Fed Cap Scotland Philip White director the institute for public policy research Scotland and they are joining us in the room and we have Marion Davis director of policy communications and strategy One parent family Scotland and Sarah McCulley service manager employment and training Falkirk council and representing the Scottish local authorities development programme sorry development group who are joining us remotely as with the previous panel please waiting to lie or the member asking the question say your name before speaking and allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn your microphone on before you start to speak you can also indicate with an art in the dialogue dialogue box and blue jeans if you wish to come in on a question and don't feel you have to answer every single question so I'm now going to invite members to ask questions in turn as agreed in our pre-beef so I'm going to introduce Miles if you want to come in thank you thank you convener good morning to the panel thanks for joining us today I wanted to ask a couple of questions to start off with regards to the best start bright futures programme which aims to move up to 10,000 parents into sustained employment and increase wages of up to 3,000 already in employment so I just wanted to start by asking how much of this could be achieved through the employability programmes which are being currently delivered and whether or not there's anything specific you wanted to highlight to the committee which you think needs to change in that so happy to bring in David and Philip and then go online sure for the invite to come and talk to you today delighted to be here from two fronts both from personal and professional personally as somebody who's been in the sector for about 20 years is a long-term health condition and is a very very proud father of a seven-year-old daughter who absolutely tells me what to do every single day but also someone who has experienced the majority of my educational and professional development as a mature adult whilst being a parent so I certainly can resonate with a lot of the information that's been already spoken about today and professionally from FEDCAP Scotland as a not-for-profit organisation that is passionate about this area and supporting as many people as possible and working with Scottish Government local third sector partners local authorities to co-design to national problems so thank you for the opportunity to talk about this I was in to answer your question it depends on the structure I think employability provision can have a huge part I think employability is what has historically been the best route out of poverty and I think it still is if it's the right job and it's the right structure of job people are experiencing so many barriers and inequality just now and I think we need the right support to provide to people and I think Philip and I were just having a quick chat before we came in and both organisations talk a lot about scalability we are a national provider with local presence but we pride ourselves on being able to deliver at scale and I think the problems what we're talking about a quarter of a million children living in poverty that needs to be a big investment to address this in a previous role I worked for the Scottish Union's voted employment to help reduce the disability employment gap we're talking 160,000 disabled people moving into work these types of things can't happen on small scale in short termism we need to work collaboratively with the Scottish Government with local partners to provide what people need, when they need it and for as long as they need it I concur I think the ultimate point is that it has to similar to what David alluded to so quarter of a million children living in poverty to date social security has done the heavy lifting to try and reach the upcoming interim targets particularly through the Scottish child payment that is right and proper but if you want social security to be the only thing that can do the heavy lifting to get you to the 10% final target in 2030 you're talking about a significant scale of investment the likes of which has never been seen in Scotland so employability and child care the other half of your inquiry is incredibly important that's not just getting people into work it's important to remember it's by some of the stereotypes around poverty two thirds of children living in poverty are in a household where at least one person is in work so it's not just about getting into work but we find it quite often people are in work they're caught by structural inequalities not least low pay that's the last player role but David hit the nail on the head at the minute the issue is scale so you know all the numbers in particular in our submissions and other submissions happy to get into any of them in detail but the core point is at the minute there is a massive chasm not just in the overall numbers of people that are being reached by current employability programmes and in turn those that are supported into work that chasm alone is big enough but when you break it down to the numbers of parents those programmes and then being supported into work they are tiny in comparison to the aims and ambitions that the government has set itself so something is going to have to give and that is ultimately about scaling up as David has rightly said I think Thanks for that Does anyone want to come in online? Sarah and then Mary Good morning Sarah McClelland, Falkirk Council Thanks for having me this morning I'm representing local authorities across Scotland who coordinate or deliver employability provision with place-based approaches and considering the question with regard to the scale echoing what has been said already we are seeing increased investment this year with regard to the delivery of parental employment support programmes across the country and I think that the figures and the reach and the scale is achievable but similarly to what has been said already it's partnership which is key there needs to be a holistic approach to ensure that that reach is achieved and that services are accessible to the widest the widest group of parents that are in our local areas it's all about overcoming the barriers or at least alleviating some of the barriers that parents have and that includes financial debt childcare affordable transport sector based training fair sustainable employment opportunities and to do that we need to work in partnership and have collaborative and holistic approaches to serve this design and delivering it's not just about employability and jobs it's about supporting parents to alleviate the real and perceived anxieties they have about a variety of challenges that they are facing personally and professionally to ensure that they get the right advice and guidance about the potential family income that can be achieved through employability a perception that employability and increasing hours will make the family income greater and actually that sometimes is a myth sometimes working part-time is the best option for parents and gives a much better outcome for that work-life balance as well so there's a whole number of elements that have to come together if we want to achieve this and many of us are already putting the foundations in place to do so Thank you and Marion did you want to comment? Thank you and thanks for the invitation to come along today virtually One parent family Scotland is an organisation for single parents across Scotland and we've got family services in six local authority areas and in fact in two of the Pathfinder areas which is part of the child poverty delivery plan we've got a range of national