 Sbyt, everyone, and welcome to the 27th meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2022. Sorry, that's very echoey up here. The first item on our agenda today is an evidence session on the national care service Scotland Bill and we will hear from two panels of witnesses. Our first panel I would like to welcome Jackie Irvine, chief executive of of the Care Inspectorate, Clare Burns, director of Celsius, councillor Tony Buchanan, councillor on East Renfrewshire and the Children and Young People's Spokesperson on Cozla, and Mike Burns, assistant chief officer Glasgow City Council and Vines, convener of Social Work Scotland. We do, as you can expect, have a lot of ground to cover today, so we'll move straight into members' questions, and the first questions we have are from Stephen Kerr, please. Good morning. I think the first question I've got is, with the introduction of this bill, as it stands, what does this bill do to fix something that's broken in what operates currently in terms of children's services? Does that question make sense? Jackie, would you like to go first? I suppose the issue for us is that in terms of the bill, it's obviously a framework bill, and what's important I think is how it's interpreted and implemented on the ground, really, in terms of whether that improves. Our focus in the Care Inspectorate is about regulation inspection, but, importantly, taking those opportunities to drive improvement, not supporting providers to do so. My understanding is that there's a lot of regulations to follow, and that detail will be very important, but I'm happy to pass to any other panel members. Your answer is basically that it depends. Well, I think that everything in terms of policy is about how we implement it, isn't it, and develop it. Obviously, the affiliate report spoke about having more consistent provision of care and support across the countries that we don't have a postcode lottery. That's probably the key, is about how it's implemented and interpreted on the ground. Is that possible without the bill? Is there a way that that could be done without the inclusion of children's services in this bill? Obviously, if children's services weren't included, you'd still have the impetus to do that for adult services and older people. Our inspection evidence shows us that, regardless of the structure, you can go into a fully integrated area and inspect a strategic inspection with our colleagues, and you'll get good results, and you'll get some areas where there's improvement needed, and, adversely, you can go into areas where it's not integrated into health and social care, children's services, and you'll see very good results. You see the same mixture on both sides, and the important factors have been around leadership, around how people are using data, engaging with children and young people in families to think about what they need to design services that meet their needs. There's not one answer on either side, but it is around leadership, engaging, looking at what your third sector partners can provide alongside you in terms of meeting needs in an area. I hope that that covers it. I think that it does. It's very clear, and I thank you for that, Claire. Thank you, Stephen. You are reading my mind. Claire wants to come in. Thanks very much. I suppose that it's just fallen on from Jackie. I think the NCS has potential to deal with some of the issues and challenges that we've got in children's services, but at the moment we only know that it has the potential to do that because we don't have the detail to be able to say it will manage some of the big challenges that we know we have that the promise is outlined. Again, I think one of the things that concerns us, and certainly concerns the sector, is that there seems to be an underlying assumption that structural change in and of itself will bring about those changes. I think it won't. I would actually just bring people back to the Feely report, and while the Feely report was on adults and older peoples, it was also really clear that even the changes there required us to look at the evidence of what makes change happen. We talked about a focus on stage-based, science-based approaches to change and improvement and implementation, so unless we pay attention to those things and regardless of what decision we make, we won't get the changes that we're aspiring to. So irrespective of structures, this change management you're describing is down to leadership, which is exactly what Jackie said. I'd say it's down to a number of things, but leadership, and we can talk about those in a better way at the time, but leadership's absolutely critical to those. And the big challenges, just outline those big challenges in children's services, that this could be the means of meeting those challenges. Yeah, so two or three things that were absolutely prominent in the promise, so one of the things that families are telling us is that they're saying, you know, we are getting to crisis before services are stepping in and helping us, and so we want our wellbeing concerns to be recognised and to be managed at an earlier stage, and through universal services, if that's possible, so they find a lot of the services that we have at the moment quite stigmatising now. I would say where it's safe to do so. You know, we need at times for social work to come in, but how do we actually build on universal services to be able to notice where there's wellbeing concerns, assess those, and be able to put in services at a really early stage? And how do we, and I think the promise was really clear that we need to be able to keep children with our families or with our kin where that's possible, that's the best thing for them. So it will take more investment in universal services and it will take more investment in acute services as well. And a lot of that's down to the trained people on the ground, isn't it, in terms of coming back to Jackie's point again. Early preventative intervention is often about being able to read a situation and know what to do next. Yeah, and I suppose just on that, a lot of it says that, you know, I think we have workforces who are absolutely motivated to do that. What we're not good at is putting in the structures, training, coaching capacity that allows them to do it. We are at the moment layering on task after task with the legislation that we've got. So it's trying to simplify that and give our workforces the kind of support that the evidence is telling us will make the difference to find out. Reorganisation is not salvation, but having good people on the ground that are... Thank you, Stephen. Well, got... Yeah, yeah, I'm having a very interesting conversation with Claire. I'm grateful to her. Councillor Buchanan, would you like to comment on Stephen Kerr's questions please? Yeah, absolutely. I think you'll find that most of us are probably all going to say things along similar lines. The key aspect in all of this, of course, is the children themselves. Yes. And the outcomes. And preventing is the best way to ensure that those outcomes are positive. I think across the board, all local authorities operate on the basis of getting it right for every child. And that can be different in different areas. So I don't hold out to the theory of a postcode lottery because what someone needs in an area, in a rural area, might be different to that in the services that someone requires in a very urban area. So there are aspects to that. And I know that every local authority works to try and get the best outcomes for the children that are within their area. And that means pulling together, as has been touched on, a lot of the services, those universal services, because it's not just the social care aspect, if you like, the social work aspect. It involves housing. It involves working with their family. It involves education. And you bring all of those things together. And the best way for that to be done is locally, within the communities and through the local authorities, because they are best placed to deliver those services and to meet the other challenges that can often impact on the outcomes that you're looking for. I think we're going to come back to interfaces, but you're making a case for the status quo that there are 32 different models for good reason. It's not a 32 different models. Most, a lot of the models are the same, but there will be aspects within that that are based on what local needs are. And that flexibility has to be there. Okay, okay, and that needs to be in the bill. Mike. Thank you very much. I suppose I'm just clarifying. I'm Mike Burns representing Social Work Scotland. I'm the assistant chief officer in Glasgow, but I'm Eve very much representing Social Work Scotland. I suppose your question in some respects indicates a sense of something needn't fixed. And I suppose from my point of view, I think there's a really positive story to be told about children's services and the partnership that we've had with the Scottish Government. So I think that there are really positive issues about the implementation of Christy. I think getting it right for every child was a real credit to the Parliament that continued the work that had previously happened. I think that if you also look at the point that's been made about the promise as a four-year work that's then identified a 10-year plan. And I think that within that, you're picking up issues like, for instance, significant work done by the Parliament in relation to health vision. And I have the issue in Glasgow of integration. So we've gone from 150 health visitors to 274, but we've also then seen as a significant reduction in coming into care previously under five years ago from 105 down to 40 last year in now 19, but also investment in family nurse partnership in the promise in kinship care. Kinship care in my own city now is 1,032 children to the cost of 11.1 million. So there's a lot of really positive co-ordinated positions mental health. Do you just see risks in this, then? I do, because I think that there's a danger that the evolution that we've had and certainly for myself have been involved in children's services for 36 years in Scotland and equally 16 years in senior management, seven years in their very intensive arrangements that we've had. And one of the things that we've had is nine local authorities approaching us to consider with us where we're finding some of the best practice, but equally we've gone whenever we're going and learning with those other organisations, we're learning ourselves about what they're doing. So why is that a risk, though? Why are you seeing downsides in this, then? Because I think that the evolution of the integrated arrangements takes time. And I think there's a neediness to see at times quick fixes and quick wins that in a sense you have to see things over a 10-year period, you have to see them. You know, I keep saying within my own experience, things don't happen within the financial year. We have to work in a 5 to 10 to 15 years and that's very difficult for particularly young managers, but it's the bit about saying that's where real change comes about. Very difficult for politicians as well? Indeed. And I suppose that's because we recognise the pressure on occasions that politicians are under, but we've had tremendous support from the Scottish Government, from elected members, from the IJIB, and we've gone from a position five, six years ago where we had 1,413 children looked after and accommodated to currently 703. We've reduced that by 710. So we're on the journey. So your argument's very similar to Tony's. I think the points that Jackie Clare and Tony have made are all in a sense aligned with the direction they travel that we would want things to go on. Thank you, all of you. Stephanie Callaghan, you have some questions in this topic as well. Thank you. Thanks very much, convener. I'm wondering as well, are there elements of this building that would provide opportunities to address existing inequalities and improve accessibility? I wonder, Jackie, if that might be a question you could pick up. I think that one of the things that we would say is that we inspect and regulate from cradle to grave. So the aspect that we've been asked to speak to today is whether children's services should be in the national care service. And being a social worker myself and having been a manager myself, but also importantly from the point of view of what we find in the key inspectorate, we would look at a family situation. You can have several practitioners going into that family for a range of different needs and support requirements. So adult services as well as children's services, perhaps mental health, maybe addictions. And the important aspect of meeting the needs of that family, and this fulfills some of the aspects of the promise as well, is about working together with that family and working in a consistent, family-focused way. So even if you've got adult services and adult practitioners going in, that they're working in a family-focused way, that they're sharing information, that they're looking at how they support the whole family. So I think for me that's kind of key to this. And it can be key to how people are working in local areas if you've got that. And again, you can see this with integrated structures and those that aren't as integrated, but it is that bit about, and some of it also is about transitions within there. Transitions, not just within an age band, but transitions obviously from children's to adult services and how closely that is planned for, how seamless it is, whether the family are clear about what their options are. So that would be my response to that question. Just is a little bit of a follow-up to that then. There are, as I understand it, there are going to be changes to children's services, regardless of whether or not they are included in the national care service, depending on where those services sit just now, whether it's IGPs, whatever, whether it's lead organisations. So is what you're saying that on balance, actually this would be a positive way forward to include them? Would it be much more positive than not? I think it certainly could be because we obviously, as we know, I think we've all spoke about the fact that the structure isn't the same across the country, so not everyone has children's services within their health and social care partnership. But I think I take Mike's point in that any change like that, because there'll be more change for some areas than others, is something that needs to be carefully managed to keep that consistency and to, I suppose, not create gaps. Is statistical information quite a part of that as well? Sorry. Is statistical information quite a part of that as well? Because I know it's gathered in different information that's collected, even sometimes within local authority areas. I mean, it would certainly be something that you would want to monitor. I mean, when I said earlier it's about how it's implemented on the ground that will be important. What I should have also added was it's also how it's resourced on the ground and how it's monitored on the ground, so close monitoring. And the key inspectorate comes into that role in terms of our regulation inspection and scrutiny and providing assurance. So, you know, we would be looking to, we'd be as enthusiastic and as committed to supporting those services and inspecting, providing assurance to the public and to the Government no matter what the structure or arrangement because we currently do, we currently work across a very complex structural landscape. Does anyone else want to come in on those? Mike? Yeah, I suppose there's a number of issues for me about the point that you're raising about addressing inequalities. Integration at its very heart was always about addressing inequalities. It was always about saying, why were we integrating? We were integrating to make sure that the most vulnerable, the most in need was getting a much better co-ordinated service than what they would in the past. So I think from that point of view there is a bit about the point that Jackie is making about a much greater shift towards strength based trauma informed relationship practice which we've seen through family nurse partnership, we've seen through health visiting in terms of the universal pathway. So I think there's a criticality there that actually recognises the need and I do think that it was interesting that Audit Scotland report in relation to 2018 recognised the need for continuity of leadership, continuity of structures and that's one of the things I think again in our own experience we were looking at where that consistency takes place that you're able to then create a cohesion and a vision for a locality that can drive change. I think pick up the point that you're also making about data and that criticality about education at times talk inspection about getting to name children and that's something that we've equally talked about about how do we get to a point where you know you're making the kind of impact that we need to make on children's lives and outcomes similar point that Councillor Buchanan made. Thank you. I suppose a follow-up and I'm not quite sure which of the panel might be best to answer this but although the national care service is being designed and we've heard a lot about that it's obviously being co-produced now consultation taking place in a year etc where should the government's forward planning focus be if it's a bit of a vague designing where should the government's focus be while they're designing in terms of children's services they're still going to provide them while the NCS is being designed in terms of where should the government's focus be on existing children's services. I still think it's about getting it right for every child it's still about the delivery of the promise it's still about tackling child poverty it's recognised that we have a cost of living crisis and an anxiety and fear for families today, tomorrow, next week so we have to be in a position where no matter how stretched our service currently feels that we need to be up to that challenge and I think we're needing to focus in on how do we get children, young people and their families through the next six months so that we're in a position to still capitalise I think on the good foundations that's been made in Scotland thank you Mike Claire just to follow on from that I think the two things that are critical one is that we really look at the issue