 Izzwydd, yn fawr, ac yn gweithio i gweithio ddod 58 o fy Gwladdau Socialissaol i Gwladdau Socialissaol. Felly, fawr, cyhoeddon o'r ddod yn amlwg. Felly, i gweithio i gweld gennymau mewn ythafodol. Felly, mae'n rhai ddialog i ddod yn gweithio i gweld John Mason i gweithio i gymhreir ymateb James Dornan. I thank James for his valued contribution to the committee. Our first item of business today is to invite John Mason to declare any relevant interests. I do not think that I have anything relevant to declare. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item 2, our next item of business for today, sorry, Mary. Just to declare that I am a previous councillor from 2003 to 2022. Okay. I also have Paul Cain once coming in and Rose McCall. Thank you, convener. I was previously a councillor from 2012 until 2022. Thanks, Paul. Rose? I was also a councillor from 2017 for that term. Okay. I just declare an interest as well. I was also a local councillor for South Lanarkshire from 2017 to 2021. I believe Jeremy wants to come in as well. Thank you, convener. I'll just join everybody else. I was a former councillor in the City Council from 2015. Okay. I don't see any other hands up. So our next item of business for today is a decision to take agenda items 6 and 7 in private. Are we all agreed? Yes. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item 3, our next item is consideration of a Scottish statutory instrument, the council tax reduction Scotland amendment number 3, regulations 2023. This instrument is subject to the negative procedure and the purpose of the instrument is to amend certain council tax regulations to make sure some payments are not regarded as capital or income when calculating entitlements to council tax reduction. The payments concerned are the Grenfell tower payments, the post office compensation payments and the vaccine damage payments. The instrument also clarifies that the capital of the person liable to pay council tax has no impact on the person's entitlement to second adult rebate. The Irish citizens who come to Scotland from Ukraine do not require leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom. Do members have any comments on the instrument? I invite the committee then to agree that it does not wish to make any further recommendations in relation to this instrument. Are members content to know the instrument? Yes. We are moving on to agenda item 4, kinship care. Next, this morning, is an evidence session on kinship care, and this follows on from the committee's short inquiry into kinship care in 2022. I welcome to the meeting Natalie Dawn, minister for children's young people and keeping the promise. I also welcome her officials Dawn Abel, unit head caregivers, and Louisa Brown, family care team leader improving lives for people with care experience, Scottish Government. A few points to mention about the format of the meeting before we start. Members online, please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn their microphones on before you start to speak. I ask everyone to keep questions and answers as concise as possible. I now invite the minister to make a short opening statement. Thank you, convener, and good morning to the committee. I am very grateful to the committee for inviting me along this morning to give evidence, and I really welcome the opportunity to discuss the new Scottish recommended allowance for foster and kinship carers. Of course, the wider work that the Scottish Government is undertaking to support kinship carers. Kinship care has evolved over many decades, and during that time, there has come an increased recognition and value for the role that kinship carers play in providing secure, stable and loving homes for children and young people when they are no longer able to live with their birth parents. I want to put on record my sincere thanks to kinship carers at the outset for stepping in to provide children with a home, often at very short notice and within complicated family dynamics. I know that given that care can be multifaceted, and that is why the Scottish Government is committed to providing both financial and practical support for kinship carers, so they are best equipped to love and nurture the children that they look after. On 30 March last year, we published our implementation plan, setting out the actions that we would take to keep the promise by 2030. In the plan, we restated our intention to introduce a Scottish-recommended allowance for kinship and foster carers in order to end the inequality and ensure consistency across Scotland. As the committee knows, this has been a Scottish Government commitment since 2018, and I know that the time that it has taken to deliver on this has been a source of frustration to both caregivers and stakeholders. That is why, in August this year, I was really delighted to announce that we had reached agreement with COSLA about a new national weekly allowance that all local authorities must pay to their foster and kinship carers. We estimate that the new Scottish-recommended allowance will benefit more than 9,000 children, and it has been funded by an additional £16 million from the Scottish Government. That funding enables the allowance to be backdated to 1 April this year. It is up to local authorities to decide how best to do that and to make sure that there are no unintended consequences for families. We know from some initial feedback that some local authorities have already implemented the new allowance and have made the back payments, but others are expecting to do so at the end of November or soon afterwards. We will use our existing forums, groups and networks as feedback loops to help to identify any obstacles to implementation and, importantly, to help local authorities to overcome any obstacles and share good practice. Once the Scottish-recommended allowance has bedded down, we will also review it more formally and identify any areas where improvements could be made. When I announced the new allowance, I committed to maintaining the 23-24 levels of support for the allowance that is going forward and to review the funding implications for future years from 24-25. Like all of you, I am acutely aware of the cost of living pressures on families and I am considering what we might do for future years given our fixed budget and the significant financial challenges that we are facing. I will be able to say more on this after the Scottish budget has been set out by the Parliament in December. We recently had Care Experience Week, which was an opportunity for everyone to celebrate the Care Experience community. I visited Siblings Reunited or STAR, otherwise known as, and met staff in a small group of volunteer supporters. STAR provides a safe environment to bring together sibling groups separated in care to form positive experiences and relationships, and what that visit really reiterated to me was that, while important, funding is only one part of how we can improve the experiences of those in care and for their carers, too. That is one of the reasons why, along with partners, we established the Kinship Care Collaborative in 2020. As you will know from your previous inquiry, it is working hard to deliver improvements in support for kinship carers, children and professionals working with kinship families across Scotland. Following recommendations in last year's social justice and social security committee report on kinship care, the collaborative established a rewrite group to refresh the existing kinship care guidance for practitioners. The rewrite group has been examining the guidance with a view to updating it so that it reflects updated legislation and also growing knowledge and experience of what works in kinship care. The refreshed guide will also clarify many of the issues that both the committee and stakeholders have told us that are open to interpretation. This includes the meaning of at risk of being looked after and placed with the involvement of the local authority. Our aim is to publish this by the end of the year. Alongside that, a group of practitioners are helping us to develop a new national kinship assessment framework, which will complement the refreshed guidance and will help to improve the consistency of approach and practice. We are also taking action to promote the work of the collaborative, as I know that this is an issue that the committee raised previously, and ensure that it is open, transparent and accessible to all stakeholders, kinship care families and others with care experience. More broadly, work is also on-going across wider government to support kinship carers. For example, we are working with partners and caregivers to develop a plan for delivering trauma training for kinship and foster carers, as well as adoptive parents. We have also made it easier for kinship carers to apply for Scottish social security benefits that they are eligible for, expanding the definition of kinship carer to make it as inclusive as possible in consultation with those with lived experience. I believe that the totality of the work happening across government, specifically to target kinship carers but also help families more generally, should help us to achieve our ambition to keep the promise by 2030. Finally, I just want to say that I really welcome the committee's interest in kinship care and the Scottish recommended allowance. I am equally happy to answer any questions that you may have for me this morning. Now we move on to questions, and our questions will be directed to you, but you are of course welcome to invite any of your officials to respond should you wish to do so. I am going to kick off with question number one. How do you work towards providing clear and accessible information for kinship carers about legal arrangements around kinship care and how to access their rights, support and advice? How is that progressing? That is obviously extremely important, and I touched on that in my opening statement. We need to ensure that kinship carers can access their rights, support and advice that they are entitled to. The kinship care collaborative established a communication subgroup. It gave a clear steer that the first step towards this was to ensure that local authority websites held up-to-date information on their kinship care policies. The subgroup has written to the office of the chief social worker requesting its assistance in contacting all of our local authority chief social work officers to highlight the importance of ensuring that relevant information is published and that it is updated regularly and made available to carers and practitioners. That is a legal requirement under the kinship care assistance Scotland Order 2016. The letter to the office of the chief social worker also asks that local authority websites provide links to the kinship care advisory service for Scotland website, which is funded by the Scottish Government. The website contains a wide range of information that will assist kinship carers such as financial support such as welfare benefits, information on legal orders and the advice service also runs a helpline that offers a callback service when out of normal operating hours and it provides a range of free training packages. There is work going on there. As I said at the beginning, we understand that it is extremely important and impositives that the on-going work will help to improve matters. As I was just building on that, there is obviously information and advice available as you have outlined. I am keen to understand how people are aware of that, particularly for those kinship carers who are entering into that kinship arrangement for the very first time and perhaps are navigating a new landscape. What action has the Government and its agencies taken to make sure that information is getting out to people? Although it is the responsibility of the local authorities to