 We have no apologies for today's meeting. Our first item of business today is a decision to take agenda items 4, 5, 6 and 7 in private. Are we all agreed? The next item of business is consideration of the council tax, discount Scotland amendment number 2, order 2023. This instrument makes amendments to the council tax, discount Scotland consolidation and amendment order 2003 to update the qualifying benefits listed there. To one or more of those qualifying benefits is one condition used to determine whether a resident is disregarded for the purposes of a council tax discount. The order also clarifies how the change in entitlement to disregard because of having an award of universal credit is to be applied to the case of a person currently disregarded on the basis of universal credit. The instrument is laid under the negative procedure, which means that its provision will come into force unless the Parliament agrees to a motion to annul them. No motions to annul have been laid. Do members have any comments on the instrument? I invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any further recommendations in relation to this instrument. Are members content to know the instrument? Moving on to our next agenda item, an evidence session to inform our inquiry into addressing child poverty through parental employment. The inquiry is looking into how the Scottish Government is working with local authorities, employers and other partners at a local level to tackle child poverty through improving employability. Since summer 2022, the committee has gathered information from local employability partnerships, taking part in a focus group, undertaking visits to North Ayrshire and the Western Isles and run a call for views. Some clear themes have emerged from that work, and we will explore those in a series of evidence sessions over the coming weeks and in September. The first theme that we are going to look into is the availability of affordable and flexible childcare. Today, we will focus on the provisions of affordable and flexible childcare for parents and policies relating to those issues. I want to welcome to the meeting to today's panel Graeme McAllister, chief executive of Scottish Child Mind and Association, and Matthew Sweeney, policy manager for children and young people convention of Scottish local authorities, COSLA, who are joining us in the room, and Irene O'Dayne, chief executive officer, Scottish out-of-school care network, and Jonathan Broadbury, director of policy and communications national day nurseries association, who are joining us all remotely. I have a few points to mention about the format of the meeting before we start. Fertile witnesses and members, please wait until I or the member ask in the question say your name before speaking. Fertile witnesses, please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn your microphone on before you start to speak. You can also indicate with an R in the dialogue box in blue jeans if you wish to come in on a question as well. Do not feel you have to answer every single question. If you have nothing new to add to what has been said by others, that is okay as well. We have a lot to cover this morning, so I would ask everyone to keep questions, answers and any follow-up questions tight. Colleagues in the room should indicate to my sale or the clerk if they wish to come in and ask a supplementary question. Members online should use the chat box or WhatsApp. I will invite members to ask questions in turn, as agreed in our pre-brief. The first theme that we have at the moment is the impact of funded hours. Good morning to the panel. We are keen to begin with quite a broad question looking at the impact of 1140 hours. What are the key lessons already from the expansion? Obviously, there is going to be a further report or a full report in summer of 24, but we are keen to get a sense of what lessons have been learned thus far. I wonder if I may start with Matthew Sweeney on that broad point. I think that there are a number of things that we can point to about the success of the 1140 hours expansion. As Paul Cain said, there is a further report coming, but I think that we have already got some really good evidence in terms of the increasing uptake, which has now increased from 97 per cent to 99 per cent, and also some really high parental satisfaction both in the quality and in the flexibility of the offers that have been provided. I think that there is some really strong evidence that has come through so far. I think that in terms of what the lessons are that have come from it so far, there was a lot that went into the planning for 1140, which was around understanding the need. A lot of consultation went on in every local authority to understand the needs of parents. What I looked like when informed models have come on, and there is that process through the funding for the child model to make sure that there is that parental lead. I think that that is something that we need to think about in any expansion. I think that we had the time, capacity and resource. I think that that was really important that that was worked out early on. There was time to grow and expand, to make sure that the capacity was there meets what was going to be the increased demand. Lastly, I think that the importance of partnership working not just between the Scottish Government and local government, but by increasing and on-going work, I think that there still is around the work between local councils and their partner providers locally. I wonder if any of the other panellists might want to give a broad