of services at the moment coming out of Covid and it sounds like an obvious point but it's worth making any of the changes or aspirations that we want for children's services come through workforces that's workforces who are saying are doing something different with an individual or with a family therefore if you look at the set in a bar report that Social Work Scotland did 30% reduction in workforces so unless we really build on and think about the critical issues we've got in workforces that we have and I think the other thing that we need to keep focusing on and I think Mike's alluding to that is it's not about structure but it's how do we continue to support practice what does that practice look like how are we specific about that practice how do we provide the coach and training and the data piece for me is also about saying that the data is about saying can we see that there is a fidelity to practice that's really good and can we see that there's a related outcome that's positive as well there are two things for me in that Willie's got another supplementary on this theme so I've passed to him it's interesting the change of tone because you got really passionate about the issues that you're facing today and that's really encouraging that's where your passion is but what is the current proposals for reform due to the individual staff members that you're working alongside are they worried about their jobs are they worried about you know what their position will be if they're already running a service are they worried that that might not be the case anymore and what does that do for tackling the issues that you've just spoken passionately about perhaps Mike maybe could I think what we've been surprised by is the lack of impact on the front line picking up the point that's being made about the pandemic and that's where I think there's a critical issue about capacity because I don't even think that the front line staff in particular front line health visitors school nurses, social workers specialist children services are focusing in on this issue I think you're quite right Mr Rennie saying they are focusing in on the criticality that exists right here right now I think the issue about senior managers are in a sense strategically beginning to think through what will be the implications of this and I'll go back to some of the issues in Scotland report and back to I think some of the points that we've made in our submission is to say that issues take time to do the capacity to pick up the point that's being made about change and practice that does not happen overnight that happens with good supervision it happens with capacity building and we're in a position at the moment whereby we recognise that we think there are some elements that are on a good path supported by the Parliament supported by local members and what we are then saying is this will disrupt it's already disrupting it's already taking time and attention we think away from all the preparation and planning that we've got to do for this and we're actually saying we think that evolution and actually building on the foundations that we've got is what Scotland should be and we're very proud quite rightly nobody disagrees with the Christy commission nobody really in a sense disagrees with getting it right for every child particularly again focusing in on the most vulnerable and nobody disagrees in heart with a lot of the aspects of the promise let us get on with that and let us get on with the directs and the travel and that I think as Clare alluded to even like yesterday I'm speaking to Heads the Service and they're saying that the service is really fragile that there are a real tipping point of capacity and some of the issues that I think yourselves are very in tune with in relation to the health service pressurey junior doctors pressurey nursing those issues relate themselves all of that workload issues relates to our young social workers thank you and that theme Mike Hans nicely on to our next line of question which will be led by Mike Hans so we're the bills about creating a national care service and there's an awful lot in my understanding that social work and children's services do that it's not about care, formal care Mike could you maybe explain about in terms of the breadth that you understand is in the proposal here and where how much it is beyond care we've heard about and mentioned already but it'd be useful to hear some more I think that's a really good question because I think at times we get frustrated in terms of local government social work that were defined by child protection and were defined by risk and were defined by risk and removal in relation to children that are looked after but I think social work moves us into much more of that issue about kinship care about children with disability and early help early support that what we want to do is we want to be in a position where we're stepping in at a moment to change for a parent, a moment to change for a family and that critically then leads us into the position of integration with you look at some of the arrangements in Scotland where very good relationships we're health visiting but you've got to do in terms of the point that Jackie made earlier is we've got to have that level of integration with education we've got to be working hand in glove with Police Scotland and we were at a conference last week where Police Scotland the chief superintendents talking about we want to be firm on crying 99% of the time we want to be compassionate that's fantastic imagine working in a country where that's what's coming from where police force you then want to be in the position where we're actually picking up Jackie's point we're building with the third sector we want to go back to what has been previously said is if it's whole system and it's single system then we have to operate as a whole and single system and in my own authority we're in the position where population 0 to 18 110,000 and 10 in a bit thousand of those kids are open to social work so one in 10 kids in the city isn't it then about the narrow position in relation to child protection it's not even in relation to the narrow position that we looked after our kinship but it's about that complex needs it's about neuro-development it's about a whole range of the way that we engage families the way that we the most important critical task that you live are doing in your life as parent and that's the bit that we have to in a sense get alongside parents so that we can we can do that work pre-birth to 0 to 2, we know that's the golden area and that's I think the direction that we're on Is there a risk, Councillor Buchanan around this then, in terms of that children's services become defined by the idea of care rather than necessarily around prevention? I think there is a risk I think it's fair to say that there has been the view of most local authorities if I speak partially about even in my own authority and some of the work we've done we had integrated services before IJBs were thought of if you like and we started very early on looking at removing the silos if you like that are often around most areas of work so we started to break that down and that's where we touched on the family issues what we call the family firm it's where we looked at education it's where we looked at housing aspects in the welfare of the child the most important thing is the family and the parents and quite often if you can provide the parents with the skills required to ensure if you like the upbringing of their child then that is preventative because it saves further involvement whether it be of social work or anyone else it hopefully prevents ever getting to the stage where you may be in the adult services because if you can get it right there then you stop the problem before hopefully it becomes a problem so that breaking down of silos and as Mike touched on it's not just about social work saying we're here for one aspect only it's the whole aspect that's right through that process of working with a family of ensuring that that child is safe brought up, loved and an environment which helps that child grow and that's what's key a number of areas right across the board from social work through education, through their teaching staff through the third sector, through third parties through the police etc all of those organisations can play a part and to me the best way of doing that is not just locally but via local government who are best placed in order to deliver those services Clare Burns you said when you were defining in essence the problems in this you just said that families who are getting to crisis before services are stepping in so that preventative space that doesn't feel to me like an issue of care so is it appropriate for these services to sit within a national care service, a huge service that's going to be dominated rightly I would think by the huge problems in social care that we have in the country is there a risk that this becomes the Cinderella or worse some of the issues of prevention some of those issues exist whether we're in the national care service or not I think it still comes down to where is the best place to support this practice and as Mike said yes I think in Scotland we're on a road and we've got some of the conditions what I would say is that families will still tell us that there is still work to be done even within the existing structure to ensure that those functions and services exist so even the co-location of education, health and social work won't necessarily give you an experience that families find really positive that's what I'm trying to say there is still work to be done so for example some of the work that we've done and done do where they try to do that very thing where they were saying families are same to us you're not responding at the point at which well-being needs are being flagged how do we actually do that we were saying you've got team around the child meetings and they were saying yeah but families are telling us they don't understand what's happening they feel really stigmatised teachers were saying I don't feel I have the confidence to do this so it's actually we worked with them to build what does that practice look like how are we using data to see was there fidelity to that practice what were the outcomes to that practice suppose it's just it's not about what structure we're in but how do we focus on that kind of practice one of the principal interventions in Dundee my home city is around glad I chose that then I'm always happy to talk about Dundee as colleagues is that there have been family support workers put in by the council into schools who are working directly with that's not an issue of care in terms of children being taken into care that's very much is that practice then not potentially put at risk in terms of if this whole process is housed within a national organisation that then separates itself out from local authorities again I think sorry no I'm just catching Jack's eye we'll clear on this point then and maybe bring Jackie in so I think again the thing about this is there is the potential for this to be positive if we do it the right way and there is also the potential for us to sever some of the relationships that are already existing so I think where it's working where we've got but I would say as well it's not I also don't want to paint a picture that everything that families would be saying that the existing structure everything's fine cos we know that it's not where there is good relationships for example where there's co-working between education and social work where they are jointly they're saying yes it builds relationships yes it builds better information sharing so I think you're right that again it has the potential to sever that unless we put all of the structures and capacity in practice in place in the NCS and at the moment the sector are no reassured that that would be the case okay thank you yes I think just I'd make an observation we're talking about care without really defining what we mean by care so we're talking about care and I think the interpretation that's been given to it is that that's about formal care that's accommodating children and you know what we know from inspection but from practice is that children don't just pop up into a child protection kind of arena there's that history before that where universal services have worked with them and if we look at what the promise is asking us to deliver we're asking us to work in a different way to support those children to take some risks actually about keeping them in their communities with that support wrapped around the family and I think from that point of view then it's really essential that your adult services and your children's services are working together including the third sector including your universal services like health visitors, family support workers etc so I think it would be remiss to get too hung up on I don't see any of this dividing children either children's services will go into the national care service or they'll go out and actually for most local authorities that will either or will mean a change so if you're currently integrated like Mike's referred to in relation to Glasgow then pulling children's services out of that and keeping it with the local authority there will be a disruption if you're not integrated and you're sitting in the local authority and you're then going into the national care service so either of this there'll be change no matter what and I think our premise would be that we need to take every opportunity to help providers drive up improvement we say that every time we touch a service in terms of inspection or a pre-visit or self-assessment that we are assisting them to look at where they need to improve and obviously use data to do that in terms of the planning but the other aspect is and I've just come back to the point that was made earlier which is about current issues we can't get away from the fact that current providers are struggling with staffing with the cost of providing their service going up but obviously everyone is in terms of the economic crisis at the moment and that will be put in them under pressure so it's about the amount of change that's happening I think my focus with, I can only talk about my staff group is about keeping them focused on the job that they're there to do through the public sector reform 2010 act and the 2014 joint bodies act so that that they've got a legislative duty to regulate scrutinise, inspect and support in terms of supporting people's improvement journey and that's what I'm trying to get them to focus on I think they're I can't speak for other services obviously I could have a few months ago but not now so there is that with any change I think there's a need to try and keep us focused on the core job and coming back to the core job of children services but if we are experiencing change then it is about leaders and managers and senior officers trying to support their staff through that change because for one authority it can mean a very different thing from another authority and from a different partnership point of view Thank you Jackie Bob Doris, would you like to pick up that line of questioning please? Yeah, I would It's just a big supplementary on my colleague Oh yes, absolutely So first of all a supplementary on Mr Marra's exchange with witnesses I was a wee bit concerned about the idea of potentially this leading to working in silos and less communication I'm hoping I can get some reassurances on that because my understanding is that way before health and social care partnerships were a thing way before entities enjoyed boards were a thing and now we move potentially to a national care service with local care boards that police, social work, housing, third sector schools and childcare were all talking to each other as best practice anyway and sometimes the practitioners say irrespective of the structures put in place we will get on with delivering best practice and whether those structures facilitate and support that best practice and whether it drives consistency so I suppose I'm looking for the reassurance that irrespective, and we have to decide as a committee whether that's the best thing to proceed with or not, irrespective of whether this national care service goes ahead are you confident that that best practice that I've seen in Glasgow before health and social care before integration and before we spoke about national care service was happening anyway and Mr Burmys spoke very eloquently about some of the progress that's been made in Glasgow so what reassurances can you give that maybe silo work and might be a wee bit of a red herring so can there be some reassurances who'd like to I think that again you point to the fact that there's a long history of what it means to be integrated and again we're in the position where I think the point was made earlier be clear it's not about structures there's an issue about culture about ethics about values, about principles about the way that we collectively work together and those are similar to the points that we're making about what is critical in relation to practice is equally critical in relation to leadership and the strategic direction that everybody's actually owning that and being in the direction of it I think that if you look even within periods of times we've had different elements of integration but I think what's always been interesting is when some of those changes have taken place actually workers on the ground team leaders on the ground have continued to work really closely together because again goes to the point that Claire's making about getting it right for every child and the team around the child then becomes a critical factor about integration and working together as a multidisciplinary team becomes key to achieving good outcomes for children because they're very rarely done singularly very rarely done singularly Mr Dursmos I'm asking to the witnesses believe that that will still happen anyway irrespective of whether we move to national care service or not that doesn't mean that it's the right or wrong thing to do to move to national care service but that kind of working can you give us reassurance that you think that that will continue to take place because there was a suggestion you might not I think it will continue to take I'm Bob but Jackie wants to come in as well I just wanted to make sure that thank you to create