 I welcome everyone to the 10th meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2018. Can I please remind everyone present to turn their mobile phones and other devices on to silent for the duration of the meeting? We've received apologies from Richard Lochhead and Claire Adamson as attending in his place. Liz Smith will join us shortly and Tavish Scott will only be here for a short time as he has staged two amendments to debate in another committee. The first item of business is a decision on whether to take agenda items 4 and 5 in private, which is a review of the evidence here today and also consideration of the work programme, and it's everyone content in that agenda items 4 and 5 are taken in private. The next item of business is a briefing from Audit Scotland. Can I welcome Cardinal Gardner, Caroline Gardner, Auditor General for Scotland, Antony Clark, Assistant Director, Trisha Meldrum, Senior Manager and Rebecca Smallwood, Senior Auditor Audit Scotland. The purpose of this session is to allow the Auditor General to brief the committee on her report and allow members to ask questions on the findings. I understand that the Auditor General will first make a short statement. Proving outcomes for children and their families is a priority for the Scottish Government. My report with the Accounts Commission on Early Learning and Child Care looks at how the Scottish Government expanded free provision to 600 hours in 2014 and what impact that has had on children and parents. It also looks at planning for the expansion to 1,140 hours by 2020. The Children and Young People Scotland Act 2014 increased funded early learning and childcare. From August 2014, entitlement rose from 475 hours to 600 hours a year for all three and four-year-olds and for eligible two-year-olds, estimated at 15 per cent of all two-year-olds. From August 2015, eligibility expanded to around a quarter of two-year-olds. We found that the Government of Councils worked well together to expand provision and parents are positive about the benefits for their children. Parents in our research reported a range of benefits, including improvements in cognitive development, in social skills, in behaviour and children being better prepared for school. Parents reported a limited impact on their ability to work due to the number of hours available and the way in which those hours are provided, such as half-day sessions with six start and pickup times. The Government has invested almost £650 million of additional funding since 2014 for the expansion to 600 hours, but it was not clear about the specific outcomes that it expected to achieve for children and parents. When the expansion was introduced, the Government stated that improving outcomes for children and parents were equally important objectives, but there is a potential conflict between them. Improving outcomes for children means focusing on quality, while flexibility is more important if the aim is to improve outcomes for parents. The Government has now stated that the primary aim of the further expansion to 1,140 hours is to improve outcomes for children. The report highlights the lack of options appraisal to inform the expansion. The Government implemented the increase to 600 hours without comparing the costs and the outcomes associated with different ways of achieving its objectives. There is a lack of clear evidence that increasing the number of funded hours each week for children already receiving early learning and childcare improves their outcomes. The evidence is clearer that starting earlier can benefit children, particularly those in lower socioeconomic groups or with poorer home learning environments. The Government could have considered other ways of achieving its objectives, such as earlier access to funded early learning and childcare for all children for fewer hours or earlier access to more hours for those children who are likely to benefit most. The Government did not plan how to evaluate the impact of the expansion to 600 hours or make sure that baseline data is available so that it is not yet clear whether that investment is delivering value for money. The Government has done more to plan how it will evaluate the expansion to 1,140 hours, including publishing some baseline data. The Government and councils are working hard to plan for the expansion to 1,140 hours by August 2020, but councils had to prepare their initial expansion plans in the absence of important information about how the system will work from 2020, such as the quality standard expected, the flexibility required and how the new funding follows the child model will work. Given the scale of the changes required, we feel that the Government should have started detailed planning with councils earlier. Council's initial estimates of the costs of delivering 1,140 hours are around £1 billion a year, which is significantly higher than the Government's figure of around £840 million. Council's estimate that they will need 12,000 extra whole-time equivalent staff and £690 million for changes to infrastructure, while the Government expects that the expansion will need between 6,000 and 8,000 more staff, and it is initially allocated around £400 million for infrastructure. Some of the differences between those figures are due to different assumptions about flexibility, workforce and the uptake of funded places by eligible children. The Government and councils are now working together to develop those plans, but it is clear that the expansion will require a significant increase in staffing and infrastructure over the next two and a half years, and it is difficult to see how that can be achieved on time. Convener, my colleagues and I are happy to answer the committee's questions. Thank you very much. I will pass on to Tavish, if Tavish has got any questions, because she will be going away quite soon. You talked about the difference in figures between the local authorities and the Government. Why is it that the report is being based basically on the local government figures as opposed to why we seem to be taking that as being the correct figures and the Government figures as a shortfall? Could it possibly be anything to do with the way that both of them are measuring the potential uptake or the local authority suggesting a higher uptake than the central Government is? I do not think that we are saying that either figure is right. We are simply pointing to the difference between the two. In some ways, I am not surprised that there is a difference between the Government and councils at this stage. What we say in the report is that councils did not have some of the information that they needed about quality, flexibility and how funding follows the child will work. That leads to some of the differences. We also know that councils have done their modelling from the bottom up, whereas the Government has done it from the top down. Given the short time available until August 2020, we think that that makes it harder to get the right staffing and infrastructure in place on time. We have now got to the stage where they are both working closely to try and get this. They are at the moment, yes. Thank you for that, Tavish. Thank you very much, convener, and I apologise for having to disappear off. Just two very brief questions. The first relates to the convener's question. On workforce numbers, there still appears some discrepancy between, again, the numbers produced and talked to by Government ministers and, on the other hand, by your report. Can you shed any light on that discrepancy and more to the point what is going to fill it when you are going through this exercise? Did Audit Scotland come across the aspects of training and other policies that are in place to make sure that we have enough trained staff rather to fulfil the policy? I will ask Rebecca Small to pick that point up, if I may. You talked about the difference between the council estimates of the workforce and the Scottish Government's estimates of the workforce. Part of that difference is due to the council figures that we have in the report, including central staff, so that would include the likes of administration staff, who are not counted in the Government's figures. They are purely estimating the number of practitioners. There are also different ways in which they have modelled it. We know that the Government has taken a zero-bates approach, and that looks at how many hours a day will the practitioner be delivering early learning in childcare? That works out at six of the seven hours that are employed. How many weeks of the year will they be able to provide that for? It then looks at the existing workforce and the potential new workforce, delivering at that same level of productivity, taking into account the number of hours that will be needed for the 1140 expansion and then working out how many practitioners you would need, so that it assumes that potential to make efficiencies in the way that people existing at the moment work. The council's approaches are not always explicit in their plans, but where there is information on that, they have taken the model that they currently have for staffing, and then they have scaled that up for the expansion to 1140, taking account of the change of ratios if they are providing a longer day. They have basically taken different approaches to the modelling, and that will explain some of the difference between the figures. That's a helpful answer, but that suggests to me that the point about flexibility hasn't been taken into account at whatever level, because small nursery classes in small schools in many parts of Scotland that many of us represent will be very different from big nurseries here in Edinburgh, and it doesn't strike to me, but please correct me if I'm wrong, that that model you've just described will take into account the difference between having four kids in a class and lots, lots more in the middle of a city. The extent to which they've taken into account flexibility in the Scottish Government's model is that it assumes an hour a day per child to account for flexibility, but I don't think that there's any difference in terms of how they've modelled for rural versus city areas. Okay, thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you very much. Following on from Tavish Scott's line of questioning around its variability, it's a variable picture across different local authorities. In terms of the take-up of the eligible two-year-olds, is it a similar picture of the same local authorities that are offering more flexibility, having more of a percentage of the eligible two-year-olds accessing nursery, or is that completely off the mark? It's worth saying first of all that understanding how many eligible two-year-olds are taking up their places is not as straightforward as we initially assumed it would be, because the number of children eligible depends on factors which are individual to each child and family, the benefits they receive, whether they're looked after children and so on, so knowing how many are eligible is not straightforward. I'll ask the team to pick up the question of the variability across local Government as well. It has not just about the eligible two-year-olds but people taking up their nursery places in general, not just three or four-year-olds as well. The problem that we have is the way that the information is collected at the moment, so we don't know how many children exactly are eligible in each council area. For two-year-olds, we know what the uptake is of two-year-olds overall, but not all of those two-year-olds are eligible, so it's hard for us to compare across councils. The councils that have a higher uptake of two-year-olds may well have a higher number of eligible two-year-olds, so that makes it difficult for us. It's also hard to quantify necessarily which councils are the most flexible. The information that we've got shows some of the models that are on offer, but what proportion of all places are available using those different models, so what proportion of places are open from eight to six or nine to four, or what proportion are half-day. That's harder for us to quantify. Why is it difficult? What would the councils not give you that information? It seems to be quite a fundamental thing when you're looking at something to be able to go from that base point of knowing how many children are eligible and how many nurseways offer flexible places. The councils don't know which two-year-olds are eligible within their area. There are issues around information sharing between DWP and HMRC, and the councils themselves. Councils have a variety of strategies that they're employing to promote uptake with eligible two-year-olds, but we know that one of the reasons for the lower uptake than anticipated is that parents don't necessarily know that their child is eligible. Is that difficult for the Government to do the work that you're saying that it should have been done in terms of analysing the take-up if that information isn't there? There's a broader issue beyond the two-year-olds, which is data on the actual activity levels of funded early learning and childcare across the whole of Scotland and within individual local authority areas. I look to Rebecca to correct me if I get this wrong, but the data is gathered on an annual census that captures how many children are registered in different settings at a point in the year. Local authorities do not necessarily have good and reliable data from their partner providers about the number of parents that are using funded places and are paying top-up activities for early learning and childcare. This is really important information for local authorities to understand what capacity there is in the system at the moment and what gaps there might be to move forward to the 1140 expansion. It's something that the Government and local authorities are aware of. It's something that they're working through as part of their expansion