ensure that that information is available, as I said at the beginning, we appreciate the importance of that and want to ensure that people have the information and support that they need. I think that the launch of the refresh guidance will provide a really good opportunity for everyone in the care sector to promote kinship care as an option for children and young people, and we will ensure that information on the Scottish Government website alongside that, as well as the kinship care advisory service is updated regularly. I think that there is a lot of work on-going with that. As I said, it is down to the local authorities, but the Scottish Government is providing support to ensure that that information is available and accessible, and we will continue to monitor that and look at ways that we can possibly improve that as well. I wonder if the minister can also update on the guidance rewrite group and how updated guidance will be communicated with local authorities. We are talking about local authorities having the key role in disseminating that information, but how do we ensure that there is a smooth implementation at that point for local authorities? I appreciate that there has obviously been a slight delay in the publication of that guidance, and that was really because we wanted to ensure that we engage really widely, but I believe that I mentioned in my opening remarks that we are on schedule to publish that by the end of the year. The rewrite group is currently refining the document, and it will be reviewed by members of the reference group once they are content with that. That includes the child poverty action group, the Scottish public services ombudsman, and the kinship care advisory service for Scotland. We are also intending to engage with kinship carers in the last week in November, so that will be included in that as well. It is really worth highlighting that the collaborative also agreed to form a working group that would develop a new national assessment framework for kinship care, and that framework reflects that the kinship assessment is unique in that it assesses a carer for the needs of a specific child, unlike a foster care assessment, and also considers what extra support might be required within the family. The framework has been developed as a companion piece to the refreshed guidance, so it is going to be published at the same time as that, and there are plans to put in place a programme of awareness raising and training for practitioners, managers and local authorities to support the roll-out and the implementation of that guidance and the assessment framework. That is all with the aim of improving practice in Scotland. I wonder to what extent has the social work profession been engaged in all of that work, either through Social Work Scotland or the representative bodies? So, there has been engagement with social work. I will bring officials in to give a little bit more clarity around that. Hi. The kinship care collaborative is co-chaired by myself and Ben Fradja from Social Work Scotland. They have been involved from the very beginning. The rewrite groups and the other subgroups that operate as part of the collaborative have members of local authorities on them. Indeed, the assessment framework group has service managers who are advising on what an assessment framework for kinship care would look like. Fully involved from start to finish. I wonder to what extent have they raised concerns about capacity in local authorities and the resource in order to be able to deliver an updated and refreshed framework and to implement the changes that we are talking about on the front line. Louisa, you may wish to come in on this. My understanding from working with Social Work across the piece on a range of issues is that there is a capacity issue, generally, as you are aware. They have not expressed any significance or concerns about being able to implement the updated guidance or indeed the assessment framework. On the assessment framework, at the moment, there is not a national tool, so lots of different local authorities are using different forms. What they have told us is that they would welcome something from the Government that they could use that would help them improve practice and improve consistency, rather than them scraping about for bits and bobs and adapting existing frameworks that they have in place at the moment. I am aware of the work on kinship care that has been carried out in both health and social care partnerships in my constituency. I know that they have started to issue back payments, so I am interested in when local authorities will receive the £16 million announced by the Scottish Government. Are you confident that the money will be sufficient? Yes, I am absolutely confident that there is sufficient funding there to support the rollout of the recommended allowance. The £16 million figure that funding was based on the difference between the cost of paying the Scottish recommended allowance or higher and the current local authority expenditure on foster and kinship care allowances. That has been negotiated, worked out through negotiations with COSLA. It has been modelled using current local authority expenditure on children and foster and kinship care, including informal kinship care, and the most up-to-date data from the children's social work statistics. On 18 October, the Scottish Government issued a letter to local authority directors of finance detailing how much funding they were receiving. The letter would enable local authorities to implement the allowance knowing the level of funding that they will receive. The actual money will be transferred from the Scottish Government at the end of the financial year through the local government settlement funding mechanism. As you will be aware, that is standard practice. Regarding distribution, the £16 million funding is being distributed on the same basis as the existing kinship care allocation, so that distribution has recently been changed to 35 per cent numbers of children aged 0 to 18 in low-income families, 35 per cent numbers of children in receipt of Scottish child payments and 30 per cent in the not-to-18 general population. That is for the full 23 to 24 financial year. What information do you have with regard to how many local authorities are delivering the minimum rate so far? I touched on that a little bit in my opening statement. The Scottish Government does not hold information on what local authorities have already backdated the payments because it is up to local authorities to decide how best to implement that according to their systems. I am aware that some local authorities implementing the allowance might require either changes to their financial systems as well as calculating those backdated amounts, contacts and carers, so the time needed to undertake that might be different for each local authority. However, we have received positive feedback that some local authorities have already implemented the new allowance and have made those back payments. Others are expecting to do so by the end of November and soon afterwards. I want to be really clear that that is a legal requirement as set out in the kinship care assistance order, which requires local authorities to publish information about kinship care assistance. That includes the rate at which allowances are payable. As part of that grant letter that went out in October, the Scottish Government has also asked local authorities to publish its kinship and foster allowances and to take the necessary actions to ensure that all current kinship and foster carers are aware of the rates. As I said, we are absolutely positive that that will be carried out in a good time, based on how that local authority needs to carry that out. We will monitor that forward as well. I will bring Jeremy in, who is online with us, for a quick supplementary. I invite Ross McAllan. Good morning, minister and two-year service servants. Just to follow up on the last point that you made, clearly, as a committee, we are keen to see that that does happen across all 32 local authorities. My understanding is that carers do not keep that information either. Is it your intention to write out two local authorities at the end of this financial year to make sure that they have done that? If they do that, would it be possible to share that information with the committee towards the middle of this year? Absolutely. I would obviously hope that it would not get to that stage. As I said, we have already had positive feedback on the local authorities who have implemented that already. I hope that by the end of the financial year we will have positive feedback that that has been implemented across the board. I am happy to share that information with the committee if it is required. Good morning, minister. Thank you very much indeed for your opening statement. That was very informative. I am looking for some clarity this morning. Stakeholder groups have called for the Scottish Government to clarify which kinship carers are eligible for the Scottish recommended allowance. Can you give me clarity on that, please? Absolutely. I appreciate that that is required. To be very clear, there has been no change in legislation with that. The eligibility of kinship carers for the allowance remains the same as outlined by the kinship care guidance for practitioners. Essentially, kinship carers who hold a kinship care order and receive an allowance under the kinship care assistance Scotland order remain eligible for the allowance. However, I have mentioned refreshing the guidance on kinship care to make that clearer. As I mentioned earlier, my expectation is that that will be published by the end of the year, because I know that stakeholders and carers are calling out for that. Just on the eligibility, kinship carers who are looking after children under section 7 or section 25 of the Children's Scotland Act 2011 would also be eligible for the allowance, but I know that that is a bit of a muddled landscape, so I am hoping that the refreshed guidance adds a little bit of clarity around that. That would be very good to read. I do not think that there is really anyone who can not identify the difference between the needs of a five-year-old and a 15-year-old. However, the allowance for five to 11 and 11 to 15 is exactly the same. Kinship Care Advice Service Scotland has said that that is challenging to understand. Can you give your reasonings behind that, please? Absolutely. I have heard some of the commentary around that, too. In terms of those allowance, the group who undertook the 2018 national review of care allowances, which was informed by consultation with stakeholders, with caregivers and with children and young people, decided that the allowance payment rate should be broken down into three age groups. That was the zero to four, the five to 15 and the 16 plus. Those age bands are also comparable to those used in Wales for the allowance in Wales. It is fair to say that the evidence is limited and rather mixed. Some people tend to think that babies and young children toddlers are more costly, while others think that older children are more costly to look after. The most recent research that we have seen conducted by Moneyfarm suggests that, in 2023, it is more costly to support a six to 11-year-old than to support a 12 to 14-year-old. It attributes that to the cost of age-appropriate toys for younger children and the rate at which clothes and school uniforms need to be replaced. What I would say is that the allowance has only just been introduced. It is obviously a hugely positive move, but we are open to the feedback. We will continue to gather that feedback from kinship caterers and stakeholders, and we will consider that issue when we formally review its implementation in the future, as I have previously mentioned. I am going to invite Katie