progress I think it comes back to say as a case practice we go into an area we obviously need to understand what the structure is so how partnerships are set up and what that defines that partnership but what we're looking for is exactly what Mike said we're looking for services to work closely together to wrap around that family and I keep referring to families as opposed to child because that's the key point and for leadership to be working collectively to share those values responsibilities and sometimes be pooling resources that's always very helpful in terms of the direction of travel for a children's services partnership and what we look for isn't whether we think the structure is right or not we look for the impact on the family the child, the parents is that impact is that impact improving the position of that family so it's and I don't think it's on very local arrangements and regardless of where you sit and what might come out of this there will still be an absolute requirement that social work hold dear to which is working alongside your colleagues and I think someone mentioned the range of that it goes beyond education it goes to housing particularly and the third sector so those requirements almost are the raison d'etre for how people work in social work that's how we were trained if you're a social work manager that's how you would be expecting the work to be carried out and that also picks up the preventative bit so it's for me it's not about structures it's about impact thank you and Bob can I ask you to move on to your next set of questions on kinship now please absolutely so I did want to ask because it's a bit vague that this bill in some respects and it's kind of framework bill lots to be fleshed out so kinship care looked after children Glasgow was something I know very well and Mr Burns has been very actively involved in that over the years as well and it certainly came a long way Adam Ingram was the children's minister and Stephen Purcell was the leader of Glasgow City Council when huge strides were taken across government and across party to progress things so with a situation across Scotland as I understand it where now a large looked after children who are in kinship care relationships in the community will get the same rate of support as foster families but that rates different across the country so each local authority pays differently there's an opportunity there I suppose with a price tag to make sure there's a consistency of financial support but also a consistency of other support convener so there's commission services example I would give the Notre Dame Centre who do a wonderful commission service job in my constituency for Glasgow and across the west of Scotland but it's not clear where the funding comes from that sometimes it's from the NHS sometimes it's from an entity joint board sometimes it's from various local authorities and it's tiny little pots of cash so in terms of consistency of financial support and in terms of consistency of commission service for kinship care children are there opportunities within the national care service to derive some of that change so that's something very personal to me convener I would like to know any thoughts in relation to that Tony are you able to answer that one first I can perhaps shum that sunlight on it in terms of the payments that are made and yes they do vary but they often vary because of the different structure of the payments for some for example they will have a core payment and that core payment will include a payment to assist with holidays, birthdays some additional spending that type of scenario whereas in others those payments are made separately and there is a basic payment and then there are additional payments made to cover those items so there is no one size fits all if you like in terms of what local authorities do but there's a lot of consistency there may be but that's something that we have to be looked at because what some local authorities do is they say that there are different payments and you would have to bring all of that together to look at how that comes and works out I suppose Bob's asking if there's an opportunity for the Bob Doris if there's an opportunity for it to be consistent across the country so that no matter where you are a kinship carer or a foster carer you're valued in the same way I suppose is that kind of where you're going Mr Doris? Not just financially but the quality of the commission's specialist support that is sometimes commissioned through the NHS sometimes through the integrated joint boards sometimes commissioned through individual local authorities sometimes referred from education services to the one provider who have got a patchwork of funding and that's not just Glasgow but across the country so there's clearly something being addressed here whether it's the national care service that addresses that or not is another matter whether it's the national care service to address some of that Mr Burns? I think there's a number of critical issues there I think you highlight the importance and the contribution that kinship care has made and I think it has been a game changer in the way that it's actually assisted children to stay with grandparents but also to then be consistently in the school that they were in to be with the friends that they had in the way of stability and continuity My understanding is that there is on-going dialogue at the moment because I'm looking at that through the issues about the foster care fee and allowance so previously the equality and human rights commission very helpfully supported the fact that they wanted an equal approach there and we've done that in Scotland and I think as I said earlier on that basically involves 1,032 kids and 1,000,000 which is again a fantastic direction of travel in terms of the point that you've raised but I think the issue that you also alluded to about the need for consistent and co-ordinated support to those kinship carers we would want to do more on that and I think that that is a gap in a direction of travel that we would want to go on but I think similarly the point that you've raised about saying when we looked at it in Glasgow we were spending £42.3 million a year on 239 kids and we had in a sense were when we also did the financial analysis we were spending £2.7 million on prevention and everybody looked at that and said we need to shift to Christy we've moved that from £2.7 million to £6.9 million Disney sound a lot but it's been a hard graph to get there we're then supplemented by the whole family wellbeing fund that's going to come in through the promise at £4.66 million we've aligned that to the mental health money that we've been given at £1.7 million some of the underspend the point that I think that you're raising which is really helpful is then about the way that we again if it's whole system and it's single system we need to get into a way that sustains the third sector in a much more three to five year position that also then allows them to do the points that Claire's raised about consistency practice consistency of early help and early support and again if you look at the position we've also looked at in terms of community planning there's a need to then make sure that all of that money is done in a co-ordinated way but my sense of that is equally within the context of the local need which I think again councillor Buchanan raised thank you very much for that can we move to questions now and please thank you for your evidence this morning it's been very clear I was going to ask about the interface issue and you've kind of addressed already that there's a multitude of interfaces with the police with education services with various other bits so I was going to ask about that but you've kind of answered that and the answer seems to be that the people that you work with are professionals who are trained to work together in the way that Bob's and he'll overcome any barriers that politicians want to frequently put in their place and that seems to be I don't want to I'm sure that's what Bob I'm sure that's what Bob meant I'm sure that's what he meant but what I really want to know is are there any members of staff that you're working with that are crying out for this change are they saying they must have a national care service to overcome these problems is that happening? I would like to go first on that I don't know I think so I mean colleagues here work more directly with staff I think the important point is I think most of the staff would say particularly on the back of the promise that what we're doing for families at the moment is not good enough and there needs to be some kind of change what they're really so I think they recognise that what they're concerned about is going into the unknown that we unpick everything and at the moment we don't have enough detail to say that the level of disruption will be worth it so how do we not strengthen what we're doing at the moment so what you're highlighting is of course I think you're all talking about change I mean Mike was just talking about trying to up the budget for prevention versus other spend so you're constantly changing but is it structural change they're crying out for? no no or what I would say to you is that what I think staff recognise cos again we've all been in this as we've been through local government reorganisation we've been through joint is that structure in and of itself will not give you the changes and I think that's where people are they recognise that it's much more complicated than that it's much more nuanced than that and particularly when it relates back to Mr Doris's point about kinship carers we need to be able to invest in children's services that if there's no further investment any change in structure again will just be more disruptive but I suppose I do want to make the point that Mike made is that everybody's recognising that the system as is is fine cos the promise told us that it wasn't so we need to strengthen we need to build capacity and we need to strengthen what we've got at the moment or make the commitment that people will be reassured that the issues we've got at the moment will be addressed in the national care service but at the moment they can't be reassured about that cos a level of detail is not there for them to be reassured so Tony have you come across staff members that are crying out for this? I have to say it's been quite mixed I think all staff members want to do their job and to do it better and that's a given in that environment it's more often than not they want to be able to deliver more and the big problem is that at the moment they're doing fantastic work there is huge amount of very good work that often doesn't get highlighted going on day in, day out and in every hour there are successes if you like that staff are out working with right across the board the big difficulty they have is that they know what works well they know what they would like to improve on but having the resource and indeed the staffing to do that, not just the finance to do it is what's critical that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be centralised or anything else what it means is that there is a need there they know what they need is they know how to address it and the resource and the finance and the staffing to necessarily move that forward and take that good practice and broaden it out if you like and that's one of the key issues I think that staff have so it's that fear of not being able to do enough because they are hindered by those blockages I think the answer would be no to some extent but I think there is a recognition in terms of the point that Claire's made to the 32 chief social work officers there is challenges around scale there's challenges in relation to rural there's challenges in relation to the islands and they would be really keen that those issues are carefully considered I think the point about I mean I've worked in six local authorities in Scotland I've worked in the smallest I've worked in the largest I think at times I am accused of being maybe overly optimistic and positive but also about the fact that I think there is a need to recognise that not all the enabling conditions are the same and I think that there is a recognition that scale is important but critically capacity is important consistency leadership is important but the workforce issue varies across the country significantly and again there's a bit of resentment about the position in Glasgow in terms of our ability to recruit relative to other areas and I think that there is a feeling that some of that in terms of the national social work agency is in a sense positively looked at as a mechanism to really lift recruitment, training coaching, quality, supervision consistency so I think that in some respects goes back to the point people are getting on with the day job at the moment and I think that these issues have exercised the chief social work officers without a doubt do you want that? That would be helpful just a couple of things in terms of context because I think you've touched on that Mr Rennie in relation to what we're dealing with just now and what we also know and is becoming more apparent in the data is that the demand is going up coming out of Covid so people will have read you'll appreciate the mental health wellbeing demands going up for both parents and children what we are hearing from our providers then is that the demand at the front door is going up and at the same time I think Mike's just touched on it there is an issue about workforce and we've had a history haven't way of knowing that the rural and the island communities struggle to recruit that's been something that's kind of almost part of Scotland isn't it but I'm hearing from providers in the last couple of weeks that they're struggling even more about to recruit I think coming right back to the beginning of our conversation I think clear you made it it's about the workforce isn't it that delivers this so although you're wanting to talk about the technicalities of this bill and what goes where you can't do that without actually looking at the current context and the challenges that we face and I say we in support of my providers and the partnerships that we go into to inspect Thank you very much for that some questions for yourself Thank you I've found this really useful and colleagues have covered a lot of ground I take on the points you make about the importance or otherwise of structure but I want to ask I suppose we've experienced of going through health and social care integration reflecting back on that and looking to potential change that's coming I'm interested to know what lessons have been learned some of the concerns that have been raised about the bill are that risk around disruption of services so from the perspective of children and families in our communities that need the services that are being provided what lessons have we learned through integration that can help us moving forward I would like to go first on that one Claire are you able to I'm probably I'm going to pass that to Mike Good that's fine we'll leave that to Mike to answer then It's a really important point about the reflection again it goes back to maybe the bit from the political aspect about always looking forward and one of the things that I've reflected on coming in and preparing here is that you don't always give yourself credit for the decisions that you make and the work that you do that takes time to come to fruition so there's a bit for me whereby I would equally say in terms of the lessons on health and social care integration that Glasgow goes back to a position where it started that journey in 2003 and it is about saying we move from a learning disability integration position in relation to moving from Lenox Castle to then seeing an opportunity with the health board to get that kind of cultural change as I said earlier doesn't it happen in a financial year it happens over 5 10 and 15 years and it's maybe I keep saying there are some important lessons that I'm learning at the tail end of my career that I wish I'd understood and been passionate about them 15 years ago I know but there is a bit where you're saying to the legacy that you're going to leave behind you want people to build on the foundations you want to build you're not going to give them everything sorted but you're going to be in a position to say have I built some really good foundations here that leads us to a different position so I think in relation to the health and social care again my element would be that we've had a 10 year journey on that that I think there are areas whereby and again it goes back to maybe some of the point that Mr Doris was making about saying the famous point is governance then does become important particularly in relation to issues around clinical governance around working together but also in relation to the finance because it's in relation to the finance that a lot of the tensions in the system are needing to be worked through in relation to and I think again we've been really fortunate in some of the positions but I know that's not always been the case across the country and I think there are areas there that we would still be advocating let's bring forward best practice let's bring forward what is working let's look at where the challenges have been overcome and let's then replicate that best practice and I think again it's about saying these things take time Ruth Davidson thanks for that response can I press you on some examples well again I think within children's services I'll go back to the point that I made earlier is that collectively we got all of the staff into a room in terms of 1,800 at the time and we went through the fact that here's where we've landed here's where we're spending the money and the money is important because I think at times particularly in social work and child visiting school nursing and family nurse partnership we tend to be saying we'll focus in on practice but the money is important about what it delivers in terms of the outcomes so I think shifting to a position where we were saying picking up Jackie's point about the promise it was about then recognising 65% of children that come into care in Scotland go home and that's a devastating transformation to absorb as a professional because we then need to move on to the bit where Jackie's earlier point is we need to take risks, we need to support families we need to be