advice and support services through a free phone helpline single parent forum and a lot of web-based self-help so we do reach a lot of single parents and last year I think it was over 8,000 parents, children and young people that we worked with we do that through specialist crisis interventions single parent tailored benefits and money advice family support many of the things that Sarah just mentioned there health and wellbeing and of course employability programmes and I just to pick up on what the previous speaker said is that the aim of supporting so many parents into sustained employment can only be achieved by a range of interconnecting to policy interventions not just employability employability is only one part of what is needed and I know the committee has looked at childcare and me because I put in a submission or some evidence on that as well that not only is high quality and affordable it has to be flexible to meet the needs of the labour market and we feel that to achieve greater success for parents, particularly single parents, there needs to be more tailored employability provision particularly the parents that are the priority families and the child poverty delivery plan we do support the person-centred approach of no one left behind and I think it's been a really positive development in terms of what has gone before we feel that that is very important but in addition we need to recognise that some of the groups, the families that we work with face systemic barriers and discrimination so to challenge that we feel there should be more group-based programmes, there are some fantastic ones and we as been mentioned earlier need to integrate family support financial inclusion and from that point of view peer support as well we feel is very important ingredient in what we do single parents supporting each other so I think in particular the question asks about increasing the wages of parents already in employment and that's an incredibly challenging area and probably local authorities and public sector employers offer the best opportunity for progression in relation to that in mark training we would like to see more ILM programmes so programmes that provide employment while people are being trained in the job and there has been ILM programmes I'm not sure if they're still on going but no one left behind has had an ILM programme for the financial years 2021 to 23 and we would like to see more of that particularly within childcare to support single parents to move into that area of employment but I'm sure we'll touch on a lot of these issues again later that's very helpful, thanks Marion I was really impressed when I visited FedCAP to see some of the work coaching that you're doing in Livingston and wanted to ask specifically one of the conversations we had was around sustaining people once they're in work not just matching them with a job and then job done and just wondered if there's anything you wanted to add around other policy areas which can help achieve that especially given the number of people who get into employment but then that job maybe fails and they go back to square one so just wondered about any learning on that great, thank you and thanks for taking the time to come in season we'd like to extend that offer to all of the committee and I think you're absolutely right this isn't just about getting people into work there's a real concern that in my previous before coming to First I work closely at Falkirk and the majority longest employability provision we got was probably about 20 weeks and did very well with that but with what people are experiencing now they need that longer term so to have 12 months pre-employment support is fantastic and then as soon as somebody gets work to have 12 months in work support to keep them so that's crucial and I also think we were talking about childcare and other barriers that giving parents access to training to progressing work is so important but at a time when they can do it so we've invested as an organisation over 12 million pounds into Scotland which demonstrates how committed we are to being here through our digital platform called the FEDCAP Hub which all participants on programme and all partners get access to and that allows parents in work to access training and development at a time that suits them we can track when they use it we know that the most popular times are between 7 o'clock at night and 2 o'clock in the morning and it allows people to go through training at a time that suits them based on their interests so that absolutely is ability we have the in-work support speaking to a previous participant a parent the other day that didn't feel as if she was a role model to her children before getting work has now moved into work is now exceeding is aware of the amazing transferable skills that she's got and has moved into becoming one of the top sales people in her company in the UK from some day that wasn't working and now she's made a statement that the in-work support was so valuable in fact she's annoyed now because her years came to an end but one of the statements that she had said that I'll mention to you I said what is the difference from where you were to where you are now and she said I now say no to my son less and it's amazing it's so simple it's amazing to watch other children do things to get things and now being able to say yes she's now purchased a 12 month pass to Edinburgh Zoo which sounds silly but to be able to plan and do things that she said on benefits I was day to day now to be able to have something that I know I can do with my son it's so important and I think in terms of other policy areas we're really keen to bring health, employability poverty, disability, all these policy issues together I think one parent family has mentioned in their submission a lot about intersectionality and we're passionate about this we can no longer have commissioning for parents poverty, disability ethnic minority groups we're supporting 200 Ukrainians in Scotland just now and we're saying what about that Ukrainian woman that comes over from an ethnic minority community or somebody in Scotland from an ethnic minority community that is a lone parent that has a health condition and is looking for work what programme do you advise her to go on and how can you say to her to forget that inequality or to forget that disadvantage we'll focus on this just now it just doesn't work like that there needs to be more flexible eligibility criteria we would like to change the no wrong door approach to the right door when you need it you can get it here and we can pull partners in to you rather than sending you out to other people we'd be delighted to work with the Scottish Government about designing something that would look like that thanks David does anyone else want to add anything on that if not happy to hand back Kamina? just coming back to your original point there around sustainable employment and sustainable job opportunities I think if you look at some of the policy areas that are circulating at the moment such as in NSET and you're talking about lifelong learning I think that correlates with what we are trying to do within the child poverty funding and the PES programmes with regards to building those skills with people when they are in employment also we work with a number of employers to look at the business support side of things we're looking at workforce development and that ties in quite nicely with the work that we are then doing with individuals around upskilling them because we are upskilling those individuals to give them real in-work progression opportunities and careers rather than just jobs but also