comment on the key principles. I will ask particularly on employability, if that is okay, convener. First, I would like to say that, as an organisation, we are really supportive of ELC policy, particularly in time to close attainment gap and obviously to deliver funded child care to families. However, we have some very serious concerns about the manner in which the expansion was implemented. There have been a series of unintended consequences. During the six years of ELC expansion, the child-mining workforce has declined by 34 per cent. Real terms, that has been the loss of 1,926 child-mining businesses and over 11,000 child-mining places for families. We undertake an annual audit for the Scottish Government, looking at where local authorities are in terms of including child-minders in ELC delivery. Last year, with our latest workforce analysis, we actually projected that those trends are set to almost double by July 2026 unless we take urgent action. That is really serious implications for children, families, communities, parental choice, but also for the Scottish Government's programme for government commitments to extend the ELC down to one-year-olds and to develop a new system of school-age childcare. The reality is that, if providers continue to go under at the current rate, we may not have the providers to deliver those policy ambitions. Do you want to come back in, please? Yes, I wonder if I can. That was very helpful. We are particularly interested in employability and the extent to which 1140 years has taken people back into the workplace and into the workforce. Obviously, we have some interim data in terms of people, particularly women, going back to work, so particularly mothers. Looking at some of the tables that we have been provided with, there is a bit of a sense that there is something of a drop-off when a child turns three of people in the workforce, but also what we are seeing is a slight increase in people who may be going part-time to actually changing their working patterns to accommodate the childcare offer rather than perhaps the other way round. Has there been any analysis done by any of the panellists at the moment ahead of that summer 2024 report to look at what has the impact been in terms of three and four-year-olds? I believe that Jonathan wants to come in. He is indicated that he wants to come in. I have a comedian hand. It was to go back to the original question on the impact. On the following question, we have not done any work on it, but I can speak to that as well. It is just the echo of what Graham said as an organisation and our members, who are predominantly private and voluntary nurseries, that the ambitions of the policy and plans we definitely support and we know that children have access and high quality provision greatly improves their life chances. There are two aspects to addressing poverty here, which is closing the attainment gap between those from disadvantaged families and their peers, as well as supporting parents into work. I would say that important lessons are that members like ours have a lot of experience in delivering the flexible childcare that families need. The original plans probably did not involve them enough, so there are estimates that private and voluntary settings would be used for about 20% of the funded places. Recently it shows that it is now over 30%, but the budgets being allocated to these providers are still in that 20-21% region from local authorities. Providers, like our members, are being asked and expected to do more with less of a share of the allocations of budgets, so there are important lessons there. I agree with Matthew on the importance of partnership working. That has been crucial to address some of those challenges, but there are big challenges with the workforce that need considering before any further roll-out. In terms of employability, what is crucial is that parents can access places where they need, whether that is close to a work location or within the hours that soup may be full-time working. There is an important point there that, once you spread the 11-40 hours over a full working year and not just term time, you are looking at just under 22,500 hours a week. Parents are either still having to pay for additional hours outside of the 11-40 or making formal arrangements. The point that Graham Graham was making about childminders is that there is an important question there about blended places and how easy it is for parents going through the system to choose the providers that they want to, and the set-up that suits their working life and needs. There is an important question there as well. Thank you, convener. I am not sure whether you want me to move into theme 2 at this stage. Yes, I am happy for you to do that. To blend the two together, because I think that they follow quite naturally. I thank you for that response, Jonathan. If I could just perhaps ask one reflection on the one and two-year-olds, and then I will move on with the convener's indulgence to speak about expansion. We know that uptake for one and two-year-olds, who are the both vulnerable one and two-year-olds very often in our communities, is actually only at 52 per cent. Obviously, that is a concerning figure, given the determination to try and support people back into work in our communities. Is there any reflection on where that 52 per cent figure has come from and why uptake has been low? I am looking to Matthew Sweetie on that. What are councils doing in terms of trying to encourage parents to take that offer up? Thank you for the question. It is a really important