 We Dec that is the first item on our agenda, consideration of the colleges of further education and regional strategic bodies, membership of boards, Scotland Order 2023. This statutory instrument is being considered under the affirmative procedure. If approved, the order will require that there be two trade union nominee board members, one from the college teaching staff and one from the support staff on the management boards of all the incorporated colleges, new college Lanarkshire and Glasgow Colleges regional board. As with every statutory instrument, consideration under the affirmative procedure, we will take evidence from the responsible Scottish Government Minister. So with that regard, can I welcome this morning Graham Day, Minister for Further and Higher Education and Minister for Veterans? Alongside the Minister today, we have Adam Mackey, Senior Policy Officer, Institutional Governance and Reform Unit and Alison Martin, Solicitor of the Scottish Government Legal Department. Good morning everyone. I now invite the Minister to make an opening statement. Minister, you have up to three minutes. Many thanks, convener. I am delighted to be here today to discuss the colleges of further education and regional strategic boards membership reports, Scotland Order 2023, which makes changes to the constitution of the boards of management of all regional and incorporated assigned colleges, regional college boards and the board of management of new college Lanarkshire. For ease, I will for now refer to the changes as affecting college boards. The order makes amendments to existing legislation to ensure there are two trade union nominee members, one from the teaching staff, one from the support staff on the college boards. Consequential amendments to the board sizes are also made to ensure there remains a balance of independent board members. I hope, among other things, that this will go some way to improving industrial relations in the sector by giving greater voice to trade union views, in decision making and helping to improve confidence, particularly amongst the workforce in decisions being made by college boards. I am grateful to the committee for their work and scrutinising the colleges of further education and regional strategic boards membership reports, Scotland Order 2023 and for accommodating my diary today and all that. I can also attend a similarly important event elsewhere this morning. I also want to put on record my thanks to Ross Greer, the good governance steering group and the trade unions who all provided input at various times to help to develop the order and prepare the sector for its implementation. It is no secret that industrial relations in the college sector are far from ideal, and that has been the case for some time. There have been concerns raised both through this committee and through my engagement with trade unions about a range of workforce issues, including college governance. I have been clear throughout that engagement that the workforce issues are a matter for colleges to consider, but it is my expectation that there is meaningful engagement and collaboration with trade unions and workers on such matters. I should add that existing processes are pursued when issues arise. This order will make improvements to college governance and adding trade union nominees to college boards. I am optimistic to improve confidence in college board decision making through giving trade unions a more direct route to bringing workforce issues to boards. That aligns with the Scottish Government's wider fair work agenda, which at the centre is about workers having an effective voice and having trade union nominees on boards will, I think, further the input of trade unions into decision making. I very much welcome the committee's continued focus on college governance and industrial relations, and its scrutiny of this piece of legislation. The Government has always been clear that, while industrial relations are matters for trade unions and for college employers, it will work alongside both to encourage and improve relations and ensure good governance in the sector. I look forward to taking any questions that the committee may have today. Thank you for that, minister, and we will move to questions from members now. Can I start with Ruth Maguire, please? Thank you, convener. Good morning, minister. I think that this is a welcome move. It is important, obviously, for the fair work principles that you set out. I wonder if there are going to be any further opportunities to strengthen board governance. I mean, this is always important, but I guess particularly while we are operating in times of financial constraint, it is crucial that we have excellent governance on our college board. Indeed. There is a piece of work getting under way that looks at a review of the guidance institute to college boards. Do you want to come in, Adam, and explain the detail of that? Yes. We are currently looking at the appointment of board member guidance. We have been working through the good governance steering group, who have also been working on the order. We will be considering the skills that we are looking for on boards and the appointment processes to ensure that there is fairness and parity across the sector and how members have been appointed to boards. We have been working on that in tandem with that order. Once this is through Parliament, we will be seeking to go to consultation on that document, and we are happy to fly to the committee when that consultation goes live. On the addition to that, we are going to ask the college development network to look at what the nature of the training that is provided for participants and boards is. It is no secret that, when MSPs join Parliament, there are opportunities for training around the nature of questioning, questioning techniques. That might be something that is worth exploring to ensure that there is full accountability in board settings. We are happy if the committee has any other suggestions to consider those in the context that I have just outlined. I want to explore the no compulsory redundancy policy again and accept what you said before that the colleges have always been excluded despite the broader statements that were made in the past, but I accept that. Are you recommending to colleges that there should be no compulsory redundancies? Our position, as we have discussed in the chamber on other occasions, is that they ought to be exhausting all possibilities to avoid compulsory redundancies. We have to recognise the outstanding institutions and circumstances that might regrettably lead to such a situation, but we are encouraging them. I have to say that, for the most part, college principals and boards are committed to trying to avoid compulsory redundancies. Mike Russell was in your position. He was quite clear. He was making a strong recommendation. He was saying that this is government policy and we expect colleges to follow it. Your position is slightly different from that. Is there a softer approach to it? Or are you still as firm as Mike Russell was? I cannot speak for what Mike Russell said all those years ago. I think that my position is realistic. We have been very clear with colleges and, as I said earlier, I think that, for the most part, college boards and principals will want to do anything they can to avoid compulsory redundancies, and that is where we are. Pam Duncan-Glancy. Thank you, convener. Good morning, minister and your officials. One of the points that you made earlier was about training and the ability to question people, including in situations like this. I am sure that many members of boards, including trade union members, would now want to benefit from that. The evidence that we have had from EIS, Fila and Unison has also said that, rather than improving negotiating skills, what they need is facility time and support to be able to engage in the structures. They have also said that the machinery is not independent and that the actual machinery, not just the questioning, is part of the problem. Is there anything that you could do to try and reset that relationship and grow trust back in that machinery? Sorry, do you mean the machinery within the college, if they are sitting on the board or just the whole machinery? I think that it is both, I would imagine. The ability to influence a board decision but also the way that, for example, the management of the joint committee is held and whether or not that you consider that it needs to become independent? That is a negotiating committee. I think that there is no doubt that I would agree with you that there is scope for doing this far better than is currently the situation. However, of course, we need to get agreement around what those changes might look like. I have had a number of conversations with all sides in this. I do not think that we are in the space where there would be agreement right now, but I do think that it is incumbent on myself as Minister to try and try this forward, because we cannot go on as we have been for years. There have been far too many personality clashes involved in the structures that are question marks about how they work. So I think that we need to move to a situation in which we review this. Minister, I very much welcome the instrument and it will go some way towards resolving some of those concerns. I am interested in what the process of escalation would be. You will be familiar with the issues at City of Glasgow College at the moment. That is what is causing me to ask this question, but I am asking it in a general sense, because I think that it applies to more than just City of Glasgow, but particularly where colleges sit under a regional board in Glasgow and Lanarkshire. There are still questions from unions about how they should escalate an issue if they are unable to resolve it with college management. What is the role of the college board, the regional board, the SFC and yourself? Can you explain a little bit about how a trade union that has been unable to resolve an issue directly with management should go about escalating that? I am sure that, as MSPs, we are all getting lobbied by unions on a variety of issues around this, but often with a variety of suggestions of whether it should go straight to the SFC, straight to yourself or to the college board or, in some cases, to the regional board. What process should be followed there if there is a concern that particularly where a correct process has not been followed around something like redundancies? The regional setups do congest the landscape a little bit. To go back to your original point, it is not for ministers that I have kept saying to intervene in individual disputes, but there are processes in place. If we take the example of Glasgow and the setup there currently, there is an escalation route that is to the regional board. Now, in the context of the dispute that has been running at one college in Glasgow, that has not been followed. I met the trade unions last week and, to my surprise, learned that they had not pursued that. I also raised the question about the board's role and that should they be proactive where they see a dispute. On the back of those discussions, I met the board last Friday. I have encouraged both of them to get together. I do not care who made the first move to explore some of the claims that have been made around that particular dispute. I am pleased to say that, on Monday, they took that opportunity, so there have been discussions. I understand that, as of today, the trade unions are to go back to the board with further information. I outline that because it shows that there are processes that exist. I am not saying that they are perfect. As you know, we are considering future governance arrangements in the regional set-ups, but that is the process that can and should be followed. If a regional board comes to the conclusion that there is something that is of concern to them, they have the opportunity to escalate that to the SQA, and I would expect them to do that if that were the case in any circumstances. Is there anything in the interests of the time? No, in the interests of the time. I just thank the minister for that update that was useful. No, thank you, Ross. Apologies for that. We are now going to move to the formal debate on the instrument on which we have just taken evidence. Minister, can I ask that you move the motion S6M-11026? I remind the committee that members should not put questions to the minister during the formal debate, and officials may not speak during the debate. Can I now invite members to contribute to the debate on this topic, if anyone wants to say anything further? No, we are okay. Can I then ask the committee, do we approve the motion S6M-11026? I agree. Okay. Thank you very much, committee. The committee has approved the order, and this concludes our consideration of the instrument, and I would like to thank the minister and his officials for their time this morning. I now suspend the meeting until 9.20 to allow the minister and his officials to leave before we move on to consider the next item on our agenda. Thank you very much. Welcome back. The next item on our agenda is an evidence session with one of two panels on the progress made towards achieving the promise. Can I welcome this morning Kevin Mitchell, who is the Executive Director of the Care Inspectorate, who is struggling to say that this morning? Mike Burns, Assistant Chief Officer of Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership, and the convener and chair of the National Chief Social Work Officer Committee, and Fraser McKinlay, Chief Executive of the Promise Scotland. Good morning. I would like to say on record first that, while we are hearing from a range of organisations today, we very much want to hear from children and young people too, and we are hoping to arrange that in the coming months, so let's make sure that people are aware of that. I will move straight to questions from members, and to kick us off this morning is Michelle Thomson. In readiness for this, I read the oversight board report 2. It makes some clear calls on the Scottish Government to set out a strategic investment plan to deliver progress on the promise. I wondered to what extent do you think they appreciate the challenges within doing that, given the chronic funding constraints that are in place at the moment, and therefore, following on from that, what your thoughts would be as to relative areas for prioritisation, given that, as you know, the Scottish Government operates to a fixed budget and has some very significant constraints. It is really thinking about areas for prioritisation, in other words, if you were going to be developing that strategic plan, what would you prioritise? I can see you nodding, Kevin, so maybe you might like to go first. Yes, thank you very much, and good morning, convener, good morning, everybody. Yes, there are undoubtedly some significant challenges. The promise is rightly ambitious, and anything of that nature will take some considerable time, but there are some key priorities, I think. From all our scrutiny evidence, one of the most critical aspects is family-based care. If, as a nation, we are to commit to keeping children out of public care and more in family-based care, whether that is with their families or, indeed, with extended families of that nature, then, clearly, family-based support is absolutely critical, and I understand that is where some of that investment is planned. It will be important to provide not just that family-based care, and it must be around, I think, from our evidence, the family, the whole family. That would also include adult services, because children live in families, so it is just as important to ensure that the right services are available for not just the children and the families but the parents, as well, if that is impacting on the children's lives. That is a key priority, but also for that investment, I think that our evidence would tell us the significant importance of early intervention, because that, again, is important. Support by the most vulnerable and poverty plays a huge part in that, but support for the most vulnerable needs to be there not just early but at the right time and early enough to prevent things escalating. Again, from the scrutiny evidence that we hold, that will be absolutely critical. Probably on parallel with that, if I may say convener, is ensuring that there is the right staff, the right number of staff, skilled and a skilled and competent workforce, but we know from, again, all our scrutiny evidence that the current pressure, significant recruitment and retention pressures is right across social work and social care, and probably nowhere more so than children's services. I do not think that in all the years I have been involved in scrutiny now, which is more than I care to remember. I do not think that I have seen it as bad and I would include during the pandemic as well. It is almost every local authority that we interact with both formally and informally are having significant recruitment challenges around social work staff, social workers in particular, but not excluding clearly their family support workers as well. Indeed, shortages similarly in critical areas that support children and families, and I suppose that I am thinking there about health visitors, speech and language therapists, so it is quite broad. There are a number of complexities, but that would be the two most significant areas that I would certainly highlight. I am interested in what you say about capacity, and that is an issue both by labour availability and skills. With that in mind, would you support the devolution of immigration, for example, because we can only grow the skills that we need at a certain speed and often you can circumvent that by bringing people in, but, as you know, that is restricted and reserved to Westminster, is that something that you would support? With respect, it would not be for us to give a view on that, and we would defer that decision. There were thoughts to politicians, but clearly there will have to be some innovative approaches to strategic workforce planning in the coming years, because the shortages that we see, the tensions, the challenges, are really quite significant. Almost every local authority that we interact with, as I say, reports difficulties in recruitment, for example, not enough applications, and I think that that has been compounded during and, as we have come out of the pandemic, very skilled experience leaders and managers are also leaving. Our evidence would suggest us that there would have to be a very clear focus on a strategic workforce plan across the entire social work and social care areas, but particularly, as I say in this instance, focusing on children's services. It is important to say that I know that the focus of the committee today is on local authority chief execs, but, in our experience, leadership needs to be collaborative. It is not just a social work issue. It would have to involve, for obvious reasons, when we are talking about the safety of children's wellbeing and our aspirations for them to grow up, loved and respected. That requires very, very strong, in our experience, very strong collaborative leadership at all levels, and not just focusing on local authority chief execs and social workers, but I am sure that the committee understands that. I do not want to, but remember the workforce issues that I think are really explored elsewhere by other members. I was about to make that point. I think that you highlighted the complexity of it, but just staying on the theme of prioritisation of investment. I appreciate that you have set out the complexity very well, but, just staying on that theme, I could see you nodding Fraser. I am interested in teasing out the relative prioritisation in developing an investment plan, and obviously we have already had some comments in terms of particularly early interventions. What would you like to add, Fraser and then Mike? Thank you. I guess for the record to say that the oversight board is an independent body that the Promise Scotland supports in terms of a secretariat support, but all of that said, of course, the report is pretty central to the work that we do, and we have been working pretty hard, really, behind the scenes to help government to think about and put into place a methodology for investment and disinvestment. When I think about, as some members know, I used to work for Audit Scotland, I worked there for 15 years, so I spent a lot of time writing reports about how public money is used and the extent to which we have been able to move towards prevention, and it has been really, really difficult. I think that one of the reasons for that is that we have not been really focused enough both about the areas that we want to invest in, but then alongside that, what do we need to disinvest in? It does seem to me, given the financial position that we are now in, which is probably as challenging as I have known it in the post-evolution era, that disinvestment discussion is probably more important almost than the investment discussion that I would absolutely agree with Kevin. I think that there is wide and shared agreement that early help and support for families is where we would want to invest and prioritise, and then the next question is okay, where do you find the money? And that's the bit that there is no easy answer to. It's not easy for government, it won't be easy for Parliament when it comes to the point of making those decisions. What we are really focused on, and we'll wait and see what comes through this year's budget in a month or so's time, but we think that having a really clear and robust methodology that is properly engaging, that properly speaks to those with lived experience will develop some propositions for where that investment and disinvestment would come, and then really importantly how you get from one to the other. I think that there needs to be some investment in the change process. Again, I think that the other thing that we've not done very well in the past is that we've expected people to run the existing system alongside doing the changes to where we need to get to in the future, and at the moment I'm sure Mike will say something about this in terms of what it's like delivering services, but that's a really hard thing to do, so we do need to be much better at bridging that gap. The whole family well-being fund, I should mention, was the Government's commitment to trying to do that. That, as you know, was a £500 million commitment in the lifetime of this Parliament. Two lots of 50 million were identified in the first two years. I think that it's looking unlikely that all of that money will be found and spent in the next two years before the end of this Parliament, so I do think, as we say in our submission to the committee, how that money is identified and used to really help make that shift towards the longer-term ambition for prevention is really pretty critical. There's a follow-on question about that