Clark. I was going to ask about how uplifts will be calculated to take into account the cost of living increase. Will that be by inflation or by another formula? I am very switched on to the cost of living pressures, and work is on-going to consider the funding implications for future years for 24-25, as I am sure you are all aware, in the context of inflation, in the context of our fixed budget, and the significant financial challenges that the Scottish Government is currently facing. I think that I would probably be able to say more on that after the Scottish budget has been set out in December. Discussions with COSLA around uprating will be picked up in due course, but, as I said in my opening statement, the Scottish Government did make a commitment to maintaining the 23-24 levels of support and to reviewing those funding implications going forward, as I said, I would probably be able to say more after the budget process. That is fine and obvious, if the minister could keep the committee updated, that would be very helpful. Have you given thought to what more can be done for kinship carers who are not going to be eligible for this support? Absolutely. I think that I mentioned that in my opening statement. Although financial support is extremely valuable and required, there are other forms of support that kinship carers might need as well. Support, I think, can be practical and emotional, as well as financial. For example, a kinship carer could seek advice and support from their local authority at any point, but in terms of other support, the Scottish Government provides funding to adoption UK Scotland and the Association of Fostering Kinship and Adoption for the Kinship Advice Service for Scotland. That is with the aim of delivering a wide range of support, advice and information to help kinship carer families. We have also awarded £989,000 of whole family wellbeing funding to Adoption UK Scotland over the past three years to pilot a new approach to ensure that kinship carer families can get the range of holistic support that they need. That has a focus on education and community support, including peer support. Are you able to give us an update regarding the recommendations of the English independent review of children's social care and whether progress can be made towards the introduction of paid leave for new kinship carers? Absolutely. My officials are in regular contact with their counterparts in the UK Government, and as I understand, whilst paid leave has been introduced by some organisations such as Tesco, I believe that it is still being considered by the UK Government, but I am very happy to write to my counterpart, the Secretary of State for Education, to request an update on that to see where we are. That would be great. Obviously, if you could share that with the committee, that would be very helpful. Of course. Thank you very much. I am now going to invite John Mason in. As well as financial support, kinship carers may need other support. We have had some evidence at committee that some kinship carers might be nervous if they go to local authority that there are going to be barriers raised and that they might not be able to keep the children. An obvious one would be housing that an elderly couple might not have a large house and suddenly they have the grandchildren with them. Can you say anything about that and how we are dealing with that? Of course. In terms of our overall values and our aims for this, good practice and the promise tells us that the best place for a child to live whenever a child is not able to live with their birth parents would be within the wider family. It is absolutely in the safe and best interests of the child to do so. I do not think that any kinship carer should ever feel isolated and unable to approach their local authority for support should they require it. I have already touched on some of the other forms of support that they could access, but in terms of those specific concerns around not being able to keep that child, the consideration to remove a child from their kinship family would only be done after a full assessment of that situation. It would not be taken lightly and it would not be taken lightly. It would only be done if there was evidence to suggest that it would be detrimental to the wellbeing of the child or young person to stay with that family. Efforts would be made to ensure that that family could stay together. I think that the roll-out of the guidance and the assessment framework that I have already alluded to will provide a further opportunity to underline the support that might be required for kinship families to access who might be having those thoughts or feeling that way. To press you a little bit further, is it possible that a council takes the children away because the grandparents would be overcrowded if they do not have enough bedrooms? Based on what I said, I do not believe so, because that would not be in line with the decision to ensure that the removal of the child is what is best for the child if it is simply down to a housing situation. Obviously, it is for the local authority to deal with their housing stock and everything, but I would imagine that best efforts would be made to ensure that that family could stay together. I do not think that that would be an acceptable reason for a child to be removed. But Glasgow City Council does not have any housing stock? Well, as I said, it would be down to the local authority, but I am sure that efforts would be made to ensure that children could stay with their family. As I said, it is down to the local authority. I accept a lot of it, but it is down to the local authority. I hope that a reasonable approach would be taken, but sometimes we do find with some local authority officials that it is very much a legalistic approach that is taken. If a house is technically overcrowded, there is no movement on that. I hope that your words today are reassuring and will encourage people, but I think that there is still a genuine fear. Just to broaden it out a bit more, what other support—like schooling and things—is important to children not moving school preferably? Obviously, kinship carers might be further away. Can you say anything about those areas? Absolutely. As I said, the best efforts would be made to ensure that what is right for the child is kept, so that the child faces as little disruption as possible. I will perhaps bring officials in to elaborate on that a little further for you. I just wanted to mention a little bit more about the assessment framework and then to say something about how we are supporting children in schools. The assessment framework that I mentioned earlier would look at the appropriateness of carers, but also what support is needed for the whole family so that the child could stay with that kinship carer. Some of that might involve education, housing and so on. In terms of education, the Scottish Government did introduce a care experience children and young people funding in 2018-19, which is part of the wider Scottish attainment challenge funding. That provides funding to local authorities so that they can put in place initiatives to support care experience children and get the best educational outcomes that they can. That would include kinship carers. There are also additional monies that we are given for Celsys, who you will be aware of, to facility to network of virtual head teachers again to swap good practice and support around care experience children and young people. I had a case some time ago, but the grandparents did live, or I think it was the grandparents, some distance away from the parents and they wanted the kids to go to the local school of the grandparents because that was going to make it a lot easier, but that local school was full. So is it entirely up to local authorities in that situation just how they prioritise places for the kids, or is there, again, the Government of any thoughts on how that can be addressed? I do not have any further detail on that. As I mentioned earlier, the assessment framework sets out the type of things that local authorities will want to consider when thinking about how they can best support kinship care families and their children. Obviously, in terms of our journey towards keeping the promise and everything that the Scottish Government is working on, aims and priorities, those kind of things are very useful to learn and to understand and to assess how we can help to ensure that situations like that do not happen. Or, as I said in my previous answer, disruption to the child is kept at a minimal level, so those are on-going processes and we will consider them going forward. Thank you very much. I will invite Rosyn for a supplementary and then I will bring in Bob. Thank you. That was very interesting. I would like to add a question on the blending between informal and formal. Everything that we are talking about really obviously is formal kinship care because that is through that process, but the support needs of people who might be nervous about coming forward for additional support because they have an informal arrangement and would not want to see themselves moving into what would be considered a very formal arrangement. Is there any blending there or how do you envisage that crossover line that always comes when you come to the outsides of any policy? Sure. Again, I would not want any kinship care to feel like they are stuck in a situation and cannot come forward to help to seek the advice, the guidance or the support that they require. I will perhaps hand over to officials to go into a little more detail on that. It should not really matter whether you are formally looked after or informed in some sort of informal kinship care. The family should be able to approach their local authority and seek help and get an assessment of need and support without going through a formal route of the child becoming looked after. They should get all the support that those children receive that are looked after. Like the minister said, they should not feel reticent about doing that. It should not feel like they are formalising it. They should just get it right for any child that any child should be able to, and families should be able to approach the local authority for the support that they need. That is the intention with that. We hope that the guidance also clarifies that further for families and practitioners knowing that the support is available. The guidance will therefore do that, but those are families that obviously are not. There needs to be a little bit of promotion and effect or an understanding from people who are not currently through that social work process and that council process, but that assistance is there. Will that be coming forward too? I would like to say that when we launch the guidance, yes, we would like to get that further out there definitely through our virtual head teacher networks and education and other places that we would really like to highlight kinship and the support that is available to all families. I will quickly come in with a question on that just before I bring in Bob. It is more related to the informal setting in kinship care, particularly for children and families who are at a temporary thing. Maybe it is because the parent or the carer is going through the criminal justice system or they are going through addiction services as well. Is that how much awareness is going out on that and the financial support there as well from an informal setting? I think that certainly kinship awareness is being raised more generally in line with the promise and as we deliver on that, but perhaps there is more to be done in specific settings like justice. Children are even in a wholly private arrangement in kinship. We still recognise them as kinship placements and they should be able to dip into the support if they need it and