one. The first thing to say is that there is always an element of any targeted offer, where there is going to be that challenge to make sure that you can get to the right people in the right time. The particular challenge that we have faced around a two-year-old offer has been around some of the data sharing issues, which can be incredibly complex. It is something that has been worked on between ourselves, the Scottish Government and the UK Government for some time. Essentially, councils do not have access to the exact people who are eligible for the two-year-old offer. That is hopefully now in the process of being sorted. There has been legislation that has gone through the UK Parliament, which will hopefully enable that data sharing gateway to exist. Hopefully, at that stage, we will start to be able to provide much more targeted ones that you know of the location, and that will make sure that we can access it. I suppose that there have been a number of approaches that councils have taken about what they can do. There has been work between themselves and health visitors on some of those pathways. Similarly, there has been some interesting work out of one council who has had a pop-up shop in one of their local shopping centres to try to get out in the community and do some of those things. It can be quite challenging to do when you do not have that full data picture at the end of the day, but I think that hopefully we are making progress there now. The reasons are multifactorial. Data sharing has been a big issue, but also in our experience, there has been a lot of stigma around uptake amongst eligible twos. We deliver what are called community child-mining services in different parts of the country. It is an early intervention from family support for families who may be one step away from crisis. Whatever is going on at parental level, it could be addiction, mental health, bereavement, terminal illness. That has been impacting on one-year-olds, and that has been picked up by health visitors or social work. They have recognised attachment disorders. What we are trying to do, we have got what we call integrated services in Aberdeen and Glasgow, where we are seamless linking in vulnerable families using these services into ELC2. We are trying to use other feeder routes to access a work on the ground to bring those families in, really just providing as much support as they can. Again, we are just trying to be creative around that. Thank you, convener. Before I ask this next section, I should probably draw colleagues' attention to my register of interests as a former education convener in Ysgrifffordshire Council. Expansion is now perhaps where we are looking to. There have obviously been statements made by the new First Minister around one- and two-year-old expansion. Matthew Sweeney referenced the programme for government. I suppose that it is keen to understand what the challenges are in that. In particular, because it is something that commands a lot of support across the Parliament, I think that very often the challenge in a lot of this is trying to get the flexibility right that will allow parents to go back to work. Flexibility brings with it a big cost because you have to be able to provide that blended model or provide the physical space to be able to accommodate lots of children and young people. Again, I am looking at Matthew Sweeney from the local authority perspective, but I am keen to hear from other providers as well about what is going to be required in terms of expansion to the most flexible options for one- and two-year-olds. As I have been speaking to local authorities who are saying to me, that could mean 10 new buildings. That brings with it a huge capital cost. One- and two-year-olds have different needs from three- and four-year-olds. They have to sleep, for example, if they are in all day. That brings with it a capital cost. So what modelling have you been doing on that? Thank you. I think that it is a really important question. I agree with a lot of the points that you raised about the difference between three- and four-year-olds and one- and two-year-olds and how that might require quite a few differences in terms of how the policy is approached. In terms of modelling, we have not probably been involved in that granular stage yet. We have been having a number of early conversations with Scottish Government officials and some very initial political engagement with the Scottish Government around that. I suppose that what seems key to me is really thinking quite closely around the coherence across the childcare offer, considering where we are in terms of the 1140 expansion and the work that went in to go through the hard process of understanding what parents' needs were and understanding what that was going to look like. Building the capacity locally to meet those demands can be quite a challenging process, as you touched on in your question there. That requires us to have a lot of conversations around the timing that this is going to take around the capacity and, crucially, around what those resources are going to be. There is an element of that around funding but also a huge element around the workforce. Colleagues have touched on that and will likely do further on the panel. Lastly, I think that there is a really important question for us to think about where ones and twos fit within the broader offer across the public sector for families. Where does that fit with health service and the intervention that they do, the broader social work services, and touching on some of the points that Graham McAllister raised