planning. However, there are very significant issues around data availability to inform appropriate and well-informed planning. Can I just follow up on that about the flexibility and the fact that the councils don't seem to get the information from the councils about how flexible it is? I accept the whole point about the DWP and the two-year-olds, but surely the councils must know how many of their providers are open from eight to six at night. That sort of information must surely be available to you. That information is available and the Care Inspectorate collect information on that. The issue is that, within a setting that is open to those hours, they might not have places for all children for those hours within the setting, so it might just be a small proportion that are offered the extended provision. A large number may well be getting a part-day place and that information isn't collected consistently. As we move forward, that information has got to be given to the local authorities. The local authorities have probably got to start gathering that information in some way. Mary, you wanted to come in. I took back to the workforce issue to pick up something that Tavish Scott had said. I just want to be clear about the difference between the figure that the Scottish Government estimates will be needed to deliver the 1140 hours. Local authorities are saying that it's 12,000, so there's a 4,000 difference between the two. I just want to be absolutely sure. In a previous answer, Ms Smallwood said that a lot of that was done to the councils or local authorities, including administration staff, in that estimate. Is that correct? The council's figure does include admin staff. Is that 4,000 to admin staff? No. Some of the difference is because of the inclusion of admin staff. Some of the difference will also be because they've taken different approaches to modelling how many staff they need in the future. The Government's approach assumes that the existing staff might be able to deliver ELC more efficiently, potentially. They've taken a uniform approach to this in the number of hours a day that someone can do it. The councils have looked at what their existing staffing models are, and they have adjusted them to take account of changes to staffing ratios, because if they're in a longer day, there needs to be more members of staff. If the purpose of increasing the hours is to improve outcomes for children, surely more staff will be needed. It would seem that a huge underestimate 8,000 whole-time equivalent staff can deliver the level of care and education that is required for the increased amount of children that would be in the system to improve outcomes. What we know, as Rebecca has said, is that the Government's figure is based on using a standard assumption about the ratio of staff to children across Scotland, whereas the councils figures are built up for each of the 32 local authorities on taking the provision that they've got but scaling it up from 600 to 1440. As Rebecca said, there's also a difference because of the inclusion of admin staff in councils figures. I think that some of the difference will come down to quality, some will come down to flexibility and some will go down to the fact that there is an element of negotiation here as well about the funding that's required. The point that we're making is that there is a gap. We suspect that the Scottish Government's figures are on the low side and there isn't very much time to get those staff in place before August 2020 anyway. I would have expected that both the Government figures and the local authority figures would use the same basis to calculate staff to children ratio, but there wouldn't be any difference because it would seem that one is calculating it slightly differently. I think that it's a question for the Government. I can see that there may be an element of flexibility that's possible in some nursery settings, and the Government will want to be understanding that. Equally, for us to be now 18 months away from the point where the 1140 entitlement is meant to be delivered, with that bigger gap between the staffing assumptions that the two parties are working to seems to us a problem that makes it harder to get the childcare in place by August 2020. The final thing that I wanted to ask—you're opening remarks—is that the Government should have started planning with councils earlier to meet the target. While I accept that I'm asking you to speculate, do you think that there is a danger then that the target will not be met of the 1140 by 2020? We say in the report that we think that it will now be difficult. That's not to say that it can't be met, but there's an awful lot to be done in terms of training and recruiting the number of staff required and extending, improving or building new buildings for nursery provision, where that's needed, in parts of Scotland. We know from the amounts of money involved that both of those are big pieces of work. As we've been discussing, there's still differences of view about how much investment is needed, but 18 months isn't a long time to do it, particularly when all councils at the same time are trying to increase provision by that amount. And recruiting trained staff. Thank you, convener, and can I just apologise to the witnesses and to colleagues for a slightly later arrival this morning? Can I just drill down on some very interesting comments that I think Ms Mould and Mr Clark have just identified in terms of the data? Obviously, data, the accuracy of data, is crucial in terms of guiding the policy. You've given us some idea of where you think there are discrepancies. Can I just ask a little bit more detail around this? Is it your impression that there are considerable difficulties in the information that ought to be coming from the DWP and HMRI to be able to inform councils? Or is that data there in your opinion, and it's not being extrapolated correctly? What do you feel is the problem in getting hold of that crucial information? The issue is around data sharing, but this is probably something that it would be worth picking up with the Scottish Government as well, as it will have more of the detail. I know that there have been discussions on going between the Government and DWP around this, and they might be able to give you a more up-to-date picture in terms of progress with that. Given that you say that it's around data sharing, is that like to be an increased problem, given the data protection changes that are coming in in May this year? I'm not sure if that will cover it at all. You're not sure. Secondly, I feel very strongly that there are really two issues here. The first is that the data that needs to be collected, we have to improve the accuracy of that from a policy angle, but it's also important in ensuring that the parents who have eligible youngsters know what their entitlement is. If you feel that there's a lot more work to be done on the second of those, in ensuring that parents are aware of what their entitlement is and whether there needs to be a lot of changes made to the way that local authorities act in ensuring that that happens. Two-year-olds particularly, information for parents about that entitlement, is key in getting up from the around 10 per cent of eligible two-year-olds to two-year-olds who are eligible to 25 per cent. Some councils have done some very good work, but I think that the evidence that we heard from parents was that it was an issue more widely for parents of three and four-year-olds as well. I'm looking to one of the team to... Yeah, Trisha. Obviously, this is a very complex area, very difficult for parents to navigate their way through what they're entitled to, what options are available etc, so we do have a recommendation about councils and government helping to make that information clearer for parents to help them to understand what they're entitled to and what options are available to them. Just on the last point, do you feel that when we're told that there is a 97 per cent uptake of registration for a funded place, do you get the impression that that 97 per cent is an accurate statistic? That's as Anton said, that's based on a census at a point in time, so it's done once a year, so that's the number of registered children at that point in time. We don't know how many children that is, there's an element of double counting in there as well, so children can be registered at more than one place. Is this not quite a key point, though, in terms of identifying exactly where those eligible children are? There's some work going on to look at improving that data, so we're aware that Scottish Government and councils are working together to improve some of that data recording around uptake of places, registrations, et cetera. Do you have any idea when that's going to be complete? Do you think that it will be in place around about the 2020 expansion data? Can I just fall on for that? The quite right about the information has to be out there for parents and stuff. How do we get that if there is this barrier between the information sharing from the DWP to the Scottish Government and local authorities or whoever it may be that's responsible for it? We can't get the information out unless we have it. Evidence from the research that Rebecca and Tricia have mentioned is that one of the best ways of getting people aware of their eligibility is using people like health visitors and staff that will be engaging with families anyway. Using people that are directly engaging with families is the best way, in some ways, of raising their awareness of their eligibility and making them aware of the importance of services that are eligible for. There's a role there for staff working in the community to act as the communicator of eligibility and make sure that people are taking up the services that have been talented in early learning funding. There's a broader point that we wanted to make, which is clearly that the issue of strategic planning is very important for local authorities. We made the point in the report that local authorities need to get better at developing proper strategic commissioning plans for the services that are needed to deliver the expansion. That should involve engaging with communities as well and understanding the needs of families and parents, which will hopefully help to inform the appropriateness of the targeting of the resources that are being invested for the future. I take what you say, but given some of the complexities around the welfare system, there still has to be that information from the DWP to the local authorities and to the Government to make sure that the health visitors are given the right information to the right people, surely? It's key for an eligible two-year-olds, because it's at that point. For three and four-year-olds, the entitlement is universal, so it's much more about all health visitors, GP practices, all knowing what the entitlements are and being able to point parents in the right direction. Our work shows that that makes a big difference to parents' take-up. I'm sorry to labour the point over data, but it's a question that I seem to be asking in every committee that I seem to be on. Is it the situation with data that you're saying that those eligible local authorities don't know who they are? Is it because there's a problem—I think that Liz can mention this as well—accessing that data is there, but is it because there's a problem accessing it, whether it be process or legality or whatever, or is it the fact that it's just not there at all? It is there. The team will keep me right. The key problem in terms of councils knowing who's eligible is around two-year-old children. The estimate is that about 25 per cent of two-year-olds are eligible, either because their parents receive certain benefits or because they're looked after children. Councils won't automatically know who those children are without information from HMRC and DWP. The information is held by those two agencies, but it's not shared with councils at the moment. There's no statutory duty on councils to hold that data themselves, so they have to negotiate with HMRC and DWP about access, and we understand that that's under way. The other stuff that I wanted to ask about was that it was interesting to hear about the difference between the figures between Scottish Government and local government. There's a two-pointed question, obviously. The HQ staff that was taken to account, is that HQ staff that are currently still there at local government, as we speak, admin staff and central staff? The other part would be, in your opinion, is this maybe just the case of having been a local councillor myself, the usual dance that the Scottish Government and local government do, where they're effectively negotiating at this point to try and see how they deliver the service? I'll start off with a secondary point. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't an element of negotiation here on the numbers of staff and the costs involved. That's routine, but the gap is quite significant in this point, and we understand some of the reasons why it's there, because of the different approaches that Government and councils have taken to modelling and estimating that, so that gap does need to close. I forgot what your first question was, I'm sorry. The HQ staff are the company already in central... Those are the additional admin staff that councils think they need to administer the expansion to 1,140 hours, which... Basically, we could be talking about, it could be part of the negotiation between the two to try and... because there's always a difference between local government and national government about delivery, because of someone's at the front line, someone's looking from afar, so there's still work done between the two to get to that stage, so we're at the early stages at this point. As I said in my response to the convener's opening question, I think we're not so much surprised that there is a gap. We're noting the size of the gap and the fact that, actually, some of it is because the councils didn't have the guidance they needed on things like flexibility, quality standards and how funding will follow the child in future, and that means that it's taking longer to close the gap while the clock is ticking towards 2020. Probably a good time to remind people that we need to keep our questions short, as we've got an early start today. Not because you're coming up all over, but because of the last question. I believe you, convener. I wondered if there was a detailed breakdown of the difference between the Scottish Government and councils figures. I know that you mentioned that admin staff make up some of it, but do you have a detailed breakdown? We might be able to give you something on that. I can give you what you've got. You might be better to also ask the Government, because I think that the picture is moving all the time. We know that councils have just been changing their figures recently and submitting that to the Government, so they might be able to give you a more up-to-date picture of the difference. That's helpful. In terms of clarification, do you feel, even on the Government's more optimistic figures, that it would be difficult to recruit that number of staff in the timescale? Is that correct? Our concerns are twofold. One, yes, it will be difficult to recruit that number of staff and have them trained to the quality standards that are required by August 2020. Alongside that, the investment in infrastructure is significant, both sides recognise it as significant, whatever the exact number, and everybody will be looking to have that in place over the same short period of time. That is why we concluded that it would be difficult to achieve the expansion by August 2020. One of the concerns that I have had locally in my constituency is that, as the local authority expands its nursery provision, a number of its staff are likely to come from existing private and voluntary providers. I wondered whether that would have a significant effect on provision, particularly in smaller rural communities. We know that it is a concern. Rebecca Trisha, one of you, would you like to pick it up? Part of our providers have certainly raised that as a concern to us when we have spoken to them. It is hard for them to recruit in the first place and that they are losing staff to council provision, where they are essentially getting better terms and conditions. That has definitely been a risk that they have raised. In Dumfries and Galloway, at present, all private providers have asked for a halt to the procurement process, because they are worried that they cannot deliver what has been asked of them at the cost that councils are willing to pay. That could result in around 2,000 places being lost if some of those start to fold. I wondered in terms of that payment per place, whether that was something that you would look at. In the report, in paragraph 102, we made reference to the National Day and Neffries Association survey, where providers talk about the differential rate that they charge parents, as opposed to the fee that they receive from local authorities, and they do highlight it at risk as part of the expansion moving forward. Have you looked at a more standardised national rate across different local authorities? That is one of the other concerns that I have had repeatedly, is that different local authorities have used different modelling and have a different funding package for third-party providers. We did not look specifically at that as part of the audit, and the introduction of financial policy will be a policy matter rather than an audit matter. I wonder if there is evidence that local authorities calculate the cost of a public-provided place as X, but will offer Y to external providers so that they are driving out costs out into private and third sector. I do not know whether that is true, but I wonder if that is something that you have looked at. We did not look at the unit cost calculation for local authority provision or private or third sector provision as part of the audit. It is certainly an interesting question, but it was not part of the audit that we did. Although I think that we recommend it. The Scottish Government did produce a financial review that looked at that difference, and it looked at the cost of council provision that comes out on average at £5.45 an hour. I think that what councils are paying to partner providers on average is £3.70. There are differences in the way that they had to calculate those rates. The £5.45 for councils is for three and four-year-olds, whereas the partner-provider figure is for zero to fours. Councils pay £3.59 to partner providers, sorry, and the £3.70 is how much partner providers are saying that it costs them. Councils also identified about £99 an hour as a cost to them of commissioning a partner provider place. That is not the cost that goes to the partner provider. It is another cost that they incur. It is zero to four that you would imagine would cost more, because the ratios are different to the younger the child is, but they are offering less money. It reflects the financial pressures on local authorities as well. I asked about the question of admin staff. I think that people can say, well, admin staff, what do they do? We do not need to count them in the calculation. I want to get a sense of what that might actually be. Has there been any work done to look at the support staff that would be inside a nursery if you were going to be delivering for all children, and specifically children with special needs? Whether some of that calculation has been brought into play around what might be deemed to be admin support might actually be the support that allows a young person to access a nursery place? I think that the figure that she referred to, which is in the council's estimates and not in the Government's, is the staff that councils need, centrally, within the council to receive applications from parents of eligible two, three and four-year-olds and then match them with a place that meets their needs as closely as possible, rather than staff in the nurseries themselves doing administration. Is it fair to say that the more places that have to be administered, and the more hours that are to administered, it would be reasonable to expect, while there might be some economies of scale, there still would be cost associated with that. Is that right? Absolutely. Again, that will differ from council to council depending on what they are starting with and how many children they need to cover when we get to 1140. I want to say a bit more about the issue around the nature of the young people who are coming in, but one of the submissions that we received from fair funding for our kids says that the clear inspectorate reports that a third of three to four-year-olds are not receiving a funded place. Is it your understanding that the calculations by the Government in simply saying that this is what we give and therefore if we had more it would be more, is it taking into account this deficit in actual access to a place? I mean 20 years ago I didn't access a funded place because the hours were ridiculous and no use to somebody who was in full-time work and I had thought that maybe things had moved on, but do you think that the local authority, sorry, the Government calculation is on the number of children who are in the system bulked up or is it acknowledging that there's actually a space there where there isn't, there's theoretically a right but it's not being accessed? Rebecca, to come in in a moment, there's two complications there and I'm sorry, this is complicated. The first is, as we say in the report, calculating how many children are eligible is difficult and the data are about registrations, not children, so there's a bit of complexity there which links back to the fair funding for our children figures. Secondly, we know that the Government and councils have made different assumptions about the uptake of eligibility which is part of the difference between them. Rebecca, do you want to put some flesh on that? Yeah, I think that the specific figure for the Care Inspectorate about the third not getting their place, those were trial statistics that the Care Inspectorate only published in one year and I think the reason they labelled them as trial statistics was there was a lot of issues around the data quality and they haven't published them again since. The figures that the census figures we believe, although there are issues around the quality of that, are probably the more reliable figure in terms of what's available at the moment looking at uptake. I think that what everyone is doing to base their projections for 1140 is looking at the population rather than looking at how many people are currently taking up their places, so for three and four-year-olds they know that the projected population is what they will be basing their figures on, albeit with different assumptions around what the uptake may or may not be. We'd be looking, though, at the special needs of children, because if there was a system in which the needs of your child couldn't be met within the particular local authority place or whatever, we know anecdotally it's much more difficult but that might distort the figures. It would certainly distort the figures around cost because if you were effective at getting young people with special needs into a nursery setting you're going to have to acknowledge that there's going to be support needs that will go alongside that and I wonder if there's any evidence that that work has been done at all because one would surely hope that in expanding the hours those young people who are currently, I wouldn't say, routinely excluded but are more difficult to get access a place would be accommodated. I think that this is something that's on going at the moment in the Scottish Government's evaluation report when they did a survey of about 10,500 parents and they looked at additional support needs as part of that and they found that 17% of parents who had eligible children with additional support needs were dissatisfied with their access to suitable early learning and childcare and about half of parents who had eligible children with additional support needs had one or more difficulty in accessing suitable provision. I think that there's an ELC inclusion fund of £2 million which is to help staff support children with additional support needs and that's to fund specialist training for staff in ELC as well as funding for equipment. I think that they've got to the stage of appointing a partner to administer that fund but it's not yet open for applications but that's something that's in the pipeline. The £2 million presumably will have to be bulked up if you're increasing from eligible or £600 to £1140, £2 million is not going to be sufficient. That's what the current thing is that we have. Okay, thank you very much. Ross, and then finish off with Claire. Thanks, convener. The difference between the Government's figures and the council's figures is proportionately the most striking when it comes to infrastructure. I was wondering if you'd be able to expand a little bit on just how dramatic a difference occurred there. It's the biggest difference and I think that it comes down again to the different approaches to modelling that the two parties have had. Rebecca, can you say a bit more about that? The guidance from the Scottish Government around infrastructure was that that council should meet the best use of their assets first, so they had an ordering to make the best use of what you've got already, so things like expanding hours using beyond the school hour into school holidays, et cetera. To do that first and to look at the availability of partner providers, working with partner providers, and that the final options should be to build new infrastructure. It's not very clear from the council's plans whether or not they've taken, they've all taken that approach or not, and do you understand that that's part of the discussions that are going on again between councils and the Scottish Government as they look at revising the plans? However, if we yield cash, there's still a significant amount of additional infrastructure required over a short time period. Absolutely, and I think that the issue of the short time period is going to be a particularly acute one. The council's overall figure is £400 million. The council's estimate is more than £400 million for entirely new infrastructure alone. Is there any breakdown of that? For example, how much of that £400 million is the cost of purchasing land versus the cost of constructing on land that councils already own? We've got a figure of £411 for new builds, but I don't know if there's a breakdown between land or not. When you talked about the Government being unclear about what the outcome priorities were, and you said that if it was following the child, it would be quality, if it was following the parents, it would be flexibility, I'm really at a loss to see why those should be too competing and disparate priorities and outcomes. What's the evidential work that's been done on quality, and is what you're saying inevitably that flexibility reduces quality? What we're saying is that, first of all, everybody agrees that an outcomes-based approach is a good thing. The two outcomes of improving outcomes for children and helping parents into work, training and study are both worthwhile outcomes. The number of childcare hours isn't an outcome, it's an output, although it's one that many parents welcome. I think that the clearest way to put it is that if you are looking to improve outcomes for children, the evidence doesn't suggest that providing extra hours for children who are already receiving childcare does very much to improve outcomes for children. The evidence is much stronger that starting access to early learning and childcare earlier does improve outcomes, and if that was the Government's priority outcome, rather than making 600 hours available for all children, we think that they should have considered at the least whether they could have had more of that outcome by providing fewer hours for all children from the age of two or taking the most disadvantaged children and giving them additional hours from the age of two onwards. It's not so much that quality and flexibility are in competition, but the outcome that you are trying to achieve affects the way in which you invest the money that you are putting in, and it is a significant investment in this policy for very good reasons. On that note, we will finish the session. I thank the Auditor General and his colleagues for their attendance today. I understand that the minister has been watching this session in her ministerial office, so we will now suspend for a couple of minutes to await the minister. Thank you very much. This is the last in our series of Ask the Minister evidence sessions. Today we will hear from the Minister for childcare in the early years, with a focus on two themes—early learning and childcare and then care experience young people. I welcome Mary Todd, Minister for childcare in the early years, Michael Chalmers, director for children and families, Joe Griffin, deputy director creating positive futures division, and Donald Henderson, deputy director for care, protection and justice. I invite the minister if she wishes to make a brief opening statement. Thank you, convener. I'm tempted to say you saved the best till last day. Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you. It's been a great privilege for me to serve as minister for childcare in the early years since my appointment last November. This is particularly so, given the priority that this Government places on early years, a preventative approach, and ensuring that every child and young person has the same opportunity to prosper in life. Too many of our children and young people, through no fault of their own, do not start with the life chances to which they are entitled. I understand that the committee wishes to focus on its questions today in two key areas of policy—early learning and childcare and on looked after children. Those policy areas sit at the heart of our ambitious programme to transform outcomes for our children and young people. The evidence tells us that support in the early years is where we can make the biggest positive impact on outcomes for children, and that's where we focused our investment in early learning and childcare. Given the critical importance of this programme, I recognise and very much welcome the important role of this committee and, indeed, the Audit Scotland in scrutinising the Government's approach. Let me be clear from the outset about the Audit Scotland report. I and my ministerial colleagues agree that the expansion to 1140 hours of early learning and childcare is hugely ambitious. Where we perhaps depart from some of our reporting on this issue is that we think that it's our job, indeed our duty, to be hugely ambitious. To give just one example of recruiting the numbers of people that we need to the workforce is, in itself, a considerable challenge, albeit one that will provide opportunities for good-quality jobs and careers for people in every community in this country. However, I am confident that we are on track, not least because of the strong partnership that we have with local government and with other key players. I agree that challenges and, indeed, difficult challenges remain, but I am determined that we will succeed because the prize is so great. It is an opportunity to give children the best start in life and to transform their life chances. We also have a responsibility as a Government and as a country to improve the life chances of young people in the care system who depend on us to ensure that they can have the safe, fulfilling and loving childhood to which they are entitled. Too often, as a country, we have let these young people down. It is for that reason that Fiona Duncan was asked to lead the Root and Branch review of care, which is being shaped, of course, by the voice of care experienced young people themselves. We will engage with the recommendations of the review as they emerge, and I am determined that we seize this opportunity to transform the life chances of our looked-after children. I welcome the opportunity to engage with the committee today on the two policy areas that are so important to the Government's fundamental commitment to the country's children and young people. I am very happy to be here to explore those issues further, and I am happy to answer your questions. As you are aware, the committee invited suggestions and submissions from stakeholders and the public for today's session. I thank everyone who has contributed. We will ask questions in person today, and anything that is not asked will be sent to the minister for a formal response to the committee. All responses will be shared with those who ask the questions. Before I invite questions from members of the committee on childcare, I would like to start by asking the minister—you have seen that we were speaking to the Auditor General—what action the Government has taken so far in response to the Audit Scotland report and what steps it plans to undertake in the future. We remain on track to deliver 1140 hours in the expansion that we intend to deliver in funded, high-quality, early learning and childcare. Our expansion programme is absolutely ambitious and it will be challenging to deliver, but we are working really hard with local authorities and other delivery partners to ensure that we create the workforce and the physical capacity that is required. It is absolutely crucial to that delivery that we reach agreement on the multi-year funding package to support the expansion by the end of April, and we are on track to do that. We are making really good progress in reaching a shared understanding of the revenue and capital costs of the expansion, following updates to the local authority cost estimates, so I am really confident that we are going to reach an agreement soon. The Deputy First Minister and myself will meet with COSLA leaders next week on Thursday 29 March to progress the funding discussions. There seem to be in the Audit Scotland report that there are lots of talks about a big gap between the Scottish Government and local authorities. Are you confident that that gap is going to be closed in terms of the cost, the flexibility and the quality that is desired from this project? I am absolutely confident. I think that it is wrong probably to speak about a funding gap. We are committed to funding this policy in full, and I have said that repeatedly. It is right that we take the time to assure ourselves over the robustness of these estimates and that we are collectively making the best use of public funds through, frankly, significant investment. The Audit Scotland report presented two sets of estimates on the revenue costs arising from the expansion, one prepared by ourselves, by the Scottish Government and one prepared by local authorities. As you heard, Audit Scotland did not particularly analyse either set of estimates, it did not interrogate the figures, it just identified that there was this difference. We are working very hard with COSLA and local authorities to reach a shared understanding of the costs. You heard from the Auditor General some of the areas where there were different assumptions underlying, and we have a joint finance working group working very hard on that. The local authorities submitted their updated financial estimates to us in March, and that will inform the political decisions next week on the multi-year funding. Thank you very much, Oliver. Just following on from that audit, Scotland suggested that there has been some significant movement. Do you have any breakdown on what the gap in staffing levels or on funding is now? I am not going to negotiate this in public and you won't expect me to, let's place it. At the moment, we are at a crucial point in these negotiations, but I can assure you that we are working together well and we are working towards a shared understanding of what is required. Does that mean that the Government has increased its offer, or has all of the movement been on the local authority side? As I said, I am not going to negotiate this in public. In terms of my constituency, I am grateful to you for agreeing to meet with some private providers. However, there has been a lot of concern in the talk of a crisis and I have asked for procurement to be paused, because they are worried that they will not be able to deliver around the 2,000 places that they currently provide and are worried that they will not have a part to play in the expansion of the 1140 hours at present. They are worried about losing staff to the council's expansion and they are worried as well about the phasing that Dumfries and Galloway council have proposed. That means that parents will be able to move their children to different nurseries in different parts of the region that will get the 1140 hours first. They are also worried and feel there is a great unfairness that they are currently having to cross subsidis, nursery places and that hard-working families are having to pay out of their own pocket to pick up the shortfall. Do you have any comment on that? First, I am really looking forward to meeting with you and those partners. One of the things that I am most pleased with is how closely we are working with so many different people on the ground. We are absolutely clear that partner providers will be parts of the picture going forward. We do not think that we are going to be able to deliver the quality and the flexibility that we require without having private nurseries, third sector nurseries and childminders as part of the package going forward. From a Government's perspective, we are developing a provider neutral model and we are absolutely sure that those people should be part of our offering going forward. The reason that we are phasing the way that we are is because we want the policy and the increase in hours to benefit the people who need it most first. We have asked local authorities to go first to the areas where there is the greatest level of need. I do not think that anyone around the table would disagree with that. I think that that is the right thing to do. We are not going to go overnight from 600 to 1140 hours. It is going to be a phased transition and I think that it is absolutely right that we phase and target initially the areas that need it most. In terms of staff, I understand that there is an issue with private nursery staff being more lucratively employed in local authorities and we are working very hard to change that situation. You will understand that part of our offering and part of what we have agreed to fully fund should enable nurseries to pay the living wage. We think that that is absolutely right. At the heart of ensuring quality, we want the staff to have good quality jobs. That is why we are giving extra money to local authorities so that they can increase their offering to private nurseries and make sure that people are paid a good wage. In terms of the cross subsidy, we are determined—we are not going to set a national rate or anything, but we are determined to iron out some of the differences in procurement across the nation because we think that the procurement steps to gain, to become a funded provider, are quite a lot of barriers in the place of those businesses at times. We want to simplify that process and say that once you have passed the national standard, you have passed the national standard, so we are trying hard to simplify that process. We do not want to lose any of the quality on the way, but we are absolutely, let me assure you, we are keen that other people and local authorities, so partner providers such as private nurseries such as third sector nurseries and definitely childminders continue to operate in this sector. The other thing that I would like to ask about is the staffing numbers and whether you think that it is realistic that we are going to even find 6,000 new staff on time. In Dumfries and Galloway, I know that they are struggling to recruit enough staff to meet current provision. I have heard from head teachers in some local authority nurseries that they are having to take time out of running not just the nursery but the primary school to help out in order to fill gaps. Is it realistic across the country as a whole that we are going to find that number of people on time? Yes. Although I absolutely acknowledge the level of challenge that is involved, I mean, I heard somebody, I went to one of the road shows that they are doing in a school and it was described as the biggest recruitment drive since the second world war. It is huge. The scale of the ambition of this is incredible, but it will be transformative. As I said, the prize will be worth having. We are putting robust measures in place to ensure that we have sufficient capacity. We are supporting new entrants to the sector to be in the qualifications that they need. We are attracting more people into jobs in early learning and childcare in that there is a career and progression pathways right into the section. The expansion of the ELC workforce is already under way, so it is not that nothing has happened. To support the first phase of the workforce expansion in 2017-18, we have already provided local authorities with £21 million additional revenue funding, increased the ELC-related capacity in colleges and universities and increased ELC modern apprenticeships by 10 per cent. We estimate that the combined effects of the investment will have supported between 2,000 and 3,000 additional placements to enter the ELC workforce already, so those people are already in place. We launched phase 1 of our national recruitment campaign last year in October 2017, probably none of us—well, maybe Ross Greer has seen it—was very targeted at young people. Many of us will not have seen the campaign, but it was very successful at attracting people to our website, so it was targeted at school leaders. It is a bit too early to be absolutely sure of the impact of it, but we are pleased with the increase in traffic to the website that we have had. We think that it will result in extra recruitment. Phase 2 of the recruitment campaign is coming in the next few months, and we will be targeting returning parents and career changers. With that phase, we have also been to increase the diversity of the workforce. I should say that we have received a lot of very helpful submissions, and I want to thank all of those who took the time to provide us with information for this session. I want to focus on one submission, which is fair funding for our kids, who basically describes the current situation for families who are trying to access childcare. It is not about aspiration now that everybody can share aspiration, but about the reality of people's experience currently. Most councils only offer free childcare for half-days—two-thirds of all nursery places in Scotland are for half-days. Just one in 10 council nurseries are open between 8 p.m. or longer. 