supporting the employers with regards to sustainable business so we're doing all of that and that lines in with NSET I suppose going back to Marion's point childcare does continue to be a real challenge and although across the central belt it's less of a challenge when you look at the issues faced in rural communities with regards to childcare it's an on-going challenge and there's a lot of innovative practice out there that we can take learning from the policy area at the moment with regards to the best strategic early learning and schooling childcare plan is going to be really key to align with the ambitions of employability and I suppose just finally the other policy area that I think is key with regards to sustainable jobs is to do with the fair work strategy there's a lot of big ambitions in there some of them relatively easy to achieve over a short period of time however some of them do have unintended consequences with regards to sub-sector and private sector organisations and I think we just need to take a wee bit of time to realise some of the impact and support those businesses with regards to the fair work strategy and bring them along with us and not just dictate what we see as being key areas of fair work to be successful moving forward Thanks for that, Sarah. You could maybe write to us about some of the more detail around those challenges just so that we can capture that that would be helpful. Happy to hand back to you, Camina. I believe that Marion would like to come in and then I'm going to pass on to James. Thank you. Just to add to the points that have been made I think particularly picking up on what Philip had said earlier employment aims won't be achieved without policies that help tackle the crisis that so many low-income parents face, especially single parents. At One Parent Family Scotland we've got a model where we offer a range of support for parents who are facing really serious and sort of difficult issues results in a crisis they're unable to buy food we have to get them to a food bank helping them to pay for gas in deep debt so we need to sort out as much of that as we can before they engage in employability work so that's a bit before employability that way we really need to fund and resource so I suppose the point that I'd like to make is that if you're in a crisis and we've been through a lot of crises recently the path to employment training and education it seems more like climbing a mountain then moving along an employability pipeline and we have seen real and substantial progress in reducing child poverty in particular but the recent stats show that that's not really enough to meet the statutory child poverty targets and that is linked to employability because if you're in poverty and you're stressed it's very difficult to even think about looking for a job so child poverty will only tackle the parents especially single parents who have a boost to their income through social security we've got access to early years in school age childcare, it's not only affordable but it's flexible housing is a key issue as well but we really hope that the Government will use every tool at its disposal to drive a transformation in the labour market we want to make sure that all parents have access to decent family friendly employment which they don't have at the moment and especially through public procurement is an option that we could use more and I would echo what Philip said about the Scottish child payment has been a real game changer it's had a huge role in supporting hard-up families but it is losing value in real terms day by day and we would like to see the First Minister act as soon as possible to increase that payment to £30 and analysis in fact done by IPPR shows that that needs to increase to £40 if we meet the child poverty targets although we're talking about employability to support parents out of poverty, they still need to tackle the poverty that they face so that they will move into employability programmes and then into training, education and employment OK Thanks, I'm now going to bring in James and following on from that OK Thank you, convener I'd like to start off by asking given the change in the funding allocations last year due to the emergency budget down and Westminster can what about you expand the difference that made to plans to expand employability support for parents what knock-on effect did that have on that Thanks, James that was one I thought is probably not for me but in terms of the I clearly can't talk about budgets for local authorities but in terms of an overall I'm very fortunate in my job that I cover Scotland so I speak to about 80% of leps in local authorities in the last year have engaged with 500 people across different local authorities to get an idea of what they're facing and for me there's no winner at the moment so the lateness of funding the reduced funding is a knock-on effect to everyone so you have local authorities some amazing people working in local authorities that are as passionate about addressing these issues as all of us in the third sector delivering it so you've got the people in local authorities experiencing that you then have local providers friends that work for other organisations that are delivering fantastic work to people that are now unemployed themselves because there's no funding to keep them on so we now get a knock-on effect at times where when that funding does come in some of these organisations can no longer apply for them because they now don't have the resource and they can't employ people for six or seven months so we're losing good people from the sector and ultimately the people that the impact most here are the people that we're trying to support the people that we want to support and I think there's a real space for us as a national organisation to work with the right partners in smaller organisations to create solutions and maybe help and support them into a space that they couldn't normally get to and we benefit from the expertise that we've got and I think there's been a lot of challenges but maybe some of the other members would be happy to add. Okay, thanks for that. I thought you had nothing to say on it but you did remarkably well. Philip, can you say it up please? There was a few things to unpack sorry, a few things to unpack in it. Undoubtedly the way the current fiscal framework works the fact that we're still very dependent on UKGE spending decisions does not help. The bizarre situation last year in advance of the emergency budget review where the initial proposed tax cuts under Liz Truss were going to result in bizarrely additional money for the Scottish Government and when those were reversed less than a month later that money then disappeared so there's a lot at play there but fundamentally you just need to look at the medium-term financial strategy that was published a couple of weeks ago the core point is that at the minute spending plans over this Parliament are quite stripped expected funding available so ultimately what is politics politics is about choices and I think that is why there was strong recognition given the circumstances last year that difficult decisions needed to be taken in year. One of the first times that had been done quite publicly and quite openly and I think that that is to be respected and commanded you can't escape the fact that actually employability was one of the areas that saw some of the most significant cash cuts whereas actually lots of other areas that saw cuts in year where deferred income, where staffing changes that weren't going to then come to fruition employability was a genuine cash cut and quite a significant one so again