around community child-minding and community support as well? I suppose that when we are talking about expansion and Paul's previous question, that is about lessons learned. I think that there is a really important one here, which is that private and voluntary providers are already doing an amazing amount of work in this space and child-minders as well. They are very experienced about the needs and the facilities of children in this age group. They are already working with their babies' 1 and 2-year-olds. They are already delivering those services. There was a big plea around the initial 1140 expansion, which is to look at the infrastructure that already exists in the settings. Unfortunately, that was not always fully taken into consideration. We had new nurseries being built next to existing good provision. We did see some settings pushed out of business because of the competition that was created by new spaces being built. It is not just a question of how many new nurseries do we need to build, but what exists already and how we can develop and work with the private and voluntary providers that are there. They understand the sleep needs of children, they understand how the brain is developing in these younger children and they also work with parents on delivering the flexibility where possible around their needs. I think that there is a lack of data and Cormdu a study on the efficiency of childcare. There is a lack of data among local authorities already about provision for under twos and provision for rural areas and provision for children with additional support needs. There is a big piece of work to understand what provision is already existing there to make sure that any expansion plans do not damage existing good quality provision. We saw a big focus on growing the local authority workforce, which was important. There was a big expansion, but that happened at the expense of existing settings. We had people lose pretty much entire staff teams as local authorities recruited to the new places that they created. That has a serious impact on the ability for existing settings to deliver places that are already with them, but to continually improve and develop their staff when a senior management team might be taken on and employed elsewhere. They have then got to build up that staff and there is a really high turnover, which is still impacting on private voluntary providers to this day. I will bring Graeme in quickly. I see that you have got your hands up, and then I will follow on. From my point of view, the Scottish Government absolutely deserves credit in this sense, and it has been recognised very early on that, with ELC for ones, it cannot get a simple roll-down of the existing offer from three to fours. It has got to look very different, and it has got to be much more nurturing. Childmaning already has so much experience in that area, but I will be honest with you that my colleague mentioned capital build projects. It made me shudder a little because, as Jonathan has mentioned, with our ELC audit, last audit that we undertook last year, we found that only four out of 32 local authorities in Scotland have undertaken impact assessments of their local expansion plans on childmaning businesses. Too many have gone down that capital build route without looking at what other provision is already there, so at a larger echo, Jonathan, please look at existing provision. There is extensive experience out there. What we do not want to do is to rush into this and damage other providers out there at the moment. I am keen to understand whether we have got the focus correct on the policy. We are in a situation where the many aims are to improve children's outcomes, close the poverty-related attainment gap and support parents into work study or training. We are also looking at extending the hours to one-and-two-year-olds and also school-age children outwith school hours. We have single parents, all families and working families, so do we have the focus correct and, if not, where should the focus be initially? I am happy to say that, formally, COSLA has not had an official position on that, because we were not at that stage in discussions. I suppose that what I would come back to is that in 1140, we were very clearly from the start, and we had three outcomes that were about the needs of the child and the attainment gap around support for parents—not specifically about employability, but just whatever can do support them, whether that be training, studying, volunteering, there was that sort of just general support for parents and then also for a more broader look at family support. I suppose that I am not clear at this stage and it might just be the stage of policy information that we are at. What is the specific that is being looked at in terms of the policy intention around ones and twos or school-age childcare? I would imagine that, even between those two policies, there may be differences in emphasis and focus, and I think that that will determine probably how much we will want to do and how much we will want to design a policy that is based on some of those things. The investment that came from some of the quality as part of 3 and 4 is because of that focus on improving attainment gaps for ensuring young people, whereas, if there is a broader focus on flexibility and parental employability, that might be quite a different offer that we look at doing. I think that, probably, I am not clear in my mind at this stage what the real outcome we are looking for from the further expansion is. Before I go any further, I am bringing Gordon back