in the position where staff at the front line need to know that the decisions that they're going to make I've been there where things have gone wrong and you know I was even saying in the last couple of days as you don't forget that you're sometimes feel you're sitting on top of a volcano that one case can be in a situation where people can say well I don't like his transformational agenda I don't like the strategy I don't like the promise because of this one so I think in Glasgow we're we know we're on a journey, we know it's not perfect but I think there's a lot of good practice across North Lanarkshire Council across Fife, across Dundee across Aberdeen that we're learning from that I think has been a byproduct of the integrated and I think the evidence is there and that's one thing I would really strongly emphasise If I could just move on to Tony and I suppose my question is how we protect families from that risk because there's always going to be an element of risk with any change to services so how do we best protect children and families as we move through that change You know I think at the core our aim is to protect those children and families and make sure that they're supported with their families and all local authorities subscribe to that and that is a key aspect of the services that we deliver what I would say is I think integration has on the whole been very successful I think as Mike touched on there is a huge amount of best practice in all authorities which sometimes maybe needs pulled together to some extent a bit better than it has been perhaps but the reality is there's a huge amount of good work there that is designed to protect those families at source i.e. in their community with the services that they require in order to get them through any period of difficulty and that's been vital and whether that comes from dealing with the family whether it's through addiction problem whether it's simply helping a family budget in the current crisis all of those aspects play a part in the everyday services that we provide so I think all local authorities are signed up to that to make sure that that works and they will utilise all of those services that have been integrated in order to deliver that and protect families because that's a key aspect and it's what we want to see as an outcome because ultimately that outcome is both preventative and successful but then it leads to a much greater outcome for the child Jackie, do you want to come in on this, are you okay? I think the bit that we do need to strengthen is the bit about alignment across the leadership and the acceptance of that risk that we're taking that it doesn't just sit with individual social workers and it doesn't just sit with social workers so that we're aligning that is that something that elected members have agreed on, that are MSPs that the care inspector there, I'm sure that's something that Jackie's been looking at as well, is that those other organisations that provide the governance and the scrutiny, how are they aligned to that, are they signing up to that because it can still feel a bit like that a bit mixed and a bit punitive at times as well so I think that's what's needed in order that staff don't feel that they're sitting on a volcano but that's what the preventative agenda will take Thank you very much Ruth Can we move to Graeme Dey, please? Thank you, convener I'm interested in the panel, I've been encouraged by the fact that you've avoided lapsing into that mantra that if only you gave us more money everything would be right that's been very welcome I was worried that it might be the case after reading the coslas submission I also welcome the acknowledgement that all of you have made that things aren't perfect, that there is room for improvement and one area I suspect we would all agree upon that has imperfections is the transition from young people to adult services and I ask my question for you how do we solve that long standing issue if not through having a fully integrated national care service because if the issues in certain localities are to do with culture and approach and not picking up with that best practice stubbornly ignoring that best practice then how on earth do we bring about the improvement and is there also not a logic to having children's services captured by a national care service when there has to be that read across from children's services into adult services through the transition Tony are you looking to go first I see a hand going to a button I think that there is a risk when you move things too far away from the point of need and I think that that becomes a big difficulty and certainly from coslas point of view and from our service providers we look at that risk is best mitigated by being dealt with locally where you can tackle the local issues as I've said we've already touched on there are differences whether in the rural area or an urban area etc different pressures, different aspects can fall in and to play so it's vital that there is that local aspect and from our point of view the best place to do that and the ones that have been doing it up to now and delivering some fantastic services has been the local authorities I think all local authorities have their strengths and will be managing that as best they can with the resource that they have and I think best practice does get looked at they do try to cater for it as much as they possibly can and I think that it's therefore vital that you have that local touch we don't concentrate enough on what has been working well we know that Philly the reason that we're here is that there are gaps there are problems it's how do we fix those problems and where do they be best placed to ensure that we can fix those problems and in our view that is best done within the local communities and within local government because that's the place closest to those who need the services but that's where the problems currently exist so how do you bring about that improvement because with the best will in the world and you're right to focus on the positive examples but we all know there are negative examples as well so go back to my original question how do you fix that if not through changing the structures and changing the approach? By ensuring that we can deliver those services locally by co-ordinated working it doesn't mean that we work in isolation of each other local government at all levels should be working together to ensure that they can deliver on that that would be one of the key aspects going forward so there does have to be that link if you like ensuring what you see as a Government or as a Parliament that we can work with and it's the delivery vehicle that becomes the important aspect and I think that that has to be local it doesn't mean to say that we're at odds or that we're disagreeing that what needs to be done it's about how we actually get around that I think it's a question that really focuses in on the Achilles heel and I think it is an area in terms of the freely report that quite rightly picked up particularly with children with complex needs young people with complex needs mental health in particular addiction learning disability that I think we recognise that that's an area in need of significant improvement I think there is in some respects a challenge around the mismatch I think one of the things that's been really positive again about the promise in the direction they travel is the fact that now we look at our caseloads and we're working with a lot of young people that are 18, 19, 20 and indeed 25 I did like the comment that was made by the Deputy First Minister which was about saying in terms of children's services we need to land young people in adulthood and adulthood really realistically if you've had a young son or whatever 25 just about right in terms of giving them but I think that there is a bit about saying there's a recognition that one of the things that we've talked about in relation to integration is that I operate as the preventative wing of that mental health service and I think that there is a bit about the transitions is about saturation in need and what you've then got at times is a mismatch between the intensity of the care plan that's occurred particularly for children that have been well known to us for a period of time through that 18, 19 and we're working with them at 25 to then penetrate an adult service where the perception about risk, need and demand is different and I think that that is something has been really positive in relation to specialist children's services and CAMHS and again you recently made decisions which was about saying we want you to move to Western and mental health and we want you to see you working with young people beyond the 18 up to 25 but again that's going to take time that came to us on the basis of saying can you fix that and you're saying we can go and look at it but that's a five-year job Jackie, do you want to come in on this and then I think we have to move on Graham from the care inspector's point of view we very much look at transitions when we're going into an integrated partnership and we're doing a strategic inspection and regulation inspection and Mr Feely clearly as Mike has said made that requirement that he didn't observe and he didn't hear from people that it was a seamless transition from children's services into adult services no matter what age you go into I think coming back to the local issue no matter what comes out of the national care service you're going to get your service locally it's not going to be you're living in Fife and you're getting your service from Aberdeen but I think there's more to be done in relation to that seamless transition there's clearly differences in that I can't say this for certain but if you've got the budget for adult services sitting in one place and the budget for children and families sitting in another place then that can create not always but it can create a barrier to making that transition that would be the point I would make so again it's not necessarily about the structure but it's maybe about how you organise and it comes back as well to leadership in making that collective responsibility for those children moving into young adulthood and making sure that there isn't a barrier put in the way of that Thank you. Can we move on now to questions from Ross Greer? Thank you very much. First question is probably primarily for Tony but I've been interested in other panel's thoughts on this. Do you feel from the bill and the financial memorandum that the cost of potentially transferring children's services has been made clear to you? I think there's still a lot that's because it is still a framework there is no clarity in everything that will or won't be provided within that. What I would say from a causal point of view is that we know that local government could deliver those services given some of the greater resource and the ability to utilise that resource as was touched on earlier. Workforce planning is a significant issue and trying to recruit people into the various services that require that support is critical. I suppose there's an argument that would say that if what we are going to look at the costs and setting up a national care service could well be spent utilising the services on the ground and in the front line that we would be in a better position than perhaps we are now. Jackie. In relation to those resources there is a framework bill absolutely right, we don't have that detail but I suppose for me and for our organisation the importance will be in that future modelling because the future modelling is a co-production which is no one could actually argue against that that's the way it should be done co-produced with people who use services who know what they need and know what works and whether the resources are we don't know what that will result in so in terms of the financial requirement for that co-production that's still not there because it still needs to be done and obviously there's the fact that there's a framework bill it needs to be built on so there's some unknowns I think I would suggest in that area. We mentioned quite a bit already particularly in answer to Willie Rennie's question about the level of integration and other services in the cause of submission particularly in relation to early year childcare provision if the decision is made to transfer children's services to the new national care service how easy will it be to disaggregate that discrete spending from wider spending that local authorities put into services that are for children in some way rather than specifically the children's social services that we're talking about here. Who wants to have a shot at that one? We would expect that it will be extremely difficult because how do you start then to unpick it all and separate it and that is one of the conditions when we talked about silos earlier and integration that's where the problems could be created because you're trying to unpick pieces of something of a whole that currently works and we know that that generally works so how do you then start to bring that back together again to ensure that would you be able to apply to one area to deal with some aspect of the services applying to another fund or another unit to get funding so it makes it in our view at the moment because of the lack of information it is it would be extremely messy to try and unpick all of that and continue to deliver the services at the level that we currently do. You mentioned already as I said that this is a framework bill this is not the bill the decision on whether it will be taken as part of this legislative process it will be taken later but is there any information that hasn't been provided that you think is critical before Parliament further considers this bill or can we wait for that future decision on children's services specifically? I just want to say that we welcome the fact that there's an independent steering group and obviously Claire's organisation is supporting that and we are engaging Professor Bridget Daniels in a few weeks just got a meeting with her so I think that that's really helpful that they'll be able to look at research and look at examples elsewhere and what might assist with that I think so it can wait there are some key bits though that are missing obviously because it's a framework bill so I think this is an iterative process we and other organisations will be keeping a close eye on what the timescale is for the steering group to report but that would be the crunch point really and I would imagine that the steering group will come out with some recommendations in terms of what needs to be more clearly and explicitly mentioned within the final legislation for example where would the governance for public protection sit and how would that shift if children's services were to go in or not as the case may be? I suppose for me it would be the alignment between the financial memorandum and the promise the promise of the UNCRC and the new child protection guidance because it would be about saying we can't just cost what a restructure will take but actually what are our aspirations in there going to take in terms of workforces capacity build and what is the cost of that and just to clarify Claire, do you believe that that further costing should come before Parliament completes this legislative process or can that come as a result of independent reviews? I think it should sit alongside the research because the research will give additional information that will sit alongside because I think what it will tell you is what are the conditions in enabling context that are required in order to implement the promise. Thank you. I'm looking at the clock and I know we've got a few other sections is that okay if we move on? Thank you. Michael's got a supplementary on the finance theme and then moving on to research. I declare an interest of a close family member who's a practicing social worker. So my question is to Tony around about the status of pensions. Pensions wouldn't typically be included under two pay. We're looking at thousands of social workers moving to a new body. Is there any clarity being given from the government on the status of social work pensions? Not that we're aware of. We can come back to Ian writing on that but not that I'm aware of at the moment and it's one of the concerns that staff would have about if they were transferred to an organisation then all of those aspects have to be factored in. On the status of buildings, rentals for where all these people work and from councils the relationship about that. At the moment my understanding is there's no clarity on that and again we can bring back to you but there's no clarity on what would happen and what would move if you like. Do you have any questions on the research element you were going to pick up on that? Yes I do. We've been told that there would be services representing CELSAs in this and I believe that CELSAs are to be commissioned. Can you tell us a little bit about what form that research would take? Yes. It will take place between now and next. So we've started it until next September and that's to bring it in line with some other key decisions that are happening around the national care service. We're not asking the question about should there be a national care service or not. The question that's very much is how do we ensure that children, young people and families get the help they need when they need it so we're able to look at a number of things people have been talking about what does it mean around leadership what does it mean around what else around this enabling context makes families get the kind of support and feel an experience like they're getting the kind of support that they need so there's kind of five elements really at the kind of early stages of this although there will be publications as we go along so the first one is a rapid evidence review published literature so what is it actually saying about what do we mean by integration what are the different ways, different forms of integration we're looking at different deep dives into different international perspectives as well so places like the Netherlands and New Zealand where there's been complete decentralisation and decentralisation so how can we learn from how that's worked well deeper dive into different ways of integration across Scotland and what can we learn about the conditions under which those and can we make any connection