you can understand why that budget review had to be undertaken but it's inescapable that the Government's justification at the time was these cuts will mean that taking this funding away no existing activity will be impacted, what we're simply not doing is taking forward planned expansion and I think that kind of belieds the fact that the ultimate point is missing that the planned expansion is the thing that is desperately required so I think for that to happen in year and you see the knock-on impact you know things like the parental transition fund they're not at least a year delayed from when they were meant to be brought in bits of expansion on their best start by futures have been delayed that is going to have a knock-on impact so it's obviously good that that money is being restored now in 2023-24 and indeed increased further but again you go right back to the very start on the basis of current numbers of people that are being supported and comparing that against the ambitions that the Government has set it's not enough just to simply reverse that a little bit on to that in year cut something again has to give that that goes much further if we were to meet those ambitions over this Parliament I mean you're right you spot on what you say but it's not just show the sort of utility of the funding mechanism where you know you're waiting till the last minute we're waiting till the last minute as a Government to know exactly what we're able to pass on to make sure that these programmes are funded I mean the whole thing should be streamlined from Westminster all the way down to the level that we're here Absolutely I'm not going to disagree I think there are still a huge number of issues to be worked through the fiscal framework review happening as a whole different committee and a whole different we can spend hours talking about the way the fiscal framework currently works and so I absolutely again appreciate why that emergency budget review had to be undertaken but again I think the ultimate point is we know what expected funding looks like across the rest of this Parliament we know that that is less than the Scottish Government has made that we're set kind of you go right back to the start of this Parliament and the very first programme for Government of this Parliament we know that that is going to be incredibly tight to deliver so we're getting politics about choices the fiscal framework does not help in managing those budget decisions but again if we're serious about meeting those ambitions that have been set in best start by futures that is going to require some further difficult decisions about where we spend our money Okay thank you Sarah Thank you I don't want to repeat anything that's been said already but I think we need to remember that employability support although funded quite heavily from the Scottish Government through no one left behind is also funded by local authorities themselves through their core budgets and other external funding such as European funding, UK Government funding and a variety of other areas as well. The double challenge at the moment is that as we know local authorities are trying to make significant savings internally as well employability is not a statutory service so there's a challenge of potentially being seen as an area that could take some significant cuts with minimal impact so we need to bear that in mind moving forward. I suppose on a more positive note certainly the investment around parents this year has been significantly increased and local authorities and local employability partnerships were aware that that may be the case moving forward and have put a lot of work into building those foundations of where key development is required and what priority geographies with what priority groups utilising local data to make sure that that increased investment is targeted in a way that will be most effective coming back to the point that was made a moment ago yes, it is a significant challenge not knowing what your funding allocation is and it's not just to the last minute we didn't receive grant offer letters until June this year so you're already a quarter into your delivery year before you know what you have to spend and what the parameters are around the provision that you want to deliver has to be not just committed but out the door by the end of the year so it means that you are running at significant pace however communications prior to that at least gave us the opportunity to work with wider partners around what we could start putting in place and developing so that it was in a ready-made plan as soon as we had the green light with regards to grant offer letters so that we're there now and we're moving forward at pace to increase the offer to parents at local level okay, thank you I've just got one last question Kavina do you have any any witnesses of any insights in the progress within with the £15 million transition fund panel so again that's been delayed sorry, sorry, keep forgetting for the red light as we're going to understand that it's being delayed by well at least more in the year now since best start by futures again, ostensibly, I think some of the reasons I think there's probably budgetary pressures certainly I think Government has also experienced difficulties in working with UK Government to try and sort out again what it was planning to do with that fund and in turn the impacts on potentially reserved benefits but I think it's supposed to take it more widely so it's delayed disappointing and I think particularly given what was announced by UKG in terms of childcare reforms it potentially shifts what you want to spend that budget on but I suppose going back to one of the questions that Miles asked previously I think that's where this again becomes quite important that £15 million fund will be incredibly important I think the original tension was that a lot of it would be dedicated towards childcare and particularly the upfront cost of childcare but again what it requires is spoken to as actually a much wider, much more holistic offer to parents and I think again that's the trick that we're missing you could spend that entire £15 million just addressing childcare challenges and still leave a big black hole so I think what I gain, what we don't quite have is the recognition that there are so many issues that parents face that there's not just the childcare but there's the transport cost in terms of getting to childcare there's the housing costs involved there are the costs of even just being able to kind of the things that you do during the day everything else so I suppose that took it a bit more widely than you had asked but the short version is it has been delayed by at least a year but I think we need to see progress quite quickly on it okay thank you Sarah you wanted to come then Mary if that's all right convener absolutely I was just to say that I asked this morning and I believe that the first meeting took place with Scottish Government and local government this week and again just reiterating what's been said already they were looking at the information and advice that being received from HMRC and DWP in relation to impact on benefits when utilising that fund that's all the information I have okay thank you for that Arnie hi yep we at One Parent family Scotland met to the Scottish Government officials about the parent transition fund a couple of years ago will be now the aim is to tackle the financial barriers parents face and enter the labour market and as Philip said it was particularly focused on up-front childcare and also that was something the UK Government have made some policy changes on although it isn't going