in. Irene is indicated that she would like to come in, so, if we discover a second, we will bring Irene in. I thank you very much for inviting me to this inquiry this morning. I would just like to put in a few points about the expansion of ELC and the points about quality and the policy focus. There are things that we have to be very careful about here. Of course, I think that the policy focus is right to focus on the six priority groups that need childcare the most and the children who would benefit from good quality childcare the most, too. However, what happened with the expansion of ELC is that we lost a lot of qualified staff in superior childcare because they cannot compete with the full-time hours and better pay in conditions of local authority in our three early learning settings. I know that this is coming up later, so I am not going to take too much just now, but it has led to a workforce crisis in our sector. That has to be dealt with before we expand the sector much more because we have not actually got the staff. That is an issue that we will come to later, but we recently did a survey of parenting carers about access to school-aged childcare or not. One of the comments from one's parents was about that I took on work because I had early learning in childcare because it was there. However, my child is of school age and I do not have any childcare. The juggling and the stress that is causing me means that I basically wish I had not taken up the job in a bus place, but now she needs it and she is going to stay in it. However, there are a lot of comments like that from parents in this survey. I know that they have been shared with the committee, and I would read all the comments because they are very heartfelt from parents who are desperate for childcare, school-aged childcare. The expansion of ELC has led to the expectation that childcare is going to be there when the children of school age. Quite a lot of them talk about the shock of not finding any or not knowing the long waiting lists and so on. That is just the comments that I wanted to make there. Another comment that came through from a parent was that I am a taxpayer and I cannot get childcare and yet there is free childcare for some families, so we have to be very careful. We do not create a divide where the children who go to services that are well subsidised are not stigmatised because that is a service for the poor kids or other parents are not resentful because some parents are getting free childcare and they are not. The expansion has to be of benefit to everybody in some way. Otherwise, that is going to foster those kinds of divisions in society. That is just my comments here. It is a very important question in terms of the focus because there is always a tension between the learning and education part of early learning and childcare and the childcare element that parents need. It is an important question to get to the nub of because if you are solely focused on providing the places for parents, you end up with a bit of a numbers game and what gets forgotten is the importance of the child. As an organisation, we and our members put children at the heart of what we do because if it is high quality early learning and childcare, we know that the benefits are as close as we think we have to a silver bullet in terms of the impact that it has for life chances in terms of early intervention so that more expensive and costly interventions later in life can be mitigated or maybe even avoided. That cuts across all of the priority areas if you are talking about children with learning difficulties, additional support needs and disabilities. Those early interventions in the first five years of their life can have huge impacts that last a lifetime. We come at it from a focus of quality is absolutely essential. It is important that any plans for expansion whilst offering the places that parents need do not undermine the ability of providers, whether that is local authority, private voluntary settings, childminders or out-of-school care. It is not just about playing, we are talking about children's personal, social and emotional development. We are talking about laying the foundations of learning that have an impact all the way through primary and secondary education. If we do not get it right in those first five years when 90 per cent of brain development happens, there are long-term consequences to that. That is our plea. Yes, we know that care for family members is the second or third on the list when it comes to the reasons why people are not in work and especially for women. That has been growing recently, according to our ONS data. There is a lot of focus on getting older people back into the workforce or maybe helping people back who are long-term sick. Child care, whether that is in early years or school age, can be one of those areas that has a big impact on parental employability. We always come back to that. That cannot be at the cost of the experiences that the children have and the skills and the qualities that staff are working in those sectors to deliver. Before I bring Gordon back in, Jeremy wants to come in on a supplementary question. I was really wanting to pick up on the issue of perhaps more rural areas. When we visited the West and Isles, we were told that there was only one child minder that covered the whole island. As we seek this expansion, how do you think that we cannot leave those who live in rural island communities behind them? Are there any good models out there that you can point the committee to? I am very happy to. It is a subject that really