with outcomes although we're not confident that you can make an automatic connection between integration and outcomes but what conditions and what elements of that integration might help with outcomes a national survey of the children's workforce to start to unpick some of those things as well and more qualitative data as well so interviews with the workforce to start to unpick some of that so those are the kind of five elements to the research but you're not being asked to address directly the question of whether children's service should be integrated and I suppose the speciality of Celsus is in a relation to looked after children and I know that you've produced some fantastic work in that area to credit your staff I suppose my concern a little bit is in terms of that specialism does it, can we capture the breadth of children's services that we've touched on in our various questions or is almost at your body being commissioned in this regard a pointer towards a bit of an inherent bias towards the care end of the spectrum rather than the breadth of children's services so I suppose I'd want to reassure you on a number of points on that we're really clear that it's about the broader range of children's services and I suppose the other thing is as well like traditionally we are the centre for we were the centre for looked after children we're now the centre for children's caring protection and we're also involved in the whole family well being fund around building preventative services and so we are moving into that area so I suppose I'd want to reassure you we're really clear that it needs to be broader and you'll draw on expertise around education and mental health, the other areas of okay, thank you and also just Mr Mann I would reassure you just what Jackie is saying as well is that that's also why there's an independent steering group of academics across that to ensure that we've got all of those lenses there's a very brief supplementary from Stephanie who's looking to get some clarification on some of the statements that have been made yep, so if I could direct this at Tony or Mike actually either of you and I do agree that integration has seen some really really positive changes for families and I share that passion right across the board right across the panel today that we're seeing about getting the best possible support in there but I feel like you know we need to go back to the beginning that children can't be seen just in isolation because children are parts of families and adult social care really really affects them and the whole point of the review was that it really shone that light and the need for a change in ethos and culture across social care services and co-production and designs at the centre of that so it was always about you know really actually providing the care that really matters to that individual and co-design and co-production has been a huge part of this process so I suppose I'm struggling to understand on one hand I'm hearing that the kindle teams work really collaboratively that they face huge complexities in structures different barriers but that they will make things happen they will work collaboratively to make things happen and that seems to be quite at odds with the idea that you know if you get co-design and co-production that's including people with lived experience including those workers in actually co-designing the policies that live in them I'm struggling to understand why you feel that that's not going to work within a national care service so just to get an explanation on that because it seems to be at odds with the other stuff that you're saying Come to quite a tight responses to that because I know I've got some questions specific Sorry I might have to be shorter I do have some critical questions later from Mr Day to ask as well so if we can have the responses to that very succinctly please if possible I suppose in essence you make the point really well about saying, I mean I say to our elected members, IGIB the most important infrastructure in the city is not IT and it's not roads it's family and I think that shift that you're talking about about being really thinking through the context of poverty inequality at times where we create a toxic environment for families to do the most difficult task which is parent and I think the promise has done a magnificent job of profiling lived experience I equally think the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry has given strong testimony to the lessons that we need to learn I think picking up your point therefore then needs to be hard reality consensus about the problem that we're collectively trying to fix and I think it's in that complexity we would still say that we need your engagement on because we need to understand the complexity of the ASIS system and the direction of travel that we need to go in so I still think that there is a space there for further dialogue and it's certainly been really helpful this morning in terms of the questions and giving us an opportunity to articulate from a practice and leadership position where we see some of the challenges Once coming on that you don't have to bit Tony Just to echo some of what Mike has said I see it from an elected member point of view and from a council point of view we view that that integration has worked because it has been local and I can speak in terms of my own authority in the services that we provide and there are very strong links between adult social services and children's services because there has to be that they've got to work together in those services it's across everything that we do and that's priority I would still be local and I have sat in integration joint boards myself too so I know where you're coming from but that delivery would still be local Well we don't know that because you're taking a potential aspect away from it the local aspect involves other local authority services it involves our education services it involves our housing services all of that all of that comes together within that and that's where you have that local bond and integration Thank you Tony Can I now move on to our final block of questions from Graham Day please Thank you computer Mike Burns spoke earlier about an evolution taking place around the delivery of services and rights but the 2016 carers act required the provision of short breaks for carers get six years on we're told that only 3% 3% of unpaid carers receive statutory support for breaks from caring section 38 of the bill has the potential to address this for carers in general but specifically young carers a particular element to this given the rate of progress so far isn't that essential to support a group of young people who have a pretty tough time about buying a launch Mike can you go first I think it kind of picks up the point though that we were saying earlier on about we need to see issues in the context of families I take the point that we're not always attuned and we're not always going back to that point about earlier intervention and identification who notices about our ability to then recognise that we're dealing with young carers and I think that again that's our journey that we're on I would point to again the position in relation to kinship care where we've seen a we've seen a recognition of a level of care that really required the state to intervene and support that and I think that there's a parallel there that could reasonably be looked at in the direction of travel that we're on but the point being that six years on the progress has been glacial in dealing with this issue I think that's without doubt fair I think it goes back to the bit about there's a number of lenses to look through an issue on I mean again one of the things that we're saying is that the number of young carers in Glasgow it depends how you engage with that family and that young person sometime they're young carers and we intervene on that footing but a lot of the time it's a wee bit similar to youth justice and various other issues we're often dealing with families where the issues are in and around poverty inequality, trauma and a level of support that we need to wrap around that getting it right for every child so it's about the lens that you use and I think it goes back to the point that Jackie was raising about the promise and I think picking up the point that was challenging clear about and the earlier question about seeing the way that we intervene in a much broader way than simply saying your child protection, your looked after your a young carer and we're actually we need to recognise as a need to wrap around support to families families in a different way absolutely and you articulate that very well we'll go back to the council if you can and I say earlier the exchange delivering local isn't working in that regard is it it's very difficult and I think there's a number of reasons for it obviously there is a need all local authorities recognise that the support that's required in the need in terms of delivering that there are some issues certainly with a lack of respite care or support because of workforce needs which I think most authorities just now are trying to recover I think most have probably got adverts out just now trying to recruit staff to try and cover it so there is an issue in terms of getting the workforce in place there's an issue I think that impacts more impact difficulty with identifying young carers in some instances we have probably identified more post Covid are coming out of the pandemic than perhaps we're aware of so there's an on-going issue in that and I think that comes back to I suppose one of the classic views that I often hear from social work colleagues is that a lot of children in that position who are young carers don't necessarily want to tell anyone and go out and get that support we need to break down those barriers as well and go out and deliver that so there's an aspect here as well but I think we all know that services are struggling just now post pandemic to try and not just get staff but to deliver on that and yes therefore there are problems and issues which is all valid but this is a problem that predates the pandemic as well but it does, it's exacerbated that no thank you very much so I'd like to thank everyone for their time this morning it's been a very very informative session so thank you very much for coming and sharing your views with us we're now going to have a suspension for around five minutes to allow for a change of witnesses and for us to stretch our legs thank you very much so welcome back thank you very much everyone we're going to now take evidence from our second panel today on the national care service Scotland bill so can I welcome to the meeting Ian Nisbit the education law solicitor law solicitor, struggling Cairn legal and my rights my say Cameron Wong, McDermott who's the policy officer from Children and Young People's Commissioner Scotland and Fraser McKinlay the chief executive of the promise Scotland so thank you very much for joining us today and we're going to move straight into members' questions and with this first panel of questions Willie Rennie to kick us off thank you it's a nice and simple question to start off with is it essential to centralise the service to create a national care service in order to deliver a human rights approach we would like to go first Cameron Wong yeah thank you for the question yes I could it's not absolutely central there are multiple different ways to deliver children's services widely defined as social care and social work services it's not absolutely essential that it is delivered through a national care service Fraser I agree with that Mr Rennie I was lucky enough to listen to the earlier session and some members might know I worked for 15 years with Audit Scotland so I've been through quite a lot of reform journey over the years so I recognise a lot of the same issues cropping up all was nice to hear Audit Scotland reports quoted in evidence earlier on so Michael get the check for that later on so is it essential I don't think so in the end it's a judgement I think this is about a judgement about what is most likely to do it and I think for us we're not there yet I don't think it's not essential I don't think that the structure and whether it's delivered nationally or locally actually impacts on whether you can make that a human rights complaint or not the legislation that the Scottish Parliament is looking at bringing in would apply to local authorities as well as it would apply to national care service and as far as making those rights real for people you want a system where disputes can be resolved where complaints can be addressed where people feel that there's an accountability and an involvement and so I suppose my concern is that in moving from a local service delivered by a local authority where you've got locally elected councillors and so on to a national body regional care boards and so on that if that's not done carefully then there's a risk that that's lost and that actually you could have the structures in place and the nominally the rights in place but in terms of making those rights real for children and young people you lose some of that so I think there's a risk there as well just a short follow up then do you know of people within the organisations that you work in or people that you work with who are demanding arguing campaigning for a national care service in order to deliver this approach no no so no but then I'm not sure I've ever heard staff argue for that necessarily at this kind of big level overall the years that I've been involved in and looked at reform and I think at the moment as the panel said earlier on people are really just focused on the day-to-day trying to focus on the work but no I don't think and certainly in the problem of Scotland is that the structure isn't the thing that's going to make the difference in the end okay thank you very much that was short and sharp and now can we move over to questions now from Stephanie please thanks very much convener and thanks for coming along today just on the point there about local elected members in decision making it was my understanding that care boards would actually include elected members different organisations local organisations, third sector voluntary and people with lived experience as well on those care boards so really I suppose just to make that point there so I'm wondering what does a human rights approach look like in the context of the bill so particularly for care experience young people children with disabilities young carers and children with additional support needs as well we can go to you first Cameron no problem thank you for that thank you very much for that question these proposals of course impact a wide range of rights contained in the UN convention of the rights of the child not least article 24 the right of the child to the highest attainable standard of health but also article 27 the rights to an adequate standard of living but your question about taking a human rights based approach it involves the four general principles of the UNCRC being mainstreamed into the processes leading up to decision making this includes at the stage of development of the proposals the consultation stage and at the legislative scrutiny stage so just in terms of background the general principles firstly the principle of non-discrimination that's article 2 of the UNCRC and non-discrimination within the context of the UNCRC isn't limited to the protected characteristics contained in the equality act it would encompass characteristics like children in care or children conflict with the law so what we would expect in terms of a human rights based approach is special consideration given to specific groups of children to be most impacted by these proposals including disabled children care experienced children victims and children in conflict with the law in terms of other general principles that have to be mainstreamed into decision making you've got the best interests of the child's principle which isn't just relevant in terms of individual assessments but involves is relevant in relation to decisions that are made in relation to groups of children so the best interests principle is relevant in terms of service design and delivery and also article 12 of the UNCRC which is the rights of children to express a view and for that view to be given weight in decisions affecting them and what general comment 12 of the UN committee as a child says that article 12 requires meaningful participation in planning, delivery and evaluation of services what this means in terms of practice for this bill is that section 30 of this bill requires ministers to consult publicly and to provide Parliament with a summary of the processes by which they consulted what we would expect on the rights-based approach is that any consultation has to be based on concrete proposals in line with article 12 these proposals have to be informed and designed in partnership with children and those that represent their interests it has to include the voices of groups of children who are most likely to be affected by those proposals including care experienced children at this stage we also note that only a partial children's rights impact assessment has been carried out because of the lack of evidence underlying the proposals so we would expect to see a full children's rights impact assessment in due course and we welcome the Scottish Government's commitment to that in the policy memorandum and finally in terms of taking a human rights-based approach it's vital that there's full legislative scrutiny of those proposals and we have concerns as well as other organisations that the process of proceeding by delegated legislation or regulations won't give that level of full legislative scrutiny that is required to take a human rights-based approach there was a lot in your answer there Cameron Wong and I know there's a lot that will be picked up separately by members as they go on impact assessments being won in particular but can you carry on on that in the human rights theme please? That's really helpful, thank you that's really really incredible helpful so I suppose you know there is that co-production co-design at the centre of it that focuses in the areas that you're talking about so what I'm wondering just now is you know this is a framework bill so really it's about you know producing a bit of legislation that we can then hang the