to help all parents with up-front costs for childcare so that has kind of changed I would imagine the focus of the fund but what we have suggested we were never that keen on that anyway I think that as Philip said there's a lot of areas around childcare that it's very costly but we suggested the introduction of a job start payment so similar to the new payment that helps young people with costs associated with the transition into paid work for young people the job start payment is some like 250 pounds or two and for a young person with children it's 404 pounds so we sort of thought that's maybe an opportunity to follow the principle of a cash first approach whereby the parents would be able to use that cash for the areas where they have the needs could be travelled to work it could be clothed they would make that decision OK, thank you for that OK, I'm now going to pass over to Mary and then we'll bring in Jeremy Thank you Thank you convener and good morning panel The Scottish Government has a commitment to all age guarantee of support for those most disadvantaged in the labour market focus on the priority groups One Parent Families have made a suggestion on their submission Marion, what discussions has One Parent Family Scotland had on this issue with the Scottish Government? We haven't as yet had had any discussions on this I know our chief execs on the child poverty board so potentially I did highlight this tour to say this was something that might be of interest to the board but the whole idea of it is to build on the principle of the young persons guarantee and that is for anyone aged between 16 and 24 and that the all age guarantee would focus on the priority groups but she thinks a really positive thing because although the child poverty strategy has been in advance we feel there should be more of focus on the priority groups the parents that head up those priority groups and the child poverty strategy so for those that are disadvantaged in the labour market and have been out of work for a while of parents and carers we really would like to see something really practical happening with that and I think as far as I'm aware would involve skills development Scotland but I would say is that access to support particularly kind of into training and education is very challenging for single parents and we've been involved in some interest in research with the University of West Scotland and Oxfam, the report's not produced yet but what it does highlight is the issues and challenges for single parents in particular who are in higher education and the research does show that although child poverty is a national priority with targets to cut child poverty and that's obviously inseparable from parent poverty that current policies don't address the educational needs of single parents and single mothers in particular in higher education so for example the commission on widening access which is a very important area because it supports those who want access that maybe don't yet have the kind of recognised qualifications but it's established to promote access to higher education for disadvantaged groups that doesn't include single parents students and they aren't mentioned in the report and I think what the Oxfam report shows as well is that the University of Scotland doesn't address the needs of the student group either so I think that a fair bit of work to be done on this proposed sort of promise and linking it into lifelong learning as well that's a real challenge to support single parents to access lifelong learning and some of it's because of the UK benefits system and conditionality but I know perhaps we might be looking at that sort of later The conditionality and universal credit is very controversial UK Government suggests people into work and increase their earnings is there any evidence to suggest that sanctions regime is having that effect and what alternatives should be considered by the UK and Scottish Governments to support people into employment just on that subject I'll put it back to yourself, Mary Right, thanks This is a huge issue for us and the conditionality and benefit sanctions has been something that we've done research on we've lobbied on we've tried to influence policy on and in fact the chancellor announced increasing the tightening up of conditionality on single parents and they've changed the earnings threshold from about 15 to 18 hours at the national living wage so that means that anyone working below this is going to be subject to stricter work conditions and the requirement to look for more work or to increase their wage and on the past single parents would have had limited or no work search requirements below the threshold and they're now going to be subject to intensive work search requirements and the third sanctions and I know that through our service in Glasgow we're saying that some of that coming through because that's one of the pilot areas and we strongly would argue that sanctioning parents and the threat of sanctions changes behaviour and actually it can impact on sustainable employment because the threat of sanctions requiring single parents to move into a very work-first approach they move into the wrong job they don't have the right support or the childcare and it falls apart and many single parents their sustainability and work is really challenging so we think that this intensifies poverty and we really wish the UK Government would move away from this very work-first approach it's not the right one for single parents and we know from our work, our research that disproportionately affects vulnerable single parents and so they miss an appointment and they end up we have to take them to food banks because they've had their benefit cut so a huge impact on employability and it just adds to that crisis that families face that prevents them moving in and achieving what they want to achieve thank you absolutely perfect, thanks marine anyone else want to come in on that one still not used this button there's two very quick points on both your questions firstly on priority groups it's just to reiterate a point that a lot of witnesses made almost this time last year in response to best start by futures I think there is still a risk that the priority groups are a lens through which policy that has been designed in a catch-all way are viewed after the fact no policies that are intended to catch everyone will be evaluated or looked at after the fact to then see how many lone parents etc went on to those as opposed to being a lens through which we design policy and I think that's a really important shift if they are a group, if they are the groups that we really want to tackle and we really want to improve opportunities for then you need to start your policy making by ensuring that those policies target them whereas I think quite often we just look at them after the fact and then in conditionality I mean there's lots of evidence to say that says and we've done someone happy to share with the committee UK wide that suggested it's still an incredibly punitive regime rather than supporting regime quite often it forces people to take quite often it ratchets up under employment because people quite often take low quality jobs because that's the way that they're directed to so I think that Scottish Government has been absolutely right to kind of reject that model I think there's a risk that you take that too far and what you end up with is a passive cash transfer that actually again doesn't bring in that wider support that people need so for example, you know you can completely reject conditionality within something like the Scottish child payment whilst also