well-being fund, but thank you for your comment about disinvestment as well, where you have a fixed budget, which many people don't seem to understand the implications of a fixed budget. Mike, last comments from yourself about prioritisation of investment then, thank you, and then we can move on. Yeah, really helpful question and I think really immensely helpful opening comments from Kevin and Fraser. I think the point that you asked about robust strategic plan and is it, in a sense, appreciated. I think there is progress on that and certainly our dialogue Scottish Government has been, I think, a great deal more appreciative of that challenge and about the need, as Fraser has highlighted, for transitions from the ASS system to the 2B. I think that Kevin makes the point really helpfully that the enabling context, the enabling, because I think in Glasgow in particular and nationally, we've been looking at saying, if it is whole system and it is single system, one has to recognise the scale of complexity and in recognising that complexity you then have to understand that the enabling context, as Fraser said, has got markedly worse than the last four years and come March we will be four years into the impact to Covid and the pandemic and we certainly wouldn't, in any shape or form, say that we're out of it. We're actually seeing greater acuity, greater challenges around mental health and we're seeing the impact of poverty and austerity at an even greater rate than in the context of, as Fraser says, public sector finances that are the most challenging. So I suppose the point that we would really emphasise and has been part of our learning is about capacity that you need to recognise that you're not going to shift that system from where it sits in terms of the legacy, the layering on of legislation and the challenges that we've got to that new vision unless we collectively, and as a kind of coalition across the holy children services, I'm picking up Kevin's point about the criticality of health visiting, the criticality of not just social work but what education they're doing early years, speech and language, mental health, but also then the third sector, is then recognising Police Scotland that it requires that promise to be embraced and understood across the system, but again to do that we need capacity to quicken up the pace and actually, in a sense, radically build on the progress that we've made at times swimming against the tide. Thank you very much, thank you, goodnight. Thank you, and first of all, can I just state that Mike Burns is here representing Social Work Scotland today, I think, make that in my open remark, so just to make sure that we are aware of that. I want to ask specifically about that whole family wellbeing fund and the impact that it's having so far and how might the success that it's having be built on in terms of prioritisation. Fraser, do you want to go first on that? Certainly, convener. The Promise Scotland welcomed the announcement of the fund when it was announced a couple of years ago, recognising that the money was to be repurposed, it was not in a sense new money, and I think in a sense therefore it's a really good example of the challenge that we find. Government did have, as I say, £50 million in the last two budgets which was very welcome. I think the experience of actually ensuring that money is well spent, so some of that money, about £32 million a year, is distributed to local places and might be a better place to talk about how that's gone. I think that nationally the Government struggled a little bit to figure out what to do with that money, in a sense, to make that systemic shift. The whole idea of the whole family wellbeing fund was that it was supposed to support the change that would then be built on, as you say, to make those kind of transformations in that prevention more sustainable into the future. I guess my view is that it is still a good thing. I think that the evaluation that is being undertaken by Government will give us some learning about how it's gone locally and nationally. We need to learn those lessons and we need to think about how we're doing things differently. I do think that there is something about the system to use that phrase, that the organisations and people in the statutory sector and the third sector are already delivering brilliant working family support in lots of places. I do think that we have a tendency to fall back into the traditional ways of doing it, so I think that too often we go, we'll hear some whole family wellbeing fund money, we need to identify a post and we will appoint a person to become the whole family wellbeing co-ordinator in a place. I'm being slightly simplistic for effect. Of course, you get stuck in recruitment challenges and then, before you know it, six months or years passed and before you know it, we haven't actually managed to make the progress. I would encourage nationally, locally, people to be thinking about things like cash first approaches. We know that giving money to families is a good way of supporting families in difficult times and we should be thinking a bit more radically, I think, about what some of that money is used for, as well as the commitment that the Government has made to taking a more strategic approach, as Mike said, to identify where the remaining £400 million of that fund is going to come from. Willie Rennie, sorry, do you have a quick sip on that? I've received reports that this money is being used to backfill where, perhaps, reductions in expenditure have been made elsewhere. What has happened, where that money has been repurposed from, how has that service been provided and is there evidence that it has been just backfilled into where it has been cut previously? I have not seen the hard evidence of that, Mr Rennie, but I have heard of conversations around that. I think that, when it gets into local places, the way in which money is brought in is quite hard, I think, to say that this local area has got that amount of money, and it has definitely been used to backfill that. I think that, in lots of places, people have been really strong in ensuring that that whole family well-being fund money is used for things that would not otherwise have happened. There will also be some grey areas, where, perhaps, some things were due to be reduced or cut and that money has helped to sustain a thing, which is not necessarily a bad thing, by the way, if they have managed to continue that funding. Again, I think that that is one of the lessons that we need to properly learn and one of the things that the evaluation work will, hopefully, tease out a bit more, is to get a wee bit more specific about exactly what the dynamic is in there, and to be a bit clearer about how we ensure that that money is really designed to help to make the change in local systems. Mike Burns, over to you now. Thanks for clarifying that position, but I do reference Glasgow quite a bit and give you my experience. The point that you raised, Mr Rhaeny, is that, again, what I think has been really helpful has been, in a sense, holding our nerve on spending that money and actually recognising it. We have had a lot of political buy-in from both the council and the IJB about recognising that that is once in a generational shift towards the aspirations of Christy and getting it right for every child. You are really right in terms of both of the questions to highlight systemic transformational change in the way that we fund that early help and earlier intervention. On a positive note in Glasgow, I think that what we have been able to do is hold that fund on the shift in the balance of care that we have had in Glasgow. Going from 1,413 children in care costing in the region £95 million, we have reduced that down to currently on Friday 624. Of that 624 now, only 79 of the children are under five massive testament to the Scottish Government's investment in health visiting. Going from 150 health visitors in Glasgow to 274 and seeing an 82 per cent increase in the workforce and an 82 per cent decrease in children coming into care. What we have then been able to do is to then shift. When we then looked at that £95 million, we were only spending £2.7 million on prevention. We have managed to increase that to near enough £8 million. We have then, through massive support for the chief executive, then connected that into community planning money at around about £7 million, but then connected an upstream money that is coming in for the Government around mental health, £1.7 million, but also the school counselling, £2.6 million. Again, one of our educational psychologists says that a lot of children that are shown signs of distress around mental health are in actual fact living in poverty. A real laser light focus in on anti-poverty approaches, trying to connect the Scottish Government into that work that we are doing, but recognising the point that Fraser has made in other parts of the country, people are feeding back, that where we have then gone is to, again, sometimes looking at quick wins, sometimes funding what was already in place and enhancing it. I think that we have had really good support from the third sector to say that we should consult on that collectively and recognise that what we want to do is about early years, early intervention, pre-barth 0 to 2 and 25, and do something collectively that recognises that it is about a whole system change that we are talking about. It is not about simply looking at quick wins. I think that we have had really good support from any you need it, from your chief executive, from finance colleagues to hold their nerve and recognise that, if we backfill or we simply trade one saving for another saving of the ASS system, our capacity, again, going back to the point that Mr Ols was raising, is simply then diminishing your capacity. Where we have come in is to really build medium-term confidence with our director of finance, both in the HSCP and in education in the council, to say that if we can really address that early years and earlier intervention, we can substantially reduce the failure demand. We have been able to show a £24 million reduction in that six-year spend, but also if we had the same number of children in care, that would be costing us £70 million today. You can see what we needed to do six years ago was absolutely necessity in a critical point at that stage. I will come back to you, Mr Burns. The oversight board has concluded that delivering the original aims of the plan for 2021-24 is no longer realistic in that timeframe. You have spoken of some great successes in Glasgow, so I am wondering what assessment have you or your organisation made of that? Do you believe that the promise can be kept by 2030? I will come to you first and then come to the other members of the panel. One of the things that I have reflected in coming to the committee that I have certainly been clear about has been the correlation between child poverty and poverty per se and the impact of children coming into care. In terms of delivering the promise, we have to deliver a real attack on poverty and the impact of poverty. In relation to securing important shifts, whether we do that by 2030 is, in a sense, an important gate point in that progress. For me, in terms of 2021, what we are looking to do is to take that whole family wellbeing fund. We have reduced children in care, as the promise wants us to do. We have driven it down by, for some reason, 10 per cent every year. However, we want to take that whole family wellbeing fund and say, can we move that to 15 per cent, can we move it to 13 per cent and can we shift ourselves in a direction, as Kevin said, which is still about re-engineering the money, all of the money, back into early years and earlier interventions. We talk as professionals about we want an enabling context to provide support for families. However, one of the things that I reflect back is that parents are entitled to an enabling context. They are entitled to funding that helps them to bring up their children. They are entitled to good housing. They are entitled to good access to early years. I think that we are in a reasonable position, but I keep coming back to the point that we need alignment of capacity to quicken up that, and we need to be in a position that we are communicating back to our elected members and to the Parliament that we are making tangible progress. I think that if people feel that there is concrete tangible progress being made, then I think that where we sit in 2030, because I have kind of finished off, I made the point. I was trying to be provocative and aspirational. It did not go down as well as I had hoped, but it was actually saying that if we were to replicate what we have done in this seven years, over the next seven years, we would then perhaps have no children in care, but we would have the bulky children being looked after in kinship, and we would sustain them in the city. We recognise sadly that probably some children are still going to have to come into care. We are still going to have to put children on the child protection register, and we are still going to need secure care. I think that we have to be in a radical position that we know as a country and as a city. We are providing first-class early years, earlier intervention and all the aspirations of Christie that we know as the direction of travel that we need to be on. I think that we are in a reasonable position, but we can and must do better. In answer to your question, can the promise still be kept? Absolutely yes. My response to that and the oversight board report does say that, as well as recognising that plan 2124 was unlikely to be met in full. I do not say that in any way as an excuse, but the independent care review reports were launched in February 2020 and were born into a world in which the pandemic was literally unfolding. We have had the cost of living crisis and everything else now. As I say, I absolutely do not mention those things as any kind of excuse, but it is important context for the work that has happened in the first three, almost four years now of the promise being a thing. I think that the key thing for me, as we learn the lessons from the brilliant work that my colleagues in Glasgow and lots of other places are doing, is that we also need to remember that what matters in the end is how this feels to children and young people and families in the system. Of course, numbers of children and young people in the care system coming down is a good thing. That absolutely has to be part of the ambition, but it will not mean anything unless they are genuinely feeling the love and the relationships that the promise is all about. I was having a conversation—I have been in this job about a year—in one of the early conversations that I had. It is possible that we could tick all the boxes in terms of the actions in the promise and the promise still not being kept, because chilling young people and families do not feel it day in, day out. I am sure that you will hear about some of that from colleagues in the next panel, because we know that too often the changes that me and my team are working on are genuinely in the long term, and they are not yet having enough of an impact in the daily lives of folk in and around the system. That continues to be our driving force. I know that it is for Mike and all his colleagues across the country, and it is where things like scrutiny and inspection come in, because there is also something about ensuring that we are measuring what matters. I think that up until this point, too often we have been measuring what matters to the system and not actually what matters to chilling young people and families. That is a good segue into hearing some comments now from Kevin Mitchell, please. Yes, thanks, convener. Just for a minute or two, if I may, just to stay on that point, I alluded in my earlier comments about the nature of transformational change and something of the scale of the promise. Clearly, that is going to take a number of years to implement. I think that it is unfortunate, but the plan 21 to 24 got off to the start. It did come out of the pandemic, or still in the pandemic. As Fraser and Mike have both referenced, the context of that is the cost of living pressures, the staff recruitment and retention that I alluded to, and just quite a challenging policy landscape overall. However, there has to be—we have seen through our scrutiny work, which I am sure the committee may come on to—that it is fair to say that we see that principally through our strategic inspections of children at risk of harm. Although we are not inspecting the promise per se, we see aspects that we are interested in in terms of the commitment of chief officers. I do not think that there is any doubt that there is a strong commitment there from chief officers and partnerships, which are crucial, not just focusing on the chief executive—the local authority—important though they are in the whole picture. We see that commitment, but it is fair to say that to achieve it, there would have to be renewed focus, energy, drive and commitment continuing at pace to achieve all the ambitions of the promise. We recognise that we have a part to play in that, which is why our six work streams three are outward focusing and three are inward on ourselves, because we recognise that with others and scrutiny partners in particular, we have a role to play in that as well. We are committed, as I think chief officers are, to doing all that we can to make sure that our contribution helps to ensure that the promise is delivered on time by 2030. Thank you very much. I move to questions now from Stephanie Callaghan. Thank you very much, convener, and thank you for your comments so far, panel. If I could go to Fraser first of all, you are both welcome to come in too there. We have already heard that the oversight board's report talks about the perception that the promise is a social work role, and this has led to challenges in multi-agency work. I wonder what work has been done with schools to help them to realise the promise and what more could be done in that area? Yes, certainly. The first thing to say is that there is lots of good work happening in schools across the country. I know that in places like North Lanarkshire there is training that happens for people that work in schools. Similarly, they have done stuff like that in Midlothian and lots of other places. The picture is that there is lots of good stuff happening in lots of different places. What we are not seeing yet is that happening everywhere all of the time, and that is my ambition in a sense. That is the job of the Promise Scotland to ensure that those good things that are happening in local places are replicated across the country in ways that are appropriate for different communities and different environments. We still hear that the promise is seen as a children and family social work thing and that it is really just about the care system. Of course, it is about children, young people and families in and around the care system, but a lot about the promise and we have talked about it already. It has to be much wider than that. If I take an example, one of the things that you will know in plan 21-24 and is in our work programme for this year is that there is a commitment in there to end informal and formal exclusions of care experience young people in schools. That is a clear commitment that was in the promise and was carried forward in plan 21-24. That is an enormously ambitious and challenging thing to want to do. It is one of the areas in which we are probably not going to achieve that by March of next year. One of the reasons that we are providing some focus on that. The reason that school exclusions is an interesting example, a powerful example, is that that cannot just be fixed by teachers in a classroom. The whole question of exclusions is a genuinely whole system question about understanding why those young people are turning up to school that morning in a frame of mind that required that means they are behaving in ways that are really difficult and ends up in an exclusion. Another interesting thing about it is that there are schools that do not exclude people at all. We know that it can be done and we know that it is really difficult. We know that there are lots of different views about whether we should be aiming to end exclusions for care experience young children and that there is a debate being had there. The reason I mentioned that one as an example is that it is a wee bit of a microcosm of the promise overall, which is that there is a presenting issue, which is that care experience young people being disproportionately likely to be excluded from school significantly so. However, when you begin to tease that out and unpick it, the solution to that issue is not just about what happens in a classroom. It has to be a whole system approach using a whole range of different levers and that is why we are keen to get under the skin of it. I think that it is challenging and the pandemic has had an impact, particularly in relation to issues in and around attendance and attainment. I do think that, as Fraser said, North Lanarkshire Council has a lot of work. We went and replicated some of the work that they were doing in relation to wraparound and wraparound to 9, 10 o'clock at night on Saturdays and Sundays. The point that Fraser is making is really important about how he creates that whole wraparound support to our family. We have had fantastic buy-in from education and we have probably been really clear that it is our commitment from our local schools that are there to hold on to children and young people that we can do really well. Issues in and around virtual school but also our educational psychologists because of the shift that we have made are now significantly in our residential units. We are looking at a significant bit of money that we have used through mental health to, in a sense, respond to the pandemic and get children and young people back into school where that has become a real challenge over the past four years. We know that, if we can get them into nursery, primary school or secondary school, we can get them into their opportunity for their positive destinations and for better outcomes. That goes up significantly. I think that the issue around capacity is probably something that schools and that whole system change is required to deliver the promise in the way that we need to do it. Just to pick up on what you are saying there, Mike Isbell, and go back a little bit, talking about schools and talking about Glasgow learning from what has been happening in North Lanarkshire and, certainly, I have seen some of the work that is happening there, and it is fantastic. What has actually been done then to make sure that that learning is going on across the country so that other areas could learn from the good practice, not just in North Lanarkshire and Glasgow, but across the board? One of the things that I say is that, which is quite unusual, is that 15 