 Rydw i'n gwybod i ddechrau 11 oes o'r FfDM 2021 o'r FfDM. Rydw i gyd yn gwneud i ddweud ymlaen i ddiogelio arno gael aelodau neu ddefisio arno i gael, ac roeddw i gael i ddau'u gwelio. Felly rydw i'n gweld i'n gael i ddweud hwn i fyf yn Mark Griffin MSP a'r Adam Tomkins MSP. Adam yn ddydd yn Gordan Lindhurst i ddweud i ddweud. Rydw i'n gwybod i ddweud. Gend item 1 is a decision to take items in private, so I ask that the committee agree to take items 3 and 4 in private. Agend item 2 is consultation on early years assistance best start grant regulations. To inform the policies that the Scottish Government is currently consulting on draft regulations for the best start grant, we will be one of the first of all benefits to be delivered from summer 2019, and the consultation closes on 15 June. We are delighted to welcome to committee this morning Claire Simpson, manager of parenting across Scotland. Ross Bragg, director of maternity action. Gavin Fergie, lead professional office Scotland Wales and commercial development health sector Unite Union. Sonia Scott, welcome, consultant in public health medicine NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. I thank those that have provided briefings for today's meeting for doing so. I would like to open with a question about, obviously, that this is a consultation. The regulations have a final policy objectives, haven't been finalised. I would like to ask briefly whether you feel that there are any gaps in the regulations at the moment, and I will come to Claire first. We think that there are a number of gaps, one around the qualifying benefit that maternity allowance ought to be covered in that and ought to be allowed as an eligible criteria. But also around teenage parents, it's not so much a gap, but there's a lot of dispute there, and I've ended up... I wasn't sure myself whether the benefit should be paid directly to teenagers or to their grandparents. I thought quite a lot about it, but I went to organisations that worked with young parents and to young parents themselves. Without exception, everybody said to the parents themselves that we allow people to marry in this country at 16, which implies that we allow them to start a family. If we think that they are capable of that responsibility, we need to give them the money to do so and empower them to become young parents and to spend the money as they wish. Those are the two major things that we are concerned about. Obviously, the grant is means-tested and it's designed to get the most it needs. Do you think that a general application to those in maternity allowance would meet that criteria of giving it to the people most it needs? Obviously, maternity allowance isn't means-tested, so there are some people who would be on higher incomes as well as those on lower incomes. The Parliament has really tried to address the question of unfair work and low-paid work, and many of the people who get maternity allowance will be those very people. It's a very small uptake in Scotland at the minute. It's 700, so I think we would catch some people who are really at low income and miss out on other benefits. There may be some who take it up who are on higher incomes. Ross, would you like to come in? Yes. Firstly, we'd really like to welcome the best start grant. It's a fabulous new source of support for parents on low incomes, and we do see a lot of pregnant women and new parents who are really struggling, so I think this is a very welcome contribution. The two areas that we'd flag as areas for further thought are maternity allowance and also the situation of some migrant parents. With maternity allowance, one of the problems is for specifically the group of women on maternity allowance who are sole parents and have no housing costs because they're not entitled to universal credit and consequently not entitled to the best start grant, whereas if they were receiving the same amount of statutory maternity pay, they would be receiving roughly £400 a month of universal credit and of course the best start grant, so it is an anomaly. These women are predominantly lower income earners, but not exclusively lower income earners as maternity allowance is also available for those who are for various reasons not entitled to statutory maternity pay, but we would like to see some provision made for them. There are various ways to approach this and exceptional circumstances provision with guidance is one possibility there. The other group we're concerned about are migrants who are for reasons of immigration law precluded from accessing benefits and that may be EA nationals who don't meet the criteria to gain benefits or they may be nationals of other countries who have no recourse to public funds as a condition of their visa. In both groups we have women and families who have been living in the UK for some years who intend to bring up the children in the UK and are often living in quite severe poverty and at the moment really have no recourse to financial support. I am a health visitor and I do represent the majority of health visitors in the country. We welcome the opportunity to speak to you but we are not at all experts on social security legislation or how to draft such. What we see are the impact on the families that we deal with of poverty. Any measure that improves that child's future is to be recommended but on the fine detail of legislation we can't give you that detail but we were surprised and happy to be invited because you made strong representation. You wanted to tell visiting opinion round the table so perhaps there's a question further on that I can give more detail on but on this one we don't see any obvious gaps but we applaud the direction of trying to reduce poverty within families and the children within those families. I also welcome the best start grant and the extended eligibility and value. Like Gavin I'm not an expert in social security systems or welfare but coming from the perspective of improving the situation of people on low incomes I think there are a number of issues so I support the comments that have already been made. I think that maternity allowance would be something to consider in terms of an eligible benefit for this grant and in addition in one of the submissions students were mentioned and students on income related bursaries who may miss out because they're not entitled to housing benefit. I also support the comment about young people themselves getting the grant directly. I think that respects their autonomy and I think that it also gives a message of trust that they will be considered and how they use the grant and I think that we could include in the information that we give to those receiving the grant sources of support on an advice on how it could be used sensibly. On technical notes there are a couple of things I noticed and forgive me if I'm missing some of the subtlety of the legislation but how quickly applications were processed. I didn't notice that in the regulations. There was some time periods for how quickly reconsiderations would be undertaken but not how quickly they would be processed and how payments will be made to those without a bank account. Finally, I wondered whether the civil servants drafting legislation had considered whether there would be a way to automate notification of entitlement to this grant. We now have a number of our health boards that have electronic maternity systems. We also obviously have our birth registers so we have a way of knowing when children are born and if, in setting up our new system, we have a way of knowing when children are born. The social security system could talk to each other. There might be a way for it to be flagged to the social security system that we have someone eligible. Unfortunately, it would require that our social security system talk to the DWP system and I appreciate that that might be the stumbling block but I think that it's worth exploring. We know that, even with extensive promotional campaigns, our healthier, wealthier children programme in GDC showed that people find it really difficult to navigate the social security system and know what they're entitled to. Thank you very much. Ms McNeill, you wanted to supplementary on that one? Yes, I really just, from my own understanding, thought that you might be able to help me with this. You raised the question of immigration status and who might qualify. I just wanted to be clear in my head what your view of that is. In relation to EU nationals, what is your understanding of who would qualify? Is it the residency qualification, the number of years that you've been resident in Scotland? There's a number of factors that are brought into play in determining your qualification. If you meet certain criteria which you may be working on a self-employed basis, there's criteria which determines whether that is sufficient to have you entitled to benefits following that. There's criteria around job-seeking. There's, again, quite specific rules around that. There's also having lived in the country for five years which gets you another form of status again. So there's a few tests which are applied but we do encounter women who, for various reasons, don't meet those tests. They may not have been earning enough money from their self-employed role. For example, that's one particular example that came up on our advice line quite recently. The woman had been working on a self-employed basis for more than a year but for relatively small amounts of money. So she was then considered not to have been meeting the criteria which would have made her eligible under their EU provisions. So there might be quite a number of EU nationals that might not qualify for, although they have been living here? Yes, and we don't have numbers on that unfortunately. Just secondly, in relation to the other qualifying criteria, you would qualify for this benefit if you had been on any tax credits, including housing benefits. There's a