ensuring that you've got a ready made group of people there who very clearly could potentially benefit from wider support so there's no reason why whenever those people are provided Scottish child payment that that doesn't come with signposting or passporting to employability services to childcare that might be eligible for to wider benefits so that's not just about being a big debate around passporting automatic payments and passporting automatically from best start grant to Scottish child payment and vice versa that's incredibly important but actually what I don't think we've done yet is Neil passporting and signposting to those wider services that people could benefit from so I think we can reject it there's lots of evidence to say it doesn't work in fact it's harmful, incredibly harmful in some cases but that doesn't mean that we don't ensure that we use the social security system to enable people to reach those wider services and support thank you for that anyone else before we hand back to the convener David just quickly thank you go back to the priority group and just get to put into a bit of context we spoke you know no one left behind the figures in the document don't want nearly 6000 parents 22% moving into work first start parents 30% get jobs 18% sustained bedcap our own delivery sitting at 30% into work and 26% sustained so good in terms of national averages but not good enough, more that can be done and I think we're demonstrating that it needs more of a focused approach to what parents need and how they can engage and we also talked about two thirds of children living in poverty have a parent in work we still have a third in the excess of 80,000 that don't have a parent in work so it also puts into context the scale of the work and how we need to cover everybody here okay thanks very much I'm now going to bring in Jeremy and then I'll follow up with Katie thank you thank you convener and good morning to the panel I wonder if I can just maybe develop that seem slightly further and I mean just to know how might the approach to this client group differ compared to supporting roles who are either unemployed or economically inactive do we need different approaches and I'm happy for anyone to jump in and take that David hi thanks Jeremy and I think there's we're talking about how does it differ but I think there's also some similarities I think we have identified that we talk about knowing life behind but we know that there are a number of people just now we look at what 786,000 people in Scotland that are economically inactive so we talk about unemployment being at record lows we've got more jobs and people looking for work and we have nearly 800,000 people that are economically inactive some of which will be parents, students, 30% have got health conditions and the only data that we get from that is that 80% are not looking for work so up until this point it's been well they're not looking for work we don't worry about that now we need to understand why so rather than being different we're in the process of creating an innovative model for that pre-employment stage it's not about employment it's about whatever people need what matters to them just now and that can be anything and I think I was in a forum the other week about the national performance framework and this is again the challenge we've got we are trying to create a national inspirational framework that's aspirational as well but the gaps just now for some people looking at that and if we go in and we start talking about employability or progression too soon they're just going to retract so I think that we need this wrap around support service that we said it brings in what people need to get them to a stage where they might be able to consider talking I think that this is the same for parents and what we're trying to do at FEDCAP is look at a model that isn't just programme contract based ok, you come in, you do, you're so many weeks and then that's you as a not-for-profit we're looking to re-invest and create almost like a lifetime membership for people who come on our programmes so we realise that things change on a day-to-day basis and that you don't need to go back to the beginning but actually you can keep engaging you can keep getting access to support that whilst you do progress you've still got that on-going support that'll help you get to where you want to go no matter what happens what does need to change is this eligibility so we look at economically and active we've supported 3,000 people in Scotland at where economically and active prior to coming on our programme we have through that supported 1,500 so 52% into work within 12 weeks which is incredible some of the things they talk about is the transport issue the cost of transport their health has been barriers some people in the 25 in below age group had said they were actually attracted to the programme because they wanted somebody to talk to now this tells you the situation that we're in in the barriers that we're trying to address so I think we need a situation where we had sort of out of those 3,040% weren't eligible for the programme she imagined somebody with multiple barriers building up the confidence I think a parent with everything they're experiencing just now finding some we are reaching out to them and being told I'm sorry this isn't for you and we need to then find you something else not suitable because they're not looking for full-time work so we need something that there isn't that assessment that you know what if you come to us you need it and we're here and we'll support you and then we can move them on into existing programmes that are there thank you thanks David I think thank you so if we're talking about inward parents in particular then the local employability partnerships and the local authorities have been attempting to engage in support in these parents since the end of 2019 I think there's certainly been lessons learned with regard to our perception of the parents and the employer's response to the support that is available and I think there was a perception that parents would be really keen to engage as would employers and that wasn't necessarily the case now given that we had lockdown in the pandemic in the middle of that we're a wee bit further behind where we would like to be with supporting those parents and the employers as well but there's certainly been continuous improvement put in place with how we can engage with those parents and what we need to do to adapt to the needs so simple things like pre-employment parents tend to have a bit more flexibility about their engagement with support staff and training if you have parents who are working and they have caring responsibility for children we need to think about the flexibility and when we are providing those support services so that needs to be out with 95 normal hours needs to be out with your Monday to Friday type office hours we need to look at the difference between evening provision and online provision that parents can potentially undertake once they've put kids down at night and things like that so there's a variety of small tweaks and learning that has already been established across the country with regards to the motivation of parents that are in work and trying to support those parents as well I think that one of the biggest hooks for those parents which is very similar to the pre-employment parents is the financial advice that they can gain so if we can potentially provide the carrot that is really good financial advice to make sure that parents in work are receiving all the benefits that they are entitled to and also get a really robust calculation with