local authorities have contacted us off their own back. We have, in a sense, been really keen in terms of the work that we have done with the Scottish Government, the promise that we have done with Celsus and the University of Strathclyde. We have been really open to that, because whenever we take that dialogue out, we learn, and we are always trying to find out where is that breakthrough or where is that bit of progress that has been made that we need to be attended to. Again, it links to the bit in relation to Kevin's challenge around integration and inspection, but we would recognise that we still have a massive and long journey to go in relation to making some of the improvements that we need to make. As you are saying, it is about that cross-system learning, and it is about where it is working. That is really critical. I am already conscious of time, if that is okay. Thank you very much. One of our key jobs is to ensure that good practice is shared. It is important to stress that, while we are sharing things on our website, we have a stories of change initiative, which is all about sharing good practice in places. However, it needs to be deeper than that, so, as I say in this specific question, one of the reasons that we have picked exclusions and education as a specific focus for us this year is to do exactly that, to ensure that we can really get under the skin of the virtual school approach in North Lanarkshire. It is fine to say that there is the virtual school approach of everyone going to do that, but it is the detail of how that is done that is really important and the time that it takes to properly understand what is happening in those places and then to take that into your own context and apply it. We are getting into some of the real detail around sharing of lessons and we run community of interest, community of practice and stuff, so it is a key part of our job. That is great, that is really helpful. I will just move on a little bit there and maybe stay with yourself there, Fraser, as well. We can note that more robust data on sibling contact was needed and who cares Scotland's brothers and sisters participation project. I cannot get my words out today. I find that many siblings were unaware of their sibling rights and did not have regular contact. Clearly, being aware of those rights also provides a lot of security for children as well that they are going to get to see their siblings, so I am just wondering whether there has been further progress made. It happens to be one of the four areas of focus in our work programme for the next two months for exactly those reasons. The siblings, brothers and sisters are an interesting one because the policy and legislative environment in Scotland for that is really strong. Everyone recognises the importance of keeping brothers and sisters together where it is safe to do so and yet it is still stubbornly difficult to deliver in practice. That is the bit that we are really interested in. Why is it that too many sibling groups have to be separated at the point of the state getting involved in their care? That should not be the case. There are some practical issues that we need to tackle to do with the availability of foster carers, particularly for larger sibling groups, but there has to be a cultural bit there that we need to unpack. The data is critically important. The brilliant work that Who Cares and others have done around that. There is a lot of activity around that question as well, it is fair to say. We are hoping to support the momentum of that because there is still a stubborn, about 25 per cent of sibling groups are still separated. We just need to get that down and that is the work that we are focusing on over the next 12 months. I am briefly returning to the issue of behaviour-decess behaviour in school, and I buy all the stuff about early intervention. I get all that about we need to avoid exclusions if at all possible. Teachers tell me that they are often frustrated that they are left to pick up the tap where the service fails elsewhere. How do we deal with that? How do we support teachers to do their job? We need to learn where those new approaches are. The issue is about wraparound and mentoring that goes right into the school. When we have looked at the emotional and behavioural support, that is an area that is done quickly, and it has a massive waiting list on it because the need massively goes beyond what we have the capacity to do. In relation to that, it is about engagement and about when time-out takes place and when we need to take different approaches. It is also about how we integrate and how we then hold that young person. I think that it picks up Fraser's point. The longer you are out, that becomes more of a barrier for that young person. We have to find a way of supporting educational colleagues to feel that it is not just a wraparound for the child but a wraparound for getting it right for every child team, that the team is working together and the team is doing that in a way that is connecting in with whether it is residential, connecting in with kinship, connecting in with fostering, connecting in with that family. That is something that we are doing together. It picks up the issue about brothers and sisters and about some of the issue in relation to capacity because a lot of the time what comes back to us is when we are running at 100mph and hours, where is the date on that and where is the date of improvement. We have pockets, for instance, in relation to the initiative that we are doing with quarriers, which is really, really important. We are also trying to stretch that out to all third sector that are involved in the family so that family support—again, I like the point that Kevin was making. It is then about supporting those parents and supporting the adults, but it is also supporting the teacher and supporting the whole system to hold that young person, because it is really critical. I will just move on to housing if that is okay, because the latest figures show that for those under 25 looked after children, they have been assessed as homeless or threatened with homelessness. That has increased by 10 per cent in the last year, that is up. Why is that happening and what are we doing about it? I am happy to pick that one up initially. As you know, Mr Rennie, the promise is really clear that children and young people, care experience children and young people, should not be going into a homeless system, it should not be happening. The oversight board report, one of the things that it does highlight, is the board's disappointment that the care-experienced pathway of the homelessness strategy in the Scottish Government had been temporarily paused to do with capacity issues. The oversight board has made, as I said, its disappointment on that, pretty clear. As you know, and I get to mention the oversight board report in your neck of the woods, there are great examples of work happening in things like the Fife house project, part of the national house project, which is all about working really intensively with care-experienced young people to help them to make that transition into their own tenancy, and the results of that are fantastic. Tenancies are being kept. It is a win-win for the young people and for the council, because they are getting a secure tenant, and it provides a much more stable base for those young people to go and work and do all the stuff that they want for any child. I do think that the solutions are out there. We know how to do this, and it is about finding some resource. It is also about bringing a cultural shift that says that it is not okay for children and young people in inverted commas to leave the care of the state to go into the homeless system. It would not be acceptable to any of our own children, so it should not be acceptable for care-experienced young children either. It is troubling that we are not making better progress on that. I think that what the oversight board has said to Government is that we expect to see a much clearer focus and priority over the next 12 months on that. It is not that we are not making progress. It is going backwards. Do we understand why that is happening? We know that the homeless situation overall is tough. Housing supply is difficult, but if that is a priority, why is it going backwards? Part of our concern is that the priority had been paused the past 12 months. In a sense, that is precisely the point that the oversight board is making. There is no doubt that this is another example of one of the best ways of dealing with the issue for the care-experienced communities to deal with it for everybody. In the same way, the exclusion is probably better to not exclude any children at all, not just care-experienced children. As you say, I saw the answers. I do not really know why those numbers are heading in the wrong direction, Mr Rennie. My guess is that it is part of that wider context that we see across the piece in Edinburgh just two weeks ago when it announced its housing emergency. There is no doubt that those headwinds that Mike described around poverty are as strong as they have ever been, but that should only redouble our commitment, I suppose, to actually make the progress. Michelle Thomson, do you have a supplementary question here? I am fairly new to the committee, and I am not aware of the reason why it was paused. If you could help me to understand that, that would be useful. So, not in great detail, it was paused for capacity reasons, as what the Government said was the issue. There were other work streams that were equally important. Work streams around domestic violence against women and girls in particular were continued. Clearly, from our perspective, it was a concern that the care-leaver pathway had been temporarily paused. The Government would say that there has not been any work happening on it at all, but it was in the strategy and it was temporarily paused. Right. Again, it is one of those areas where, if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority because of potentially chronic constraints, but I am guessing as well, I do not know. Indeed. I make no apology for wanting to boost the care community to the front of the queue for the prioritisation, but, as we said, right at the start in response to your question, the decisions about prioritisation are difficult. I suppose that we are not terribly good at talking about it out loud, as sometimes if you are prioritising one thing, you are inevitably de-prioritising something else, and sometimes we need a more upfront and honest discussion about that. Very quickly on that point, I think that we absolutely welcome the issue of going from 16 to 24 to 25. I think that we recognise how important that is. I think that, in that area, the issue of funding is really a huge issue that chief social workers would say that we are absolutely committed to that. If you then look at the populace that I was saying earlier, that we are then holding on in our residential units and fostering 18, 19, 20-year-olds, and I think that the issue is, as Fraser said, that the enabling context is horrendous in relation to homelessness in light of unaccompanied asylum seeking in Ukraine and the impact of the pandemic and the moves out to hotels means that that position is really squeezed. I think that we are in the process of doing a 16-plus accommodation review that is trying to make that a commesure it with the investment that we have made in residential homes at 1.7 million per home times 13. However, you have got to make that a accommodation in 16 to 25 commesure it with what young people are now looking for on a contemporary basis in 2024. Kevin Mitchell, as well. I thank you just very briefly. We know that care-experienced young people are more likely to experience homelessness than their peers. All our scrutiny evidence tells us similar to what Mike said. I suppose that it is another example why a multidisciplinary approach from the scrutiny bodies and the services is required is that housing options are important. However, as is so important, it is the support that young people get to maintain those housing options and tenancies, so it is that support, but again emphasising the multi-agency bit of that in terms of the input by housing. I move to questions now from Ruth Maguire, please. One of the areas identified for priority focus was early deaths of care-experienced children and young people. I was quite surprised to read the information about circumstances of early deaths that were not collected. However, I understand that there is now a national hub for reviewing and learning from early deaths of our children and young people in care. I wonder whether I could hear from Kevin Mitchell initially about that work. I suspect that some of what you reference there might have alluded to the report that we published which was an overview on our responsibilities of deaths of looked after children in Scotland. That most recent report covered a total of 61 care-experienced children and young people. I suppose that there might be some confusion, because our specific role is about the deaths of looked after children and reviewing those. That is the contribution that we make to the child death review hub, which is led by his. When that report was published, there was some concern about that. We wrote to the Promise Oversight Board to highlight that, although we do not have all the information within our deaths of looked after children report, it would probably not be true to say that that information was not available to the wider role that the child death review hub has of looking at all the deaths of all children, whether they are looked after or not. The information is there, but we do not have all the information for our part of it. It is only when it comes together with the joint work that is done in the child death review hub. Again, there was some confusion and I do not know if the committee was aware of it. Of those 61, 42 were looked after and 16 of those were due to life shortening conditions. Again, tragic though those are, there is nothing or not always anything to suggest that they would have been avoidable. Then, in that number as well, there are also deaths through misadventure or unexplained deaths. Again, tragic though those are. It is important to get below the figures, but we did provide that clarification to the Oversight Board to make sure that those figures were understood. Indeed, whilst our report presents limited data on the characteristics, there is a wider review in which we play a part in the process led by Hiss. It feels very uncomfortable talking about numbers when we are talking about actual children and young people. I suppose that what committee would want to be reassured of was that where there is learning to be had that it is possible to do that so that we make sure that we are doing the best for children and young people in our care, I do not have other panel members have anything further to add on that. Briefly, I am bearing in mind what I said at the start in terms of me not speaking for the Oversight Board. In a sense, I think that Kevin's response kind of illustrates the problem, because I accept everything that Kevin said. The fact that there are different organisations in the system looking at different parts of it and therefore we are not able to get a fully rounded picture is part of the problem. Importantly, the Oversight Board's point is what we do not know enough about is the nature of those young people's lives. That is the thing that is absent from the whole debate and discussion, and that is the bit that they feel strongly about, as do I. It is about understanding what is happening in those people's lives that lead them to the place that I think is the critical thing. So, like everything on the promise, there is lots of process that we need to get better. I believe that processing system in this context is really important, because that is the thing that drives people's behaviours. It needs to be, with an end point in mind, that it has to be about understanding the lives of those children, young people and families to see why they have ended up in that place and how we can stop that happening in the future. Thank you for that answer. I think that that is exactly the point, isn't it, that the system has to understand about individuals' lives. Mike, I do not know if you have anything further to add. It also connects to the point that has been made about that support framework 16 to 25. I think that it is really picking up that point that Kevin made about the absolute need for capacity and wraparound for that lengthy time. I do think that in my career it is something that you look back on. We have a real degree of pain to say why we were not paying attention earlier to those young people's lives. I think that it is much better now that we are in the position that we are required to always be in the position to think of their life as a testimony to them, to learn the lessons. I think that it is often, as Fraser highlights, absolutely devastating for all of the staff and all of the young people that are in and around that life. I think that we recognise that a lot of the lessons that come out of those young people's lives are articulated by the young people themselves through the promise about loneliness and about the need for us to be much more trauma-informed. Going back to some of the things that we are talking about is to say that the thing that we very rarely focus in on is about the quality of practice and the focus in on sustained kindness and sustained support for that young person and how important continuity is for them. I think that, as Fraser highlighted earlier, there is a lot of exceptional practice across Scotland in relation to foster carers and staff in children's homes that are holding on to those young people but, again, can and need to do better on some of that. Just to clarify for your awareness that, although the Child Death Review Hub is led by Healthcare Improvement Scotland and we play a part in that, it is important to note that the views are being undertaken for all child deaths up to the age of 18 or 26 for those in throughcare and aftercare. Reports are published and will continue to be published on the learning arising from those reviews because I think that you make a really important point. There has to be lessons learned in some cases and we have to make sure that, as far as is humanly possible, we minimise the risk of anything of the kind that we see happening again. That is a key role for that whole hub, which we play a part in, to make sure that learning is circulated to those who are able to make sure that the lessons are learned and that the risks are minimised for young people. Okay, thank you. If I may move on, physical restraint was another focus of the oversight board's first report. The report states that, while there is a commitment to culture change across the residential sector, progress is mixed. What assessment has been made of the impact of the new reporting procedures in relation to restraint? Ideally, we would prefer there to be no restraint, but the procedures and processes have been strengthened. We make sure that we require care services, for example, to notify us of any incident of restraint. Proportionality is key when restraint is used. We have worked with others to broaden out the definition so that we make sure that we capture all instances of that. When we are inspecting individual services, we will look at individual circumstances or any patterns or trends that give us cause for concern. That would probably summarise our role. I definitely think that the requirement to report on those things brings a spotlight to it, which is a very good thing. I think that it might be a bit early to say exactly what the impact of that has been yet, but one of the issues that we are also very keen to press, and we have been working with the commissioner's office on this, too, is to ensure that guidance and expectations around restraint are consistently made across all different settings. You can make some progress in care settings, but it should also be the case in education and everywhere else. It is really important that that is progressed by Scottish Government across all those fronts for all different settings so that we do not end up with a patchwork approach to restraint. As you say, the oversight board has been pretty clear about its expectations in terms of progress in its last two reports. Again, some really good progress in relation to weave within our children's units replicated how nurturing is our schools. We have, in a sense, gone down a route of how nurturing is our children's homes. Again, as Kevin and Fraser have said, it is a commitment to no restraint. Again, it has been really positive because we have been working really then closely with Cibyl, and we are by law again focusing in on that strength-based, asset-based trauma-informed, and also recognising that all behaviour is a communication. We have had significant contributions from speech and language therapists about enabling us to understand often where there are issues around delay and also issues around communication. Children on the spectrum and understanding that. Again, I think that there is some really positive work there. We are rolling it out, but we also want to be in the positions that we are also sharing that with Cibyl and other parts of the system. I am afraid that I am not able to do so. Can I move to questions now from Pam Duncan Glancy, please? Thank you, convener, and good morning to the panel. Thank you for answering the questions so far and sending in the information that you have in advance. One of the submissions that we got was from the Promise Scotland. Fraser, in that, you highlighted the need to ensure work to deliver the promise as well planned, carefully sequenced and the workforce is supported. A number of those issues we have covered today, but can I just ask specifically on that? To what extent are those things currently happening? We think that the need to happen more is my short answer. I know that the committee has been doing a lot of evidence recently on that very question, particularly on the children's care and justice bill. There is a very obvious immediate one between the children's care and justice bill and the work of the hearing system working group. We are spending a lot of time with Government who assure us that they are understanding the connections between those two things, and I think that we can still see the evidence of that more strongly, if I am honest. I think that we are really understanding the implications of all the moving parts. On one level, it is incredible. If I take a big step back, it is really so positive that there is so much policy and legislation coming through Parliament at the moment, which is absolutely designed to help keep the promise. That is a thoroughly good thing. The risk of that is the complexity that it brings. We have already talked about the pressures that the workforce is under, and you have heard