19 councils have no nurseries, which are open between 8 p.m. and 6 p.m. There are a whole number of other factors that suggest that there is a pretty major problem with the current situation. What work are you doing to address that? It may be in the future as an expansion of eligibility to ours, but what that seems to describe is that it is very difficult for families to access the support and the childcare that they need for their families. That is a reason to expand the eligible hours. One of the main reasons that we are doubling the hours is because that will make a significant difference. If families are able to access more hours, there will not be the same difficulty. I can see, as a parent myself, that for some families, gaining three hours of funded access to childcare in an afternoon in a local authority setting may not be transformative, but gaining something near a school day and having some flexibility around where that is delivered will absolutely be transformative. The concerns that they are raising are why we are changing things going forward. The current eligibility is 600 hours. What is being described is that people are not being able to access those hours because they are not available in a setting that suits them. There is no logical connection between expanding the number of hours and making it more accessible. I am interested in how you think that you would address that question. If most nurseries only offer free childcare places for half days, if you expand that to offer more half-days but do not necessarily make it more likely for families to access whole days or longer periods of days, they are not going to be able to use the facilities that are there. You might have heard when I asked the Auditor of Scotland and our staff about the Cairns spectra report on a third of three to four-year-olds not receiving a funded place. I am not sure if that is true. What is your estimate of the number of places that young people are entitled to or families entitled are not taken up? I heard that discussion with the Auditor General and her team and I understood from what she said that the figure of a third was from a data collection. I think that our census is correct. I think that so near 100 per cent of places for three to four-year-olds are taken up. That would be my understanding. I am interested in the expansion hours and we could maybe have a further conversation about how you secure what is already there before you expand it, whether you balance one off against the other. Is there an issue about expanding free-care places? However, there is evidence currently of local authorities increasing the cost of childcare for the paid places. For example, in Glasgow, there is a 50 per cent increase in childcare costs, which has just been brought in without consultation to families. Do you have a view on that decision and whether that cuts across a policy that says that childcare is central to our young people? What we are aiming to do is increase childcare. I can see that I am failing to get this point across to you, but naturally that will increase flexibility. We are talking about moving from a half-day each day to a whole-day, virtually the same as a primary school day. That is the aim for this policy, and that naturally will provide more flexibility. Local authorities go out on a regular basis. It is a statutory requirement for them to go out and consult with their local populations as to what is required to meet their needs. I believe that local authorities have a good understanding of supply and demand in their areas. The most recent care inspectorate report on 19 September 2018 showed that flexibility is improving. More than half of providers—51.4 per cent of providers—are now offering a choice of provision. The proportion of council settings providing funded ELC before, during and after school has increased from 19 per cent in 2013 up to 30 per cent in 2016. The proportion of council settings operating during school holidays has increased from 18 per cent to 23 per cent. I agree that we are not where we want to be yet, but we are moving in the right direction, and I think that the increase in funded hours will transform the landscape. Do you have a view on the increased on non-funded hours by 50 per cent without consultation with parents? Is that not going against a policy that I would support, which is recognised the fundamental importance of childcare and the benefits of funded places by government? Is increasing funding charged amount by 50 per cent in line with government policy or do you think that it goes against that policy? As I understand it, the increase in Glasgow is still very fairly priced compared to alternatives. There are exemptions for families on low income, and it is for local authorities, as I am sure you will understand. It is for local authorities to make decisions on these issues, not for central government. On two points. The Glasgow raised the threshold to 30,000 for eligibility. Those who are earning less in that are more benefiting from eligibility. I accept the point that was made by Joanne about the increase for those who are earning more than 30,000, but it is obviously to help fund that. More importantly, from the important point that Joanne raised, if local authorities are at this stage giving an inflexible model, can we be assured that when we get to the end of the process that inflexible model, no matter if it is half days or a full day within a very set time, which does not work for many parents, will no longer be there? At the moment, we are absolutely focused on delivering this expansion. We are moving from 600 hours of funded entitlement to 1140 hours of funded entitlement for all three and four-year-olds and for eligible two-year-olds. As you will understand, that is our primary focus at the moment. In 2020, we are hoping to look at introducing a funding follows the child model, which I am sure will solve some of those flexibility issues. At the moment, we have a consultation out on what that might look like. We have got consultations on a national standard. It will be underpinned by a national standard. I think that that will solve many of those problems as well. I agree that I am failing to get this point across, but increasing the hours and doubling the hours is going to make them more useful to parents and children. Ruth Cymru Thank you, convener. I would like to ask you about childminders role in the delivery. We have a submission from the childminders organisation that tells us that 10 out of the 14 ELC trials involved childminding, but they felt that, in some cases, that was based on a lack of nursery availability rather than parental choice and flexibility. I am interested to hear your thoughts on where childminders fit into that and perhaps the role that they can play in providing care in a home setting in smaller numbers and how that might benefit a number of our children who are using them. Ruth Cymru Absolutely. I see that childminders are a great option for some families, for younger children, for children who are part of a family that some children are going to school as well. I absolutely agree with the concept of families being able to choose the type of childcare that suits their needs. Childminders will be a part of that going forward. One of the reasons that we include childminding in the trials is because we are determined that that should be an important part of things going forward. I am meeting, in fact, later today, after this, with Maggie Simpson, who is the chief executive of SEMA, to discuss further how we can ensure that they are comfortable with where things are going. The central Government's view is that we are provider-neutral. We want this expansion to happen. We are not saying who should be providing the care. What we are saying is that we want it to happen. We have engaged extensively with stakeholders, including childminders. I will go back to the funding that follows the child. I think that that is what will solve many of the problems in this area, or the perceived problems or the perceived barriers. It will make provider-neutral. As long as somebody, as long as the provider meets the national standard, they will be eligible to become a funded partner. We are also quite keen to simplify the procurement process so that it is not quite so burdensome, so that it is a bit more proportionate for childminders who may only have a small number of children. If they are unlucky enough, those children might come from different local authority areas. We are very keen to engage with them. We see them as a very valuable part of the offering going forward. We are keen to smooth out the barriers that they are facing currently in the future. At the end of the submission, Maggie Simpson makes quite a strong statement that the future of childminding is under threat if they are not included fully and properly. You have given a flavour of some of the things that can be done, but how can we ensure that local authorities and the commission that they are included properly as partners? We are determined. The central Government will see that funding following our child model will make it provider-neutral. The families will be able to choose the type of childcare that suits their family needs most. I am sure that families will continue to use childminders in some cases, because that will be what suits their needs best. We will work. As I said, I am meeting with Maggie Simpson later today. I am all ears to hear what problems she has and what barriers she wants to raise with me. I am more than happy to take those on and work on them together with her to ensure that we deliver that with childminders at the heart of it as well. I want to come back to the workforce issue that Oliver Mundell was asking you about very briefly. No, I did, but you did not let me in. I was trying very patiently to get in. Audit Scotland has said that the Scottish Government has not yet done enough to ensure that the staff will be in place in time to deliver the increase in hours. You will know that local authorities estimate that 12,000 staff are needed and that the Scottish Government figures estimate 8,000. You spoke very fully when you gave your answer to Oliver Mundell about what has been done to recruit additional staff. How many additional staff have you recruited? Between 2 and 3,000. Already in place. How many staff are in place to deliver that now? Between 2 and 3,000. How many staff in total are in place? I cannot give you that figure, I will have to write to you. So there has been an extra 2 in 3,000 started training this year between an extra 2 and 3,000. I cannot give you the figure of the current number of staff. So how near the 12,000 are they? So between 2 and 3,000 is what? You do not have a figure for the number of staff you had before you increased it by 2,000 or 3,000. If you could give us the figures, that would be very welcome. Just before I come on to the issue of child minding, I want to be really clear. The increase in provision is it to improve educational outcomes for children or is it for the benefit of the parents? I am confused because you have spoken about both. What is the primary focus of this, the primary intention? The primary intention is to improve the quality of educational offering for children. We are determined to close the attainment gap, which is already apparent at age 3. We are determined to put in place early years education, which narrows that gap before the children reach school. As your committee member Claire Adams pointed out, I do not believe that it has to be a binary choice. It is not an either or. We can do more than one thing at a time. We are absolutely determined to increase the quality of early years education, but we are also determined to increase the flexibility for families. If we can, as well as improving the educational offering, if we can also improve the family income by reducing childcare costs or by freeing parents up to go to education or to work longer hours, then we will improve the family income as well. That will make a huge difference to the individual child. Improving outcomes, you need to encourage more children to come into the system to help to improve the outcomes. Can I come on to the issue of child minders then? Child minders are a very valuable asset. If the aim is to improve outcomes for children, how will you assess the educational outcomes from children that are based with child minders? How will you make sure that they are on a par with nurseries? At the moment, child minders are regulated and care-inspected, so there are outcomes for children