when they need it just because a family is stepped in to support and look after children and it is totally private and does not have any involvement, does not mean that circumstances can change and they do not need that support. I would certainly welcome people to come forward if they need that, but perhaps there is more as we launch the guidance to get that message out there to all settings where families might come into contact and raise the awareness of kinship. So certainly we can look at that further. Okay, thanks very much. I'm now going to invite Bob in. Thank you very much. I couldn't get involved in an evidence session with kinship care without putting on record. I think that my thanks to campaigners who I first met in 2006 heard of the 2007 elections and national hustings in the constituencies that I now serve in relation to that but also the incoming children's minister Adam Ingram back in the day and his work, challenging work in relation to kinship care payments and indeed Glasgow City Council who I met with back in those early days who at that point agreed after meeting with me a 50 pound a week kinship care allowance. That seems tiny now but at the time it was seen as real groundbreaking stuff so how far we've come but we obviously need to go further. So sorry convener for putting that on the record sometimes. A kind of institutional memory is quite important in sessions like this. Actually I had a supplementary in Mr Mason's point which I'll ask before my substantive question who is looking at the wider support that kinship carers receive. The wider support they often want is for the young people they're looking after of course, a lot of them with emotional and mental health and wellbeing issues have experienced significant trauma and the ways that there are within sometimes CAMHS and other services often delivered by the NHS rather than local authorities. I understand as well in my constituents with the Notre Dame Centre who's a real centre of excellence for dealing with that and they take very specific referrals on kinship care. They have a very delicate funding framework to make sure they can continue to do that. My substantive question falling up from Mr Mason is to what extent minister do you assure yourself that that wider support in terms of emotional wellbeing of young people in kinship care and the trauma they've experienced is addressed adequately and consistently across Scotland? I think it's a work in progress. I believe that this spans much further than what we are discussing in this room today and we are continuing to listen to the voices of those with care experience to see what they require in terms of CAMHS and things like that. We are seeing improvements and we are putting a lot of work into improving that for young people and you mentioned trauma and obviously I appreciate you were talking about the support for young people but the support needs to be there for the carers as well to be able to to deal with that in an appropriate manner. We are working to develop a plan to provide trauma training for kinship, foster and adoptive parents. I am positive about the work that is going on to support care experience young people but, as I've said, I believe that there's still more to do and that will be continued to be led by the voices of those with care experience. I'm sure that the minister would love to see you if you're busy diary ever permitted to go along. I would love to take you and show you what excellent work they do but I'll move on to my substantive question which was going to be more general about the progress that the collaborative has made in recent months but I've actually a very specific question in relation to the progress that I think does need to be made. I'd written down there's a guidance rewrite group and there's a national kinship assessment framework being developed to get that national consistency. I understand, I don't have an active case at the moment, but over the years one of the issues with consistency is kinship and bereavement. I would explain it as where there's a gran or an anti at hospital and a loved one passes away in the kids over there. Very vulnerable circumstances, quite often what happens is gran steps in and says I'll take those kids home. Now if gran doesn't do that social work services will say to gran would you please look after these young people they're very vulnerable. The outcome is the same that was always going to happen but one would be deemed to be an informal volunteer led relationship with the children and the local authority and other one would be the local authority placing the child with the kinship relative. Some local authorities understand show really good flexibility in acknowledging that formal placement would have happened anyway, others don't. It's inconsistent. This is a matter that's been raised with me over many years so in relation to the work of the collaborative and the guidance rewrite group and the national kinship assessment framework and indeed that access to the Scottish recommended allowance can you give me an assurances minister that those types of situations have been taken into account and guidance and best practice will be rolled out putting the onus on local authorities to do the right thing by kinship carers and bereavement? Absolutely. I would already expect local authorities to do the right thing in terms of in terms of what your Mr Doris is referring to but as I've said I expect that the refreshed guidance and that work that is on-going will make that much clearer for local authorities and we're hoping for that to be published by the end of the year so absolutely I'm very understanding and switched on I've dealt with my own cases around this and as I said that is something that we're trying to improve trying to improve provide more clarity for local authorities. Minister would we get to see like a case study within that guidance because guidance can be a kind of dry and dusty thing but I think what social work professionals would like to see would be you know a case study where the situation I've outlined to you perhaps more eloquently than I have minister but that I've outlined to you is it shows them what they should be doing rather than maybe sometimes what they are doing because when there's finances underpinning this and a budgetary impact on local authority we have to make sure there's best practice and not budgetary practice if I can put it delicately like that absolutely and to take the decision based on budgetary practice would be going against everything that we're aiming for in terms of the promise so yes absolutely in answer to your to your question really helpful thank you okay thanks very much I'm now going to finally bring in Jeremy Balfour who's joining us again online thank you thank you and good morning minister I wonder if you could just look forward now what are the next steps for the collaborative so as you know well first of all I would just really like to say I would give a thanks to the members of the collaborative for their very hard work and their commitment to delivering change in this regard as members will be aware the collaborative was formed in late 2020 and many people volunteered to give up what has been a considerable amount of their time to attend meetings through this time participants have shared expertise and understanding of the issues in kinship care many of which we have have discussed this morning and that's helped to inform and drive the work of the collaborative going forward so publishing that the refresh guidance in that new assessment framework that we've been discussing this morning will be really really key milestones and I think for me we should perhaps then sit back sit back for a second to take stock in collaboration with the collaborative quite a tongue twister there about what the future might look like and I'm very very happy to keep the committee informed of any decisions on that going forward thank you minister some stakeholders have suggested that the kinship care collaborative could have a role in gathering information about the role out of the Scottish recommended allowance as we discussed previously what consideration had the minister given to this and as they reflect is there still a role that I think they could play going forward yeah absolutely I absolutely agree that the kinship care collaborative alongside others some some stakeholders that we've already touched on this morning the kinship carers advisory group the fostering network social work Scotland could all have a key role to play in feeding back about the allowance and I think as I've already mentioned their engagement to date has been extremely valuable and has really helped to inform the development of the recommended allowance and sorry the recommended allowance information page that was published on the the Scottish Government website this week now the next meeting of the collaborative is on the 27th of November and I've asked officials to discuss with members how they might inform work on the allowance going forward and how this might feed into the next steps for the collaborative so absolutely I think that is going to be very vital as I've already said we're committed to formally reviewing that and I think taking some of these organisations stakeholders with us will be will be vital thank you minister and thank you community okay thanks very much and thank you minister and thank you to your officials as well I found it very informative and about the heart of it is about our children and young people and the carers as well and my heart was out to all the kinship carers as well here in Scotland so I'm now going to briefly suspend the meeting until I for a panel change before we move on to the next item of business but thank you once again okay so welcome back and our next agenda item is the first evidence session on the Scottish employment injuries assistance advisory council bill ciac bill for short this is a member's bill introduced by mark griffin msp on the 8th of June 2023 it is currently at stage one so the bill seeks to establish a new body the Scottish employment injuries advisory council or ciac to provide expertise about support for people who can no longer work because of workplace injury or disease so ciac would have three functions to report on draft regulations for employment injuries assistance replacing the Scottish commission on social securities role in this to report to the parliament and ministers on any matter relevant to employment injuries assistance and to carry out commission or support research into any matter relevant to employment injuries assistance so I welcome our panel for this first evidence session on the bill and who are joining us remotely we've got dr lesley rushton chair of industrial injuries advisory council and dr mark simpson interim co-chair for scotish commission on social security so can I thank you all for accepting our invitation and just a few points to mention about the format of the meeting before we start if you could wait until myself or a member asking the question see your name before speaking don't feel you have to answer every single question either and if you've nothing new to add to what's being said by others then that's that's okay as well please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn your microphones on before you start to speak and you can indicate with an hour in the chat box and zoom if you wish to come in on a question and can I ask everyone to keep questions and answers as concise as possible so I am now going to invite members to ask questions in turn and can I just remind everybody for this particular panel it is purely on the context second of that bill so I'm now going to bring in John Mason sorry invite John to ask the first few questions thank you John okay thanks convener and I am completely new to this committee