that in evidence from Social Work Scotland and others. We need to be really careful that the planning and sequencing of all the different moving parts, the cogs that are turning all make sense together for those who are both delivering those services and dealing with those changes on the ground in terms of the service delivery end of it, and as important, the people who are receiving the services, the children, young people, families and people with care experience. I think that we would still like to see more on that. I still think that there is an opportunity to be clearer about how sequencing, not just of the legislation passing but the implementation of that is actually going to pan out. Thank you. I appreciate that. You probably have heard the minister say in committee recently that she was going to treat the care review and the review of the hearing system separately from the Care and Justice Bill. Do you think that that is the right decision? I am a big fan of both, and I think that both things can be true for me. To a large extent, or to some extent, they are discrete things in their own right, but they clearly have overlapping interactions. Although, of course, in terms of legislative process and the consideration of individual recommendations in the hearing system working group report of which there are many, I can absolutely understand why the Government wants to give them due attention in their own right, and it is absolutely critical that they make sense as a package. Otherwise, we are going to find ourselves in a place of making decisions around how things should work in ways that people who are having to make them work find really difficult. Do you think that there is a risk for the bill if the system hearing changes that are being suggested do not happen first? Yes, I think that there is a risk of some of that. I think that because of that important interaction between the two pieces of work. I guess that the reason that I am hesitating is that it is not necessarily quite as simple as saying that you need to do this bit first and then do that bit. I think that some things can be run in parallel. I think that some things can be implemented over a period of time. That was never going to be a change that was going to happen overnight. I do not think that I would have a specific view about exactly what bit needs to happen first, followed by the other bit, in a sense that is the Government's job. I think that what is really important, and we list, as you say, in our submission to you, a whole range of things that are coming together in a sense over the next period, which makes it really, really important that that holistic view is taken and that everyone really understands how those bits are actually going to fall into place once the legislation is passed. Mike Burns, you are keen to contribute to this as well. I think that it goes back to again the initial question about, is there a sufficient appreciation, and I think that the answer is no about the enabling context. I do think that there is, I mean again our word that we keep coming back to is alignment, that this lack of sequencing and a layering on of legislation. Again, we are very fortunate in Glasgow to have a legal team, but the legal team at times are feeding back to being saying, we cannot keep up with the changes. If they cannot keep up, then what impact does that have on health visitors, social workers, teachers? I do think that there has to be a greater connectivity and a greater alignment between the implementation, and we need to really be thinking about that implementation, that impact, that capacity to be in a position to make the kind of changes, because you cannot have 10 priorities, you have to tell me what priority number one is and what priority number two is, so that I can then, in a sense, deliver in that direction. I think that a number of those things do join up. I recognise that, but I go back to the point that I am saying is that we have to take cognisance, see how exhausted the system is, how exhausted people are in it and families, and we have to then provide an implementation that can measure it with that challenge. I will resist the urge to ask questions more about the workforce, because I know a colleague will come on to do that. You mentioned that priorities are really important. What information has been shared with you all about the cabinet sub-committee on the promise since its announcement in the programme for government, and what do you think they should prioritise? I think that they should prioritise listening. I think that we are making progress on it, because I think that the work that we have been doing collectively is that we are asking Scottish Government through the whole family wellbeing fund and the public sector reform to come with us on the journey, to come in to actually see the implementation challenges, to see the fact that, as Fraser said earlier, there is not a lack of willingness, but there is an issue around capacity, and it is that bit that I think in terms of the very house and in terms of a dialogue and relation to tackling poverty, employment, all-age child care, connection at the whole family wellbeing fund, it is a recognition that we then need to get that alignment right about the leverage change and where we think is a city, is 32 local authorities and is a system that we are going to make. I think that we have to do that together. I do not think that it is any point in saying that there are a set of priorities in Edinburgh that is not even understood in Dundee and the challenges in Fife and the challenges in Angers. Do you want to come in on those points, Kevin, briefly? No. I think that, again, we have been paying close attention to the recent announcements and how that will impact on our work. I see many of the things that we have talked about today reflected in that. The Cabinet sub-committee that is to be chaired by the First Minister is very relevant to the promise work. Clearly, as are commitments about funding and funding some of the issues that are deep in our hearts in terms of that family support and, I suppose, the workforce issues. Again, part of the context that I highlighted earlier was that very complex legislative policy context. There is a lot there, and it is all important. We just need to be thoughtful in both our work and how we interact with services and partnerships because they have got a lot on. We keep coming back to it. When staff are in short supply, the tendency is to focus on the crisis intervention. We see that in our scrutiny work, even with the huge commitment that there is. We have seen in our strategic inspections that there is that commitment there from chief officers and others. We have seen already some very significant improvements in some aspects of the promise, but I do not think that we should underestimate the scale of the challenge that is facing staff. Unfortunately, when we talk about early intervention and prevention, when staff are really challenged, they will focus and make those sometimes difficult and sometimes unpalatable decisions to focus on the crisis intervention. It is back to what Fraser might have talked about earlier on. There are a lot of messages there, but there is a lot to do and a lot to take in, and it is all important. Two questions. I am conscious of the time and the fact that you have all touched on both of them in various ways throughout the discussion, so feel free to be concise or refer me to your previous answers if you want. The first is about how we disseminate best practice and embed that in the system, because it has been pointed out already. There are loads of best practice happening across the board, but in a very patchy way, various folk are good at various things. Nobody is doing everything the way that we would want it to be. I direct this at Mike in the first instance. Are we being systematic in how we collect evidence of best practice and then try to embed that across the system? We have all got lots of anecdotes about it, but I am not sure whether we are actually seizing that and then embedding it wholesale. I have been chairing for a year a social work Scotland group with the Scottish Government on data, and I was using the last meeting to get appropriately frustrated about the fact that we cannot continue to just generate the level of data that we are generating. Nobody looks at it, nobody pays attention to it. There has got to be a feedback loop that again creates that alignment and leverage and driver for change. I think that the bit in and around enabling context is really important, because going back to some of the discussions on the national care service, you have 32 different enabling context, so there is no point at times about simply writing a report and saying to a system that is what you need to do. There is a bit about engaging that system on what are your challenges, what is it that you need to do, but picking up the point is that we have learned things, we need to slow down and we need to be really precise and prescriptive of the change that we need to take. I think that there is a bit that we need to do that in a sense nationally so that we are in a position that I do not want to be in a position where you are finding out something. If something is working, tell me about it and I can then go and look about implementing it. I think that all of us say briefly that we need to be more systematic about it, I would absolutely agree with that. That is partly our job in the problem in Scotland, and that is the work that we are focusing on to make sure that how we have described it in our strategic work programme is that we will be more assertive about good practice. So actually saying to people that stuff over there looks pretty good to us, why are you not doing it, as opposed to a slightly more kind of letting a thousand flowers bloom approach up until this point, which I think has been good, but I think that we are at a point now where we do need to focus on, you know, from where I am sitting six in a bit years to go to 2030, if you have a better idea than what people in Highland are doing on a particular thing, then tell us about it. If not, why are you not doing that? Now, we do not have any powers to make people do stuff, but we can, I guess, change the tone a little bit. Obviously, they can inspect it, and others have good vehicles and mechanisms for sharing good practice in their inspection reports, too, which we would expect people to be picking up on. So the short answer is yes, I think that we definitely need to be more systematic, and this next period, the next two or three years, is absolutely critical for that. But Kevin Doe, feel free to come in and go back to make some real entry. Oh, sorry. I will cut you off if you want to answer the next question. Just very quickly, I think that it is a really good point that you make. We have got a statutory duty to identify and disseminate good practice, so we aim to do that in every inspection, not only when we are inspecting signposts that service to where we know that there is good practice, just to help them, but we will also take opportunities on our strategic inspections to do that. We will profile in reports examples of good practice, and for our regular care services, when we publish thematic reports, we will give a stage to some of the good practice examples, the services that we have seen, to allow them to profile themselves with the aim of helping others to try not just necessarily transpose, because there is a good point, what works in one area won't necessarily transpose to another area, rural city, but it can be adapted and it can save time and it can help drive improvement quicker. So a really important point, and we try and do quite a lot or as much as we can around that. Thanks very much. I might just return to what you mentioned there about the appropriate level of frustration that you were voicing through the group on data. That's an area that's of interest to members of the committee and Parliament as a whole across a wide variety of areas. We've produced a huge amount of data in the public sector, but not necessarily the data that actually drives improvement in the way that we want it to, or that even gives us an accurate reading of how the system is currently operating. Could you just tell us a little bit more about what you mean there by trying to streamline the data that's being produced towards what's actually driving improvement and what the process will be for the working group taking that forward? One of the things that I've tried to say is about can we get to a bit where we equally benchmark with each other and we also then in the position where we're looking at how are we making progress, are we making the progress that we need to make, so on a Monday morning and a Friday I'll look at the exact numbers of children that are in our formal care, the numbers in kinship. It's then about looking at, for instance, the rate of admission every week, the rated admission every month, the issues in and around throughput, the points that are getting made about, for instance, the rate per 10,000, and also then looking at that rate per 10,000 visa v then, the rate of poverty within. So we're still then looking and seeing that the children that we're then looking after within are still coming out of SIMD 1 and 2 predominantly. So again I think it's about, there's at times I think data can get interesting and I was saying yet if that's of interest to you fine but if we're actually trying to transform and radically change the system we've got to look at that information that provides a feedback loop to tell us that we're on the right journey. And it's that information that we've got to pay attention to in relation to, for instance, in Glasgow now, the number of children that are looked after in Glasgow, the number of placements, because that tells us about placement continuity and about stability, about the data on brothers and sisters, the data in relation to do. So I think there is a hard desperate that I'm saying to people we can't get into a big debate, we need to actually be looking at 10 key items that we're saying nationally, this is something that drives towards delivery of the promise. Mr Fraser McKinlay and first please on that. Yes, sorry absolutely. It's just to point thank you, I'll be very brief, two very quick things. My team talk about data to prove and data to improve. I think we spend a lot of time on the data to prove bit and reporting to people and actually not enough time on what's the data that's helping us to do things differently and better that would be the first thing. And secondly, critically important for me is the nature of that data. So we've been spending a lot of time doing work to figure out what is important to measure if you're a child or a family or a young person or a care experience person in the care system. We're much more focused on gathering data that matters to the system and not what matters to the people that are actually in it and that's a massive shift for us. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to have to move on Ross if you're going. Okay, thank you. Can we come to Liam Kerr now please? Thank you convener. Good morning panel. Fraser McKinlay, I'd like to just stick with something that Ross Greer was examining. He said earlier that this is wider than just the care system and there needs to be changed to the whole system and you also alluded in your answer to Mr Greer to the extent of your powers. How can the Promised Scotland drive and help embed system change given the extent of your role currently and are there any tools that you could use that aren't currently available to you? So our job is to challenge, to convene, to bring people together in ways that maybe they haven't done up until now to join the dots, as I've explained a couple of times, Mr Kerr, about ensuring that that good practice is being shifted. There's no doubt that it's an unusual job that I've got, quite different from the one that I used to have. It's one of the reasons that I was excited to do it because in the end this is about culture and leadership is critically important. There are organisations, not least the Care Inspectorate and others, that have the statutory responsibility to do the accountability bit. I think that what is really striking for me in terms of being on this job for a year and having been involved in the care review beforehand is that the moral credibility and legitimacy that the promise still brings with it is enormously powerful. It's very striking that people are very committed to it. The voices that were in the care review and continue, and you'll hear from colleagues and who cares soon, continues to be an incredibly powerful force for both holding the system to account for change, and I include the problem in Scotland in that, and also then ensuring that the changes are right. So at the moment I'm not looking for additional levers or powers. I think that the last thing the system needs is another organisation with powers to do stuff. As an organisation, we are committed to not being here by 2030, so we are publicly saying that the promise Scotland will not exist by 2030, because once the promise is being kept you don't need an organisation called the promise Scotland. I have to say that that has been a very powerful thing because what that means is that when we turn up in places, the only thing that we are interested in is what needs to happen to keep the promise. We have no skin in the game beyond 2030 and indeed you would expect the organisation to begin to reduce in size as we get towards that. So that commitment to our own obsolescence, I think, is quite powerful, actually, and it does allow us to say things and do stuff that other folk in the system find a bit harder to do. I understand, very grateful. Kevin Mitchell's phrases just brought up the accountability bit, as he called it. The promise Scotland's plan 21 to 24 set out five priority areas. Earlier on, Kevin Mitchell mentioned that that has been tough for various reasons that he gave. What changes has the Care Inspectorate made to inspection and regulation in line with plan 21 to 24? Is anything further planned? Thank you, Mr Kerr, and for the opportunity to address that. We have done quite a lot, I think. There is always more we can do and there is more we will do. However, as I briefly alluded to, we have taken a number of six actions internally. We have an individual who is full-time responsible for the promise work within the Care Inspectorate, so that was an initial commitment by the chief executive. That team was established in 21. We have a regular report on our board. It is part of our corporate plan that was developed covering the period 22 to 25. I suppose that the key changes that we have highlighted there are the six work streams, three internally facing and three externally facing, recognising the dual role, responsibilities on ourselves and our role to work with others. The biggest change has been the quality frameworks that we produce. We now have amended our quality frameworks to include a clear reference to the promise aspirations in children's services—the early-year services in the residential childcare. We have put a much stronger focus on experiences and outcomes. We have always had that focus, but we have put a much stronger focus on making sure that, when our documents are used primarily for self-evaluation, that is one thing that benefits the services. When our inspectors inspect, they use the same framework to inspect. As a result, we are putting a much stronger focus on the lived experience of the children, participation and engagement, and listening to children. That has meant that we are spending longer on inspection because we are interviewing more children and spending more time with the young people. I suppose that the best example that I can give is by no means the only example is the secure care pathway review that we recently published. Hither to the inspection of a secure care service would concentrate only on what is happening in the service, but what we did quite innovatively was that we deliberately labelled it as a pathway review. We focused on the experience of the children and young people before they went to secure, while they were insecure and when they left secure. That involved us following 30 young people over a period of 18 months interviewing each of them three times. That is a very different approach, but the richness of that was that, while it is critically important in terms of the care, safety, protection and wellbeing, what happens in the service, what is just as important is what was the journey to this. Was it that could things have been done quicker? Could they have been done earlier to avoid perhaps going into secure? What happened after? You are not just looking, you are looking at a much bigger picture. People have told us that that is much more helpful. It is much more helpful to the services because it is not then just about secure, it is about the assessment before you go in, it is about the early intervention and prevention work and it is about the support that is there after children and young people leave secure. However, we had to do that at the expense of individual service inspections because he can imagine that it is quite time consuming, but it was the right thing to do. All our frameworks have much more emphasis on that. We have always focused on experiences, but we are doing much more engagement and that applies to our early-year services as well. We have a principal team as services that Mike leads and manages about making sure that our own staff are trauma informed. That is about training and developing of our staff. We have introduced a learning and development framework. We have had development days for our team that specifically undertakes the residential childcare inspections. We have a huge amount of work, but it is just as important to our role externally as well because our strategic inspections, although we lead the strategic inspections of children at risk of harm, those services are undertaken in collaboration with the police inspectorate, the education inspectorate and healthcare improvement Scotland. We have been working with them because, again, like us, we might be the social work and social care regulator, but in the same way as it does not just sit with social work, we have to drive that shared understanding and shared commitment through our joint work. We are part of a group and I struggle with the new name, but Fraser will be very familiar with it. The Audit Scotland strategic scrutiny group now renamed—I will have to look at this because I get it wrong every time—the strategic public sector security network, SPSSN. That is effectively the Audit Scotland strategic scrutiny group comprising of chief execs of all the scrutiny bodies, including the housing regulator, healthcare improvement Scotland and police fire. We spent most of the afternoon discussing our individual self-evaluations of our work in relation to the promise and plan 2021-24 in particular, and sharing with each other in a very open and transparent way what we thought we had done and what we thought we would still do. That was really helpful. We see that we have a key role there to work, not just on our own processes but to support others, and that is the nature of the work that we do. If you were asking me about self-evaluation, the obvious question would be how are we doing, because we ask others to do it. I think that there is steady progress, but there is more to do and a lot more to do, and we recognise that. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, convener, and I am aware that we do not have a lot of time left. As has been mentioned before anyway about workforce recruitment and retention, obviously, how important that is. The promised Scotland submission to the committee highlights the important role of the workforce in reforming the system, but a survey published by the Scottish Social Services Council on 31 October this year found that all local authorities bar 1 were finding it difficult to fill social work vacancies for the very good reasons that there are too few applicants with the required experience or with the required qualifications and that the pay is less competitive than with other employers. We are aware also that the minister has said to us that workforce improvement plan is being developed and is due to be published in 2024. Just to ask what involvement have you and your colleagues had in developing that proposal to move things to a better place, please. I think that Social Work Scotland has been heavily involved in that, particularly with the office of the chief social work adviser. I think that there is a significant focus on the issues in and around recruitment, retention and also the enabling context in terms of support supervision and the issue around professional development and post qualifying. The infrastructure of that is recognised that we need to, again, an area where we need investment and we need capacity to get the recruitment right across the country in terms of the challenges in relation to some of the rural areas but also islands and islands. I think that looking at how we, in a sense, create the opportunity for people not only to be recruited in but to be sustained in. I think that, again, I will go back to the bit that we have talked on earlier and touched on earlier about saying that we recognise that we will have qualified social workers and health visitors. We have team leaders whose only experience has been the last four years in being in that pandemic. I think that, consequently, we go back to the issue about we need to recognise the level of support and reflective practice and space and capacity that needs to go in to support that. I think that that is something that we are really keen to work with the Government on. Anybody else? Anything at all? Mr Gideff, if I may say, the Government get advice from many people, as I am sure members of the committee, what we hope is that the advice that we give, which is based on scrutiny evidence, is helpful at least. Just to reassure you that we take every opportunity to share with the Government not just our individual reports but our collective assessment of what that is telling us about the workforce and hopefully based on evidence so that we can back that up with evidence. I think that that is, hopefully, valued and really important. It is a key role for us. We do that at all levels of the organisation. Our chief executive, Jack Irvine, will do that at her level. We do it with our sponsor branch and we do it with various policy officials right across our portfolio, which is early years. Children, young people, adults and older people, as you know, it is a wide injustice as well. We take whatever opportunity we can, but we make sure it is based on the evidence, which we hope is more helpful, so that it can be absolutely substantiated. That is very helpful. On the back of that, if you do not mind Fraser McKinlay, to what extent are the aims of the promise still achievable if workforce and capacity issues sustain as they are at the moment? There is no doubt that it is one of the risks, I think, to achieving it in full. I suppose that my only other contribution to the question is that that question around recruitment and retention cannot just be about social workers. The promise will be kept by an enormous range of people who work with and alongside children and young people and families and care experienced people. The promise itself takes a very broad definition of workforce, and social work is absolutely central to that, but you do not grow social workers overnight. That long-term work has to happen, and we also need to think then quite differently about how services are designed and who therefore needs to be involved in those services to try and ensure that we have the right people able to provide the right support at the right time. That cannot just be a conversation about the professions in inverted commas. I am confident that those things can be sorted, given all the conversations that we have had and given all the work that we have talked about. I would also say that, although we are right to be concerned about the pressures on the workforce generally of the new things coming through, we should also be in mind that a lot of those new things coming through are actually the things that will help. They are the solutions in the long term to the problems that we are currently facing, so there is also something for me sometimes a little bit about framing that we do not see all those things as another problem that we have to deal with. Those are actually the things that are going to make it sustainable in the long term. That is very positive, and thank you very much for that. Thank you very much, Bill Kidd, for that. I would like to thank the panel for their time this morning and the evidence that we have heard. It has been very useful indeed. I now suspend our meeting for eight minutes to allow for a change of witnesses before we reconvene to hear from our second panel on this topic. Welcome back, and we are continuing this morning with our scrutiny of the promise, and we will be hearing from Claire Burns, the Centre for Excellence for Children's Care and Protection that sells us, Nicola Colleen, commissioner for children and young people, and Louise Hunter, the chief executive officer of Who Cares Scotland. Good morning to the three of you, and thank you for joining us today. I am going to move straight to questions from members, and I bring in Michelle Thompson again. Good morning. I am going to ask a similar question to what I asked the first panel who were here this morning. That referred to the oversight board calling the Scottish Government to set out a strategic investment plan to deliver on the promise. My particular question was what specifically should be prioritised for investment, given the chronic fiscal shortfall that the Scottish Government has and the nature of its funding. I do not know if you were in earlier, but we had quite a lot of commentary around the complexity of that, and we also had commentary about some areas that needed to be de-prioritised so that others could be prioritised, and we had a long discussion about capacity. I do not know who would like to go first on that, but I am trying to get a sense of what we should prioritise, because we have to prioritise something. You go first on that. It is a good question, because you kept hearing about the amount of policy and procedures in the clotted landscape. You heard Mike Byrnes saying it as well. The sector is looking to the Scottish Government to say that it cannot implement anything, so what is the most important thing that you can implement? There are two or three things that I would like to say. It is easy to identify things such as early family support. I would say that we also have to prioritise the collective leadership piece, and we talk about that. We say that you heard what the panel is saying. It needs a whole system approach, it needs collective leadership. That in itself is a programme of work. It will not happen on its own. I think that we are really learning that through the whole family well being element 2, and we are learning it through our experience. If we want the promise to be implemented in the timescales, we will have to put investment into that collective leadership piece. How are we getting leaders in local areas together? People who have responsibility for education, social work, social care, finance, commissioning, because they can unlock some of the barriers that we are having. Work could aim to say what it is going to take to implement the promise. We need to shift the question to what it is going to take, but what does it mean that your department is going to have to do differently? It is creating that readiness, creating that building, and we have to be realistic that that is some of the work. It is not enough to say that we need more early family support and more investment in kinship. Those things are absolutely important, but we have to see the collective leadership as being part of what we need to invest in. The other is about saying that we are getting clearer and clearer about the relationship of child poverty and children and young people who require support and children and young people who are looking after. We talk about leverage, but where can we intervene everywhere? Where can we find places that we think will have the biggest impact on the biggest group of children and young people that will be preventative? Can we focus in on the child poverty strategy and the child poverty pathway? As those things that we think are the most preventative, they will give us the biggest investment for children and families. It is identifying those priorities. The other thing is the whole family support, particularly around universal services. The reason that I say that is that that is what children and families are telling us all the time, is that can we get the support earlier when we need it and can we get it through universal services because that is what is available to everybody. You heard Mike Burns talking about the investment and health visit and how they feel in Glasgow that they might not have the data, but they feel that that has made quite a significant shift, so those would be the three things that I would identify with. That is very helpful. Before I bring in Nicola, do you think that there is recognition in Government the scale of the transformational change from a leadership perspective that is needed going back to your first point? I mean, this is really significant stuff. Do you think that that is recognised and you are right, there is a cost associated with that as well? I think that we are making progress on that with Government and I think that, particularly conversations that they are really engaging with a number of local authorities, including Glasgow, about saying what have you done and what have you learned and how can we be on that learning journey with you. I think that we are making progress with them. I think that it is a big challenge to all of us and not just Government, it is a big challenge to the sector to come to terms with the fact of what this will really take. It is not just going to take things getting into legislation and it is not just going to take training and it is not even just going to take funding because you have also heard that sometimes that funding goes to places. It will take a much greater shift in how we approach change and I think that Government needs to be on that journey with us, but the sector, including us, needs to be on that journey as well. I think that one of the things, and I will finish here because I know that other folk will want to come in, is that Government is also beginning to recognise that you cannot just put the change out to local areas. They are a significant part of that change, so how are they on that learning journey around? How are we part of the barriers? How are we getting in the way and how can we find solutions collectively to those as well? I think that how they are part of that journey with us is really important. That is very helpful. Nica, would you like to come in? Thank you very much. As you know, I took office in August this year, so this is my first time giving evidence to the education children young people's committee. I just wanted to put on record my personal support for the promise and my commitment to supporting children young people with experience of care. In response to your specific question, I will echo a lot of what Claire McLean has said. I think that there is a significant focus needed now on that implementation plan, but that absolute understanding of the collective leadership that is required across that. What I really want to flag is the vital role of the third sector in that. There is a real need for a joined-up approach from the Scottish Government, local government, but that involves the third sector in seeing the leadership that they are actually delivering, often in the early intervention and preventative space. Often, they are finding ways to connect with young people and their families earlier, and that needs to be acknowledged and really recognised within the strategic investment plan as well. In terms of prioritisation, I echo what Claire McLean said about prioritising that implementation plan with really effective leadership, but aligning that with strategic investment across the board and accountability. In preparation for today, I was really privileged to speak to some young people with experience of care, and I hope to draw on that throughout this session as well. However, they were absolutely crystal clear that they want to see more accountability, but it has to be really meaningful accountability for them as well. I also want to come in on that as well. I thank Snack for that important link to care experience people. I think that this is maybe the first time in this committee that we have actually spoke about care experience people this morning. Just to give a bit of context before I come directly into answering the question, you will see that behind me we have lots of our members who wanted to come along today, because this feels like the first opportunity for a bit of public scrutiny around Scotland's attempts to keep the promise. Just to give a bit of context about who I am and what we bring to the table today, Hooker Scotland represents 4,000 care experience people across Scotland. Care experience people are not a homogenous group, they are not just children and young people, and I would like to touch on that quite heavily today. We spoke almost exclusively about children and young people, but we know the impact of care is lifelong. Our members share their views with us every day. We hear from them through our data, through advocacy, through events, through committees, through lots of different ways, and today, while it is me sitting here, I will bring to you directly what those care experience members have told us over the past almost 45 years now. What that looks like to us is representing 1,700 care experience people, over 6,500 advocacy issues across 32 local authorities in the past year alone. We consult our members regularly. We had an event last year called The Promise and Me event in summer 2022. We also consult with them through our summer of participation this year, where we spoke directly to 200 care experience people directly about the impact of the promise. That is what I am going to bring today. I want to talk to you about how care experience people feel about the promise, because I do not think that we have covered that so far this morning. I want to talk to you about the concerns and unintended consequences of delivery that have led to a real dilution. I think that some of that came across this morning in the evidence. I want to give you some examples of the progress that has been widely celebrated. We have heard so much about good pieces of work, but I would like to ask the question today of how do we know that this is good work, how do we know that it is actually making an impact on the care experience community? Someone this morning mentioned the easier wins. We need to address that today. How the lack of engagement fundamentally with the care experience community to track progress and impact has been felt by them? If we are going to start talking about what we need to prioritise in the promise, we need to be really clear that Scotland agreed to keep that promise. We are now almost four years in. We have known about the issues that the care experience community has faced long before the independent care review in 2017. It is 2023. We need to be in a position where we are not talking about what we prioritise moving forward. We are very clear that we need to completely keep the promise. If there is a conversation about having to dilute some areas, that first and foremost needs to be had with care experience people. I will take that last point, which is most important. A lot of the areas that you have covered I know other members are going to come in on as well. Thank you very much for that, Michelle Thomson. Many of your points will be addressed with the themes that I know you were in for the last session, so you can see how the conversation developed. I want to ask again about the whole family well-being fund and what impact it has had so far. If there has been success with that fund, how might that success be built upon? Who might want to go? Louise, do you want to come in first on that? We know from the oversight board that what they are saying is that plan 2020-21-24 is failing. It is not going to be kept. For us, we have used a lot of words this morning around being disappointed, being concerned. We are talking about people's lives here. We are talking about people not getting the support that they have demanded and being promised for a long, long period of time. First, there is a big issue around the data and evidence that is being collected. We do not know, as a country, what impact this whole family well-being fund is having. If I could pick up in a couple of areas where we have some indication of what is happening, that would be with our advocacy data. We represent around 1,600 primarily children and young people for our advocacy because of the way that contracts work. Some of that is to the children's healing system, some of that is through local authority contracts. We are saying that the top five advocacy issues to put it in a bit of a crude term are the things that people present to us on a daily basis. They have not changed. They have not changed since the promise was set out almost four years ago, and they have not changed long going back before that. We know that, on a day-to-day basis, the majority of children and young people that we support do not feel the impact of any of the investments that the Scottish Government has put in or that the sector is attempting. So, while there might be what we are hearing is good news stories, there are definitely some questions around how they are being felt by the care community. We always need to look at continuing care, and I am sure that Clarell will pick up on that as well, particularly in some of the excellent work of sales that is around continuing care. Continuing care legislation came into force almost 10 years ago. That massively predates the promise. What we know from speaking to our members this year is that three out of four, sorry, two, three care experience adults had a negative experience when they were leaving care. We heard from 200 care experienced people across the summer, and for some of them they said that they were not ready to leave care when it happened, and several factors contributed to that. What they have told us was that sometimes it happened too fast, sometimes it happened literally overnight, sometimes they left care and there was a lack of a safety net to rely on. Some of them said that there were issues with statutory support services, and some of them said that we just felt far too young. Actually, if we think about what we know about when young people in general tend to leave home, research from Bernardo's in 2021 said that the average age of leaving home is 23, but research from Celsus has explained to us that no care experience people are asked to leave much earlier than that. They are leaving care at age 16 to 18. One of the most stark examples of that I can give is when one of our members said to us over the summer, one day I was seen as an adult and almost when I was seen as a child only a few days before. That is the impact of this cliff edge based on an arbitrary age cut-off. At the moment, we know statistics published by the Scottish Government for social work stats for 2021-22 have said that 49 per cent, so just over 4,000 children and young people who are currently eligible for aftercare are not in fact receiving it. We also heard this morning from the committee or the panel, sorry, around the impact of the siblings legislation. We have heard that there is lots of great legislation behind that, lots of really good intentions and good will. It sounds like there has been a bit of investment around that as well, but what we know is that we do not have that level of detail to say that siblings are being kept together. Louise, everything that you are saying is really coming from the heart and it is resonating with us. I am just conscious that we are trying to. I might ask the other panel members to comment on the whole family wellbeing fund and successes that it may or may not have. Do you want to go first, Nicola? Yes, I am happy to. I thought that I would just bring in a couple of examples of positive examples that have been shared with me. Again, when I met with young people, I must say that it was a small group and they cannot be used to represent all of the United Kingdom experience young people, but when I met them, the positive shifts that they were definitely saying were around about relationship-based practice and a real recognition for that, and the positivity in terms of culture change of having years ago being discouraged to maintain relationship with previous carers or social workers and seeing a real focus towards support and encouragement for that. They were also talking about the improvements in holistic recognition for them to have all of their rights developed for them to thrive so that there is support for their personal interests and their hobbies, but there is a really particular whole family support that I would like to give an example of as well. That is Aberlare's intensive perinatal support service. It was established in April 2021, based in Falkirk. It provides support to pregnant women and new mothers who are affected by substance use and have a baby under 12 months of age. The primary aim of that is to maximise opportunities for new babies to remain safely in the care of their mother through facilitating recovery from problematic substance use and developing and enhancing parenting capacities. The women who are supported