proposal to include universal claimants who had an award in the month before applying, and that's not included in the draft regulations. Given what you said earlier about encapsulating low-paid workers as well as those in benefit, are you sufficiently satisfied that the qualifying criteria would mean that the women who are also working on our universal credit would qualify for this grant? I think our expertise is pregnancy through to the first year, so I'm not so sure about the return to work provisions for the later second and third payments. But around the time of the birth, the issue is specifically in relation to maternity allowance and those who are sole parents with no housing costs who are maternity allowance who are not consequently eligible for universal credit. That's the only group that we've identified at that point in time. We are particularly concerned about that. I'm satisfied that those on universal credit can be those who are not working and those who are working, but you're satisfied that the eligibility rules as to who qualifies would cover both groups, those who are working and those who are not working, but were on low incomes? Yes, universal credit, as you know, is set at a very low bar, so there are going to be people who are not entitled to universal credit who we would consider to be on low incomes, but within the constraints of that, yes, I think it does cover working and non-working. Yes, just on the issue of the month prior to applying and the universal credit entitlement being greater than £0, I wondered whether we could include anyone who was receiving even a £0 universal credit in that month and perhaps again I'm not understanding the subtlety of that. The reason that I question it or query it is that we know that 70 per cent of our children living in relative poverty are in working households and we also know that precarious employment is increasingly an issue, so I'm concerned about people who might be moving in and out of eligibility for universal credit and if in a month they've received a zero payment, I presume that's because the next month they might be reconsidered and after so many months of zero they then are exited from the benefit. That's my assumption here and if that's the case I think that would allow us to capture another financially vulnerable group, obviously again I don't have numbers and the implications of that for the cost of the grant but it might be something worth exploring and I'm not sure why it was set a greater than zero, I guess that's what I'm asking. I've got a couple of questions but I wonder if I could just go back on one point that Mrs Scott made in regard to missing people and using the register of birth as a way of doing that. My understanding is that the first payment can be made before the birth of a child, maybe Mr Fergie had to comment on that as well. How do we pick up parents who want more money before they can pay for things before a child is born? You said that it's difficult. Is that a role for health visitors, for other people? I wonder how we then pick people up once they go and see a medical professional and are pregnant. Currently with the Shure start grant we require families to have a health professional signature but we've found that that is a barrier and I welcome the fact that with the new best start grant that won't be needed. I'm also conscious of the reliance on really hard-pressed front-line staff to be remembering a whole range of things and that doesn't always happen. Having said that, I appreciate that eligibility starts from 24 weeks of pregnancy. We now have across Scotland eight of our 14 health boards have a single IT maternity system, BadgerNet. It's a dynamic system, so we can clever med or the company that provides the system and we can make requests on a two-monthly basis for updates in that system. If we decided that we wanted that system to talk to our social security system and alert the social security system once someone reaches 24 weeks of pregnancy, there would then need to be a way of cross-checking that with eligible benefits. That's why I say that it would need to talk to our social security system and possibly the DWP. That would be the same for the birth register. We could consider BadgerNet in addition to the birth register, which would pick up the remaining health boards that aren't on BadgerNet perhaps. There's now, as I'm sure Gavin will talk to, an antenatal contact with our health visiting colleagues, which is fantastic. It may be that it could be raised or signposted by professionals then, but again that's another request on a whole range of things that we're asking health visitors to look at at that contact point. The problem with health visitors taking part in this at all, proactively, is capacity. I think that there's a misconception now that there is this magical 500x health visits in the system by next year and the £40 million that went on top of that. They can do everything for everybody including putting their pants over their tights and flying to the next visit. It just doesn't work like that because they just do not have the capacity because there are more, almost as many, leaving the service as we're bringing into the service. We're also very concerned that the interaction that you have with your client and the family becomes much more, I'm going to give you that now, tick that box, I'm going to give you this now, tick that box, rather than building up a therapeutic relationship with that family. When we're looking at a timescale being introduced in some visits and some health boards of 40-45 minutes, adding another task into that just scoshes out perhaps things that will apply to everybody in a universal way. We have to remember that being a health visitor or being access to the health visit service is a universal benefit and we have to be cautious as well. Health visiting has always been seen as one of those shadowy social work agents of the state. No, we're not. We're health. We're there to empower you in your health decisions and to get healthy outcomes. We're very wary about more on the workforce and we're very wary about being seen as an instrument of the social security system when we're not. That's very helpful. Thank you. Obviously, there's a role for health and midwives, albeit what you've said, a line for capacity. We also have to think that particularly vulnerable families, often third sector agencies, will be in touch with them and there's a role there. The other group is looking at young parents. They may still be in school or in education. As Gavin says about health vistas, we expect teachers to do more and more, but at the same time, if you have a pregnant teenager in your class, there is obviously going to be some educational input there. Particularly, we know that the outcomes for children and for parents are so much improved if they can stay on in education. I think that there is a role for quite a varied range of professions, albeit accepting that they have their own very particular job to do. I apologise for wanting to come back in, but that's just sort of triggered something for me. One of the, just to refer again to healthy and wealthier children in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, the process for that is that we use our universal contact points in health to make referrals. We try to keep the onus on the front line staff as minimal as possible, but if, in the course of their holistic assessment, they notice financial difficulty, they can make a referral. Through the badgerment maternity system, for example, we're trying to make it as streamlined as possible. It's a case of pressing a button if the family agrees to that referral. That's where the third sector and other provider organisations can come in. Then, unlike sitting with your health professional and going through your income and your benefit entitlement, you're sitting with someone separate from health, so it kind of overcomes Gavin's concerns. But one of the issues, if I may say, and kind of appeal to the committee, we're finding that investment in those services is decreasing. I'm about to, in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, launch a big renewal of awareness with our midwives and health visitors about the new child poverty act and the need to maximise incomes. I'm very concerned that we're going to generate lots of referrals that we don't have capacity within our local authorities to cater for because of budget issues there, which means that financial inclusion services, the budgets for those who are being reduced. That's something that perhaps needs to be considered in terms of support for best start grant. That last point that Sonya made highlights the realities of practice for so many health visitors now is that local authorities colleagues are just not there anymore, so they're being expected to do more, and they have very, very little capacity. Is it still in this area? No. Miss McGuire wants to come in. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I just wanted to talk a little bit about that area of breaking the link with accessing other services and kind of look at it from the perspective of my constituent, I suppose. The committee has done quite a lot of work and we've been focused on increasing uptake and simplifying things and acknowledging everything that you say about the pressure on practitioners. Is there a danger that, if the onus is on the person who's entitled to the benefit and having to evidence contact with another service, that that increases the burden on them and might impact on uptake of what they're entitled to? My understanding is that they don't have to evidence their contact with health. I think what we're saying is that through contact with perhaps social security system they would encourage those that haven't, that aren't in antenatal care, so certain groups we know aren't often contacting the health profession. That's one of the issues in the health professional signing it, but to access the grant they don't have to show that they're in contact with health, that's my understanding. To demonstrate that they're enrolling in nursery or they're having contact with another service? My understanding is no. You don't actually have to be going to nursery to receive the nursery payment. That was my reading of the regulations. I've got a couple of technical questions, so if you don't want to answer them, please ignore them. The first one is around kinship arrangements, which I think we would all agree is a good thing. From looking at, again, my reading of the regulations, we need to be a formalised agreement for the kinship carers to get the money. Obviously, there are 32 local authorities. Would your suggestion be that there should be a standard agreement between each local authority to have the same documentation that has to be completed? Or would you prefer to leave it to each local authority to do the one thing in regard to reaching that formal agreement? Do you mean the formal agreement over kinship care? I think that Louise, who is going to speak from South Sys afterwards, is much more of an expert than me on this. I don't have the technicality. What I would say is that certainly the organisations that we work with are aware of a great number of kinship carers who are on great hardship and really could do with this payment. I know that the Government is talking about bringing proposals forward this summer about kinship care allowance. I do think that very often we can be subject to a postcode lottery over who gets what. If somebody has taken on that burden or that, hopefully, joy as well, financial burden for their family, they should be penalised for doing so, or just because they live five miles apart, they should be a huge discrepancy in their payment. Do you suggest that there is an agreement between all local authorities that the same procedure has followed and that the same agreements are reached with the Scottish Government rather than each individual local authority doing it? There is a kind of central agreement, maybe with COSLA, working it out. As I say, I am not an expert on these matters, but in terms of the end outcome of having a uniform rate across the country, I would certainly agree with that. On universal credit that you spoke about earlier, I had a follow-up question on maternity allowance. Is my understanding that some people on maternity allowance will also be qualifying for benefits for the best art grant? Are you aware of how many families, or have you any experience of how many families you think might miss out on the best art grant because of that, and the anomaly between how maternity allowance interacts with universal credit? I actually can't answer that, I wondered whether Ross could. Beyond my area of expertise as well. If you don't mind, we are just jumping back to Mr Balfour's question. From our opinion, practitioners appreciate one thing for the whole country. It's not a huge country, it's fairly small. Why do we have a myriad of cutting and slicing, as one of my colleagues said, a postcode? We are moving towards one pathway in Scotland for health visiting, and it's certainly beneficial to practice. You have families moving in and out of your patch often, and if you have to re-educate them over what happens in your area, which is different from the area that they've just come from, it just wastes time. We would go for a Scottish-wide agreement on that particular subject. I can comment on the maternity allowance question. As far as I'm aware, there isn't data that tells us how many women will be in the position that I've described of being receipt of maternity allowance or parents with no housing costs. I can't tell you precisely how many will be affected by that, but as far as I'm aware, it's only that group who will be excluded from universal credit and consequently excluded from best start grant amongst those who are receiving maternity allowance. Have you had any interaction with the DWP on that point at all in terms of your... I don't know that the DWP has paid a whole heap of attention to what we've said on this issue. We certainly... It's our view that that should be changed by the DWP, but I can't say we've made any progress on that. It would be our preference to have some provision along the lines of an exceptional circumstances provision in Scotland to be able to accommodate that. Ideally in the future that wouldn't be needed, but I think at this point in time we do have a group of women who are... Many of them will be very much in need of financial support who will be excluded from best start grant under this arrangement. Absolutely, absolutely. And just related to that, convener, I know Pauline McNeill's question touched on this in the relationship with universal credit generally, but I wondered if there were any other points you wanted to add about the relationship between the best start grant and universal credit and any issues that you think might arise. Well, I think, you know, there's all sorts of problems with universal credit. Our focus is really just on pregnancy in the first year. I think this maternity action one is the one that stood out most strongly for us, though I think there's many different families who will receive less money under universal credit than they would have under the previous arrangements. But in some ways there is, I think, the alignment of the best start grant with universal credit and other benefits administered by the DWP makes a lot of sense in terms of simplicity, because we certainly have a lot of women calling our advice line who are struggling to work out what their entitlements are and to access them. And there's many others who don't call our advice line because they're not even aware that that support's available. So I think keeping the system as simple as possible with your assessment processes as straightforward as possible makes sense. And so aligning with the DWP provisions is generally a positive step. Thank you. Thanks very much for your evidence so far this morning. It's very helpful. I get the impression that we need to simplify matters for those who should be able to access the help that they need when they need it. We have looked previously at the issue of automaticity and just streamlining the system so that it takes up less of the health professionals' time, for example. And I'm just wondering if you think we need to do more in that regard, because the social security agency will know who's claiming benefits. I'm just wondering if we need to be looking at more automatic links. We know when someone is born, because births are registered. We know when children start school and so on. So should we be using that information to make sure that this is happening more automatically? Thank you. The obvious answer is yes. The reality is that there is a myriad of systems that the practitioner needs to move through, needs to use and they don't talk to each other a lot of the time. Sonya mentioned the budget system, eight health boards, but what about the others? They're not there yet. There are various systems where you would think it's obvious why they don't talk, but they don't talk rather. That is a huge barrier to a practitioner when they have to duplicate their effort, when they've got to try and jump over that artificial software barrier that's been put in place, because one agency has that and one agency has this and they just don't speak. Anything that we can use technology to simplify practice or to assist the practitioner in a practice is to be applauded, but that is a huge task to tackle. If we can tackle it, everything will be much more efficient and much more effective and we'll make the best use of that practitioner of time. I can see that there are huge IT difficulties. The other issue that I would flag up is that there's a potential for simplification to flag up people, but there are also groups of vulnerable parents. Again, I suppose that I'm flagging back or going back to young parents, but also to parents with learning disabilities. I think that those groups of parents need the relationship, both in terms of support, but also in terms of advocacy and help to move forward and get the grant. I'd add that certainly we find there are a lot of very vulnerable women who struggle to work out what their entitlements are, vulnerable families who struggle to sort that out, but also some who aren't vulnerable, who are simply dealing with the challenges of pregnancy and new parenthood. Our view is that it makes most sense to have multiple points at which parents are told about their entitlements in the hopes that at one point they'll pick up on it and be able to act on it, because it may well be that having that information, even at a critical time, is just not enough to get the message through. I think that there are a couple of windows of opportunity around systems talking to each other. I've mentioned Badger, NetGavin quite rightly points that it doesn't cover all of our health boards. We also have the new Scottish child surveillance and wellbeing system, so it's replacing our old child health surveillance preschool system, and every child should be on that because we call children for vaccinations, so we should have every birth on that. There are a couple of health systems that are currently in development that if we specify that they should talk to our social security system, and in developing our social security system that it should talk to the DWP system, once their functionality becomes available if it ever does, then at least we're set up for it in the future, so let's not miss those windows of opportunity to have them, the systems talking to each other, so that we may not be currently ready, but at some point in the future we are to achieve what Gavin has outlined in terms of a smooth, streamlined IT approach. I suppose that being on a low income and claiming low income