close to our heart in the sense that I have already spoken at length about the declining of childminding workforce. However, the issue has been more pronounced in rural communities. It is really struggling to recruit childminders, parents having to travel 40 or 50 miles to access child care with additional travel costs. One of the things that we recognised early on is that there is already pronounced inequalities in remote and rural areas. One of the real risks with the programme for government is that, if you then layer on ELC for one's school-age child care, you have three snatchers entitlements. If some provider is already struggling to provide funding entitlement just now for 1140, that gap is going to widen in these communities if they cannot access one's and school-age child care. We took a lead about 18 months ago. We convened a national meeting, brought in local authorities and other partners, and created what is called the Scottish Rural Child Mining Partnership. It is really ambitious that there are 15 organisations in a way to recruit 100 childminders in remote and rural areas where they are most needed. We obtained funding from Highlands and Islands Enterprise and South Scotland Enterprise. At the moment, there have been so many pressures on local authorities, on childcare providers, during a pandemic and during a cost-loving crisis. A lot of people are just focusing on hearing and now thinking that they have to make cuts. They are not looking ahead at thinking what workforce do we need. We were absolutely looking ahead, thinking that we need to ensure that we have the infrastructure to deliver a programme for government. That was where there was a really good synergy between ourselves and Highlands and Islands who recognised what we are almost trying to do is join the dots between different policy agendas. That is to say that you are up until now childcare and early years are quite a low value attached to it, but a place such a huge role in job creation, community and economic development, enables parents to work, enables parents to stay and work. We have got to get that right. That pilot is going really well. We are testing what we are calling a supported model of child-mining recruitment. We have been running a demographically targeted campaign. As of last week, we now have over 40 new businesses established. That is in some areas that have never had a childminder or employability teams have struggled to recruit before. That has attracted interest from other authorities. We now have a larger pilot with Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, East Renfrewshire testing that model in urban areas, but we really need to put a lot of time and energy into the investment. We are working behind the scenes to get this nationally as soon as possible. The feedback that we are getting from those rural communities is that what we are doing is providing a lifeline to them. We have examples of parents who are having to take their children to work with them. It is completely unacceptable. There are real concerns, as Irene had mentioned, of school-age childcare and child-mining. We are really running the risk of not having the providers that we need. That is a major concern at this time. I am going to bring in Gordon, and then I will follow up with the next team. There have been a lot of really good points made. I was particularly struck by the point that Graeum Johnathan made about child development and the need to get it right for children in the first few years. The Scottish Government in wanting to extend ELC has basically said that it wants a partnership approach. I am just wondering if the organisations here today feel that they have been happy with the level of involvement of having the development of the childcare policy. I think that it has been a mixed experience. The Scottish Government has been very inclusive, but one of the challenges is what you are always going to have when you have a national policy that is dependent on local implementation. The Scottish Government understands that we want to respect local autonomy, decision making and accountability, but what you do then gets variation. That is a problem. We have had some local authorities who have been absolutely supportive, very inclusive of childbeining, but we have had others who have been completely the opposite. That is the problem. You have got a real widespread variation around Scotland. Local authorities have also had a conflict of interest. Under ELC expansion, they are responsible for overseeing local expansion, but they are also a local service pride on their own rights. Some manage that well, some do not. That has been one of the problems that many children have been squeezed out. They still just get the scraps in terms of the numbers at 1140. Regular reports to their audits of local authorities are not providing parents with opportunities to access different forms of childcare. From that point of ELC, on the one hand, it has been positive that the Scottish Government has tried to be inclusive as much as possible, but there is also a limit to how much Scottish Government can influence that. We really need local authorities to actually recognise their responsibility. We are not criticising all of this. There are some really good examples of practice, and that is why the Scottish Government has recently commissioned us to develop good practice principles for local authorities working with child binders. We have just completed a draft of that. It has gone out of consultation over the summer, but we really need buy-in from local authorities