so this is completely new subject to me and so maybe some of my questions will be a little bit simplistic but we'll hopefully that'll help others as well who are less familiar with the subject so as I understand it we currently have several bodies we have the industrial injuries advisory council we have the Scottish commission on social security and we have the disability and carer benefits expert advisory group and we're now talking about also having the Scottish employment injuries advisory council so maybe if I can start with you Dr Rushton can you just give me a brief summary of how these all relate to each other and how it would change if we had this new body well I can tell you can you hear me all right yes that's great I can tell you about IAC we don't have as my understanding any direct discussions with some of the other bodies that you have mentioned if I just briefly tell you what we do yes it we we are responsible for giving advice to ministers on industrial injuries disability employment benefit which as you know is part of our social security system there's been some kind of work of compensation through this since well the 1920s but more officially since the 1940s after the war the the committee IAC has been going since 19 well is an act parliament in 1946 but has been going since 1948 so we've been doing this a long time so what we do is we review and collate and write various reports on different issues concerning IIDB most of our work concerns diseases and occupations but of course there's a very important accident provision as well under IIDB so we look at all sorts of different occupational related ill health ranges over everything from musculoskeletal to infectious disease viruses and so on um we get our work if you like from constantly monitoring the literature as to what's coming up so we might for example look at the international agency research on cancers reports and so on we get a lot of requests from individuals through constituents from MPs or MPs directly um we might get requests from parliamentary groups such as the environmental audit committee for example um so that's what we do and we we write various different types of reports we have information notes which is a quick when we've had a quick look at something we have a position paper which is where I want a very detailed review of a piece of um disease and occupational data um but we haven't made recommendations and then there's a command paper where we do it's the same we do a detailed review of of the evidence and there is we do make the recommendations to ministers both the last two papers are published everything is published on our website including all our detailed minutes of every single um meeting we have eight meetings a year four for the main council and then we have a more of a research working group which meets in between those four times and what happens after after we make recommendations is that if the minister is willing and and approves the command papers are what's called laid before parliament because it has a direct potentially direct impact on the um legislation which um I think goes back to about 19 it's built into the 1992 social security act um when that has been being published then the DWP do a lot of work in order to prevent to give information to the ministers on the impact that this particular recommendation would have so it be a financial impact um you know numbers of people it would affect and so on and that's all done behind it within the DWP the the IAC doesn't have direct influence on that at all we're not a lobby group but at our meetings we do have um a lot of observers both from policy from the decision makers group in Barnsley from medical assessors we have people from northern Ireland we have uh uh the observer from HSE and the committee is made up of about 11 it varies but we're in the middle of starting another recruitment between 10 and 12 independent experts who are a scientist of various kinds with spiritual people, muscular, skeletal, epidemiologists like myself I'm a statistician epidemiologist and we also have equal representation from members or who represent employer organisations and members who represent unions and worker organisations so that's a bit of a long answer but it sums up exactly what we do I hope please do ask any more questions okay well I think probably my colleagues will have more questions but that was helpful and certainly helped me understand a bit better what was going on so if I can turn to you Dr Simpson I mean it just seems a very complicated landscape and yet we've just heard how one of the bodies has a very you know pretty wide remit anyway so I suppose my question is you know are we needing all of these bodies is it clear what all of their remits are and obviously it can speak for your own sure well it's a complicated landscape as you say but it's partly a complicated landscape because of the nature of social security devolution so just I'll come on to the role of SCOS within that in a minute but just to give a little bit of context that's you know at least part of the reason why SCOS exists in the first place and I presume part of the reason why Mark Griffin sees a need for this this additional body is that as part of the process by which parts of social security were devolved to the Scottish Parliament following the Smith commission the UK government took the decision that's the social security advisory committee and the industrial injuries advisory council would not be authorised to to advise the Scottish Government or Parliament on on devolved benefits so the SCOS was was created to with with a view to filling the gap in terms of the the scrutiny functions that that's certainly the the SAC has has provided it at UK level um what that means in practice for our role um you know as as some members will will be aware we have um three or depending how you look at it four central functions the one that we spend most of our time on is is pre-legislative scrutiny so um many um the the Social Security Act will requires the Scottish Government to um refer um most sort of major sets of social security regulations to us for scrutiny before they're laid before the Parliament um we report on them we make recommendations um in the region of 80 to 90 percent of those recommendations are accepted by by the government up to this point um some of those have resulted in changes to the regulations before they're laid others are more about things like administrative practice guidance communication or things to consider in in future reviews um the other things we do are to um report on essentially any matter connected with social security that either the um the Parliament or the Scottish Government asks us to um and then the final piece in the jigsaw is our role monitoring the um the devolved system as as a whole for um um for compliance with the commitments in the in the social security charter um the I suppose if there if there's a major difference between our role and the envisaged role for the the the new body it's that the majority of our functions are very much reactive you know we report on legislation or on regulations when they're referred to us we write a report on something connected with social security when we're asked to by the Parliament or the or the government um the only sort of proactive part of our role is we you know we get to um to decide to to some extent what aspects of the charter we want to look at although even there there's a reactive element because we're we're required to do report if there's evidence brought to our attention of of systemic non-compliance with the with part of the charter so our role is largely reactive the role envisaged for the the new body in the in the draft bill is um um has got more proactive elements to us to um to um to our role um you asked as well about the about um Dachbyg um which as as a body that's had a different role within the system and has now completed that role and that was a much more forward looking role of um you know of of making policy recommendations for the for the developing devolved system so it's role was was was quite different to ours um and you know I think I'm right and saying reasonably different to um to the role of the saga at UK level as well so I hope that's a useful overview yes thank you that is useful so I'm learning as we go along I mean in one sense you said well you're reactive but on the other hand you have quite uh you could look at almost anything that you were asked to I mean what would it what would have to happen to for your role to be changed would that be legislation at Scottish level or would it need legislation at Westminster level or does it not need legislation yeah oh we're this is this is something that could be in the pipeline to some extent because there's just been a review of scores carried out um which could potentially result in a in a few changes to our functions depending on what the the government parliament decide but um you know those those main functions that have that have described are are set out in the the Social Security Act so um any any changes to those would need to be in primary legislation through the through the Scottish parliament it's you know the the UK government doesn't play a role in in determining what we do okay that's great thanks very much okay thanks very much I'm now going to invite Ross McClellan thank you thank you convener um my questions are both for um Dr Rushton um thank you very much indeed for the overview that you've given I am also reasonably new I'm not totally new but reasonably new and this is the first time I'm getting an understanding of what it is both both bodies really actually do as far as this is concerned so um having said that I'm aware that IAC can commission literature reviews so can you very roughly um give me an idea of of what does IAC spend the uh spend on the spend on these sorry um yeah we'll start with that okay um thank you for your question um I should just say traditionally all the work of um reading all the reviews uh all the papers putting everything together writing the reports has been done for years decades by the members themselves um I've been chair since 2018 and and one of the things I I've been going on about is um we need funding for research and and I was interested to see what what figure have been put on um for your proposed committee um to answer your direct question um we have one commissioned review at the moment which is on um uh respiratory some selected respiratory diseases um and uh both non malignant and um cancer so we're particularly um looking at um uh lung cancers and silica for example we're looking at cleaners and lung cancer um far pesticides and um and COPD um chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and that's been carried out by the Institute of Occupational Medicine which is in Edinburgh um and it's uh the big budget for that is just over 50 000 and that's a sort of 18 month um uh gradual project we're just about to um accept a proposal for a six month uh six month timescale probably about a month's work um upon scoping review on women and occupational health women um have been uh not had the opportunity of of applying for iidb because of the traditional heavy industry background of the industrial injuries disablement benefit um and it's it it's one of our campaigns recent campaigns now um the other thing I wanted to say was that um from a regular annual budget for research that is actually commission getting people to help with the work instead of it being done all including writing reports we um we got a regular 25 000 a couple of years ago and I don't think it's um wrong with me to tell you that I've they've now managed to up this to 100 000 a year which is about um roughly I think if you talked to the um secretariat that probably the UK SHA or the food standard agency for