by the service are at high risk of having their children taken into care prior to referral. In the last two years, 21 women have been supported by the service and of those 17 have kept their babies in their care. The majority of women were referred into the service during pregnancy, so that offers a longer period for building relationships, treatment and care. I thought that that was an excellent example that the earlier women received support, the better the outcomes can be for them and their babies. However, I chose that because I wanted to flag the fact that, again, it is a third sector organisation. We need to ensure that we make the third sector a key part of the strategic investment plan. However, this is an excellent example of practice, but it is not rolled out across the country yet. You heard the earlier panel talk about a systematic need for taking these examples of good practice when we are looking at whole-family support and being able to ensure that they are rolled out as well. I hope that that is a helpful illustration that there is good work happening, but we would like to see it more systematically. That is an excellent example. I have visited the Aberlare facility with another committee hat on, and I would only resonate and agree with your comments about the impact that it has with those young people. I have some experience of working alongside the Scottish Government, particularly in the whole family well-being fund. I have less knowledge on element 1, and I can only imagine that what the panel was saying before has happened. Money went out to each local authority as part of element 1 in each partnership. We have to understand the pressure that there is a real pressure to say how we will help everybody and local authorities to understand that pressure. Some of that will have went to particular services and particular ways of working, but there is no doubt that some of that will have went to just trying to stabilise the system. Who can blame a system where things are really difficult and really dire? On element 2, I have much more experience of that. I need to recognise that the Scottish Government did something that was quite bold and brave. We are going to work with a few local authorities and their partners, and we are going to put a change team around it and build capacity around it. That has not been straightforward, but I think that they were following the evidence on that, which was saying—you heard Mike Steeck earlier on today—capacity, capacity, capacity. It is about saying how we have skilled people and changed methodologies who can help local areas and help them to think through what is the first kind of change that they want to make. It is actually building some capacity to say that we understand that you are managing huge operational demands, and at the same time we are trying to keep your focus on a massive change. That needs the kind of skill capacity of people coming in, facilitating that, helping them to think through what the evidence is saying about the what and why. Again, it has been challenging, but I think that what has really helped us in Scottish Government and local leaders to focus in on is really what this is going to take. How are we working with leaders to get agreement and consensus about where we want to intervene in the system, and it is feeding right back into the Scottish Government about saying, here are some of the things that are getting in the way, the amount of data that we are being asked for, the amount of recording that we are being asked for, reports that we are being asked for. So I think that we are really learning what it is that is putting additional demand on the system that we can begin to think how do we take that demand out. So there are some really positive elements of that, but I do appreciate that when money goes into local authorities, there are different ways that it is used, and it may not always be focused down. What I will say, I think that that is why it is important, as I was saying previously, and I know that Fraser has agreed with us, is that we need to start engaging with directories of finance, directories of procurement and commissioning, because they are as critical to this transformation as head to social work, head to education. They hold the levers, they hold some of the powers, so I would really say that it is about they need to be at the table alongside us. Thank you, and that evidence sort of reflects what we were hearing in the previous panel as well, so it's great to have that reinforced. Can I move now to questions from Pam Duncan Glancy, please? Thank you, convener. Good morning to the panel. I think it's still morning yet, and thanks again for the information that you shared so far and also what you sent in advance. One of the things that the oversight board says is that delivering the original aims of the plan 21 and 24, and of course we've touched on this, is no longer realistic within the time frame. Louise, you've started to set out the impact that it is having on young people and care experienced people, and in particular that these issues have been known for some time. What is your assessment of whether or not that is a true reflection and why that is the case? Of course, you're right that the oversight board has set that out, and they've quite clearly said that they don't expect that plan to be upheld in full. There are probably a number of reasons for that, and I think that the biggest situation that we've got is that we don't actually know. There's not a lot of data and evidence, and I think that the oversight board actually state that themselves. They state that it's very difficult to know where we're seeing real progress. One of the mandates that I have today is to share the information from care experienced people directly, and it's that they feel completely excluded from this process. Actually, the care review set the bar for how to engage and how to make sure that care experienced people had a voice in this process, but if anything, their engagement sense and those four years' sense has been really quite patchy and inconsistent. Actually, for the majority of this morning's session, we heard quite a lot about the system and the sector and how things are really challenging. Fortunately towards the end, we started to hear some real sense being spoken around. Actually, we can only really measure impact if we speak to people that is impacting directly, so that's really important for us. I guess, without going off on a huge tangent, I'd like to just highlight some of the challenges that we're seeing with the care in what we're seeing. We've heard lots of, I guess, really good news stories, but what our members are telling us is that, in the attempt to try and keep some of the ambitions and aspirations set out in plan 21 to 24, we've seen a bit of a dangerous dilution. You might have heard this this morning when the panel members spoke about restraint and the fact that actually in the promise, which was published in February 2024, it specifically says that Scotland must strive to become a nation that does not restrain its children, which seems really clear to all of us, but actually plan 21 to 24, which was launched only a year later, waters that down quite significantly by saying that restraint will always be pain-free, will be used rarely, and it will only be used when it's required to keep a child safe. Now, to our members, that doesn't sound like we're striving to become a nation that doesn't restrain our children. In fact, it sounds like we're admitting defeat. We heard the Care Inspectorate this morning talking about how we measure restraint, and it's actually really encouraging to hear that the Care Inspectorate are doing some work around that. I think that there's a note of caution in that as well. It does seem like we're starting to dilute because the Care Inspectorate are, as much as we heard from Mike, particularly, certain local authorities are taking the approach to let's not restrain, but what we don't know, what the position is in other local authorities. Actually, the dilution, we also know that the terms of restraint are being called safeholding now, so there's lots of concerns. To answer your question directly, I don't know that the Promise Oversight Board knows what particular elements of the plan are being kept or not kept. I think that there's a real data gap in Scotland, and again, I'll always come back to this. No one's actually sat down and asked to get experience community. That's really helpful. Can I also ask Nicola and Claire for your reflections on that and why you think that it is now unrealistic that they will meet the forms in 2021-24? I do agree with the Oversight Board's report that it isn't realistic, and what Louisa is saying that we're hearing from the get experience community, that they're not feeling that progress. I do believe that the current 20-30 targets are still achievable, and they must be achievable. I think that there's a refresh needed now in terms of sustaining ambition, as well as leadership and commitment to children and young people in the country. As we've already mentioned, I don't want to repeat myself too much, but I think that there is an absolute need for clarity of leadership from across Scottish Government, local Government, embedding the third sector within that clarity about that being outcome focus, and based on what we know that children and young people are already saying, that change looks like and feels like with them. Further, to be a clear strategic investment plan aligned to that, and further, to be a clear accountability process that includes children and young people as part of that, as well. The recommendations that the Oversight Board are making echoes the recommendations of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, including observations that are called on the state, which means both the UK and Scotland to implement a tracking system for the allocation, use and monitoring of resources for children. It was encouraging to hear what Fraser was saying this morning about a framework being developed for methodology around investment, and we'll look forward to seeing more of that in due course. On the UNCRC, one of the outcomes in the promise is that there will be coherent, cohesive and compliant action with the UNCRC. Do you think that that's happening already? I think that there's a real need for everything to be aligned, as we've heard earlier, about changes in terms of the law, policy and practice. We're moving in the right direction, but it has to be lined up. We have to have support for the workforce, as we've already heard this morning, but I fundamentally believe that it can be done and it should be done. I suppose that, just to start off by saying that we've done a massive workforce survey as part of the children's services reform research. What comes through really clearly on that is the workforce's commitment to the promise, comprehensively in support of it. I've got frustration here, but I think that angst would be a better word about the fact that the current context does not allow them to practice in a way that they want to, and they really feel like they're letting children and young people down and families down. That's what comes through really clearly. The commitment and the passion is there. So I think that because of the lack of investment, I think that they feel that they can really, when you've got such limited resources, you can only reach the top of the top of your priorities and your statutory responsibilities, and you've then got staff who are also saying, I've got children who've had one, two, three, four social workers, so how does that relate to relationship-based practice? I think that just feeling like they would like to support them at an earlier stage, they would like them to be more resources in the community, and often we're having to wait until families are saying, I'm at crisis point before we can intervene, and the social workforce, social care, realise that, they recognise that, so I think there's much more that they would like to do at an earlier stage for families, and I think that sense of letting families down is bearing really heavily on them at the moment. I think we heard really clearly from Fraser this morning and from others about the fact that part of the context of not meeting the promise is Covid, it's about what's happening with our workforces, I think we're right to not expect our workforces to be able to meet operational demands and do a massive transformational programme, our current level of workforces cannot do both of those things, but I probably have a different view from Fraser in that. I think what is also around in that is our approach to change, and our approach to change in Scotland, and I mean throughout Scotland, I think we're still no following the evidence on what it's really going to take, so we still want to believe that training alone, or getting things into legislation, or even funding that these things in ourselves will all bring us to the aspirations, and it won't. The aspirations are the promises that we have across Scotland, high quality consistent practice, it's going to take something more, it's going to take a massive change for what's happened before it will be a shift, it won't be a continuation of what's happened in the past and in our approaches, it's going to take, Mike was saying to you, it's going to take capacity, and that means people and it means money. Again, I would ask you to just have some caution, there can be a sense at times that the money's in the system, and I think in some ways the money is, that's right, because if you look at Mike was talking about the figures in Glasgow, they realised that what they were spending on care was massive compared to what they were spending on prevention, now that tells you a certain something and it motivates you, but getting the money out of the system also requires money and it also requires people, it's not just there for you to go in and get, because these are people, these are children in foster placements, so we actually need, how are we getting the money that helps us to manage the operational responsibilities and try and build this new system, and that's what it is as well, so I think we won't meet it if our approach to change and an approach to investment doesn't significantly change. Thank you. Thank you. For those responses panel, Ross Greer, can I come over to yourself now, thanks? Thanks, convener. Lewis, if I can start with you, it'd be interested in how you would characterise the Scottish Government's overall response to the Paving the Way report, do you feel like they really grasped what was being said? So it was really helpful to have the Scottish Government attend the Paving the Way session, where we had just under 50 care experience members of Rookier Scotland. During that, or at the end of that process, our members asked us quite a number of questions around, to put to the Scottish Government around things like who's ultimately accountable, how will we know, because actually one of the biggest concerns from the care experience community is just the amount of plans that, and I think we probably hear this across the sector as well, we have plans upon plans upon plans, you know, we'd have a plan that was developed the day that the promise was launched, we had one that followed a year later, we then had the change programme only a few months later, which was due to be updated annually and it hasn't been updated in the two years. So Paving the Way was a real attempt at us to bring together the care community and see how are you finding all of this, what are you feeling on the ground, what's happening, what's changing in your lives. So they wanted to know directly first of what is the promise, who's accountability, who's ultimately being held to account around this, how do we know what to measure and how are we being involved in that process, who's going to ask us, when are they going to ask us, what data are they going to track to actually check that this is happening. They also wanted to know lots about whether lifelong was going to be considered and the fact that you know the promise is very clear that lifelong care, you know, you don't usually leave care or care doesn't leave you and that the impact of care is lifelong, but we're all fallen into the trap of, particularly in the sector, talking about children and young people. So we, on behalf of our members, several asks for the Scottish Government in Paving the Way. That's nearly 18 months and we haven't received a response from the Scottish Government to those questions. That's concerning but good to put on the record and something the committee will be able to raise with the Government. I presume you've had engagement from the Government in other spaces over the last 18 months. There's not been zero engagement. As much as it is critical that you get a response to that, just to check that they have engaged with you in other contexts. They have engaged. Hooker Scotland has a place to bring the voice of care experience people as part of the Promise Collective, albeit that group hasn't met for a while. We have had meetings with the Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise, particularly around siblings, and we've met with the First Minister, who has attended some events with us. For us, again, when we talk about lots of plans, one of the biggest issues is, as I've already said, we've not really drilled into the detail. Scotland has made very bold statements about what it needs to keep the promise. It doesn't really go into the detail of what's the blueprint for what's the road map, how are we going to measure the progress. Care experience people want the opportunity to not just have their voices heard four or five years ago during an independent care review with most of whom we have aged out of the system, but they want to be able to speak to the Scottish Government and Scottish ministers on a regular basis to let them know how they are feeling. That would be one of the aspects of the committee today, is to seek some kind of clarification around what that will look like going forward. Where's the annual check-in to care experience people to find out how life is for them? That's absolutely something that we can well raise with the minister. Just check in the meetings that you've had with the minister and the First Minister, have they given you any indication that there will be a full response to paving the way coming from their part, or do they consider events since then to have somewhat superseded it? Yeah, it's been a question that we've raised on a number of occasions and we haven't received a response back to that. Right, again, that's something that we can raise that's really useful to put this on the range. Before you move on, can I bring Ben in on a supplementary question? Louise Hunter, just on that last point about on-going collaboration engagement and making sure that the voices of those involved and affected are being considered going forward, are there any models of current practice that you think the Government could learn from and consider and implement here? Perhaps the experience panels of Social Security Scotland may be something to draw lessons from. Yeah, so I would start by saying that participation is actually really hard to do. It's easy if you do it wrong, if that's a unreasonable way to say this. So we've seen lots of attempts to do this in the past few years where we've seen probably quite a homogenous group of people brought together for various different things to represent one particular large group of people in a wider sense. That brings some real challenge because you probably get in the same responses back. We see situations where care experience people are being asked the same questions that they were asked in the independent care review. Some of it has felt quite tokenistic, if I'm honest. Some of it has been restricted to people who feel able to come to meetings and share their experiences. For people who get a participation right, and it's taken Hooker Scotland a long time to be able to do this, it's to understand that it stems from relationships. You need to be able to have relationships with children, young people and adults. We can do that because we're in their lives because we provide independent advocacy, we create fun connection events, we give that sense of belonging by creating opportunities such as summer camp and just lots of ways to come together so that people feel that we're there for them. Of course I was going to advocate the Hooker Scotland model of participation, but in a way where we're not necessarily setting up what we want to hear from care experience people, we're genuinely asking. I think there's more than just consulting because there is a danger that we end up in a perpetual cycle of consulting and I think it's important to keep checking in, but it needs to go beyond that. We talk a lot about co-design. The majority of our members that we speak to have used on how services should be run, but are probably not going to get involved in conversations about what piece of legislation needs to lead that out or what funding model or who particularly delivers that. They just want to see their brothers and sisters or they just want to make sure that they're getting support in their adulthood. Co-design needs to be very carefully created, but most importantly they have a view on what's happening in their lives and I'm not sure at this stage, well in fact we know people aren't being asked. We need to think about participation as being relationship based with an organisation that has those relationships ensuring that we get the widest possible representation of the care community across the length and breadth of Scotland, across lots of different ages, lots of different care backgrounds, lots of different experiences and also that we're not just asking them to repeat what we already know, it's more about how can we move forward and not necessarily how they're going to change the system because that's not their responsibility but how that system change or efforts to change the system impacts them directly. Ross Greer, back to yourself, thank you for that. Thanks, it falls on quite neatly from Ben's question there about that consultation, co-design and engagement. As you say Louise, not everybody in the care community is going to want to be engaged at a national level when it comes to questions of policy legislation etc, but again looking for examples of where there is good practice, I mean are there even any local authorities or more other public bodies who are doing engagement within their sphere and within their remit who are actually doing that well that we could draw on? Again I think there are lots of stories of situations where that's happening so we know that there are most local authorities will have something called a champions board or something similar to that some of the line which has been rephrased around promise delivery boards are lots of different ways and again they will