to work with us on this. I know that Irene will like to come in. I would just like to say that we work in really good partnership with the Scully child care team at the Scottish Government. It is a little bit frustrating, because we work quite closely with them and we know that there is a great deal of work going on behind the scenes. We operate as a critical friend of the team, if you like. One of the things that we have had to pass on to them is communications in terms of all of this wonderful work that you are doing. No one knows about it. We have to get the information out there about all of it. I cannot even tell you what the work is, because it is not in the public domain. There have been three news releases since last October. The new First Minister announced £15 million for the pilots and the early adopters services for the expansion of Scully child care. Just a couple of weeks ago, £4.5 million was announced for improving the Scully state to be able to offer a Scully child care and holiday clubs on the Scully state. It is hoped that, in the coming years, that funding will be used not just for the Scully state but for community venues to provide childcare to. I would like to say that, particularly during the pandemic, the whole children and families team that we worked with, we all worked very closely together. I saw people working long hours and very hard, and I would commend the civil service for the work that they did. I just wanted to make that point. I agree with some of Graham MacArthur's points about local authorities' conflict of interest. I think that what drives different models is the needs of parents in individual areas, the statutory duty that they have to consult with parents locally and set up models that meet with them. It is important to understand that that is what drives a lot of their decisions and their models, as opposed to some type of competition. In terms of partnership working, that is crucial in how we deliver any childcare offer, considering the range of actors that we need to be involved with. As I said at the start, that is part of the success that we have had of 1140 so far. I am quite conscious about the Scottish Government's stated intention to reset the relationship between the Scottish Government and local government. Some of that is about making sure that they involve local authorities early on in policymaking. I think that that will be really important for any further expansion at all. In some ways, there have been somewhat mixed experiences so far. Some of the different policy commitments for expansion are at different stages. I suppose that we have had some concerns around decisions that have been taken around funding for some of which I re-mentioned in terms of the consultation that I had with us before that started. Some of them are quite challenging to think about what capital changes you want to make now when you are not sure about the final model that we are going to have in terms of what school-age childcare means, so that can cause some challenges for local authorities, as well as bid fund processes that can take a lot of time and be quite challenging. So there are a few things around there that I think that there are probably some things that we would be keen to continue to work on and improve that. However, the last thing to say is that this is something that has come up in discussion between the cause of the children and young people spokesperson in their first meeting with the Minister for Children and Young People and keeping the promise. It will be something that I think that they will have to return to and a strong agreement around probably the outcome, but really understanding how that is going to work in practice. I am going to bring Jonathan in. I do not know if he wants to come back in, Gordon, if not, we will move on to eligibility and I will bring in Katie. Do you want to come in, Jonathan? Yes, thank you. I just want to pick up on a few things that Graham and Matthew have said. I think that we recognised quite early on in the initial expansion of the 1140 offer that partnership working was going to be crucial, both on a national and local level. We agreed a series of principles with COSLA initially and we are delighted that other organisations are the representative bodies across local authorities and within the sector signed up to those. I would agree with Graham that those relationships vary from local authority to local authority, and they are based around respect, communication and all the principles that you would expect partnership working to involve. However, some local authorities get it, some providers get it, others do not. It is a tricky area of policy because of all the inherent tensions, so partnership working is vital. We would want to see that redoubled. I would agree with what has been said about the Scottish Government working well in partnership with representative organisations like ourselves, but at the local level, those relationships can break down quite dramatically. We are always looking for solutions because I come back to the point that it should be about the children's best interests and what works for families. There are lots of areas for potential issues to arise. I am thinking about cross-border children and the issues that we have touched on earlier about recruitment of staff from one sector to another, so it is important to go forward into any expansion plans that that partnership approach a lot. I would say that there is more time and investment into that, so that all the hurdles that are going to come up can be dealt with that way. I