benefits, you may be on a very low income and not claiming anything, which then means that you might be excluded from best start, so I just wonder if you've got any concerns around the eligibility criteria. Are we going to be able to ensure that everyone who needs access does? I think that inevitably there will be a group that will just be over the threshold for benefits who will still be struggling to meet their everyday costs and who would benefit from the grant. I'm not sure how to extend the eligibility beyond, other than the exceptions that we've outlined, how to go out a sort of extra step without it being universal. Add to Sonia's point something that Sonia said earlier about the financial inclusion services, which are key in ensuring that people know about and take up their benefits. As she said, the money for those services is falling, so I think it's about making sure that people get those checks and know if they're eligible. As she said, there will be some people who may be eligible and don't take up a low income. I would agree that it's really difficult because you have to have some way of saying who's eligible and as far as possible you don't want people to fall through the net, but at the minute that is on existing benefits and it's difficult to see another way of doing it. An income threshold, you could say that we won't make it about pass-ported benefits. We'll say that people earning under the median income, that would be a significant increase in the number of people eligible and I guess we've got to think about the affordability of that and the opportunity cost of that against other things that we could maybe do. I mean, I would love that and I would love it if you just taxed me more and people liked me more to do that, but yes, we've got that. On this area? It was something else. I'm just going to bring in Mr MacPherson, who's got supplementary. Quickly, I think that the points that you were all making there about encouraging take-up are so important and I wondered if on that basis that you would welcome the fact that the piece of legislation, primary legislation, includes that obligation. For the agency to promote take-up and how important do you see that being in making sure that we deliver this to all the people who need it? Yes, absolutely. I think it's a welcome change to much of what we're dealing with in relation to benefits and the DWP to see this focus on promoting access. I think it's fantastic. The extended time frames for application are quite important. The removal of a requirement for a health professional to sign a form to get the initial payment. There's a number of specific measures, which are, I think, very helpful in promoting access, but the overall principle of promoting access is a very welcome change. Thank you. I would take the agree and I didn't say it. At the beginning of this session, I should have done that. I very much welcome the grant. I see it making a big difference to a lot of people that we work with. On the wider issue of social security and the bill itself, the fact that it's based on respect, trust, dignity and so on, it's absolutely fantastic. I really have seen the impact of some of the ways that sometimes the DWP can work in terms of sanctions, in terms of behaviour to people. I really hope that what we are seeing currently about the new social security act in Scotland will come to pass and that people will be treated with fairness and dignity. Very often I've brought some case studies along from people that may have been helped and that have not been helped by the current system. We really need to do better. It's not helping people either with income and outcomes for their children or even getting out of that system. I really welcome a system that is going to hopefully be more enabling and empowering for people. Remove the stigma that is attached at the moment would be extremely useful. It's not life-changing but it certainly has an impact on life, the sums that are being mentioned. Anything that can assist that family to bring up their child and to remove that child from poverty will have huge benefits for society as that child develops and grows, whether it be their demand on education systems, health systems or even criminal justice systems. The research is well documented now. Anything that we can do to change little Johnny from being maybe going down something that is less beneficial for him into a more positive life and a positive lifestyle is to be applauded and supported. I would echo everything that has already been said. It's fantastic that there is a provision for promoting eligibility to the service and the whole values that have been laid out for the new social school system are also wonderful. We seem to have moved away from the idea of social insurance. This was an insurance policy. Most of the people who are eligible for these benefits are moving in and out of work. It's a myth that there are generations of unemployed when the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have looked at that. That just isn't so. People are moving in and out of work. They pay taxes and this is their insurance policy. I think that it's fantastic that that's the sort of message that this new system is going to give out. I think that when we do give out that message, people respond to it and they rise to that sort of message. Thank you, convener. I think that this is a point that Claire Simpson touched on earlier. I think that your point was a simple one, which is not a criticism. Simple points can sometimes be the best points. It was about the difference between the age of 16 and 18 and taking 16 as the age at which direct payments should be made in certain circumstances. You give me an example of why that is. People are allowed at the age of 16 to marry it, which is nothing new in Scotland. It's been the way for hundreds of years. They can vote at 16 in certain elections now and so forth. I suppose that my question that follows on from that is, do you or other members of the panel see any difficulties in terms of the way the system is set up? Or indeed, how would this interact with other benefits in the system or otherwise with the DWP systems? On some of the technicalities, I can't answer you, but it allows me the opportunity to say something else, which is about the under-18s and the under-20s and the kind of age categories that we put on things. Under-18s are automatically eligible and those who are 18, 19 or not have to rely on a qualifying benefit. When I was writing my evidence, I puzzled quite a lot over that bit of 18, 19 and that you could be possibly 17 or 18 and automatically entitled to a grant, but at 18, 19 you were not and would have to rely on your parent and the passport and benefit. I wondered about the affordability of that. I wondered about who that would be. I didn't put it in the evidence because I didn't have it then. But thinking about it since, it is those people, probably the 18, 19-year-olds who are living at home with parents, who are maybe studying, who are not in receipt of other benefits. Those kind of people are likely to be, not always, but possibly studying or possibly training. If they become pregnant during that time, it's very hard. I can really testify to that. My son and daughter-in-law or in that position will be a bit older at the minute. It's not an easy thing to do. If we extend that automatic entitlement to under-20s, I think that it makes it a great deal simpler to administer. It treats people as adults, as they should be treated, and past the age of 20 they are not dependent and can't be treated as dependent by the DWP. When I looked at what the figures were, in 2016 1,449 children were born to parents between 18 and 20. Those figures, when looked at them as well, have been declining year on year. Some of those people anyway are going to be getting money through universal credit on their own. It will be a relatively small group, but it will be a group to who need the money and who it could make a difference to. That difference could be paying some childcare costs very early on. It could be buying a product, whatever it is. I think that it simplifies the system and I think that it catches a group that we currently don't catch. That doesn't really answer your question. Perhaps I would like some of the possible complications that might arise from a simplistic approach. I wonder if any other members of the panel have comment on that area in terms of the age differentials that are applied. There are technical issues that arise with that, but, unfortunately, I cannot speak to them today. I appreciate some of what has already been covered, but I just wanted to be sure about the responsibility for a child and who can apply. As you know, only the person responsible for the child will be able to apply for the best grant, but there have been two suggested approaches that decide parental responsibility and use the receipt of reserved benefits as part of the test, but the test is yet to be finalised, which is why I am interested in your view. Testing the draft regulation excludes, for example, all looked after children. The consultation document seems to assume that all looked after children are financially supported by local authorities. We know that that is not necessarily the case because some looked after children are loving at home with their parents. It might be some of that age group that you were talking about in response to Gordon Lindhurst. We have covered the question of age, and I think that you did talk about kinship carers. I just wanted to be clear about your view about who should be able to apply for a best grant, who would qualify as having parental responsibility. Is there anything else that you wanted to add to what has been said already? The agencies that we work with will be responding to the consultation. I have all said that test 2 is the one that they prefer, because it enables the way to reach and will include as