going through child minders. Specifically, educational outcomes in reducing the attainment gap. How will you ensure that child minders help to reduce the attainment gap? There are two points that we are looking at. The first is whether, in a consultation, we will be having shortly on the national standard to underpin the funding follows a child. It is reasonable to expect that child minders would be qualified. At the moment, many child minders are qualified, but it is not currently a requirement, so we would like to put in the consultation the question about whether it is reasonable to expect a qualification of that kind, so that would be one thing. The second aspect is looking at a much more integrated inspection regime between care, inspectorate and education Scotland, so there is more seamless understanding of the quality of the provision provided in all the different settings, both on the education, the learning side and the childcare side. If you currently have child minders that are not qualified and you decide that there is a requirement that they should be qualified, if not, all child minders want to go through that process, you may lose child minders? Can I be very clear that it will not be simply us that makes that decision on whether child minders should be qualified? We are very keen to have, and we are putting that out for consultation at the moment, and we are keen to have child minders themselves state whether they think that it is an appropriate thing to ask them to be qualified or not. I wanted to ask an interesting point about the attainment gap, because it would probably be fair to say that in terms of the Government's thinking that it will expand ours, there is going to be improvement for children and for families. That is something that I absolutely accepted, but I was very struck by the Auditor General's argument that, with the same pot of money, you could direct the money in another way, particularly around the way that the gap grows by the time that a child is three. The suggestion was that the Government had not done any work around looking at, instead of giving everybody extra hours from three and four, so longer hours, actually investing on vulnerable younger children with that gap emerges. Have you reflected on the Auditor General's suggestion that you should have done that? Is it a very strong argument for saying that, in terms of the attainment gap in particular, you direct resources to two-year-olds, particularly youngsters who are already disadvantaged by the time they get to two? What I would say is that that is not exactly what we are doing. We have expanded the entitlement to all three and four-year-olds. We have a universal offering, but we are targeting it at eligible two-year-olds. We are already doing both. We are determined to close that attainment gap. The suggestion from the Auditor General is that, rather than expanding it, you could have put even more resource into two-year-olds. Given the challenges of identifying vulnerable two-year-olds, by making it a general offer to all two-year-olds, you are going to pull in lots of youngsters who are already disadvantaged. It is not something that, until I read it in the Auditor General's report, I had properly thought through, but there is a logic to that argument, and I wonder whether it is something that you would look at further. We are absolutely determined to close this attainment gap, so we are very keen to target two-year-olds and we are very keen to target eligible two-year-olds. We are doing work around that. I am not sure whether we will come on to that later in evidence about how to identify those two-year-olds and how to get them in. Do you know why that was not tested by Government? That option of saying that we will include all two-year-olds in the 600 hours rather than using the money to expand? I am not sure if I have a view one way or another, which is the better, but I wonder if there was any—or if you know why there was not some evidence-based work on why that was done. Can I just clarify what you are putting to me? What you are saying is that should the Government have looked at not expanding childcare for three and four-year-olds and making the 600-hours universal for two-year-olds versus increasing the offering to 1140 hours for all eligible two-year-olds plus all three and four-year-olds? To be fair, it is not my proposition. I have said already that I thought that that made sense, but what the Auditor General is saying is that, in terms of outcomes, there was another way of doing this, which was to say that there is an issue about uptake for vulnerable two-year-olds. We are not capturing them in sufficient numbers. Should we have invested—before expanding hours—if it is about the attainment gap, you would invest in all two-year-olds because then you would capture the vulnerable two-year-olds. I wonder if you know why that was not done, because it is about evidence-based. It is not about having a view on the policy, and whether it is still something that you would look at in terms of expanding down the way to two-year-olds rather than expanding out from all different children. Do you know if it was not done? I do not. I think that the situation from the Auditor General was that it was not done. Minister, the largest proportion and absolute difference between the Scottish Government's numbers and the council's numbers is in terms of infrastructure. 400 million is the Government's figure, and the council has it at 690 million of additional infrastructure spending that would be required. Could you elaborate on how the 400 million figure was come to? As you can imagine, we looked at the assets that we already have in the country and took them into account when we were deciding whether it was possible to deliver them. I agree that there are discrepancies between what we say and what local government says. I assure you that those discrepancies are coming closer together as we speak. I understand that. What I am trying to get to the bottom of is that the 400 million figure that the Government came to, was that as a result of an acknowledgement of how much money would be available to you, or was 400 million identified by the process of identifying how much money was required? Is it 400 million based on creating a shopping list of everything that would be required or an acknowledgement of the financial situation that the Government sent and how much money it would be able to offer? I am going to ask my colleague Joe Griffin to answer this for you. He is much more familiar with the model. As with a number of our national figures, it is based on an economic model, which runs a certain set of assumptions about take-up, about the different service options and the principles that we shared with local government in advance of the planning process, which said that there is a hierarchy of how you use infrastructure. You start with your existing assets, you look at re-using and so on, so forth, and a new build should be a last option then. The 400 million was shared as an indicative figure to assist with that level of planning. You would be able to tell us how much of the effort has been broken down as such, how much of that estimate was allocated to the purchase of land rather than construction costs? I do not have that figure to hand. I can check back and we can write to you if we have that as a clearly disaggregated part of the estimate. I do not know. I would hope that the Government did have that because it comes back to issues that I think raised previously in the committee of policy coherence in the Government. That would be another example where the issue of existing use value for councils, purchasing power of land, would perhaps come in. If the Government was taking an all-government approach to that, that would make sense. The estimate from councils was included over 400 million for new builds alone, not just for refurbishment or extensions to existing sites. Obviously, there will be some difference in the figures and the ministers indicated that that difference is narrowing, but it indicates the scale of the construction that is required. Bearing in mind that we are not yet at a point of agreement and that a number of those construction projects will be quite considerable, on what basis does the Government believe that that will be completed in time in the next two years, because construction takes time? Yes, it does. Again, we work extremely closely with local government on the full range of issues to do with the ELC and infrastructure as one of those as well. The message that I hear most clearly is that the end of April date for reaching a political agreement on a multi-year basis of funding is very important in terms of those timescales, so that is what we are working towards. The understanding that we have in the conversations with local government is that if we can meet that date, the construction processes and so on can take place very quickly after that. There is confidence that those construction processes can be completed in the next two years, because to me that begs the question surely if there is such a significant difference in the level of construction that is required, how can there possibly be an agreement on the timescale in which that can be completed? The minister has already said that we are not a position to say how the negotiations are going, but we are confident collectively that we will reach a point very soon where there is a shared understanding of what is required, so I think that that could be quite a quick process. I have not heard directly from any council that anything is impossible. I think that we would all share the characterisation that it is challenging, but I have not heard from any council that it is in a position whereby it is literally impossible. Minister, could I just ask you about some comments that were in the Audit Scotland report? Obviously, it is very supportive indeed about the ambition of the Scottish Government's policy, but it makes the comment that the Scottish Government did not undertake effective analysis once the 600-hours provision was in place, and that was five years ago. The Scottish Government had implemented the increase in hours without comparing the cost and potential outcomes of expanding childcare and without looking at other possibilities of spending the money that you yourself said cannot all be done in one phase. I am of the same opinion as my colleague Johann Lamont that I am not an expert on what is the best thing to do, but you said in an answer to Johann Lamont that you did not know whether any work had been done on this. Audit Scotland is saying that it was not done. Could you clarify who is correct? I can look into it and write to you if I clarify. Sorry, minister. Are you of the opinion that Audit Scotland is correct when it flags up that there is a problem that not enough analysis was done of the 600-hours provision in order to inform policy? Is that correct, or do you disagree with them? I think that the expansion to 1140 hours was announced back in 2014, and it was included as a manifesto commitment for our party, which then won the election. I do not know that that is why we are delivering on a manifesto commitment. I am not sure, perhaps I will not understand your question correctly. Do not that anybody is disagreeing about the laudable aims of the policy, and that is very clearly flagged up in Audit Scotland. It is obviously a very substantial amount of public money that is going into the policy, and what the committee is wanting in Assurance Office, as I am sure many parents are, is that that money is well spent. Audit Scotland is flagging up that it would have been helpful to assess how well delivered the 600 hours had been, and with good quality analysis, with a good quality data set to inform that. Yet, to Johann Lamont, you say that you do not think that policy work has been done. That is a concern to me, so could you clarify whether you think that the work has been done? I understand what you are saying. Audit Scotland also highlighted that there is data collection in place for this expansion, and that we have better baseline figures with which to compare it. Going forward, there will be better data collection, and there will be better analysis of what this expansion delivers. We are not going to get the information until we have done another phase of development and implementation to know whether it is working or not. I think that that was raised during the debate in Parliament by one of my colleagues, who quoted Harry Burns, who essentially said, we have enough evidence that this will work. Let's just get on and do it. I think that I am big to differ on whether it is satisfactory to put a policy into implementation without having the adequate data set behind it to inform whether the judgment is the correct one. We had this morning a comment from Audit Scotland again that there are issues about the data set being incomplete, particularly when it comes to identifying where the most vulnerable two-year-olds are. That is a serious issue, minister, because, obviously, we may have children missing out on their funding because of the fact that we do not know where they are. Again, does that not reinforce the need to do a good quality analysis of just how effective the spend is? I agree. We are aware of the issue of two-year-olds. We are absolutely well aware that the uptake of entitlement for two-year-olds is lower than we would hope, and we are taking steps to address that. Local authorities would find it very helpful to be able to identify potentially eligible families in their area and to target information to them much as they can down south in England, but that relies on them being able to access information from the DWP and HMRC. That requires an agreement from the UK Government to share that data within an appropriate legal framework. That requires them to pass some legislation. I have to say that I have