secondary legislation on if you like so I'm wondering though on that framework bill that you would like to see us making a recommendation on it's difficult to say at this stage because of course as you say it's a framework bill and there isn't that level of detail in relation to what services would be coming into would be coming into a national care service however in terms of things that I think are missing at this stage from the framework bill probably how these proposals align with other programmes of transformation in the children's sector so we have for example the direction of travel is moving to early prevention prevention and implementing the commitments made to the promise there's a question mark even with the proposals as they are stated how any structural change to our children's services has delivered how that's going to meet the commitments that the Scottish Government have already made to keeping the promise probably can I interrupt a tiny bit there Cameron Wong it's just we did want to have some questions on the framework legislation later on we've got things planned out a bit so can I steer things back if you don't mind and move to questions from Michael Marra we're looking at a national care service and I suppose in terms of the UNCRC that would potentially be most directly related to articles 9 and 16 about protection of family life in terms of the decisions that the state might make but I suppose I have questions about the breadth of the transfer of powers and your reflections on some of that so for instance you could say that social work and children's services protect articles 26, 27, 28, 29, 32 so access to education health and wellbeing so there's a wide range of services that were being transferred do you have concerns that some of those areas could be lost or neglected and overbearing focus on the issue of care which is incredibly important but that particular focus and maybe Ian in the first instance that's one of the big challenges children's services as you say covers a really broad variety of different functions within local authority and other bodies and to bring that into one service and adequately cover both on the one end of the spectrum family of disabled child who are really seeking services and also the sort of child protection model where that's families who may be keen to engage with those services that is a real challenge and it's difficult to answer questions meaningfully with just a framework in mind I suppose in terms of the human rights approach my day job is I represent children including children aged 12 to 15 with additional support needs in the additional support needs framework legislation what you have there is quite a well developed system of rights including I think critically the ability to resolve disputes where those arise and so for me the idea about something being human rights compliance always has to come down to how are those rights being made real where do we go when there's a dispute about the level of care that's being provided or the type of care that's being provided or something of that sort maybe that's very useful thank you Ian you reflect on some of Ian's comments there I mean where that pertains to care I can understand this within a national care service and how some of those issues how about when that presents itself to the health and wellbeing of a child who is not at risk of care do you see the challenge around protecting those rights in a national care service so yes I think it's worth bearing in mind Cameron's point earlier he will apply to all local bodies delivering the services however they're structured so there shouldn't be any gap and there are pros and cons the risk varies if children's services are in or out your point is absolutely well made Mr Marra about a risk that it becomes too focused on care from the promises perspective the independent care review was about the experience of children young people and families in care but it is also about how we provide early help and support to families to stop kids going into care in the first place so we absolutely have an interest in universal services in all the other stuff that is UC comes with it and I suppose my reflection on the bill is recognising it as a framework it is very frameworky there are some quite big questions to be answered which is quite unusual in my experience you guys are much better than I do in terms of the legislation you look at but I think that's where a lot of uncertainty comes from while absolutely we accept the commitment for co-design and co-delivery I think the letter I sent you or the lead committee back in September points out our concern that there is a risk that you have a legislative process that's kind of almost happening in parallel but it's become disconnected and I think Cameron's really helpful description of the principles I think sets a really high bar for what a human rights approach looks like in its context is it right you mean so that you talked about prevention there and I suppose what would be analogous for me would be the idea that prevention around adults accesses to care services but in that regard it would potentially open up to issues of adult housing the national health service so prevention for children seems to be pulled into this position but not prevention for adults I understand your framework a comment but do you have a yes so I think to be fair the principles that are on the face of the bill do talk about a lot of this stuff they talk about the importance of prevention they talk about the importance of all those things so again I think one of the reasons we end up having this conversation is that it's just not clear what we're talking about at the moment and that's where I think members are right to raise the questions about what's in, what's out and what the implications are for providing the early help and support that we are really clear that families need we have a supplementary from Stephen Kerr on this or maybe Cameron Wong gave a brilliant answer to the initial question about human rights I wanted to ask specifically Cameron Wong about the commissioner's latest report where there are some alarming concerns raised around child protection and safeguarding would this bill enhance or not enhance the concern you have as a commission about these issues I thank you for the question I think at this stage it's far too early to say we know that children's services have been put into this bill at quite a late stage and that the proposals are actually based on the Feeley review which focused on adult social care so I think there needs to be more evidence before we can make a judgment on whether delivery of children's social work and social care services are better delivered through a national care service rather than through local agencies or the third sector agencies that's what I would say at this stage Stephen Kerr if you don't mind moving on to the next section of the questions you might be quite brief in terms of my questions because of the reoccurring theme of lack of evidence and lack of detail but I suppose I'd like to get your views on what you feel the possible impact would be in separating children's services from the current situation you know taking it away from the integration that they currently is at local authority level what is the potential impact on the children I mean if I can comment that from my very specific context which is working with children with additional support needs and one of the key things is the multi agency working and for different agencies to work together and obviously at the moment education and social work come under the same local authority and so there is at least in theory an ease to getting those bodies to work together we see things like social work is being based in schools and things like that local authorities who have joint children services departments and I think there is a real concern that I have that some of that is lost and that we have unintended consequences so to give you just one example if I may the co-ordinated support plan which is the statutory document that some children have for delivery of co-ordinated services across different agencies at the moment because social work is a local authority function the child has an enforceable right to the co-ordinated services they can go to the tribunal get an independent view on whether that's expressed correctly whether it's being delivered and so on if you move that to a national agency then that is lost and it goes into the same basket as health services where you can't go to the tribunal about that the mechanisms for making the rights that you have real are lost and diluted in that service so unless you're going to replace that with something equivalent I think that's a real concern of mine that unintentionally we end up weakening the co-ordinated support plan which is a key statutory document for many children so colleagues are much better to talk about some of the specifics I suppose my observation Mr Kerr would be whichever way you cut this there needs to be good integration in either model so you could argue and I think the point was made earlier that at the moment for a national care service that includes children and families is that it helps the transition between childhood and adulthood because it's all in one place the downside is that you potentially risk breaking the link between other council services and children and families particularly education so whichever way we end up here the need for good partnership working and integration and all the stuff you heard about this morning absolutely still stands for me so I suppose that would be my more overarching observation on your question The imposition of another agency in terms of local working in terms of innovative solutions the originality and creativity that is required to deal with tailored solutions for children's needs would that be undermined in any way by this imposition of a national agency I'm conscious of a point earlier about the answer it's always it depends isn't it but it depends on how it's done so a national anything doesn't need to be a big monolithic you know everything's done exactly the same everywhere kind of service and the care boards are going to be organisations in their own right important distinction I think if I'm understanding it correctly is that they will have their own staff in the way that integration joint boards currently don't so I think there's nothing I think in conceptual terms that should prevent innovation and all the things you've described locally equally there's nothing to prevent those things happening at the moment I come back to the question you know you would need to be really clear that making the change to the national care service in the way that's described with children and families in is the best way to make the difference that needs to be made and your view about the potential it has to do that the national care service has to do that I mean it's just it's just too little detail to go this might get a bit frustrating for you but genuinely we are in the timescales that were described earlier on as I understand that decisions will be made in principle kind of the end of next year end of 2023 and we're going to be working with Celsius and doing some of our own work to ensure that we're informed so that we can inform Government and Parliament about what we think the best option is Does it concern you at all that this research that's about to be done or is underway which I think is due to report in about a year's time which would then the passage of the bill etc but we're going to be looking at this in the wrong direction aren't we Yes, as I said earlier on one of our concerns right from the get go is that the work to do the co-design and the research and everything else is slightly decoupled from the legislative process now that's an approach with the framework and as Ms Callaghan said earlier the idea then is that the regulations and secretary legislation are hung off that it's an unusual approach but I guess from our perspective that's the way it's happening at the moment and we will work to ensure that we are contributing to the research that we are doing our own work to help inform that judgment I think I would say very quickly that I'm sure Clarey would say herself that that research isn't going to provide the answer No in the end there's going to be a lot of different factors that need to be taken account of No that's precursor to the further consultation Cameron Wong, a preview you wish to come in as well Thank you Just very quickly I'd like to recognise that the Children's Commissioner's Office we're not a service delivery organisation so other organisations will have more to say in relation to issues around integration but what I would say is that the proposals do of course present an opportunity to create a rights respecting system that does better integrate children's services at the moment children's care and it's really broadest sense encompasses a wide range of different things you know you have statutory social work services which protect children's most vulnerable children in Scotland you have social care for disabled children you have support for care experience children all of which are provided by statutory agencies and by the third sector children in their lifetime will most likely be engaged with a range of different services multiple different services and the landscape is complex and it is varied so we do agree that better integration of services and a holistic approach does have the potential to benefit a significant number of children the issue around alignment is also important and if a system was devised that had better aligned different services you know for example the alignment between mental health services and for example a additional support needs legislation then that is good but going back to the question about human rights based approach it's vital that this process takes a human rights based approach bearing in mind the principles that I set out earlier in relation to non-discrimination for example to account the views of children giving weight to them I've got a follow-on question if you don't mind so you spoke there Cameron Wong about the human rights concern approach but what are the risks of having a partial impact assessment at this stage and what would be the human rights concerns of working in that way perhaps yourself Cameron Cameron Wong and maybe Fraser Neane I can come in on that as far as I'm aware the consultation on putting children's services into the national care service wasn't accompanied by a children's rights impact assessment to begin with that really isn't consistent with taking a human rights based approach we do note that the current assessment is largely based on the responses to the consultation the analysis report produced by the promise having at this stage such a limited children's rights impact assessment of course raises issues about the extent to which we can scrutinise the legislation at this stage but at the same time recognising that it is a framework bill and hoping that recognising the commitment from the Scottish Government that a children's rights impact assessment a full one will be produced in due course and it's vital just to say at the very end here it's vital that that children's rights impact assessment is done on concrete proposals I'm not on the abstract I'm not sure if any other panelist wants to come in on that I'll just be repeating what Can we move now to questions from Cookab Stewart, please? Thank you, convener the UNCRC so I'm aware that a lot of that has already come out but I'll try and sort of like pull some threads or get you to go a little bit further so we have recognised that it is a framework bill so that's what we're dealing with so in that context the other context of course is that there's no decision at the moment where the children's services will be included in the national care service so we're in that space as well as a committee to look at it so in that way in that context, to what degree can a meaningful assessment of the impacts of the rights be considered at this stage Ian, you've sort of leaned forward, thank you they'll all be sitting like this when they are on Is that how this works? I mean, I think that that's absolutely right that you can't really do a meaningful rights impact assessment until you have the full proposals to know how they're going to be impacted so I think that there's a lot of sense to doing things in that order Thank you Do any of the other panellists have a view? No, I agree with what Ian has said there I suppose the only thing I would say is that there is a big bit of chicken and egg in all of this and because the approach that has been taken is the one that's being taken is difficult to do an impact assessment had a different approach being taken and all of that work done before the bill was introduced then obviously it would have been a different approach but given where we are I absolutely agree that it's hard to do the full assessment before we have done the design work Okay Do you think that with the consideration of the impacts of the rights of children and the families of significant changes to the care system can be undertaken in the time that it takes for the regulations to progress through Parliament sort of looking at timescales here and how they fit together because I just want to explore that a little bit further Cameron Wong Thank you for that question The issue of timescales is something that really concerns us and it's something that we've set out in our consultation response The reason why it's an issue is thinking about the timescales in terms of when the Scottish Government expects services to be functioning in the national care service I have concerns about how we can take whether it's possible to take a human rights based approach within that time frame I'll take for example one issue The Scottish Government has as I understand it committed to co-design and co-design the most intense form of participation when it comes to children and young people it involves participation at a very early stage even before a consultation and I probably just highlight that the promise is an example of good participation care experience, children, adults and we're at the very heart of the promise I've written here that 5,500 people with direct experience of care were involved in that process not only where families heard from but also the workforce that type