many people as possible. The issue of kinship care is very specific and very technical. I think that kinship care is in receipt of formal allowance. We will be able to get it in formal, may not. In Scotland, we have children who are looked after at home as a special category. I think that they also, under what is proposed, would be allowed to get it, because otherwise, when the child is looked after, the local authority would be expected to pay for certain things. I think that there is an amount of refinement of the regulations still to be done, and I know that civil servants are working on this in this area. We would go for whichever test allowed the way to reach. In our view, that is test 2. Thank you very much. Are there any further questions for the panel this morning? I thank you very much for your attendance this morning. I am sure that a lot of interesting areas are raised, some of which I have written to the cabinet secretary about, so I am interested in hearing the misery. I thank you very much for your time this morning, and we will suspend shortly one of the panel's swap-over. Good morning. We move on to our second panel this morning. I would like to welcome to committee Dr Louise Hill, Policy Implementation Lead at the Centre for Excellence for Look After Children, Celsus. Mark Willis, Welfare rights worker early years child poverty action group in Scotland. I again would like to just open with a question of the developing stages of the regulations for best art grant. You say that there are big gaps in what is proposed at the moment. I will go to Dr Hill first. Thank you. I am to be Louise, but thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to come and meet with you today and to discuss this issue. We really welcome the best art grant, and in particular the extension, the financial increases are very substantial, particularly for our early years children and preschool. We think that it is a great development. We also really recognise and value the approach as the other panel members have said towards a new kind of social security system for Scotland, and being value-based and rights-based with an emphasis on trust and dignity at its heart, so we really welcome that. I should also say that we have been really impressed by the social security team in the civil service, in their engagement. I participated in a consultation event last week, and it was incredibly well attended by all kinds of different groups, really good representation from third sector and from health in particular. I think what felt different perhaps about that kind of event was that it really was a genuine dialogue around that these are some of the challenges that we might face and really wanted to hear the solutions. There was some really positive energy in the room and there was a real openness to listen to the solutions, so just to say that from the start. In terms of some of the gaps, and I can speak to it in greater depth, but there is a specific issue that we have for looked-after children and young people. In the illustrative regs issue, maybe aware there is an exemption of looked-after children, and that I think as part of the development was not actually the intention and perhaps that is helpful why there are only illustrative regulations at this stage, because there is a recognition that we have a sizable number of looked-after children that would be at home. In terms of our under-fives at the moment in the last year, it would be 768 children, our under-fives and looked-after at home with their birth parents. There is also a significant number of children obviously that are looked after in kinship care in Scotland, so about 28 per cent of all of our looked-after children, that is just over about 4,000 children at the moment. Having that exemption of looked-after children would mean that that group that we would absolutely recognise could be in need of additional support, partly because we know that children that grow up in kinship care live in some of our poorest communities in Scotland. The analysis of the last census data clearly shows us this. It is often an older group of kinship carers and it would be a group that are disproportionately affected by disability and ill health. There are many factors to take into account for that group. I can talk in greater depth about the kinship care issue for you. The other area that I particularly like to raise is around an assumption of entitlement for care leavers. I think that we can make particular links with the Scottish Care Leavers Covenant and the emphasis that we should have as corporate parents and the duties that we have under part 9 of the 2014 act for children and young people, that we should be very clearly doing everything that we can to ensure all of our care leavers access all the right kinds of support services, and that includes a social security service. I think that what is important around that is our social security system. I think that what is important around that is that we know that our care leavers are disproportionately high users of social security. They are overrepresented in the system. That is another area that I would be keen to talk about. Thank you. Mr Willis. Thanks for inviting us along. We would like to welcome the best start grant as a positive step in tackling poverty and supporting families with young children. Compared to the Sure Start maternity grant, we would see it as a clear improvement in the ways that has been mentioned, increasing it and allowing payments for the subsequent children. That will make a big difference to families. So in terms of the gaps such as they are, some of them have been mentioned already. I would put it maybe the gaps will perhaps emerge as a result of a change in context in social security because the starting point, if you say any child tax credit, pretty much does capture all low-income families, I would say. Moving to saying any universal credit, again, the best you can say, it's good that there isn't an income threshold there, but there are differences in the way that universal credit treats unearned income in particular. That will mean that individuals or families, in some cases who would have got child tax credit, won't get universal credit. That comparison moving forward as universal credit is introduced will mean that there will be families who are on low incomes who miss out. Is it easy to identify or capture them? It might not be that simple, but that is what we would see as a gap, I would say. The other things that have been mentioned already around kinship care and some questions about habitual residents and the questions about young people as well. Thank you very much. I'm going to bring in Mr Walfour. Good morning, panel. I think that this is the problem that you, Dr Hill, in regard to kinship arrangements. My understanding is that kinship carers will get a payment if they enter into a formal agreement. If I might not, perhaps you could give me a comment on that. If that's right, should that formal agreement be standardised across Scotland so that it's not decided by each local authority or each agency, but it's a standard, so if you move around the country, there's no kind of differences. Secondly, those who are fostering aren't entitled to this. They seem to be excluded, who are fostering children. Do you think that they should be included in that as well? Obviously, adoptive parents are fine, because they are legal for the children. I'm interested in people who are fostering and issues around kinship. I've got one other question, I'll come back to it in a moment. Thank you, that's a good question. If it's just helpful, can I set out a little bit about how kinship is in Scotland? It's quite useful perhaps to think that we have three broad groups of children that live in a kinship care arrangement. We have a group of children, which is just over 4,000, which are children who are formally looked after children. As the best out grant, as the regulations currently stand, this group of children would not be eligible for the best out grant. We also have a group of children who are not looked after children, but under section 11 order of the 95 Act, which was considered a kinship care order in the 2014 act, they are not looked after children. If they have that order in place, they would be eligible for the kinship care grant. In terms of the allowances question for kinship carers, this group of children are deemed to be at risk of becoming looked after or were previously looked after children. The local authority would provide an allowance to that family based on an assessment. Not all families that have a kinship care order get the allowance from a local authority. It can be quite a confusing field. You also have a much, much bigger group of kinship carers. There are around 12,000 in the last census figures, and these are informal kinship carers that there could be no knowledge at all of social work services of those arrangements. We consider those to be private family arrangements that are made. Interesting from a research point of view, although there has been relatively little research conducted in Scotland on kinship care, but taken from the UK evidence base and the international studies showed that the actual adversities that children face means that they actually have very similar backgrounds, whether they end up in informal kinship care or formal kinship care. Those kinds of factors are experiences of living with parents who perhaps have serious drug and alcohol problems, mental health difficulties. Disproportionately represented is a group that Claire mentioned earlier, is parents with learning disabilities and much highly represented in terms of informal kinship care, so the children might live with a grandparent, for example. And you also have bereavement, being obviously a factor. So you have three quite distinct groups of children, but actually if we just talk to the children themselves and did I work