the committees that they um uh our secretariat for like the committee on toxicity and carcinogenicity is about what for one of those committees you would we would have um so considerably more although I have to say I don't think the DWP actually call it strictly a research budget okay but it is that's what it's for thank you yes that's that's that's very helpful um in what other ways does I get information it needs to advise ministers but um I mean obviously the ministers are doing a lot of work themselves but um what other ways does does I get that information commission we do our own research our um scientific secretary um he he does research of the literature gives us lists of the papers and and and so on for us so he helps with that and the editing but the other thing we do is we often take advice from people not on the committee um so experts uh where we where we need them so to give you an example one of our command papers um was on uh cutaneous melanoma malignant melanoma in pilots and um aircrew and it's a command paper recommending um uh iidb for them um that it should go you know into that and we had a lot of help from the CAA the civil aviation authorities balpa the british airline pilots um we had a lot of help on ghost cosmic and uvv radiation from radiation experts at what was public health england that is now uk sha and we also had toxicological help from um the committee on toxicity um from one of their um members on the actual mechanisms by which the um excess risk occurs so we we use experts where we can if we haven't got them that's very helpful thank you very much indeed okay thanks for you i'm now going to invite bob doddison thank you thank you convener um i was interested uh dr russan when you spoke about you'd commissioned um a review 50 000 pound i think was the the cost that you'd mentioned for that so in terms of research reviews um are you able to co-commission that i suppose what i'm thinking about mr weaver's talking about a new body set up for scotland and there's a very modest research budget for that but also there's scots um who as we've heard is necessarily proactive because of other other commitments they've got is there so it is i am able to co-commission research jointly be that with scots or with another scottish body even though you're not making recommendations at a scottish level but at a uk level is that something you're able to do i have i'm afraid i don't know the answer to that i'm but it's a very interesting question the commissioning is actually done by the dwp so i i i um imagine that that would need discussion that from from the scientific point of view there's absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be joint commission and in fact it makes economic sense really um if if one or more bodies is also interested in this it's worth working together but i'm afraid from the actual monetary point of view and and the way one would draw up contracts and so on i'm afraid i can't answer that but i think that's very helpful um can i ask i don't be worse we're focusing a lot on eligibility specifically for industrial injuries benefit um he may have said some of this other stuff already but can you say a little bit more about the work of iac um on wider issues around workplace health and safety that you may be involved in separate from making recommendations of preventing evidence to the UK government about whether we should extend the eligibility for industrial injuries benefits can you say maybe a little bit more about that yes i think that's a very pertinent question um we do as i said have um an observer every time every meeting from the health and safety executive so they make sure that the health and safety executive um they actually help us quite a bit and for example we always have a very small prevention section at the end of our command papers and we always check with them um what their advice is and sometimes they have relevant data and they're able to help us with that and so there's a bit of turnfro between us and the HSE on the wider community um a lot of our members are nationally and internationally known experts in their in their own fields and more generally and um we have actually been discussing ourselves about the fact that actually iidb and iac's role is very much not known by the people that really need it um from the point of view of workers and employees employer employees and employers so we are thinking this year about how we how we individually might write in journals and so on and present the other thing i should mention is we always have a public meeting every year every two years we have a public meeting in fact we had one this year in Cardiff and since COVID we've gone hybrid now so we had our first hybrid meeting in summer um where people um actually it was quite good we had quite a few people that come from across Wales um as well as elsewhere to attend so we we do our best to to um spread uh both our work but also draw attention draw attention to particular issues for example one of the reasons we've been looking at the pneumoconiesis is silicosis which she's often under diagnosed and we we hope that um industries such as the construction will be more aware of the issue if if from some of the work we do. Thank you Dr Russian i think you must you must be reading the questions that i'm about to ask you because you're praying to them rather rather superbly but it's it's very very helpful because i was going to ask you about any on-going work programmes and i was going to ask you about the health and safety executive referring back to mr mason's point about whether there's duplication overlap or complementary work or a combination of all three i'm conscious that the health and safety executive i think uh earlier this year produced some work of research on covid but not long covid it also looked at cancer and the construction industry not firefighters which is something that that's very topical at the moment so there's a lot of on-going work the health and safety executive are already doing in this area and i think you've put on record quite helpfully that you observe some of that and you've got a partnership work with them so that's important but do you want to see any more about your on-going work or partnership work and i was particularly interested in long covid i was interested in neurodegenerative disease in footballers and cancers and firefighters but don't restrict yourself to that list simply because that's what i'm asking you about i'm trying to get that dynamic between what you research what you commission what the health and safety executive does and how that all fits together you're right there isn't there is duplication not duplicate it's some of it duplicates and others it complements and it's not just nationally it's internationally as well so one of the things we do is to keep an eye on what the health and safety executive are doing what other people are doing in the uk what internationally is being done as well because a lot of the information that they're collating is is also very useful to just mention covid covid has taken up i would say a lot of our time we started we only missed one meeting and we started monitoring the data from april 2020 we've produced two reports and one of which is a command paper so that has been laid before parliament and work is being done within the dwp we are continuing to look at that we're particularly interested in adding what those are our command paper focused on health and social care workers um we're now um thinking about whether we can add education and some transports be ban not the band drivers but the bus and coach drivers and so on long covid is a really difficult issue because at the moment there's no clear diagnosis and iidb really needs a way of diagnosis self report isn't an easy thing for for iidb um we're um we're so we're looking at that um we're um as i've said we've got a commit the commission review we are looking at neurodegenerative diseases in and footballers i have to say that i didn't really mention earlier we get a lot of letters um uh and people pushing their own papers or their own which is fair enough i mean they draw attention to issues neurodegenerative disease we are widening it from footballers because we feel it's important to include other sports and more generally athletics for example um and we've been looking at the actual diseases and i've decided the best way forward would be to look at um uh the diseases one some of the serious diseases one by one and we've started with ALS motor neurone disease and a review of the literature is underway but we're just to tell you the sort of um magnitude of the literature there are about 50 papers which are relevant that have been identified and um that that is one where there does seem to be some evidence that uh for example extreme physical exercise may cause um increase the risk of developing motor neurone disease do you want me to mention firefighters they're a tricky one to dr russian i'm keen to say yes but i know that i know that time is probably against this so if you could even follow up and writing with that we would really appreciate it and to any fbu colleagues watching it it's only a time constraint we're really keen to hear what you have to say about that but if you could provide us that and writing that with the community will have my guts for garters if we don't move on i suspect correct yeah thanks very much um i've got a few questions myself that i'd like to pose to the both of you and it's in relation to membership and expertise in which you've touched upon already but so what kind of knowledge and expertise are necessary to advise on social security for industrial disease and injury and if i can bring in Dr Simpson first of all thanks thanks convener well i think first of all members probably won't be surprised to hear me say that the expertise on social security and expertise on industrial injuries are you know are two quite distinct things so there are a number of areas which are relevant to any social security payment and that would include um unemployment injuries payments so you know in particular Scolster's remit includes scrutiny of regulations that are relevant to conditions of entitlement and level of benefits um and that's sort of hard to package that up neatly and separate it from other aspects of the benefits so we do end up offering offering comment on things like application processes supporting evidence you know durations of awards that you know the sort of things that would be common to to a range of of different social security benefits and then there are you know distinct areas some of which i think you've just been hearing about which are particularly relevant to social security for industrial disease and injuries specifically you know when these are the kind of the medical and scientific considerations the engagement with um you know with with both employer and and employee perspectives and you know the kind of expertise to bring those together that you will need for good advice on social security for industrial disease and injury is going to depend on what aspects of social security and what aspects of of industrial disease are going to be based on so based on our you know experiences of the both system to date as functions are transferred from the DWP to Social Security Scotland um I would imagine it's likely that we see a devolved employment injuries benefits introduced on the the basis of a safe and secure transition with relatively probably minimal changes to the diseases and injuries that that can confer entitlements um but in the future you know we could see new diseases and injuries added or at least considered for for addition and certainly when you get to that stage scrutiny of of the appropriateness of those sort of decisions or you know the proactive provision of advice on which