likely bring together a group of mostly children and young people and mostly quite small groups and there will be areas where those young people have felt that they've driven a lot of change within that local authority. I do think that there's a lot of caution around some of what we would call the small winds and I suppose I was quite encouraged to hear that get highlighted this morning about I suppose those unintended consequences of trying really hard to run at this transformational change but really only being able to pick the low hanging fruits and deliver on things that children and young people may ask for in a group in a local authority but might not actually be the triggers to that transformational change and we've seen some examples of that and you know particularly within say the work around the children's hearing system so we've known again for decades that the children's hearing system isn't quite fit for purpose I don't think that's a surprise to anyone and what children and young people have told us and told lots of other organisations is that it feels adversarial it feels like they don't know who's in the room they want access to their rights because we know that the vast majority of children and young people don't have access to independent advocacy and maybe don't know you know we heard this morning they're not actually sure whether they have rights to see their siblings so they're asking for all of these things and what they're being told in a paper that I've seen is that where possible these things will be offered it feel it doesn't feel like the kind of strong words that we want to hear and the strong commitment that the where possible is a bit concerning but most concerning is what we're saying is lots of pilots which we know everything has to start somewhere but again this isn't news to anyone in this room that these things have needed to change and the fact that we're four years down the line and still in really small areas piloting things and if I can give you a couple of examples we've seen situations where young people have been asking for all this transformation of change within the children's hearing system but what they've been told at the moment and what they're even being led to celebrate as success are things like the children's reporter changing the decor within our children's hearing room now that's on its own it's problematic as part of wider transformational change it's to be encouraged we've seen children and young people really celebrating the fact that they are now I think there's children's hearing system are publishing a what was described to me by children and young people as a self-care scrapbook and essentially it's a book that's helped to help them guide themselves through the the children's hearing system again in isolation that's problematic part of systematic change it's fine it's not an issue but actually what we're saying is the transformational change isn't happening behind that only 10 percent of children and young people that go through the hearing system get independent advocacy so they might be able to jot down how they feel about that actually what they don't know fully is their rights and the ability to help navigate that really difficult world in the hearing system so I think that that's examples of where participation is very very well meaning but actually the outcome has been that we're celebrating small wins and actually young people are even being encouraged to think that that's the transformational change that you know it's not. There's a lot in there Louise Tumpick but can I bring in Nicola Cleane who also wants to respond to that question. I just wanted to almost pick up the point but reinforce something that was said earlier there are great examples of participation work and I think again it's a culture shift across the country of how we understand that but actually I don't believe we need more participation to answer what young people are asking to be answered you know they're actually saying who is accountable for this can we can you tell us that so that whenever it's not being delivered we know who to speak to is it a local government level is it Scottish government level what does that look like within my authority so it comes back to that detail that's needed now and I think a really effective communication strategy as well to make sure that children and young people really understand where things are at who they can talk to about it and actually who they can hold to account as well. Thanks a lot. Do you want to come in and brief you anything further on that? No I think that's enough. That's fine super thank that's helpful Claire. Can I come to questions now from Stephanie Callaghan please. Thank you very much convener and no it's still not afternoon so good morning panel here as well. So our schools colleges and universities have got a really unique opportunity to provide the support and consistency they've got the time that care experience young people need to to realise their full potential so I'm wondering I'm interested in what assessments your organisations have made of progress within school and education towards actually realising the promise and if I could start with yourself Claire. Yeah so maybe just focusing in on particularly the schools we've and it was in the oversight board is that Celsus has been part of the virtual school head teacher initiative and I think we're seeing some successes in that and just if people don't just in case people don't know that is about you know almost a kind of head teacher who is not in a school but is doing the same functions and responsibility for children and young people who are in their area who are looked after or looked after and accommodated so it's that kind of razor sharp kind of focus on those young people being able to advocate for those young people so again I think that's something that we would say we're seeing some progress on and is making quite a significant contribution as well. Could we go to other colleagues first then I'll come back because I think I'll spark off for me thanks. I may now be happy to add in terms of some work that the office the commissioner's office has been involved in around about looking at the consistency of the commitment to mental health support for young people within schools so you'll see in the oversight board that this is progress Scottish government has made a commitment to all children young people in secondary school being able to access this however we were also hearing that young people were not finding this consistent across the country so that's been quite a theme for a lot of this it wasn't consistent and we were able to use the commissioner's investigative powers and enable young people to lead that investigation so again this is where our approach we're not a scrutiny body particularly for the delivery of the promise but there are key changes and reform and improvements that are happening where when we're hearing concerns raised by children and young people around about that we've been able to either investigate or work alongside partners or campaigners within the sector to be able to highlight that and again we've made a number of recommendations for to Scottish government to be able to we're still waiting for a response on that but about how that can be better assessed on going to ensure that there's consistency and also for children who are younger to be able to access that primary skills more consistently as well. Yeah I think maybe just to add it I probably don't need to reiterate what you've already heard about school exclusions and I think we've heard again stories that are encouraging that our small pockets have changed I do just want to highlight a couple of things around education to pick up on some of the evidence you heard this morning where there was almost a suggestion probably unintended that exclusions are still happening which we know but some of it's related to the behaviour of the children and young people in the class and actually a lot of the exclusions that we hear about directly aren't actually because of the behaviour it's because of the system is effectively tripping over itself so young people being removed for a day half a day to essentially suit the needs of the working pattern of professionals so as in attending hearings or attending meetings with social work so actually that informal exclusion might not be classed as such by the educational establishment but it's a real concern for us that children young people are missing out on large large elements of school I would also highlight something about stigma which is is not really being touched on it's certainly contained within the promise but it's really quite prevalent in some of the challenges that we're seeing within education where children young people who care experienced invadably are feeling like something's a bit different and that can happen in a lot of different ways it might happen because they are getting picked up or dropped off by taxi the taxi might have the livery of the local authority on it it might be quite obvious that their lives feel or may look a little bit different to the lives of some of their peers now that's a challenge but actually it's less of a challenge if the school community and its entirety so I'm not just talking about teachers about all the support staff if they understand care and they understand care experience and they think about even things as simple as changing their language so that we're not always just talking about mum and dad or parents and that there's a bit of an understanding where people can really understand what care is then we're much more likely to create the conditions for care experience people to feel a sense of belonging in their school community and ultimately to thrive while they're at school so my brains now come back in a year so that might be good i bring you back in a little minute no problem I could just stay with you always there for the next question because you could have touched on this stuff already there it seems that what you're talking about a lot as well as about having those relationships with young people so that actually they're being understood and that that is the best way of actually recognising the things that matter to them and accommodating those so I'm wondering to what extent you feel that education is taking the taking into account of you as a care experience young people and does there almost need to be some kind of process there that means that all all young people in schools get an opportunity to actually provide feedback on how they're feeling about their own experience I think to start I don't know that consistently schools are getting feedback from care experience people again like you'll have heard this morning there will absolutely be pockets of really good success stories around that where schools are really championing what they're doing with care experience people we who care Scotland have actually run a programme within schools in only small pockets of areas used to funding for the past five or six years where we make a school care aware so we spend a bit of time with the educational teams and the support teams to help them understand what care is and actually it has been quite staggering to hear that a lot of people within schools don't know what care experience is so I actually don't understand the full breadth of what we're talking about maybe don't quite understand I guess some of the basics around what we mean when we say care experience I think there's very much still sometimes that perception that young people are care experience because of something that they've done that you know that that view is still very prevalent in society but it's also very prevalent within a lot of our sector in fact I think there was a study in the past that said some of our most stigmatising and discriminating characters within the system are actually within the system so we know that when we start to work with a school we get to a stage where they feel much more aware of what care experience is they start to think about what they can do to fully involve care experience children and young people in how the school environment works but ultimately they will start to make those changes themselves these things don't happen overnight it takes quite a bit of work to get a school to go on that journey with you but it's it's incredibly important the most important thing to share about that though is the feedback from the children and young people who care experience who are in that school initially it can feel quite daunting if their class or their teachers are going to find out about care we actually find that there's a number of care experience people in every school who haven't even known that they're care experienced I mean I first heard that I thought okay so what does that actually mean for somebody are they getting this revelation on the day that they're care experienced but actually they are and there's a huge amount of sport that goes into that it tends to be around informal kinship it tends to be around you know a kind of adoption different forms of care like that but also it means that they're entitled to a huge amount more and actually by coming to the realisation that they're care experienced and starting to understand why things have maybe felt a little bit different for them we're able to put that support package around them so we know that the impact of that has been a very positive but again only in small pockets. Thanks Louise that's really really helpful so bring you back in clear please both feel free as well to answer about that getting the views of young people as well yeah I suppose just to say because we've got a part for the virtual school head teacher working we've got an education team itself I think a lot of what we've been doing is working with FE and universities to say some of the things that you're putting in place in terms of widening access and for people who are for example care leavers often are of good intentions but they're still no flexible enough so additional funding that can be sought but it needed a confirmation of a particular level of attendance and then when people were falling just below that attendance they were losing it so again advocating about saying actually we need to be still a bit more flexible even though you've put these things in place we need to still be understanding the circumstances we've worked with the universities particularly during Covid around saying you have got young people are living in your accommodation who don't are they going back to your family who are they going back to you know loads of people went home so actually really getting them to understand they've got people in their accommodation who don't have families to go back to don't have families that are supporting them so how are you responding how are you responding to that and again an example of where we had a care leaver who has you know had been a social worker then went back did a law degree became a but actually she was saying there was loads of things if she was under 26 but actually she was 27 and didn't have a family to support her and didn't so again we're really just working with FE in the universities to say have ever much flexibility you think you're putting in the system we actually need you to flex a bit more to be able to really respond in a lifelong way to care leavers of nodding heads from the the young people in the gallery to some of the comments we're hearing so thank you very much for your responses can I move now to questions from Ruth Maguire please good morning panel i'd like to ask about siblings it's not unique to this area that we have pretty strong legislation and policy but the gap in terms of what people experience there's that sort of implementation gap if you like we heard this morning about practical issues cultural issues that might be preventing siblings being placed together so it'd be interested in hearing from panel members their reflections on that with a view to understanding what needs to change to make sure that we can keep siblings together the figure quoted this morning of 25 percent being separated i think would be quite shocking to members on the committee and then specifically i'd also like to hear from louise hunter please about you mentioned engagement with the minister and i suppose specifically what discussions you've had following the project work brothers and sisters project work i'd be interested to hear how the government responded to that so that's all tied up in a jumble of a number of questions but if you're happy to go with it would be helpful okay but i was just gonna firstly say that just making sure as many of children young people understand what their rights are i think we need to continue to do more on that because even last week i was hearing you know confusion from some young people that i met so consistently and persistently continuing to support our young people to understand that i think i'm just following on exactly from what nicola said there about about knowing their rights and i think that came across to the loud and clear this morning that actually quite a lot of care experienced people don't know that they've got their rights to see siblings or or even what that definition is and how how that could impact their life and i think you know it's worth being aware that again of that statistic that the current financial model and an operational model of independent advocacy within the children's hearing system is based on 10% of children and young people so that means 90% of children and young people going through a children's hearing system don't have access to independent advocacy so if you don't know at that point what your rights are despite opportunities to have redesigned leaflets and lots of other ways that we try and tell children and young people what their rights are but also if you don't feel empowered to share that in a room if particularly if you've already told the system through lots of consultation and committees that you don't know who's in the room you know it does feel quite jaggy and adversarial you don't feel like you've got a right to be there sometimes you don't go because you're quite scared of being as part of the children's hearing so i think if we can just impress on that that need for real tangible independent advocacy and i guess i can't give you any answers today about what the barriers are or how we can overcome them i think we know what the barriers are we know it tends to be financial there are some cultural barriers but i would just highlight that that's very difficult for us as advocacy workers and advocacy providers to sit down and explain to a child that oh you can't see your brother because there's no money or they're in a different foster care home because they are not allowed to have the same amount of children as this other one you know we need to think about and i'm sure you do the real life impact of that this isn't just a case of saying that's a shame that x amount of children can't get to see their siblings actually this is this is really impacting people's lives we know that family is so important and just there you spoke about you know a leaflet to describe to a child or young person what their rights are i can't imagine many situations where that's enough but particularly if you're in you know a time of of crisis within the hearing system that i mean most adults would be hard pressed to pick up a leaflet and you know they absolutely have their place you know as much information as possible down there but i think we seem to skirt round the issue of the sector skirt round the issue of independent advocacy and the beauty of independent advocacy is that it's independent so it's not someone that works in the sector and i think that's incredibly important to to to be clear about but it's also someone who can sit down with that child or young person and really explain what their rights are and it's the only person in that room or that process that's there purely to hear or to to to convey what that young person wants so we know that social work have to be there to make sure they're there to represent the best interests of the child sometimes that can be different from what the child wants and that's why independent advocacy is there and they can translate i think again we've got lots of good intentions about creating leaflets that are child friendly that are colourful they have their place but actually nothing replaces an adult who's independent sitting with you to explain what all that means in reality thank you i'll come back to louise but i wonder if other panel members would have reflections on what those i mean that the financial and resource restraints are quite obvious but what are the cultural barriers that are that are stopping our children's rights being enabled in terms of being with their and just to follow up on some of the things that louise is saying you know as celsus and as somebody who worked in the sector we would say you know the issue around sibling contact is just absolutely critical and it's probably one of the things that i hear social workers and social work leaders reflecting on most in terms of decisions that they've made previously in their careers about not keeping siblings together and not keeping that contact and i think we understand more and more the lifelong impact that that has so i think it's a i think there's a real recognition in the sector that that is important i think louise is absolutely right to raise the issue around independent advocacy because i think one of the things that independent advocacy can do is it slows the system down to say let's really think about the decision the system's just working you know at such a pace i think that's one of the things it can do louise is slow it down and really think about asking those questions i think some of the things that i think it is financial i think we also and i'm sure everybody here would recognise this it's about when it's safe to do so it is not always safe to do so and that should be in the minimum amount of cases and there should be an assessment about how it can be done safely but i would also say that we need to keep that we need to keep that in mind the other thing is and i'm glad kevins left i hope kevins left when i say this is that there's also an example how the system actually works against each other at times so we've talked about how we can up the so the number of children that foster carers can take to ensure that we can accommodate sibling groups but at the same time we've been talking about how we reduce the numbers in residential to sometimes four now again i can see that the motivation for that about smaller units are good but at the same time as the systems thinking about how we increase the numbers for foster care we're thinking about how we decrease them for residential i think without with and there might be consequences of that as well of sibling groups going into residential so i think i think it's financial but i also think it's cultural and