been very disappointed with the response that I have had from the UK Government when we have contacted them in the past to try to progress that. I have written to them just this week to the UK Government to express my disappointment again that the first set of regulations coming up under the Public Service Delivery Powers, the Digital Economy Act, which is being introduced into Westminster due to be introduced next month, are not drafted to reflect the needs of Scottish local authorities. I am sorely disappointed with that. The issue that was flagged up this morning by Audis Scotland was the fact that part of the concern about inadequate data is not just to do with whether all the information coming from Westminster is accurate, and I agree that there is a point there. However, the second issue is that some local authorities do not appear to have understood the strategic plan that they are supposed to be operating. Do you believe that there has been sufficient discussion with the Scottish Government and local authorities about where their strategic plans lie and whether there is a good chance that they have the relevant data to be able to implement the policy? I do think so. In the blueprint for 2020, they were given information last year, six months before we asked for detailed plans for them, so they had really good quality information on which to work. As well as that, we have had lots of face-to-face engagement between my officials and local authorities to try to help them to understand what was being required in terms of developing the plan. As you can imagine over the last few months, there has been even closer engagement on that. We are very close to having a shared understanding of what is required going forward. You mentioned earlier that you felt that the issue of flexibility would be partially solved or, hopefully, in the long term fully solved by allowing the money to follow the child. Your predecessor hinted in Parliament three years ago that that would be a child account. Could you tell us if that child account is going to be the method by which you introduce money following the child and if it is, when you think that that will be in place? At the moment, we are still developing the model. We have developed the national standards and those are going out for consultation. The funding follows the child model is actually in development. There is lots and lots of work going on around that, so I cannot tell you what it is going to look like. As I said earlier, our current focus is absolutely on delivering this expansion. We expect funding follows the child to be in place or nearly in place by 2020, but at the moment our focus is on expansion. The funding follows the child and will follow the expansion. Can I ask you to clarify? The Government has said that, while funding follows the child, it will not be on the basis of a child care account system from August 2020. Nevertheless, we wish to commission a feasibility study to look at what the aspects are involved in implementing such a thing. We are still in the process for tendering for an organisation to provide that feasibility study. Clear, Mr Griffin. At the time when it was announced in Parliament before the minister's time, we had not done any feasibility study at that time. Into a child care account operating in Scotland, that is correct. Thank you very much. George, you wanted to come in very briefly. To follow on from Liz, it is just a very similar question to what I asked in the last one. I asked the question about data on the individuals, the young two-year-olds, and I was told that it was there by Audit Scotland. Are you now telling me—sorry for sounding like Lieutenant Colombo here, just for my own sanity—that we are having difficult to HMRC and DWP in getting that information, which would help us to move everything forward in that case as well? Is that the situation that we are in at this point of time? Yes, that is the situation that we are in at this point in time. We need the UK Government to pass legislation to enable that data sharing and, thus far, I have been disappointed. That is one of my biggest concerns to other committees in the morning. That is quite a few, minister, but we seem to have the same issue all the time with agencies actually sharing information with others. It is never the lack of the information being there. It is actually getting the relevant information when we need it. It is really frustrating about the situation that local authorities in England have the legislation already available to share to access that data, so they can access that data and target eligible two-year-olds or the two-year-olds who need it most. We cannot. We are pressing to get those regulations passed, so thus far I have been disappointed. I have written again to the UK Government this week. We are determined to fix that. Meanwhile, we are doing everything else that we can that is within our power to improve the situation. We have staff and job centres trained to offer and raise the issue. We have been working with healthcare professionals who are working with these younger children who might raise the issue that there are places available for eligible two-year-olds. In some places, it is working quite well. I visited a nursery in Olnus recently in my own region, close to where I live at home. They are a third of their two-year-olds using the service where eligible two-year-olds are. They had a really good level of uptake in that local area. I asked them how they had managed it, and they said that it was word of mouth. Once people know that this is available, they are using it. The information is getting me there. It seems bizarre to me. It is absolutely frustrating. I am going to move on to the second theme. We now move on to questions on care experience young people. I would like to start by asking a question that we have received from Who Care Scotland, some of whom have joined us today. Welcome. Will the minister commit to ensuring that care experience children and young people feel like they belong and are included in their communities where they live, ensuring that they can access with ease opportunities to identify and develop their interests, skills, talents and ambitions? Absolutely. I do not think that there is a single person around this table who would disagree with that. This is something that unites the whole Parliament, I would say, and unites civic Scotland. We are determined to improve the circumstances that looked after children find themselves in. Thank you very much for that. Clare, you have a question on kinship care. Thank you, minister. I have been doing some work with Nurture Scotland in my area with regard to kinship care, the advice that is given to potential kinship carers and what level of support they are seeking from the local authority. I understand that the decision that has been made is about only giving sure best act grant to those who have the orders in place. My concern is what work has the Government been doing since the working group was established in 2017 to ensure parity across local authorities in areas that kinship carers are getting equivalent advice and that people who get to that point have a parity of how they have got there across Scotland. It is a really challenging area to work in, because it is so complex. I was at the launch of kinship care week this week, just on Monday. I heard first hand from the people speaking at that event that every kinship arrangement is particular to that individual family. I also heard how it is often grandparents who take on the responsibility, often in an emergency situation. They are not anticipating it at all, and suddenly they are taking on responsibility for extended family for young children that they have not had responsibility for in a good number of years. I would say that it is a really complex area. Citizens Advice Scotland is working really hard to provide kinship care advice service so that people are aware of what they are entitled to to help them to navigate this really complex area. However, I am more than happy to listen if you think that there is more that we could do. In that case, I am going to push my luck and ask if you would be prepared to meet with Nurture Scotland and myself to discuss some of the issues that have raised with me. I am absolutely delighted to. I would like to ask you some questions about continuing care. We had very powerful evidence last week from our panellists on that. The first question is about assessing the uptake of continuing care places and getting the message out to foster carers and to the young people who are in foster care at the moment about to reach the age of 16 and looking to their future. How is the offer around continuing care being communicated? We are trying very hard to communicate the offer of continuing care. I share your concerns about how that is being applied on the ground. I think that all of us as MSPs hear anecdotal stories that would cause us concern about how the policy of continuing care is operating. The 2014 act contained a suite of groundbreaking measures to improve the outcomes. We are absolutely alive to the benefits of seeking continuous feedback from care experience young people to improve all aspects of policy and implementation. We, as parliamentarians, are regularly meeting with those people and feeding into the system. We, as a Government, are regularly meeting with them and hearing how it works and trying to improve the system. We are all absolutely committed to improving the situation for those young people. Is there a varying picture across local authorities on how effectively that has been done? Obviously, if young people are not aware of what they are entitled to or that foster carers are not aware of the option to continue to have somebody under their care, is it the same as the issue of flexibility in childcare that is a varying picture across local authorities? I think that it would be fair to say that there is a varying picture as there is for almost everything that we look at. We are gathering data on that. As you know, we will not have the data until we have a first set of data later this month. I do not think that we will have really good quality data on continuing care until the following year, unfortunately. I am meeting with Kezia Dugdale, who is a substitute member on this committee later this month. She has done some freedom of information requests around the country, which I am hoping that she will be willing to share with me, which should give me a better picture of what is happening. I absolutely stand ready to assess what is happening and try to make improvements on the ground. The care review is also looking at this area, as I am sure that you understood from last week. It has very close contact with many care-experienced children and young people. It is very determined that the review will have an impact and that we will not have to wait until the end of the review process to begin that impact. I am hopeful that, with the report of the discovery phase of the care review due very shortly, there will be some meat for us to get into and try to improve the situation. As the convener mentioned, some members of Free Care Scotland are in the public gallery today, and I imagine that they will have a lot of evidence about the variant geographical picture. We all know the statistics around homelessness, and there is a shocking percentage of people who are homeless who have not been care-experienced. I wonder what has been done to assess that and to tackle that as well and to prevent that from happening. Obviously, continuing care is a part of that, but there is more, is there not? On the specific issue of preventing homelessness, I absolutely acknowledge that much more needs to be done to address the practice and, indeed, the cultural issues throughout Scotland today. We have made some progress on addressing homelessness and leaving care, but we have to, it is all of our responsibility, we have to make sure that people are not leaving care into homelessness. We have now got an improved framework introduced by the Children and Young People Act in Scotland 2014, and the independent review of care to help us to deliver better outcomes and to improve the quality of care for young people, alongside the extension of legal rights to those leaving care. We issued some guidance on housing options for care leavers in 2013. The Minister for Local Government and Housing wrote to local authorities in 2017 for information about provision of housing for young people who have experience of the care system. The Scottish Government, as you know, has worked with COSLA to introduce legislation to expect to exempt care leavers from council tax, and that will take effect from the beginning of the next council year in April. The Minister for Local Government and Housing also wrote to local authorities last summer about their approach to the issue and shared responses with the local government and communities committee as part of their inquiry into homelessness. So, lots of them reported having protocols between housing and other departments and young people leaving care and champions boards and the like. Preventing homelessness amongst those at particular risk, including care experience, young people, is one of the issues being addressed by the homelessness and rough sleeping action group, and that group have consulted with experience of homelessness through a series of eye-we-can events facilitated by the Scottish homelessness involvement and empowerment network, part funded by the Scottish Government. That is an important part of developing their recommendations into their spring. I welcome the recent report on homelessness from the local government and communities committee, committed to working with Mr Kevin Stewart and my colleague on the various recommendations that have been made in the report. I just have to reiterate again, let me assure you, I am absolutely vexed