with them kids, they're actually pretty similar in terms of what their backgrounds and what their support needs could be considered to be. So as it stands at the moment, the looks after children would be excluded. The ones on a kinship care order are included, and the children that are in informal kinship care, if there was a court order, so they were demonstrating that, that they then would be included and be able to have the best-out grant. But as I presented in the written submission, the challenges getting a court order and getting a transfer of parental rights and responsibilities is actually pretty difficult and challenging for many families. Now, in some ways, some things went in the 2014 act and alleviate this. So there's a provision of support for legal support from a local authority in certain circumstances, for certain eligibility to help get an order. But it's more about the cultural factors and the barriers that families face, that many, for example, grandparents don't want to take their children to court to get that transfer of parental rights and responsibilities. They also often don't want to have the... Although they should be entitled to child benefit, the family dynamics can be so fraught and difficult for these families, but actually going through the process to get the transfer of child benefit is really difficult. So often that doesn't happen, so that can be a real challenge for the qualifying benefit. Getting it through the court order is obviously a long process, really difficult, and has all kinds of other factors that come into play in terms of getting that order. I think you've highlighted the issues. I suppose, as a committee, the simplistic question back is, what's the solution? For us, test 2, as presented, would have a greater opportunity to reach some of those informal kinship cameras. So we would strongly advocate for test 2. With the acknowledgement, and as Mark has said, as the system evolves, we'll realise which groups of children we're not able to reach. The question of whether or not children in foster care should be eligible for best start grant, I think that that would be an interesting area to discuss in much greater depth with the foster care agencies and the support networks and the memberships, because I actually don't know what the views of foster carers would be, and I'd be really interested in what their views would be. Just to make a final point in terms of the eligibility issues and why we really welcome the best start grant, but for kinship care in particular, we've got to recognise that the likelihood is that children would not be accessed at maternity stage, so we have to do a really concerted effort for children at early years and at preschool, because those children are likely to have moved into informal or formal kinship or fostering. At that stage, a fairly small number would be intended to move at both, if that makes sense. Sorry. You've laid out the complexities of kinship care very well and the complexities and the reasons why families don't want to go down formal routes or the rest of it. We will never know what the extent of all kinship and formal arrangements are, but are you reasonable to say that there are kinship arrangements known to local authorities where there's no formalisation in place, but it's known that it's a kinship care relationship? I think that that will vary across different local authorities, but there will be because there can be a provision of support and they will have potentially had some contact around the needs of a child. There might be a question, though, because this is specifically focused on early years and under five, that we know sometimes for some of the challenges of kinship carers that they don't actually arise and become more difficult, should we say, until children are more primary school age, and that's when some more challenges arise in family dynamics, where that might be when they contact the social work as well, so we'd probably need to be mindful of that. Thank you very much, Ms McNeill. You had a supplementary question. Again, in regard to the informal kinship agreements, the person who got the first payment would still get the second and third payments. It just wouldn't go to the grandparents or to whoever you can ask them. My money would still be going from report to an individual. It just would be going to a wrong individual. Is that what you're saying? I think that if parental rights and responsibilities are retained by the parent, yes, but it's not an automated system, so my understanding is that they would have to apply for it, still through the process, so you could argue that it's pretty unlikely that they would apply when they no longer have care of the child. Ms McNeill. It's just a point of clarification. I think that you did say this. I just wanted to be clear. I think that I've got most of it. The scenario where grandparents have effective parental responsibility is the result of, say, a bereavement where the court has said that the children reside with you. What did you say about that in relation to the eligibility? Yes, they would be eligible because they've got parental rights and responsibilities and would demonstrate that through an order. Thank you very much. Ms McNeill, I'll bring you in on a new area. Have you got a supplementary in the previous area? To the opening bit? I don't know. It's quite a small section. I'll jump in anyway. Good morning, panel. I wanted to ask you about young parents. We've got written evidence there and both mentioned it in your opening statements. Just for the record, intuitively, I would say that it would seem silly to not give the parents of children who are responsible for bringing up the children the support that we would give to older parents, but if you would just flesh out about why that's important for the record. I think that the issues in the draft regulations is that the 16, 17-year-old is automatically entitled so he can claim in their own right. I think the intention is a mother under 16, someone always would be the appointee. So then it's 18, 19-year-olds. They do have an option, but it's complicated. They could start claiming, when they're responsible for a child, they could start claiming universal credit, as it will be, in their own right and then they would be eligible. But in some cases they could be worse off doing that as a household rather than staying as part of their the baby's grandmother's claim, say. Plus there's issues about if they're in education and so on and the idea of supporting them to stay in education perhaps and house student income, as I said, is treated for universal credit. There could be differences there. That 18, 19-year-old, in some cases, would have to be relying on the grandmother to be making the claim for them and then giving them the money, which doesn't seem ideal in terms of supporting the young parent to be the responsible one for the child. So, as has been suggested, one way around that would be to say under 20 is automatically eligible regardless of income. I think realistically, how many 18, 19-year-olds wouldn't be eligible anyway either through their parents or through claiming the benefits in their own right. I think it's quite unlikely that an 18, 19-year-old with a baby, again, you could put in a rule that if they had a partner, the partner was also under 20 or something like that. So it's unlikely that they've got some huge other income that would prevent them being eligible anyway. It would be a simplification, a shortcut. Yeah, as I said, there's nothing really special about the age 18 in terms of the benefit rules. It's not necessarily significant in some ways, I think. I suppose we wouldn't want to make sweeping generalisations about 18 or 19-year-olds. There may be people who are working and you have children, but I take on your point, yeah. Can I just ask a supplementary on that area? Because students were mentioned earlier in the previous panel. And, enthezzament student bursaries was brought up as a possible. Do you think that EMA should be considered as well as a possible gateway to this grant? Possibly. I think there that that young person who's getting an EMA is likely to be, they'd be a dependent young person and so they're likely to be, yeah, again, part of someone else's claim, I suppose. And, yeah, again, with EMA, there is an income threshold that checks the household income. So, yeah, so that would be an effective way of identifying a low-income student, yeah. I suppose if I can add on the young parents at the consultation event that I was at, I was really, there was a very powerful contribution made by someone at the next table to me around the challenge for some of our families. Some of the young people that are experiencing just so much adversity, the level of which they're moving around and what their very complicated relationships with their parents could be. So, she was very concerned if the payment went to grant, that, A, whether or not that money would ever be passed on for the grandchild, also just what a factor that might be in terms of their relationship. She also gave lots of examples of the young women being basically asked to leave the family home when they were pregnant as a result of the pregnancy. But that doesn't mean necessarily that they are going to stop claiming for the child benefit. So, you know, like I think it really struck me that the complexity in some ways that this is exactly the group of new young parents that you absolutely want to be supporting and to stop that risk of children growing up in poverty, you know? So, it kind of means that I think we need to be so mindful of this group. Did you agree on how that should be solved? Did you agree that it should be everybody under 20? I would agree that that seems to me to be a simpler system. I would say that, heartened in terms of what the communication strategy and things is around the Social Security Agency but the recognition