of human rights based participation and approach takes time, it's very intense and I have concerns and the commissioner would have concerns that that level of participation can be achieved in the time frame being discussed Do you think that there is a risk that children's needs would get lost under the adults needs if it comes into this bill? Not if a human rights based approach is taken of course the idea of co-design is a brilliant one but it has to be given time it has to be given time to be fully achieved Thank you We have a short supplementary on this before we move to the topic of co-design so that's a great lead in there I've just realised that my sub is a little bit co-designy I don't know if that's permissible Can I let her go in, Stephanie? Yes On that point of co-design the committee are being told that no decision has been made by children's services Is it fair and reasonable to do that intensive work with children and young people and I suppose if there's a human rights based approach it will include some vulnerable children and children with additional support needs Is it fair to do that if there might not be the output that they're expecting or how do you do that to make it fair to young people? I can come in on that I suppose the issue of fairness is sort of the idea of participation one of the key requirements is that children their views its meaningful participation children's views have to have an impact on those proposals if it's children's views if that co-design process arrives at the conclusion that children's services are better delivered at the local level and by national by third sector agencies then that has to have an impact on what the Scottish Government does in relation to whether children's services are brought into a national care service so the issue of fairness isn't really the question it's whether the co-design process and the participation process has a meaningful impact eventually at the end of the line We've got Fraser McKinlay wanting to contribute to that as well Very briefly, thank you I've been in this job only two months so I'm learning loads so this is very helpful for me as well and I'm by no means a rights expert but it does seem to me that the meaningful thing is about what questions you're asking what are you working with you don't go to a group of children or out of the care service it's about what matters to them and that's the thing that the independent care review which I wasn't a part of but now I feel like I have the lead role in implementing it is that's what they did they said what's important to you and then it's our job to figure out what that means in terms of structures and governance and accountability and all that other stuff so it's really just to echo Cameron's point that if you're doing that properly it's really tough work and it's a massive challenge to do that in 12 months I would suggest Ok, thank you and Stephanie, can we move on to questions from yourself now please Thank you very much so I think that was quite a good explanation talking about the promise and how that really involved co-production and co-design I think the promise has been huge just that change in culture and ethos and that focus on relationships has been so incredibly important and it's great that it's coming through into other areas as well and very much about the we've been doing things to people rather than doing things with people if you like so I'm wondering as well though and I know you're talking there Cameron for example about 5,500 people that were involved in the promise there and maybe that's a question for you Fraser I'm not saying that we would need to be looking at working with those kind of numbers at that kind of scale but obviously co-design is about involving young people and involving families and I'm just wondering who should be involved and is co-production co-design well enough understood or is there actually work to be done around about that as well to actually help this process I'm happy to start on that and I think yeah I think there is more to be done for people to understand what it really means I think my sense is that it's a phrase co-production co-design that's kind of crept into the lexican and public services over the last few years and I think people use it quite freely sometimes without the kind of thorough understanding that we heard about a second ago I think there's also something I would want to say in this context that we should also recognise that we know quite a lot already so we shouldn't ask the same children, young people and families to tell us their stories all over again so there is something therefore about being really clear what the approach is, what is it that we really need to understand and know about this next stage of the process in relation to the national care service and whether children and families are in or out or indeed whether that's been the right question maybe there's a bigger question what's the best structure and governance to keep the promise that's certainly the approach we took my chair Fiona Duncan wrote a series of blogs over the last two months we're so asking that single question what's most likely to keep the promise now in the end we weren't able to come to a view because the evidence just wasn't there and we are working now still to try and come to a clearer view about this time next year I guess but yes I think there's a lot more to be done for people to really properly understand what the purpose of this co-design process is and how that's going to involve children and families don't know if anybody wants to add anything there your question was who should be involved and I think ultimately the service users so children and young people but I think there can be a tendency to go to people who are already receiving services so I think there needs to be a breath that the net is cast to include those children who maybe aren't receiving services but who would benefit from those in terms of a kind of big picture thinking around that and I agree with what we said earlier you know I think it needs to be a big picture question around what does a service that works for you look like so just kind of following up from there as well does this kind of link in then as well to you know I suppose asset based community development as well then it would be looking only at children and young people and families or are we also looking at all the kind of organisations involved so for example a good example of real co-designing co-production in my area is the Atrotism Hub so you know it starts with the parent carers but it's also all the different local voluntary groups the different local third sector organisations the council are involved the NHS are involved and they've been co-produced from the bottom up and it's also brought in this part of the national care service that we've not really talked about yet the kind of all the informal stuff to you know not just the big care things but all that informal stuff that happens in the background there like the Atrotism Hub that actually have that effect of families and children not reaching crisis point actually having that early preventative early intervention that is really supportive without it being formal or if there's nothing wrong is there a question here Stephanie? Yeah, so that's what I was saying about you know are we just looking at children and families or are we looking at that partnership involvement as well? I think undoubtedly you need to have that and I think you've raised a really important point about the importance of the voluntary sector both formally and informally within that structures within that though you need to recognise obviously that there is a particular position for children and young people as the service users Does anyone else want to come in on this? Cameron Wong You mentioned autism hub there and just to very quickly say that bearing in mind the non-discrimination principle in article 2 of the UNCRC what it's important to recognise that the children who are most disproportionately going to be affected by these proposals are going to be disabled to children care experience children conflict and we know some of those groups face barriers significant barriers to being able to participate and so it's important that there's mechanisms in place to ensure that they can participate properly and fully in any co-design process and that could be through ensuring advocacy services for example That's great Cameron Wong you don't need to be brief on some of these we've got plenty of time but thank you picking up on that thread and again also what Ruth Maguire was saying in terms of the impact of some of these perhaps more vulnerable children being involved in these intensive co-design process if at the end with all of that listening that's been done by the Scottish Government and the outcome is that we don't want to integrate this into a national care service what would be the impact on these young people should the Scottish Government choose to go ahead anyway Children in Scotland have got really good guidance on meaningful participation with children and that's one of the key principles is that there needs to be a reporting back and what did you do with our views and obviously sometimes that isn't and there will be a variety of views as well so not every child's expressed view will end up being exactly mirrored in the legislation so there needs to be as part of that a meaningful reporting back in terms of this is what we did with your views and this is why we've taken the decisions we have Okay Just for what it's worth coming into this job I feel that day in day out because the voices that were heard in the independent care review when the promise reports were published people absolutely recognised themselves and their stories in it and they have an absolute right an expectation for us now to get on and deliver it so in principle terms absolutely if you do a co-design process you need to honour the things that people have told you and the timing commitment that they've given to that process and even if you can deliver on all of it then you need to be honest about that you need to be clear about it you need to be reporting back so I think as a principle and coming up with a good plan it has to be about implementation and beyond I'm looking at the promise making sure that we're on target to implement that so it will be mainly Fraser I'm afraid but please do chip in as much as you can Fraser in a letter to the health and support committee you did say that children and families repeatedly told the independent care review that the way the system works is a primary barrier to change can I ask you to sort of expand on that about what is the impact of the way that the system works at the moment and I suppose I'm sort of wanting a bit more information about what are the problems with the current system and I'm particularly interested in the views of the service users so children and parents not from agencies I think the first thing to say in terms of big picture is that and we heard a lot about this this morning there's no doubt that there is brilliant practice happening across the country but there's equally no doubt that the outcomes for children and young people and indeed into adulthood outcomes for people who have care experience are really poor disproportionately in terms of health, in terms of their experience with justice all the stuff that we know about so the system isn't working at that level we can see that and by the way just as an aside the ex-auditor in me needs to mention the fact that we're spending £1 billion almost every year on a system that doesn't work that well and about £875 million a year picking up the pieces of that system that doesn't work very well so the money is actually important for the money on something that isn't working in terms of some of the stuff coming down a level to the experience of children and families is that we, the care review heard that people felt stigmatised too often that the help that they were getting came too late some of the points that were made earlier so it is at the point of crisis that the help appears that that help is fragmented I was talking to a young woman just a couple weeks ago so a bit anecdotal but I think not unrepresentative of what people are dealing with who had a baby quite young she's now in her mid-twenties and working she was saying that at the time she had to engage with 13 different services to get everything that she needed so this thing about and it's easy for me to say wrapping services around children and families but that actually is at its heart the problem is that we expect children and families to navigate their way through a system that's incredibly complex and we need to completely dismantle all of that and we need to bring it back to what matters to that child and that young mum and that family now there's then a big old question which is how do you do that is a national care service the best way to do it is having children and family services in that national care is the best way to do it is I guess where we are today but as you say Mr Stewart the care review and the promise reports are really really clear what the problems are and actually really clear what must be done and now it's our job to figure out how best to do it so the target to implement all the aspects of the promise by I think is it 2030 correct me if I'm incorrect on that so do you think that this framework at the start of this process will help to accelerate that implementation or do you think it might be a hindrance so the easy answer is I don't know because it is too early to tell I suppose I mean what we do recognise and I think it's been mentioned today already is that there is a risk that we spend the next 12, 18 months, two years figuring out what the new national care system looks like and people are distracted from the important work of keeping the promise I have to say there is a really strong commitment from people and local authorities and partnerships to not do that so I don't doubt for a second that people are really focused on trying to make the changes that the promise requires and there's no doubt that in any change significant structural change you know that there is a risk that that can get in the way and distract so it is genuinely too early to tell I think and in the meantime we are just trying to do everything we can to support local authorities, partnerships and local places and the Scottish Government to deliver the changes that we know need to be made I'm pleased to hear you say that you're feeling there is a strong commitment from all the authorities to keep up the promise as it were because we heard from the earlier panel this morning that they were a bit concerned that people were distracted while the process was going on so I'm glad about that. Can I ask you how you got that evidence? Where did that evidence come from? Is it people speaking to you? Is it submissions? Where does that come from? So it's a bit a combination of all those things so we are a relatively new organisation, we've only been going about a year so a lot of my staff have only joined us in the last six months but we have a team of people for example who look after areas of the country and they're out talking to people all the time Last two weeks I was at a brilliant event in North Ayrshire in Salkoats and they had a promise conference and I did a similar thing in South Lanarkshire the week before there's no doubting still people's commitment to keeping the promise but the headwinds that they are facing are really very strong indeed and I have to say any discussion around the national care service is only one of those and indeed probably not at the moment the most significant one people will talk to you about the impact that poverty is having on their local communities and the impact that around recruiting foster parents foster families is having recruitment around social workers and vacancy, all those things are actually the things that people are finding really challenging and there's no doubt that the prospect of a national care service and everything comes with that does cast a bit of a shadow but in a sense I think there are more pressing concerns for people at the moment that they're trying to deliver the services Just a final one Children's services was to be part of the national care service to help us to keep the promise how do you think it would improve the outcomes because I'm looking at outcomes here and you can have all the structures that you want but we've heard how important it is that children's lives change so how can we ensure that the national care service sort of helps us to do that it seems to me that the core argument since the original failure report which is a really great piece of work, great analysis I thought but the main reason for reaching a conclusion that there should be a national care service was this question of consistency and I'm really interested then in taking that next step because if you say that a national service of anything produces more consistency how does it do that it doesn't do it on its own I don't think one could argue that the national health service in Scotland provides an entirely consistent service in 14 health board areas across the land on its own other things need to happen to ensure that consistency and again there's a question about how best do you do that I think consistency can be achieved in a model that's got 32 local authorities and one of our jobs is to ensure that the good practice that we're seeing in Glasgow is being spread to other places that's part of our leadership role in a sense but clearly that could be progressed in the context of a national care service too I'm conscious, I'm again not really answering the question convener but in the end it is going to be a judgement call I think You're suggesting politicians are better answering questions something I don't know Can we move on to Bob Doris please In this field I suppose this evidence session is about how we can realise the rights of children and young people within the development of a national care service if that's the road that we decide to go down and I absolutely acknowledge you this is a pretty general framework bill which I was looking at during that last line of questioning convener and part of that is the idea of a national care service charter that would be within it it doesn't say very much about that other than that's where you would enthrase lots