regards to better offering work calculations so that they can consider the best option for them that would in real time terms lead to an increase in household income and not just be making this assumption that we increase hours, increase hours, increase hours and that increases your income because there's a lot that's lost because of that then that seems to be the motivating factor that is similar across both groups as well Before I bring Marion in can I just remind the panel that we're kind of running out of time and we'll still get to members who'd like to come in and ask questions and if you can be more succinct and concise with your responses thank you Marion thank you Very much I agree with what Sarah said about the local authority partnership approach what I would say is that we would argue strongly that the approach to working with single parents is very different most single parents are women many of the parents we work with have had really challenging experiences many have split up from a partner who has been domestic abuse including financial abuse and through our services we bring parents together as well as providing one to one employability support and through that parents support each other we think that's a really crucial ingredient but we also use that as a model to co-produce our services with parents so we involve parents in the services we deliver and we have continual feedback from them on how we're doing but also I wanted to say I know you want me to be succinct it's very important to recognise that in-work statistics are not the end result this whole thing is about how employment can help reduce poverty how it can help reduce child poverty in the target groups in the child poverty delivery plan and like the latest stats I'd like to show that where parents are in full-time work single parents are in full-time work 26 per cent of their children are still in poverty and that compares to two parent families where it's 7 per cent so this is a good piece of evidence to show that even in full-time work parents can lift the family out of poverty so we do need other support beyond employability interventions and we've talked about some of these we did some research recently and one in five of the parents in paid work they found it really hard to afford food they could no longer afford it sometimes and they were eating their children's leftovers some of them said they seem a bit electricity and in travel so one parent said I've had to leave a job I can no longer afford the petrol costs I use my work my car for work too because of the rising costs I've had to stop activities with my children because I need to pay for petrol and then someone else that can't afford to get the bus she works 6 to 10 miles a day to get to the co-op where she gets the cheapest food so I think that it isn't any job it's the job that is well paid and sustainable okay thanks Mary thank you I'm happy to leave it there and move on to the next area thanks Jeremy I'm now going to pass over to Katie and then I'll bring in Paul thank you for the points that Marion made earlier does the increased focus on parents affect the scale of provision that is being provided to other groups or how other groups are being treated for example young people and disabled people and I don't know if either Sarah or David would like to come in on that I think when we come at it from a different angle we want to support everyone so I think ultimately with the shift in funding in various layers going then I think I was at a local authority the other day and I was looking at their budget allocation was anywhere between £2 million and £3 million for parental employment and between £300,000 and £500,000 for no one left behind it doesn't make sense so maybe there's an opportunity that the local authorities are being devolved there then have that money to deliver what they need in that area rather than being predetermined for us the only bit is that we want to support everyone at whatever stage there are to get to wherever they want to go not making any assumptions and I think that there's a mindset change here in that it's not as a provider an organisation or an employer sitting here saying it's about how can we go out and be proactive and reach them and make sure they're aware of what's out there and what help they can get I suppose what I'm asking is whether services are expanding and whether resources are just shifting I don't know if Sarah would want to come in on that Hi Sarah Thank you I think we need to be mindful of the work that goes into employability planning the planning news is local data we have our own local priorities linked to CPP plans, child poverty plans economic strategies at local level as well so it's much broader than just the kind of funding that comes through No-One Life Behind I mentioned earlier that there is other investment in the area around employability in the fourth valley area in particular we have Fair Start Scotland run by the local authorities which means that we can align and integrate services much better UK shared prosperity fund the end of European funding so yes there is going to be an impact because as David suggests if the funding that is targeted to a particular area increases significantly then you do have to ramp up your resource and capacity to make sure that you are meeting the profiles and what is expected of you in the area however what we tend to do at local level is then we look at the planning as a whole and we look at the other areas that are priorities such as you've mentioned around disabled people young people and such like and we then look at the other provision that's available and if we can tailor and we can mould and we can move things to make sure our priority groups that we've determined at local level are still being serviced through whatever funding is available or whatever provision and programme is available at local level however that differs quite significantly across local authority areas I don't know if any of the other panel would want to come in but I could move on maybe to my final question which is really to ask what extent parents are now the central focus of growth in employability activity might be a suitable question for the IPPR, Philip I'm going to say something that I don't want to be taking as a flippant 1st of Scotland's establishment in 2018 which is exactly the same year just after the child poverty Scotland Act was passed and the first year that the first tackling child poverty delivery plan was published so those two things came into existence at the same time but despite that all the evidence shows that parents haven't been a focus since 1st of Scotland was first established just a fifth of starts on 1st of Scotland have been parents so that's not to be flippant of course they've not been a focus but I think what you've seen there is that again despite the fact that the first tackling child poverty delivery plan also recognised that employability was key I don't think that's fed through into policy delivery and employability so in terms of where the focus is now again just in the basis of numbers if you look at how many people 1st of Scotland reported since 2018 when it was first brought in and compare that to the numbers that the Scottish Government has put in best start bright futures absolutely the numbers that the Government wants to reach far right strip the numbers that it has reached to date again I don't think that has to mean a shift in resources or focus from other parents think so as you know the article or kind of really well put the fact that particularly with no one left behind at a local level through local employability