of the local presence and particular awareness of some of the issues that are facing young people and particularly obviously for us care leavers, because for care leavers that's a whole different group in terms of what their relationship would be with their parents. So, a number of looks after children and people quite significant proportion actually do return to their family biological home and then might go on to have children themselves. So, again, complicated relationships but in terms of the local presence, I think there should be something very specific in terms of support for the under 20s that's tailored for that group just some of the complexity of their lives and how the money can be used to help them to navigate some of it. Thank you, that's helpful. Mr MacPherson, you wanted to... Yes, please. I just had some questions around the qualifying benefits. Again, I know particularly Mr Willisot in CPAC's submission at the end, you said that you believe the maternity allowance should be added as a qualifying benefit where the claimant does not have a partner. Can you elaborate on that? Well, as we've said, maternity allowance, it's not means tested. So, I understand that there's difficulties about adding it as a qualifying benefit but the basic criteria is that you haven't worked either long enough for the same employer or earned enough to get statutory maternity pay. So that's the criteria so it's paid to women for a period just for 39 weeks and the most it can be paid at is about £145 a week which actually works out just slightly more than the amount for one person and a child under universal credit. So, it means basically if they had a partner and are on a low income, then they'd get universal credit anyway if maternity allowance was their only income. So, if you're going to include maternity allowance I suppose you'd want to add something just to then exclude people who had a partner who had a high income, basically. So, you are cognisant of that point aren't it, not being means tested and it could well just rephrase that that it could mean that people with higher incomes are. Exactly, so it's not perfect so it could open the door to some people some women who have changed jobs or are self-employed who have a relatively high income but I think the great concern is that it's those women who previously would have been eligible if their only income is maternity allowance they would get child tax credit in full because maternity allowance is ignored for child tax credit but they won't get universal credit because it counts as income in full so it's bridging a flaw in universal credit that you're you could look at it like that but it's essentially identifying a gap where low income parents are not going to be eligible for the best start grant and is there any way to identify them you could even look at council tax reduction as another way of identifying that group that would help if they were liable for council tax so that means living on their own so again it wouldn't capture women who are still at home say in a wider family and it wouldn't capture students because they'd be they're not liable for council tax anyway so maternity allowance with that provisor again perhaps something in guidance about exceptional circumstances but I know you don't want to add another income test on top that you have to carry out in order to qualify for the best start grant so for simplicity maternity allowance if it's your only income you don't have a partner that would be one way of identifying that group with the caveats as you suggest but again because the numbers are so small I think as we say a 700 to a thousand in Scotland each year claiming it the majority of whom if they're liable for rent then they're going to be eligible via universal credit anyway if they have a partner and they're on a low income they'll be eligible via universal credit anyway so it's just that that small group within a group and as I say because it is paid to yeah insecure low paid work in the main most of them will be on a low income but yeah acknowledging there could be someone who incomes okay thanks for yeah coming related if that's okay just as well related to that point are there any other areas around universal credit relationship with the best start grant in particular around the earnings fluctuations and how they would be treated that either of you would like to comment on that yeah I think there's a slight issue I think there's a suggestion in the paper there that using the phrase universal credit at more than zero per month at a rate more than zero pounds I understand why that's been added there because of the fluctuating earnings and so on but I think just using the phrase entitled to universal credit would be simpler and the concern I have is that it is possible someone could be sanctioned and end up with zero even though they are still technically entitled to universal credit so yeah that was a slight concern about that phrase and I think again I think it depends on how the systems work in terms of talking to each other and what you can see but I think each month each monthly assessment period for universal credit if your income is too high and the amount is zero then you're not actually entitled to universal credit and you do technically have to start a new claim the following month so if that is easy to detect from the systems then that would be one way of doing it but another way would be to say you are entitled to universal credit in either the current or the previous assessment period or even the one before that you can go back three months that would be another way of doing it which is the way for example I think healthy start and free school meals in England look at universal credit in a perhaps over three assessment periods is another way of doing it To create that security in case there's a sanction well in terms of the sanction that would be the phrasing that you use if you're sanctioned you're still entitled to universal credit so I think if you use entitled to universal credit that would be okay if you want to deal with the other issue the fluctuating earnings and the people who for example have two pay packets in one monthly assessment period and that can take them off universal credit for that month and the other system that looks back over the previous month as well then if as long as they are entitled in that month and you could even go back to the one before that then that will capture those ones who have just missed out perhaps on because of one month's earnings being too high or yeah again it's a role that the social security agency if it has built in advice that you could acclaim again the next month as long as they're still within the time period for claiming so there's possibly ways to deal with the issue of fluctuating earnings and universal credit Doctor, if I can add into that, it's a slightly different angle but the roll out of universal credit presents some very particular challenges for looks after children and young people and their carers because really it's conceptualised much more under the English system so kinship carers in England are assessed along a very similar line to a foster carer so they're seen as equivalent to a foster carer so looks after children are excluded so it creates a particular challenge for the kind of child element part of whether or not kinship carers could access that in Scotland so it's a little bit messy and I know that with C-Pag have a lot more reflections and things on that and I've done some really good work on it and I'm certainly going to present some more challenges if the child element of universal credit is seen as a passport in benefit to get the best start grant that that will be a particular challenge for the looks after children in kinship carer. Thank you both, thanks. Go ahead and bring in Ms McNeill I've got another question. Mr Onson, you took a question. Yes, thank you, convener. Good morning. I'd just like to ask your views on the awareness of, well, sure start currently, best start amongst both professionals and claimants. Is it as good as it needs to be? What more do we need to be doing to increase awareness that that exists? I think that we have from what's known from some of the research a really low awareness amongst particular groups and I know it's been raised as a particular issue so I think that that's why it's absolutely critical the kind of local presence of the social security kind of agency around general entitlement to benefits. There's many additional barriers I think that some of our young people face in terms of having access with anything that's like a formal kind of process so I think that needs to be a really concerted effort should we say to ensure that all of our young people kind of are able to access this in our young adults but I think that there has been a low take up of particular groups so we need to learn from that. What's happened with the sure start maternity grant? What might have more reflections? I think that the awareness among health professionals is good in terms of it being part of the support in pregnancy and following on from the healthy start a lot of work has been done in health professionals being aware of it but even then I think there is certainly issues currently would take up among working families because it's different from healthy start in that respect you can still get the sure start maternity grant if you get basically any tax credits it's all at the moment but people often misunderstand that and they think that if they're getting working tax credit they're not eligible but if they've got a child they'll be getting child tax credit as well and they are eligible but I'm pretty sure I looked at some of the statistics that the numbers who get the sure start maternity grant who are in work are quite lower and just from training and our advice line people just don't realise that if you're in work and getting tax credits you could