of various rights that different groups including children and young people would have in their families and carers and everyone else so I'm just wondering irrespective of whether it's desirable to have a national care service or not are there some advantages and opportunities in relation to having a national care service charter for the benefit of children and young people from a human rights services to deliver those rights at a local level but are there some opportunities within the national care service charter having a charter to the extent that it helps people to easily understand what their rights are sets them out in a more human readable way than the legislation I think that's a good thing my question as a lawyer and as somebody representing children and families is always what do we do with those rights so what I would want to see is well where do you go who do you speak to if your charter rights aren't being delivered you know is there an easy system for resolving those kind of disputes and for enforcing those rights and making them real Mr Nils, but you haven't disputed my supplementary question to that but more generally absolutely maybe there are other opportunities within the national care service charter for example if I get interested in palliative care so with the scope of this committee I would like the right to good quality palliative care locally to be entrenched within that national care service charter but specific to this committee and this committee's consideration what are the opportunities for what maybe would like to see entrenched within that charter for children and young people as a non-practising solicitor as well I would completely echo what Ian has said in relation to in relation to a charter under a UNCRC a right to an effective remedy and any charter has to be enforceable but of course children will when incorporation happens they will have their full range of UNCRC rights in addition to any charter and we'll be able to enforce that in our courts That's great, Bob I don't think I got to what the opportunities might be I mean children and young people have all those rights but I can easily document the kind of spells out day to day realisation of those rights in a charter might be desirable separate from I respect the legal background that both Cameron and Ian has but just put bluntly what those rights are rather than the legal remedy but I will now come to the legal remedy I see after the national care service charter which no one's taken the opportunity to say we could entrench some of those rights within that we have advocacy and then we have remedy within the bill but it doesn't say what that remedy should look like but it does say that there would be remedy there does Ian or Cameron or even Fraser want to talk about what a complaints process in remedy might look like within what is a framework bill at the moment so I think what I would be pushing for is to make use of the structures that are already there so we have, as I've mentioned already a support plan and that's backed up by a tribunal in the health and education chamber down south the equivalent tribunal is for health education and social care and so you have some of those elements already and I think it makes sense to make use of the existing systems and to bring those in addition to the tribunal this system of mediation and of independent adjudication which is like a specialist ombudsman system so I think we already have a model that could be adapted and you then have something that children can access across those services and critically at the points where they intersect rather than having to pursue different models so that would be my really strong plea in relation to remedies is that we make use of the systems that are in place already under the additional support for learning legislation so that's helpful the reason I tied this to the charter was because people can read what's in the charter in easy accessible language they can look at the service they get and they can go that's a service field where my rights have been breached I want to do something about that which is a very obvious way of trying to without always having to go to a legal recourse so there are opportunities to make accessing your rights more accessible and readily available for children and young people I'm trying my best to tease out what this could mean in practice for what is actually a framework bill Cameron do you want to maybe comment on that? I would echo the points that Ian has made in relation to remedy, accountability but in terms of the opportunities of course it could be an opportunity but you mentioned that children and young people have to be fully aware of their rights and that's something that in terms of post incorporation of the UNCRC in terms of implementation that has to be one of the key focuses ensuring that children and young people are fully aware of their rights because if you're not aware of your rights how can you even begin to think about issues around I won't go back in can I make the briefest of comments you're not very good at making the briefest of comments but this would be the half hour we're talking a lot about there's not very much in the bill and it's a framework what I've tried to do is actually mention things that are in the bill but witnesses haven't really latched on to the things that are in the bill and have taken us back to the abstract and it would have been helpful if witnesses latched on to what is in the bill rather than what's not in the bill that's a comment rather than a question I'll relate back to what Mr Doris is saying and some of the comment that Fraser said earlier on about the services that need to be around the family and the child rather than them having to navigate through all the quagmire and the complexities that we have in our existing which I suspect a charter may help to help with that perhaps who knows but I want to ask a very succinct question who right now has accountability considering the promise who's got that accountability Fraser the million dollar question not easy then the simplest questions are often the hardest one to answer Scotland has a responsibility to keep the promise I know that's an easy thing to say but it's genuinely because there isn't a single organisation or single person that can do this so Scottish Government, Scottish Ministers clearly have a central role in particularly the systemic change that needs to happen so the policy, the legislation all those big things that only Government can do but local authorities as we've heard today several times and their partners with particularly the third sector are the people day in day out delivering practice which really makes the difference our job in the promise Scotland as an organisation of 25 people is to lead the change is to facilitate that change is to knock heads together when we need to and is to join the dots where we need to so it is and one of the reasons I was fascinated by the job in a sense is that it is a genuinely systems wide approach that's required so I hope I'm not ducking the question but it genuinely isn't as simple as there being a single person or a single body is to be clearer about who's responsible for what because I think that isn't as clear as it should be and that's one of the things I'm quite keen to focus on in the early months of the job perhaps it's the First Minister that's ultimately responsible then for delivering the promise so we are really pleased about the fact that the First Minister has it in her portfolio at the moment I think that the commitment at the most senior levels of government and indeed across the Parliament is one of the fantastic things about the promise party support and in the same way you could argue that in the end the First Minister was responsible for lots of stuff but we also recognise that that political commitment in government across Parliament in 32 councils isn't going to do it on its own thank you we're going to move on to questions now regarding the framework legislation which I had alluded to leading this section is Graham Day please can I ask you to assess the merits and risks of the framework as you termed it the nature of the proposal as it's put forward set against the merits and risks of coming at this from a different direction which would be to not include this as a framework element to the bill to do the research and the consultation and then at a future date decide well actually we're going to do this and services into the equation and then have to dovetail it with what presumably will be in place with a national adult care service so what are the merits and risks set against each other of those two approaches who would like to go first on that one Ian perhaps yeah so I think the obvious risk of the framework approach is that you then have quite large and significant changes in structure and in law that have to be introduced by secondary legislation that inevitably doesn't get the same degree of parliamentary scrutiny and potentially is more open to legal challenge and so on all the things that go along with secondary legislation I think in particular because of the because of the interconnected nature of children's services it's because it's across different bits of legislation and dovetails with others I think that's a particularly complex job to be to be devolving to there obviously the advantages of having that is it's flexibility it's easy to change things if change is needed at a later stage and so on it's something that governments tend to quite like and Parliament's less so but there's a balance to be had there you can't put everything through through primary legislation time wise I have some concerns about the scale of the task that's being asked to be put through on regulations in this instance but maybe the drafters who are responsible for that will prove me wrong in due course but the practical implications of doing it the other way are quite obvious as well I think that's right that there's an opportunity in doing it the other way to as we've heard gather the evidence and do the hard draft in advance and the hard work in advance rather in terms of consultation and co-production and those kind of things which we've heard are really important part of this I want to come back to something that you said earlier but other people may want to ask that first question Yeah, just to thanks for the question in terms of the disadvantages or the kind of challenges I suppose echoing some of what Ian has said there it makes it a little bit of a challenge at this stage to properly scrutinise the bill in terms of what services are actually going to be brought into any national care service so that's one of the challenges and supporting Ian's highlighted there the issue about doing this all through secondary legislation Scottish Parliament has a role as a human rights guarantor and has a role to fully scrutinise these types of proposals which are entirely incredibly complex they will be varied and I have a concern that doing this through secondary legislation or delegated legislation won't give the adequate scrutiny that's required for potentially regulations of extreme complexity Thank you Fraser? Yeah, the only thing I would add to try and come to your point about the practicalities of it is there's no doubt that one of the things I would be concerned about is children and families being a bolt on and a kind of second we've designed a new adult national care system and now we need to figure out how children and families plug into that if I'm understanding the question so that there's no doubt that there's no no risk option here I guess is what I'm saying but either way you do it there are risks I guess what I would say is that and this isn't a terribly helpful comment because it's in the past but I think there's no doubt that having set up a review of the adult care system which suggested a thing and then introducing children and families kind of unexpectedly at the consultation stage meant that there was the next bit of this process was always going to be quite challenging I think so I absolutely recognise Mr Day that there's risks on both sides and you know our job now is to make sure that we can do everything we can to help to manage the risk to get to the right answer So two further questions I'm making here one probably for Cameron Wong what detail, specific detail around what this would look like in reality would you require to be more comfortable about the approach that is proposed and going back to some of you in this bit rightly alluded to earlier on there will be considerable interaction with other pieces of primary legislation around an approach that's based on a framework bill at the outset can you kind of indicate you talked about scale but some specifics around the interactions that might present challenges in getting everything right if we take this approach so Cameron Wong first if that's okay Thank you for the question Fraser mentioned there the concern that children and young people are a bolt on here and so far there has been really limited opportunities for empowerment and participation of children and young people irrespective of the questions around detail that is an issue that is a clear issue that is important to bear in mind in terms of other things that are potentially missing at this stage in terms of detail is how of course while these proposals align with current programmes of transformation such as the promise but not just in terms of the promise but also other legislative reforms that are currently underway which would have a transformative effect on how children and young people's social care and social work services are delivered so just to highlight for example the care and justice bill consultation which makes proposals in relation to the children's hearing system, secure care all of all issues that are potentially at play here in relation to the national care service bill you've got Sheriff Mackie's working group on redesigning of the children's hearing system as well that the final outcome of that working group review hasn't been published yet and I thought about my head as well the Barnahus proposals as well so there's a range of different legislative reforms underway so it's absolutely key that any proposals in this bill have to be aligned with those programmes as well as legislative reforms My principal area of practice as a leader to already is additional sport for learning in the education system and just thinking about the overlaps there so I mentioned already the co-ordinated sport plan and the impact that taking that the children's services out of local authority control and international care service would have on that also number of children who might require residential provision and obviously they require education so that's often in a residential school setting and you've got to look at what are the different routes that people making into those kind of provisions whether it's through the educational tribunal who has jurisdiction here but also often it's a social work decision or it's by the children's panel and so there's questions about how those overlap what happens if the children's panel take a decision that's different to a decision that the educational tribunal might take and so on and that's before we even get into questions around cross boundary there's a lot of children within the residential school sector in Scotland who resided in England or Wales and the legal complexities that arise there to cover in terms of any set of regulations that was going to address those questions thank you that was useful now Michael Marra witnesses may feel they've all already covered this but I just wanted to for completeness I suppose ask if there was any other relevant existing primary legislation that might interact with the bill that you felt hasn't been considered or needs to be considered I mean I've mentioned the additional sport for learning legislation already and that's the kind of obvious one that springs to mind just because that's the area that I practice in and I think in practice isn't often well understood by social work services the list provided to the committee is not exhaustive I think but social work Scotland act 1968 children act 1975 foster children Scotland act 1984 children act 2007 children hearings act 2011 children young people act 2014 carers Scotland act 2016 age of criminal responsibility act 2019 I mean this is a very complex area of primary legislation interacting with this I mean is it possible to deal with this properly in secondary legislation Cameron Wong yeah thank you for the question and yeah alluding to my previous answer on the long list of pieces of legislation set out at schedule 3 it includes a very very broad range of different functions that could be taken away from local authorities and brought into a national care service so the landscape the structural landscape has always been very complex in relation to social care there's a risk that if we do this by way of regulation and delegated powers then there's a risk that the issues bringing us to this table bringing us to a national care service could be compounded and just made worse so that's a clear risk I just know that there's a McKinley nodding at that point yeah I think the point that was the point I was going to make at the end there if we go down this road then we need to be really clear that it's going to make things simpler and not more complicated because one of the issues that we've had and again I wrote reports about it from day 1 in integration is that we have a very complex governance and delivery landscape so if we're doing something of this scale it needs to be clear that it's going to make it clearer and simpler and I think as we've said at the moment that that isn't clear from the face of the bill and that's the work that's underway I think it can mean that the lists applied at section at schedule 3 is useful but perhaps in particular the Children's Commissioner's Office if they had any other areas that they felt they might want to in correspondence write to the committee and supply any concerns of further legislation I think that that would be particularly useful to the committee as well that's okay, can be done yes that's perfect thank you on that with the clear message about making things more simple we will draw the meeting to a close today and we will now consider our final agenda items in private, thank you Ian, thank you Cameron Maughan, thank you Fraser