partnerships that you know they do take that really keen focus on who in our area needs support but at a national level you know again what that needs to come with is additional funding and additional resources to be able to follow through in that policy priority of meeting our child poverty targets and as part of that helping more parents into work and to increase their earnings on work so yeah I hope that it doesn't have to be a zero some game or one or the other but absolutely requires a focus of resources to be able to deliver on that policy Okay, thanks very much I'm now going to bring in Paul who that's the last of our questions, thank you Thank you very much convener and hello to the panel and you know particularly interested I think in the relationships in this space in terms of how do we support employers so IPPR and their submission have talked about using the government using soft power to try and encourage employers to really play their part but I suppose there will be good tangible examples and I may be keen to understand from David certainly how do you engage employers into this Okay, thanks Paul So yeah I'd mentioned at the start really passionate about this as I'm sure everyone in the room has in a previous role in fed cap our partners of the Scottish Government funded public social partnership and fully believe that we can support people, we can upskill people we can give people dreams and aspirations but if we don't have employers that are able or confident enough or knowledgeable enough on how to support those individuals then the job is not going to work so we have our own employer solutions team that go out and find employers that are recruiting support them to support people that are with multiple barriers whether it's disability, whether it's low parents whether it's flexible working arrangements etc Today we have worked with 5,000 unique employers and we can deliver a range of things for them in terms of disability confident status and development but I think the biggest bit is that this isn't just about putting people forward for jobs in any job this needs to be the right job at the right time for that individual also needs to be the right person for the employer otherwise they're going to stop coming to you with multiple relationships but one with an organisation in Fife who came and said to us you know we do tech we're really good at doing tech we're really bad at recruiting we now just come to FEDCAP and it works in that relationship where the persons where a parent comes on our programme they have their dedicated adviser they have their dedicated health and wellbeing support they have their in-work support but you also then have our employer solutions team understand the individuals skills and wants understand the employer's needs and wants and only bring them together when it's right for both parties to ensure sustainability but that relationship with employers is crucial Thanks I can ask Philip just about the IPPR submission Oh sorry on that point thank you Marion can you hear me okay alright okay I just wanted to say that in terms of employers that is a crucial part of the jigsaw and in the past we had a really great programme with Marks and Spencer's and we had that as part of a pathway approach and that we supported parents to engage with Marks and Spencer's and they did work experience in there and then we had access to job vacancies as they came up so a partnership approach is with big employers of course with some really big employers in the public sector as well and within the NHS there's a programme as part of Noven Life Behind which is engaging with the NHS but we could do that on a larger scale and through contracts that are given out through the public sector that there could be a more of a focus on supporting those parents who are in the target groups as Philip said he came in on those family groups to proactively encourage recruitment of those parents thank you okay thanks can I bring in Sarah? thank you I'll try to be concise okay so within the local employability partnership we have a variety of partners who have direct employer engagement so you have developing the young workforce and the SDS business gateway Chamber of Commerce and such like so we can all work together to ensure we're sharing those resources and sharing those relationships where we require an in with a particular employer for a particular reason so that's one way doing it collaboratively in partnership we're in to pose the luxury position of being part of a local authority that we can work with other local authority services in gaining opportunities for participants and they tend to be well paid good conditions ideally placed for parents as well and we can broker parents into those opportunities that our approach could take we work very closely with our colleagues in procurement to make sure that the community benefits in procurement clauses within contracts that are coming in particularly big infrastructure projects we're aligning modern apprenticeships or employment opportunities to not just parents but young people in wider groups as well and of course we're continuously looking at where we can establish supported employment opportunities as well for participants particularly with long-term health conditions and disabilities and how we can support businesses who want to give back to the community they want to support this but how do they do that and how do they best support individuals that may require some additional support in that initial transition into employment so just to give a bit of a variety around the different ways that we engage with employers Okay, thanks Sarah Can I bring in Paul, can I make you aware that we are running over time so to be as clear and concise as possible Of course, I'm just going to direct this question into Philip, he did get a trailer just in the previous part just your recommendations in terms of that soft power piece and I detected something about carrots and sticks perhaps about how we encourage the Government that those recommendations have been well received by Government is there any progress on that or do you think we need to do more to encourage those recommendations to be used To be concise, we definitely need to do more as we've got Coventino to be a fair work nation by 2025, don't really think that is yet well defined in terms of what that means and what that looks like to date a lot of this does come down to the devolution settlement, the power that Government has a lot of it is soft power it's essentially marketing and PR through things like the business pledge so then there's a role for looking at what role the tax system plays what role the non domestic rate system plays things like that that I don't quite think we've tackled yet but more than anything like there is that role for businesses, even under if you can imagine all employment powers being devolved in Scottish Parliament that's probably just doing all stick is not the way to do it there needs to be a carrot as well as part of businesses ESG responsibilities so yeah, keep it concise if we want to be a fair work nation again however that's defined in two years time then further work is going to need to be done and that needs to be done by Government and business okay, thanks very much so that concludes our public business today I'd like to thank all our witnesses for taking part in sharing their expertise so we'll now move into private to consider the remaining item on the agenda can members who are joining us remotely please use the Microsoft Teams link in their calendars to join the meeting and I'd like to say thank you to all our witnesses today thank you so much