i think it's about how this we need to think about this in a really holistic way thank you nicola did you have anything else to add okay louise can i come back to you then in terms of you know we've spoken about accountability i suppose ultimate accountability legislation lies with the Scottish Government ministers so what interaction have you had or has who cares Scotland had in terms of this this topic thanks for asking that question so we were really pleased over a year ago to be contacted by the Scottish Government when they were reviewing the guidance around siblings legislation and brought in to design some participation with with children and young people and i think again not to blow our own trumpet and who cares Scotland but when asked earlier about what good participation is it's when organisations like us can design it and we're not told by the Scottish Government or local authorities what to ask children and young people so that felt like a really good opportunity to work with a broad range of care experience children and young people primarily who who had live issues around access to their siblings positive and negative i am we did a huge piece of work we fed that back to the Scottish Government and I believe that made that way into its final report on how to improve guidance we asked for a meeting with the minister of children young people and keeping the promise however this was a year ago so it was just the minister of children young people that took almost a year to happen but just at the end of september i think i we had a session where some of the young people traveled really far and wide to meet with the minister and we had a kind of interactive session where they shared some of their experiences we split it into two sessions so she could hear from a kind of older young people and from some children and get a really broad mix of understanding at the end she briefly shared what her reflections were and for us what we heard was that it brought the issue back to her attention i guess that it became quite a live issue for her again and she restated her commitment to making a change okay thank you that's helpful uh support stuff can i move now to uh willy renny please louise can i just say first of all um i've had some direct experience through constituency case work of who cares and you did a brilliant job it was it was exceptional what you did um the so homelessness you probably heard the interaction earlier on about the 10 percent increase i'm just wondering have you got direct examples and what do you think needs to be done to fix this i don't know who would like to go first louise i'm happy just to come in again i don't have any uh unfortunately i don't have lots and lots of status to tell you how many of our members have experienced homelessness but i can tell you in the last week alone we've approached by two young people who are still in care who have been made homeless um and that is again not to diminish it but it's deeply deeply concerning that that's still happening in this day and age um lots of this it feels it's caught up in the the kind of failure to fully implement the continuing care legislation so again a bit like siblings we've got some robust legislation there however i mean clear i can probably speak to this in much greater technical detail than i can there are some flaws with that legislation around i guess that right to um for young people to change their mind and something maybe to flag that the committee might not be aware of is that as an independent advocacy supervisor we're often asked now it's because it's the views only of the children and young people we get specifically asked sometimes to advocate to come off their supervision order which would mean they're not at a certain stage which would mean they're not entitled to continuing care that can be a bit of a moral challenge sometimes for us because we know that might not be the best thing for that child and young person because um they're they're not entitled to continuing care support um but advocacy the true nature of advocacy is that we're sharing the view of that child actually what we've come to learn over the past 10 15 years about the reason for that is stigma people you know if we all think back to when we were 16 um you make decisions sometimes 15 or 16 that you may be 30 years later kind of live to regret a little bit um there doesn't always appear to be that opportunity for a young person to say actually you know this little bit of independence this maybe living on my own isn't actually what i thought it was going to be and i need to go back that that isn't how the current system is working um so you know whilst i can't shed any great light on what's happening within the homelessness system um it's never a shock that children will leave care although we would argue that you never really leave care that it should be there with you forever but it's never a shock and to to find out that there are some care experience children young people going out there and that we are as you pointed out earlier actually regressing in this matter um is a real concern because um yeah no no care experience children young person should be in homeless accommodation okay tribute so Nicola first um so the panel might be aware of the um the report that my office published recently around about the use of hotel style accommodation so within that there's a there's a wealth of information and evidence about around about that not just being for asylum or refugee young people but homeless young people in Scotland as well and concerns around about the use of really inappropriate accommodation for those young people as well but in terms of solutions i heard a really positive um last week it was a young person talking about the through care support and the continued support they were receiving to be able to support them into independent living so i think i'll focus again on that continuous care seeing the young person as a whole person um and you know tackling that support to independence around about their whole personality and what they need to not feel lonely um to have a whole range of supports around about them at on-going young people also continue to express to me a concern around about those supports being taken away when they turn 25 um and also i think that we just have to absolutely increase our efforts in tackling poverty so the underlying causes of why families and children young people end up in really challenging situations just to say this is i don't have the positive stories that nicole has got because the evidence i'm looking at so i've seen that we did a um so it's part of children's services reform what i've seen is the issue around housing and homelessness is one of the persistent long-standing gap in weaknesses in the service but i think what we would all recognise as well is that it's it's an accumulation of these weaknesses and gaps so we're saying we've got really we've got massive issues around access to specialist health services particularly mental health services that will you know that will influence homelessness levels of poverty amongst particularly care leavers as well access to supports for children additional support needs so again they will be the ones that are most vulnerable to housing and homelessness and that our transitions for young people want to support to adult services really really need strengthened as well and i suppose the one other thing i've come i've come back to but people will be aware of this is when people leave so when we've got care leavers when they actually leave the system for a period that Louise is talking about anybody who tries to get back into any kind of health or social work system it is impenetrable and it feels like everything is against you actually trying to get to the person that you need to talk to and so i think we've got you know many of you around here will have tried to get services for your own family and we've got you know people and resources and we've got experience you know i really worry about what it's like for an individual young person who's a care leaver who's trying to get back into a service trying to get mental health support trying to get the systems impenetrable you know and so i think we've really how do we make those that access to services much easier and i think it's just it's an indication of how much pressures on the server on the sector and the system that just thinks you know i'm going to make folk work really hard to get back into it you know okay thank you and that comment there clear again resonates with work with the health committee did on mental health for young people and evidence that we took regarding them getting through so that some cross work there i want to ask about something that is not an easy subject and it was Ruth Maguire that brought up in the last panel and that's about the really tragic cases of early deaths within the care experience community and it might seem a little bit brutal to ask about that but i wonder if maybe you can bring a bit more sense to that louise and what your thoughts are about how we might want to see to turn that change those statistics of course and i think you're right it is really hard to discuss that and i think it's something that hooker scotland is focused on probably in the background for a number of years because we've become quite aware that unfortunately there is a i guess a premature death rate for some care experience people now i want to be really careful and not make that sound i mean it's awful but i don't want it to make it sound like that that is the eventual outcome for everybody's care experience because that's not the case i think some of the challenges around that are the fact that we don't or the sector doesn't really provide any support on a lifelong basis and again i was i've been trying to make this point earlier today that the promise was really clear that the impact of care lasted people for a huge amount of time you know for some people they get on with their lives and we'll never need independent advocacy again we'll never need to work here scotland we'll absolutely go on to thrive and be very brilliant members of our community but for other people they may need to access different supporters and sometimes and we know this because sorry we've got a independent advocacy helpline which was set up amid the pandemic expanded by the scotland government that's open to anybody who's care experience but most notably used by care experience adults around 26 plus which is no coincidence when you know that the support tends to stop 26 if you're lucky but probably earlier than that and we've had something like three and a half thousand calls since the start of the pandemic and that's from people who are in real crisis who really need advocacy support they need a bit of signposting they haven't got anyone else and there are other helplines out there but actually they come to us because that barrier of worrying if the person that answers the phone knows what care experience is or will judge them or anything like that is gone we've done lots of participation and engagement over the past number of years around care experience adults particularly around care experience people who become parents themselves or care experience people who are adults and trying to access mental health services and what the golden thread through all of it is stigma and this feeling that I don't want to tell a parent and I'm sorry my care experience adult and I fall pregnant and I don't necessarily want to tell my health visitor that I'm pregnant in case they think oh well you were care experienced you were going to need to watch you or I don't really want to go and ask for mental health support because they won't understand what care is so a lot of it's there so I think we're talking about without to be too generalised a demographic of people of people who are feeling isolated who will experience trauma in different ways we hear a lot about because of the redress game a lot of people thinking about accessing their care records and it might be decades after you leave care officially that you're even able to start contemplating looking at your care records and when you do that we know that can be really traumatic because so much can be redacted and you might learn things about your life that you didn't quite know there can be things written about you so there's lots and lots of issues out there that lead to care experience people probably being overrepresented in some of those earlier death statistics however we don't know for sure and I think there's a real piece of work around it's not okay to just say we don't know anymore we actually need to know we need to track what's happening to care experience people adults when they leave care and make sure most importantly they've got a support network around them thank you louise nicola do you want to come in on I don't have much more to add on that but I think we have to understand why yeah definitely that's fine thank you for for that and louise it's thank you for handling that so sensitively excuse me can I move over to Liam Kerr now please yeah thank you convener one quick question just claire burns on something you brought up earlier you've mentioned local authorities several times now the improvement service published a report in February this year about how local authorities are delivering on the promise and it was something of a mixed bag he suggested that there were issues around where delivery sits the monitoring of progress and a suggestion that was driven perhaps often by external considerations rather than the children and families and issues with funding especially around timescales can you help the committee understand why is this still the case or why is it still the situation at local authorities and who needs to step up and what can meaningfully be done so i think again it's probably a combination of a number of things that you've that you've heard today so i think you know we're local authorities are being asked to implement a massive transformational change agenda with the poorest conditions that we've had so it would be a massive challenge anyway but given the conditions that we've got around workforces and and also the lack of investment and we also have to take into account there are we've had years and years of public sector cuts so i think we've got a real tension and a real contradiction in our system that the very things that will help us to meet the promise which is early help support for universal services family support are all of the services that have been eroded out of our out of our system so it's almost like we're starting again almost on building those functions and those services up at a time when we don't have the money so if you think about something like we've been hearing again through our survey that you know sure start is something that we need and we're saying well actually sure start is something that we had and that we lost the funding for so i think you know we are starting we are starting from that point i think i'll go back to the i'll go back to you're saying what can be done we need it to get in and around leaders at a local level build their buy-in for the promise build their consensus around the promise build their understanding of what is happening locally and that includes how are they how are they connecting with frontline staff with children and families to hear what is going well because there are there are usually strengths and things that are going well how do we build on them but actually hearing where is it really difficult to get services and then we need to help them think about so where do we intervene and i think the bit that we often underestimate is the promise means building new functions and new services and systems that will take money and take time and take investment but i think if we can start with if we can start with those strategic leaders and build their buy-in and their consensus and their alignment to the promise what is it going to mean for me in finance what's it going to mean for me in health i think that's the real foundational piece that we need to get right understand convener thank you very much can i come to bill kid now please yes thank you very much convener thank you and it's very very interesting responses to what's being asked so far but i just on top of you you'll have heard i did ask the same pretty much the same question to the previous panel what's the impact of workforce recruitment and retention issues with the social workforce what impact is that having in care experience people and can you show any signs of how this is manifested itself please please please i'm happy to do this first i guess i can't talk about why the workforce issues are there but i think you've probably heard a lot about that today i mean for me keeping the promise involves the workforce we can't keep the promise if we don't have and again i completely take the point that this isn't just about social work it's about teachers it's about lots and lots and lots of different people all working together it's also what we've heard today not just about the number of people that we have out there delivering services but also about their skills and expertise we still know that a lot of people who work in the system don't actually know what care experience is so i think that's an immediate hurdle we need to get over but the impact on that is i guess everything i've set out today i don't think for a second that we're not providing advocacy or we're not listening to children and young people i would hope or that we're not providing lifelong support because no one wants to i don't think that's what we're talking about and it's it can be very hard for an organisation like Coo Care Scotland that is hearing on a daily basis from you know hundreds and hundreds of care experienced people about challenges within the system we don't always hear about the progress and i think you know i'd like to acknowledge that we know there is good progress happening out there and people are really really trying but because of this what we're seeing and i alluded to this earlier as the kind of small wins we're seeing a workforce trying to make a difference trying to show the community that they're doing something different but either diluting some of the commitments that we've seen in the promise of kind of highlight that around restraint probably around educational exclusion definitely around lifelong and we're kind of cherry picking the things that we think might make a difference no probably in the knowledge that they're not making a huge difference in lieu of the transformational change that's needed so i think it's having a significant impact and without that ability for the workforce to feel equipped fully equipped and well resourced i'm not sure that we'll get where we need to be. Well just to add on to that for Nicola and Claire, the minister has actually told us before about a workforce improvement plan that's being developed as you'd be brought forward next year. You know do you think that that will not do you think it'll work but do you think are you being involved enough from your backgrounds in order to ensure that it does affect care experience young people when it eventually gets delivered? So from my perspective I'm not aware if my office has been involved in that so I will check that and follow up with you convener as well in a welcome strategic approach to looking but it has to be for the whole workforce you know so we've heard earlier around about that being social work education health and the third sector involved in that as well. I think that we've heard quite a lot this morning about capacity in the earlier session so I just wanted to add that capacity is it does need investment it does need resource but it's about how people work as well so actually about that understanding of what relationship based practice looks like how that is really meaningfully delivered in service so I look forward to seeing more of that and seeing if that is very strategic and looks across the whole piece about what true investment and support for the workforce looks like because it is crucial to be able to support everyone to deliver on this. So just before you come in Claire just believe then that you know the involvement of organisations that you represent and such like offices that you represent would actually have a beneficial impact on the delivery of the report this content please Claire. Yeah I think I mean again I'm sensitive I was involved in that report because there's that many come I don't think I have what I have been involved in and I know the two things are connected though as developments around the national social work agency and again I would say I know that's been considered along with the NCS and it's something that certainly sells this we've been very supportive of to say I hear that there are things around the wider workforce there are particular issues around social work and social care that need to be you know that need to be addressed we've got particular recruitment and retention issues of the workforce survey we've just done we're saying the workforce is in crisis and we went back and back our researchers to say can we justify the use of that word and we're saying yes we can massive workloads massive vacancies people that are burnt out after Covid I think we heard some Kevin was saying this morning we've lost huge amounts of capacity and leadership where people have decided you know after Covid it's time for me to go so I think you know we really are in a bit of a crisis in terms of that but I think there are some plans around the national social work agency that if they're taken forward would be really helpful because it's saying we need to deal with education in terms of social work and social care we need to deal with some of the reputational issues that we still have in social work and social care and I think that's right we need to be thinking about wellbeing we need to think about supervision and we need to be thinking as Nicolaus is saying about how are we supporting them to work with families in a strength based trauma informed way and I think it will take something like a national social work agency we need to deal with all of that again there's no quick wins it's all of that recruitment retention support learning and development all of those need to sit together so I think I'll welcome that report but just hope it's really well connected into the developments around the national social work agency great well thank you and it's very well presented here in a public platform so that'll be good then thank you very much thank you okay it's been a very interesting morning and I really want to thank the panel for their contributions today it's been yes very insightful for the committee and that concludes the public part of our proceedings and I suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to leave and the committee will then move into a private session to consider our final agenda item thank you very much