by the stories that I hear, time and time again, raised by my fellow MSPs about the situation out there for care leavers, and I am determined, absolutely determined, and there is a good team around me, absolutely determined to solve this problem and to improve the situation. Thank you for that answer. In the spirit of pushing your luck, just one final question, and I am getting that look from the convener. I am pushing my luck, because it is on behalf of a friend of mine who is a befriender. She wanted me to ask whether you are continuing care in foster care, but often befrienders have to move on past a certain point, but they have established a relationship with a young person. Would you look into that and improve extending the befriender case, so that we can continue to have those links with the young people with their befrienders beyond 16? I would be more than happy to look into that with you. We are moving on to Ruth. I remind both the committee and the witnesses to keep both questions and answers as succinct as we possibly can. Kevin Brown's words from last week have been on my mind quite a bit in terms of continuing care and homelessness with our care-experienced children and young people. I think that, as well as the practical things and the structural things, we have to hear him when he says that there is something a bit darker going on, that we can take young people away from neglect and abuse, bring them into a system and then simply let them go. We do not do that with our own children and, indeed, even 40-year-old MSPs sometimes go back to their mum for support. It is a serious thing. We cannot claim that we have a system that is loving our young people who are care-experienced and then just drop them when they are young adults. What can we do about that culture that lets that happen and that we collectively allow to happen if we hear those things and do not change something? We are required by law to take to evidence and consider together how to address the challenges of embedding real culture change across all aspects of the public sector with regard to corporate parents. I agree with you. I hear the stories of where things are not working for people from constituent cases being raised with me by MSPs. I am shouting at the letter, where is the corporate parent in this? I absolutely agree that there are times when we, as a society, are falling short and we all need to challenge ourselves to improve that situation. All of the ministers are raising the profile of corporate parenting as part of their routine business with corporate parents. We are trying to learn first-hand about some of the really good work going on out there. We are trying to find out about the good work and share the good work. All of the corporate parents have to report to me by the end of this month their plan. I will speak to Parliament before the summer about the corporate parenting plans across Scotland. To go back to the theme of my previous question on policy coherence, the work that the housing minister has done is a positive example of policy coherence and not preventing siloed working, where he or the minister is solely responsible for improving the lives of care-experienced young people. However, there are so many other examples that seem to have missed—an example that we used previously with the Minister for Higher Education was about the cost of transport and how, if we see student support as purely something delivered through support packages within the education portfolio, we are not going to achieve the change that is required. Could you explain how you ensure that a whole Government approach is taken to improving the lives of care-experienced young people? Transport being a good example. That is a really challenging aspect of Government. I agree, but we are—I would say that the care review being conducted by Fiona Duncan is absolutely a routine branch inquiry, and it is going into every area. It is speaking to care-experienced children and young people. It is speaking to also folk who work in the sector. I am confident that they are getting a good picture of exactly what goes on and where the deficits are. Her challenge will be to come back to us and say, this is what I have found, this is what I think can solve it. We are—I think that you got the sense last week from Fiona Duncan herself just how committed she is to improving the situation, and we as a Government are absolutely committed to acting as well. When the Government's response to the review comes out, we will be able to see clear evidence of a whole Government approach being taken. It is absolutely going to take a whole Government approach to solve this. It is going to take a whole society approach. I want to go back to this issue about continuing care and to follow on from Gillian Martin and Ruth Magliar's points. In the evidence that we heard last week, Kevin Brown spoke very powerfully, and it has already been mentioned. The idea that a 16-year-old could be told that he could stay, but the finance is not there, which is just not what would be said to any other young person who was not care-experienced. We have had a briefing from Barnados, which is reflecting their experience that this is not working and that there are problems. They say that we have heard of continuing care placements being withheld from eligible young people, and that that has been explained to them in their carers as a decision-based and finance. I wonder if you can confirm that that would be unacceptable, be what resources are available specifically to support continuing care provision. In your own submission to us, you talked about, once you have met Kezia Dugdale, you will look at the statistics. Presumable any FOI information that she can get, you can get as a Government. You do not have to wait for her to share it with you. I wonder what conversations you have had with organisations, with who cares Scotland, with other organisations—indeed, young people who are care-experienced themselves—about the specific issue. As I highlighted to you when you came in with the order, I was concerned that Government was promoting the order without asking the questions about whether there had been progress in the intention behind the order. I absolutely agree with you that it is unacceptable if people who are entitled to continuing care are not receiving it. In terms of the resources that we have put into it, we have paid £4.2 million a year to Scottish local authorities since 2015-16 to support the costs of implementing continuing care. The funding commitment rises to £9.3 million by 2019-20, at which point we expect the net total cost each year to stabilise. We also fund Celsus—almost £5 million last year—and the realigning children's services programme, approximately £450,000 per year, to provide capacity building in the sector and to support community planning partnerships respectively to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families. We, as a Government, as the First Minister, has commissioned the Root and Branch Care review. We are speaking very regularly with people who are care experienced. I come into this room and I see a number of friends in the audience. I have only been in the post since last November, so we are absolutely listening and we are absolutely determined to improve the situation. I agree completely with you on the importance of the review. As a committee, we are hugely impressed with what we heard last week, particularly about the way in which they are going about their business and how they are trying to engage with care experience to young people and, indeed, responding to the fact that care experience people have forced themselves on to the political agenda. They have done it and have been hugely effective, and we applaud them for that. My question to you is what conversations are you having specifically about this issue? Anecdotally, I hear what you are saying about resources, that there has not been a translation from resources to care experience young people having access to his right to continuing care. I wonder whether it would be something as well as waiting for the statistics, as you say, and meeting with Kezia Dugdale that you would be specifically pulling together those groups and organisations to talk to them about what their evidence is, which they themselves say is anecdotal, but it is reflecting experience? I am certainly willing to look at that. As I say, I get a number of constituency issues raised on that. I am regularly looking at whether an issue raised by one local authority area or in one local authority area might also be replicated across the country. I am more than willing to consider meeting with those groups to look at it more closely. Johann Lamont has covered the issue of finance and continuing care, but I want to touch on another issue that Bernardo has highlighted in relation to that, because there are guidance, and there are three very narrow circumstances in which local authorities should apply in a decision of not giving someone continuing care. Clearly, if people are being refused continuing care on the grounds of resource, there is an issue with that guidance being implemented correctly in local authorities. How will you address that? First, we gather the evidence, and I am grateful to everyone who is writing to me to tell me about those situations, and I am grateful for people who are talking to me to tell me about those situations. We go back to the local authorities and challenge them on it. The evidence is there, but Bernardo is telling us that there are three narrow grounds, so clearly those grounds are not being correctly applied. You need to take steps to address that. On the issue of young people, care-experienced people and homelessness, and the point that I made last week in this committee, in 2012, I believe it was, the Equalities Committee in the last session of which I was convener, did an inquiry into young people in homelessness. A large percentage of young people who were homeless were care-experienced. That was in 2012. Six years on, we are still in the same situation, and I accept that you say that we have to make sure that people are not leaving care and becoming homeless, but the reality is that they are. Young people do not need more consultation, they do not need more guidance, they need more support. It is not just financial support, a lot of young people leaving care need emotional support. They need emotional support to be frank for as long as they need it for. There is a limit on the amount of continuing care that young people are leaving care experience. Is that something that you will review? That is a limit on the amount of care that a young person, a time limit on the amount of care that someone who is care-experienced will receive once they leave care. Now, as parents, whether we are parents or corporate parents, every young person is different. A young person of 18 might need emotional support for two years, three years, four years, another young person might need emotional support for far longer. As corporate parents, we have a responsibility to ensure that the young people who leave care get the right amount of emotional support that they need to enable them to sustain tenancies. Exempting them from council tax is not giving them emotional support. No, I would agree that that is just one of the many things that is required to help them to maintain their tenancies. I agree that more needs to be done. I said that at the outside that we have made great strides, but absolutely more needs to be done. I am more determined to do it. People are still ending up on the streets after leaving care, so clearly not enough is being done. I think that the Government ministers would accept that. Hence many of the things that are being done now, we will be in a position in 10 days time or so to see the statistics. We could start a conversation now, but it will be a much stronger conversation when we have the statistics available to us. Coincidentally, that will more or less align with the conversations that the meeting that the minister is having with Kezia Dugdale. There are a number of things that interlock. First of all, it is very clear that in too many places in the country, local authority staff, for whatever reason, do not understand the legal rights that care experienced young people have. We would all view it as unacceptable. I think that, with absolutely no malice, the wrong advice and the wrong official reaction is being given to care leavers. I suspect that COSLA will want to work together to be able to make sure that that aspect is rectified. However, you are right that it is not sufficient. We far better understand now not only the causes but the nature of the adversity that young people not just in care but including pretty much everybody who has been in care face and then what we need to do about it. The current law actually does not provide a maximum age. It permits local authorities to provide assistance at any age, but the greater the presumption in favour under requirement is under age 26. However, it is not limited to bricks and mortar. It can be in any area at all. For instance, to the role of a trusted adult in people's lives in teenage years, it is a proven protective, notwithstanding the adversity that they may have faced in their early life. Our understanding of that, our scientific knowledge of it, has been jumping on over the years and we need to be able to respond to that. We are working with mentoring programmes in my own area, in higher education, in relation to children from more deprived areas going into training. I doubt that we have reached the limits of that. There is more that we need to do and benefit will come from it. In that point, I would like to draw the session to a close. I thank the minister and the officials for their attendance. That brings us to the end of the public part of the meeting. We will now move into private session. Thank you.