conditions ought to be included those would certainly require you know a different kind of expertise than than the Scots for as it stands is set up to um to set up to provide you know although we look at disability benefits for example you know the various forms of disability assistance are they're concerned with the impact of an impairment on someone's daily living on their mobility on their care needs and scrutinising those kind of things doesn't necessarily require specific expertise on specific conditions but employment injuries presumably would require that kind of expertise. Okay thanks very much Dr Simpson and Dr Rysan how how does IAX membership and expertise differ from that of the social security advisory committee can you comment on that? Um I'd imagine it's quite different because we we um it's rather a specialist field occupational health and medicine um so we we have people who like myself who are statisticians and epidemiologists who've probably got wider experience than just occupation like might be environment and and within within lifestyle examples for example but I've we've got at the moment three really good respiratory positions practicing occupational respiratory one of whom rungs long COVID clinics actually um we've got musculoskeletal experts um we have I think one of the most important things for for any committee like that is to have an expert in the exposure side of things and we don't have a toxicologist at the moment although I was on IAC before um till about 2004 and we did then but I I'm encouraging collaboration with our other sister committees really I think we don't want we don't need expertise on everything and we've got a couple of people who are experts on a mental health in occupation including one from Kings um but I'm also should have mentioned we also have an observer who is from the um military scheme and that's very useful as well to see the parallels um um uh so it's the there a mixture of of science and I think very different from the social security um the current social security apart from the medical side of things some are medical be qualified and some aren't like myself I'm medical qualified right okay thanks that's really interesting I'm now going to invite Katie Clark in thank you thank you and my question again is for Dr Rushton and it's been incredibly useful to hear about your organization's work and the skill set of those involved could you maybe give an indication of the time commitment that's required for your board members and the secretary app because it sounds as if you are involved in quite a great deal of hands-on work is that fair absolutely it's all done by the members um uh at the moment well apart from the commissioned review but because we've now got some hopefully substantial um funding I'm hoping that we'll be able to you know release some of the work that's done by by those so it's a lot it's it officially it's for council meetings where everybody comes together in between four meetings of the research working group and that's a subgroup of about six or seven of the scientists um in between um there are a lot of online um getting together of the subgroups who are working on particular issues um and and um but I would say outside that there's enormous work amount of work and and it does put people off when we have the recruitment it's one of the first questions that's asked um getting something into legislation is also very time consuming it's not done by the the the committee itself although we do help if asked we do scrutinize the legislation if it ever comes into being but I mean it's it's not directly answering this question but I was hoping to be able to comment but once we've made a recommendation in a command paper it's it's the up the rest of the DWP and all their colleagues and the ministers who um get it through um and um it can take a long time I just wanted to say that to you and I don't know what you have planned it's nothing to do with me but just to bear in mind that once you've got the advice it can potentially take a long time to turn into legislation and that's a little one of the other things that's quite difficult for members yes I'm sure it can be very frustrating um in terms of how the system works I mean in these situations there's obviously often different perspectives I was previously a personal injury lawyer and so they're very aware that the employer can have a very different perspective than the employee and their representatives so how do you deal with that the fact that you have these different perspectives from employers and employees and how is that represented in your work that's a that's a good question and we do keep an eye on what the court case we have a legal person with legal expertise as well on the on the council when we keep an eye on what court cases do and they keep an eye on on irec I should have mentioned right from the start that it depends on the we we answer to the legislation and the legislation says we have to be reasonably certain that the connection between work and the disease is is true and um that there is this link because it is a no fault compensation system and compared with a lot of international other international systems that's an advantage very much show for the claimant so that's something to bear in mind as for the current system um and um uh often the decisions we make are high bound by this reasonable certainty the firefighters example is a very good one um where we have a good human data and when increasingly we haven't got the studies we look for a high relative risk a double the risk that's the easy one but often we don't a don't have it or it doesn't quite reach it and up to now the committee have been very very strict in what they do um we're starting to think about ways of getting around the problem when we don't have the data but sometimes we're faced with good data and really although there's a link um it's not sufficient under the legislation and that is quite hard for people like unions and employees employers to to um take on board um and it's quite hard for us too but we are we are set up to do one job which is to advise on that legislation and how and I'll ask this question to both witnesses but I'll um if we ask Dr Rushden first how do the bodies consider the views of those with relevant lived experience is that something that is part of your consideration so do you take it how do you capture that if you like in the work that you do would you say well we we certainly um we get a lot of letters from individuals and we certainly respond to them um they're very useful they draw attention to particular issues um which is is important or um particular um particular aspects of a situation which we may not have considered what we don't do is deal with individuals in terms of claims we're an advisory council we always write back to people but um and certainly um with some of the issues we will people will want to come and talk to us and and they do come and talk to us but when it comes to um helping them we we as a council can't do that we can take on board what they say um but uh we can't directly impact on them does that help yes I think you have answered that question thank you very much and if I could put the same question to Dr Simpson how how you take into account the views of and what is said by those with relevant lived experience no problem so um when we're carrying out our scrutiny work at SCOS which has been the vast majority of our work up to this point um we do try to take account of the the the views and the expertise of a range of stakeholders and people with experience of the area of social security that we're looking at at the time um is an um is a group that we're always sort of trying to up our game on on how we we include them um I give a short example from one of our recent pieces of scrutiny work which was the carers support payment regulations um so as part of that we um held a round table with carers which uh we worked alongside a carers um organisation to um to convene that um we also spoke to um a range of some of stakeholder organisations working with carers um and as part of that we asked them to sort of you know speak on behalf of themselves to give a corporate view but also to um to try to give us a flavour of what their uh their their clients their users and their and their members um had to I had to say about the subjects so there were a total of 12 different organisations that we contacted as part of that process um our um secretariat um did some best-based research for us to try and find what information was already published on um um on the the carers experiences of of social security um and finally we um we had a round table discussion with a number of academic researchers and some of their work although not necessarily all of their all of the researchers but certainly some of them would have been involved in um work with people with lived experience of caregiving of care benefits or both um and that um what what information we draw from those encounters you know it certainly doesn't determine what goes into our report or uh or what recommendations we make but uh we certainly draw on on those insights to uh to inform with the the content of the the reports to provide examples to illustrate some of the points that we're we're making and you know sometimes we do draw recommendations fairly fairly directly from that process at other times we'll get insights that we kind of think well that's maybe not so relevant to to this current uh current report but maybe there's an issue there that we can come back to in the future maybe when we're thinking about about what aspects of the charter we want to we want to look at so those um you know that that engagement can be can be fruitful and all sorts of ways thank you thanks very much i'm now going to invite mary mcnear thank you thank you you can be now and good morning dr simpson dr riston um i'm supporter of over the points that mark griffin is raising but does it not put the kind of car before the the horse is obviously the Scottish Government has not yet consulted on their plans for a new employment injuries assistance scheme is there not a kind of reasonable argument that the principles and rational should be considered when a full scale um you know in terms of the the Scottish Government's intentions to set out part of the wider consultation i just want to pop that out for your views if that's okay and just remind members the spell that this is purely in terms of their views it's more in line with context setting here um so just to bear that in mind i'm asking the timing of the bill so i think it's relevant yeah well i mean i don't i don't know if i can give you a particularly clear answer on that i'm not clear at the minute what the likely timeline is going to be for um for employment injuries assistance i do know that you know set up takes a little bit of a bit of time you know for example i can i can talk a little bit about the establishment of of scots so the you know that the social security act was passed in mid 2018 um i think work on recruiting the on setting up the scots commenced pretty quickly after that we held our first board meeting on in February 2019 and we published our first pre-legislative scrutiny report in May 2019 which was on the um young care grant regulations so yeah we were able to go from a you know a start and start producing a report very quickly but we were also trying to juggle some of the the business of setting up a new body alongside that which um which brought its own challenges um there had also been some legislative activity and and social security before we were we were established um so i mean i'm not going to give you i'm afraid a straight answer on when would be the right time to set up this this kind of of body but you know other than to say that the getting set up can be