actually get a sure start maternity grant so that's a current problem moving forward it will be most cases it will be universal credit we'll be looking at there so maybe the message is simpler any universal credit you'll be eligible for the best start grant avoiding the confusion between child tax credit and working tax credit perhaps but certainly work to be done can I ask your views on the issue of the cut-off points for claiming the three elements of best start grant you know the draft regulations propose a longer period in which the three elements of best start grant can be claimed just like to understand how you feel about those cut-off points again because it's a new thing for the nursery payment and the school payment it seems like a good idea and I understand there's a need for it makes sense to link it to those stages in the child's life so I understand that and generally speaking with claiming anything if there's a very limited window then people are going to miss out the nursery grant is 18 months and I think about a year for the school one so that seems quite good and that gives quite a good opportunity for low income families to get advice to hear about it, to make the application and so on I think the only particular concern I had around applications and the application windows was what if at the time you claim you're not getting a qualifying benefit and that's gone to appeal and that can take months and months to get sorted out and that's eventually the appeal successful and that's eventually paid and backdated for that period is there a way of making sure that person does get the best start grant payments in that situation I think that was my slight concern so while you appreciate the longer window there still needs to be an element of flexibility for an individual circumstance I agree with Mark the extension of the window compared to what it was for the short start grant is really welcome particularly when we're thinking about the complexities for kinship carers the longer the window that can be the better because they're just facing so many things so many factors and it's so hard looking after young children on so many levels for them so you feel that that's a really positive thing I think the timescales that are suggested around the redress are fairly short in the papers at the moment what are being consulted on and I think that we would think that it might be wiser to extend that period so that if you are not happy with the decision obviously you have a longer period of time I think it's suggested is it 15 working days or it's quite a short period at the moment and that to me felt that that might be quite a quick turnaround expecting people to respond particularly given what's going on in their lives at that time Thank you Mr Balfrey Interesting area if you've got multiple children I don't know if you've looked at this at all you obviously get the multiple birth supplement but we don't get the multiple supplement for the other two payments as far as I can see have I read that correctly and if so do you think that needs to be just looked up by when the new regulations are produced I was having a look at that and I hadn't struck me as being an issue to be honest because the issue is with the birth payment it's 600 essentially for the first child and 300 for subsequent children but then an extra multiple payment for a multiple birth but then the nursery and school payments that's always going to be 250 just per child as I understand it so even in a multiple birth it will still be per child although I think that the point is that families with multiple births have extra needs and so on so it maybe could be given some consideration but yeah I hadn't struck me there is a question isn't there around the that whether or not there is already a child in the family and whether or not that's considered to be adoption in particular so that they already have one child with parental rights and responsibility for them and then if more children then came into the family and what that might mean in terms of a lower payment for it being a subsequent child I think it would feel very unfair if they then took on the care say in a kinship care arrangement of say a nephew and then they got the lower payment because they already have one child in the family so I felt that there were still some things that could be worked out so just to add to that there is a change in that which has just recently been made to ensure start maternity grant when they look at whether there's another child in the household they ignore a child who is not a birth child of the applicant so that could resolve that if we did something similar here I don't think there's any more questions can I just have a final question it was something that was mentioned in the first panel and something is a personal concern for me and that was to do with the situation of asylum seekers obviously the whole ethos of the grant is to reduce child poverty and to ensure that children have the best possible start when they're born when they're going to nursery and when they're entering school so that indication that that might fulfil all the rules that the Home Office have regarding financial support for asylum seekers have you had any experience or any thoughts about people in that circumstance I mean as I understand it I think under asylum support I think there's a small payment of £300 for a new baby under the Home Office asylum support regime that's obviously reserved so whether this could would be allowed to be paid to people in receipt of asylum support as one of the qualifying benefits which for free school meals for example that is essentially listed as a qualifying benefit asylum support from the Home Office so if there's a way that could be done then yeah we would support that because that group is particularly yeah in high risk looking at it more widely as was mentioned earlier on people with no recourse to public funds I was expect because the maternity grant at the moment is listed as a public fund so I was expecting that this would be listed as a public fund so that would be again a reserved exclusion but again if there's any way to negotiate about that then again that would be welcome because it's another group in poverty and would need the support yeah kind of share those thoughts and I think it's a particular concern in terms of addressing child poverty in Scotland if we end up having these particular groups that seem to slip through the net in terms of our new social security system I had a maybe it's a question back to Mark actually but I wondered sometimes if we could see the child in terms of like in their own kind of autonomy whether or not they could be eligible I had in need under section 22 of the 95 act and the Children's Scotland 95 act and that almost that the support then is provided and there's a duty on local authority to them and whether or not that's not seen as a public funds I don't think that that's necessarily used very often but I wondered whether or not it could be I don't know they might be a legislative I'm not sure to me that if we did that so we addressed that question there was an earlier panel where we identified that there might be some EU nationals that don't qualify because of the politics of the EU and where we ended up if you remember the agreement that he had to be in the UK for so long before he qualified for benefits would that be a bit uneven then if we solved the asylum seeker question by saying well that'd be a qualifying benefit look at the child but then we've got EU nationals if they've not been here for I think it's up to four years, five years whatever that wouldn't qualify I was just thinking Potentially if you use that argument in terms of we have a duty of care and welfare for the child almost regardless of what the parents legal status is in the country then arguably you could use it for the EU nationals group as well I'm just not sure whether or not legally to use it but I would think that there's aspects if you have children in destitute measures like almost if the parents almost relinquish their child at a social work office and said they were not able to care for them that child would become a looked after child in which case they then would then have all the support they should have obviously that's not remotely the scenario that we would want but I'm just trying to think through that there actually are some particular scenarios about duty of care and these being a child in need and then having financial support and then obviously through a child in need you can make financial payments, one-off payments to those families might it work? I think it would work in terms of social work support I suppose the difficulty, the best start grant is who's applying for it and so on but can just come back to the point about European nationals I think that was another slight concern because the phrase used is habitually resident so I think we need a bit of clarification as to what that means and entails and secondly there's also the qualifying benefit requirements so plenty of European nationals can get the qualifying benefit and I think the idea is that that would essentially mean they are accepted as habitually resident in Scotland but I think what I wanted to flag up was that we do see a lot of cases where there's issues about how the DWP and HMRC apply that test to European nationals and they often need advice to challenge it and so on so I think again it could be a role if someone doesn't get the best start grant because they're not getting a qualifying benefit then there could be a role for getting them advice and so on to check or challenge that decision particularly affecting European nationals and habitual residents Okay, I think that's the end of questions you've given us plenty of food for thought and let your things to follow up on Thank you very much for your attendance this morning and we now move into private session