it can be a challenge in itself in some ways thank you dr rostyn do you want to express a view um in terms of iac in terms of you know the actual um the bill that's proposed by mark griffin do you know the government sets out their intentions yes um iac is independent an independent advisory committee so we would continue our work i think if if a scottish body was set up uh i think we would want to um certainly uh make sure that we didn't duplicate um i can see that that there might be duplication i think it would depend very much on how you set your legislation up because at the moment we we're working to the social security act and the reason to be certain issue and that makes us very different from in other countries and that's why our so-called lists are different from other countries so covid is a good example um we as a country didn't put covid as a part of the industrial engines disablement benefit until we had the evidence and it took a long time and other countries have got systems so um it i think we would want to work together with partly anyway with and perhaps have representatives on both you might end up with the same scientists on each of the committees actually because it's a very small group of people in the uk i don't know whether that helps that's fine obviously you've raised concerns already about you know the timing of legislation and getting it passed um you know back on this your timescale industrial engines disablement benefit has been largely unreformed since its creation many years ago and you've obviously mentioned about you know the 20s into 1948 and how complex that benefit is um do you feel that it's due to the lack of research or lack of political interest in bringing the benefit into a new world um can a real setting really given you obviously can i say this well that um yourself that women have been excluded from applying so can i get your views on that as well yes the women i think that's largely historic because um i mean it's uh the the benefit goes right back to the 1920s and before on on minors and so on so it's many many of the current prescriptions that that are on there are no longer exist but they're not taken off and they're certainly um reacting to the very heavy industry that we use to have and and hence um not applicable to the women um we're very well aware that women aren't covered they they they do apply of course especially for the muscular skeletal side of things um but but that's why we're making that a priority um as far as the legislation is concerned um um i don't think myself and the committee are are qualified at this to or to um give direct evidence because we haven't formally um considered it but you're absolutely right that the we work to the lead that we have to follow the legislation's um uh meaning um and uh and that does restrict us and uh i think a comparison there are one or two good articles comparing the different schemes across um the world um but there are huge differences across the world and it depends it's a political thing really as to how um a country feels about industrial injuries and industrial accidents thank you really appreciate your comments there um Dr Simson do you want to kind of share anything before i hand back to the convener um yes please i just wanted to uh pick up on some of the points that Leslie was making about um about recruitment this i don't know how big the how big a pool um you know a future saac body would would be fishing in in terms of finding people with the the expertise that it needs but that has been an issue for scos sometimes when we've had vacancies and it could be again for for that body um and i should also um add as well that the DWP does not allow dual membership of the social security advisory committee and scos and it might well take the um take the same position when it comes to uh hayak and and saac thanks for that thanks for your indulgence chair okay thanks very much um conscience time so if i can just remind everyone um to keep their questions and answers as concise as possible and i'm going to invite Jeremy in who's um joining us online thank you Jeremy uh thank you mayor and good morning i will be very brief because i think a lot of my questions have been dealt with question to you if actually okay dr simpson um in the absence of this bill what additional resources or expertise would scos need to consider regulations creating eia so we know it's coming probably 2025 that will acquire regulations what would you need to be able to scrutinise that properly um okay thank you um i think the the starting point for this is that in a sense script nas in the process out of employment injuries assistance regulations would be in line with you know with with the remit that the scos currently has and you know the the expertise of the of the current membership um kind of reflects the rule that that the commission was was set up to uh to undertake if that rule were to be weighed in or to incorporate additional areas of responsibility in the future then you know the membership would have to be weighed in the court in the or we need to make more use of also committees than we have up to up to now to to make sure we do what was required um and i mentioned earlier that you know we can probably assume that that they're that the priority is as it normally has been with the introduction of a new devolved benefit will be on on safe and secure transfer in that context might not be a huge challenge but in the future if changes were being made to that sort of set of conditions that's a confer entitlement then that that might be uh be uh be more of an issue um but in you know in general terms the expertise that's needed to fulfill our our responsibilities can change over over time in any case depending on on what we're scrutinising our membership changes too so that mentioned the stakeholder engagement work that we do you know we have the ability to set up committees and subcommittees to bring in additional expertise if we if we needed it so i guess we you know we we would make use of some of of of some of those opportunities if we if we needed to i mean that's helpful to understand i mean i know having read all your reports um change setup but one of the issues has been the timing in regard to how much time you've had to scrutinise regulations and the resources it's difficult to put a figure on it but do you think how much more would you require in regard to take on yet another piece of work? That's really hard for me to say i'm probably not sufficiently on top of our of that side of our operation to give you a useful answer and it would also depend very much on you know what was what was being asked of us you know if we were scrutinising a set of draft regulations you know we'd follow our normal practice but we might need a bit of time or money to you know to appoint people to subcommittees or to commission external research if it was a very complex set and that could be difficult within the context of the you know the legislative timetable it's it can be fairly demanding as you know um you know speaking hypothetically you know at the minute the more proactive functions that are envisaged for the SAAC and this bill aren't aren't functions that we um that that we currently have but you know i i can imagine you know with some of the the figures that that Leslie has been talking about earlier they're certainly significantly higher than the than the amount of money that we have budgeted for external research in the in the current year so um you know you could probably draw your own conclusions on that if we were you know if we were being asked to um to give more forward looking advice on conditions to include thank you again um i can just move on very briefly to you um dr Worcester um whether this bill passes or not you will continue to publish your reports continue advice to UK ministers the what extent do you do you consider wider audience when publishing your reports is it maybe not for the average person on the street but how wide do these reports go and do you monitor who reads from you that's a really interesting question the the the the reports everything is on the website um so and in fact our minutes are used a lot by people because they can see exactly where we're going with our thoughts because they're quite full the reports are also all of them and there are as i mentioned the position papers and the command papers are in the house of lords and house of commons um uh libraries um at at the moment we do not write lay people's papers and we don't do um regular updates in the in the general scientific press however we um are very well aware about this and um we are actually at the next meeting having a discussion about um how we might improve this both in the scientific community and apart from the public meeting how do we get it out to the um employee um uh community um so we're talking we're thinking about um seeing if we can't find a um an employee journal under a scientific journal where we get regular if you like little slots where we just do an update because we are very well aware that that a lot of people don't know about these things the difficulty if all worker groups is getting to this small and the medium sized um group groups um who won't eat you know probably not don't even look at the hsc website um but but we are starting to do something about that and you've you've picked out a uh a point where we haven't had the time to be honest with all the work we've been doing um to think about what we do about that but we do publish everything that we produce uh thank you i'll leave it there convener thank you okay thanks very much i'm now going to invite in paul cain and in that answer our question session thank you thank you convener perhaps just following on from where um jeremy puffer left off um the um dak beg i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing that acronym correctly but the the advisory group the expert group on uh disability and carers benefits um they essentially have advised ministers on e i a already i'm just keen to perhaps understand the view um doctor simpson's view if another non-statutory group was created would it be able to provide the required advice on any kind of detailed policy development free i a or you know would that have to sit somewhere else that's a wee bit of a challenging question i mean policy advice could come in many forms and does come in many forms whether solicited or unsolicited um and i expect that would um um that that would continue um i mean the um the the notes accompanying the bill sort of set out a number of of possible avenues for um for obtaining this this sort of guidance if the you know if mark griffin's preferred option of setting up the site act was uh was was not adopted um you know and and undoubtedly there's there there's more than one model that could be that that could be made to work you know if the if the right expertise is there then the the advice is going to be going to be useful um i suppose uh you know the um that was the policy memorandum that itself notes you know if if you have something that's set up on a statutory building uh with a formal requirement to be to be consulted um then it's it's harder for that that expertise that's there to be to be ignored but you know i don't really want to go beyond beyond that because you know i'm not i'm not here to offer a position on what's the uh what's what's the correct model but you know various options are available thanks and i appreciate today's for context convener so i think i'll i'll leave it there okay thanks very much and thank you thank you to our witnesses um dr rustin and dr simpson for taking part in sharing your very valuable expertise on this we will continue taking evidence on the bill in the coming weeks and that concludes our public business so thank you once again for joining us agenda