am now going to bring in Katie Clark. The Scottish Government says that it is planning on focusing provision for one and two-year-olds on those that need it most. As you know, the expansion of school-age children is focused on low incomes. What do witnesses think about eligibility criteria and how it impacts on child poverty? What can we do to maximise the impact on child poverty? Any of the witnesses would like to come in on that, or do you want to pose a question to a particular person, Katie? I am happy to come in. Back to a question that we had earlier around the two-year-old eligibility provision, that probably exists already as a model that probably understood within the system. There is a range of aspects to that. There are aspects around income and links to social security. There is also a level of discretion for local authorities to see if they are churning in that they think would benefit. There is probably something of a model that we could look at there, but I suppose that at the same time that needs to make sure that data sharing in place is fundamentally really important to make sure that we can access it. Anytime you put eligibility criteria, you are trying to make sure that you can access and make sure that people are aware of what they are able to access and be entitled to is really important. Can I ask if any witnesses have specific proposals on eligibility that they think focuses on tackling and reducing child poverty? There are obviously advantages and disadvantages in focusing on some of those issues, particularly on low income. However, there are also arguments that Iain was putting forward earlier that we need to focus more generally on all working parents, both those in work and those not. What do you think those advantages and disadvantages are in terms of which groups we prioritise, or is it better to have a more universal approach? I think that that is a really interesting question. I suppose that in terms of the targeted offer, it is probably something that I touched on in my last answer a moment ago about, there is always an inherent challenge in terms of if there is a targeted offer about making sure that everyone who is eligible is able to access and making sure that they are all aware that that happens with any targeted offer. In universal, that takes away some of those challenges and some of the issues are in stigma. I suppose that what our members are probably quite focused on just now is the financial climate that we are working within. I think that local authorities last year, before the budget, we had £1 billion worth of pressures. I suppose that there is a question about what the scale of there is for this level of investment that would be a universal offer, if we look at universal offer for all one and two-year-olds and a school-aged child care offer, that would be particularly expensive. What would be the trade-off and the cost, and I think that when we are having some of those challenges around running some of the existing services, that is a really important question to ask about. Where would the investment priority be? As you say, there are advantages and disadvantages to all approaches. Given that there is probably a limited amount of money, there are decisions that have to be taken. Are witnesses of the view that it is right that the Scottish Government is targeting in the way that it is? Do you think that they are making the right decisions, or do you feel that that is something that you would criticise or say that you need to look at it again? I already made the point earlier about the potential for stigma, and I think that it is the right priority. Certainly in school-aged child care, some studies some time ago, but maybe 10 years ago, showed that children from the lowest income who access child care and activities, not just child care but things like sports clubs and other activity decisions like that. That made a huge difference in terms of their attainment, in the basic and also in their social skills. For the children who would benefit the most from these services, they are from the lowest income families and they are less likely to be in employment, so they are less likely to be using school-aged child care. Part of that is about the needs of the children who are supporting their development and their everyday wellbeing. There are many children who come into some of the subsidised services over the years. I am sure that children have never been on a trip to the seaside, for example, or visited a museum, or went to anarch gallery, or lent a sport, or had the equipment to play sports. There are lots of benefits to children for themselves. I think that that is the bit where all families who need child care also want their children to thrive in it. It is not just that a lot of our sectors complain that they are treated as if they are just babysitters instead of the qualified professionals that they are. It is about ensuring the quality of the service, accessibility of the service. If it is not accessible to a whole range of families, then there is a danger of stigmatised provision. I really like the fact that, in primary school, universal free school meals are available in Scotland, because that works. I do not have to figure out that, but I am sure that they increase the take-up among children from all backgrounds. That is important, because when I was a child and got free school meals, I had a different power ticket just to make sure that this is the kid who is getting a free school meal. That kind of stigmatising, I hope—none of this kind of thing happens now. I know that this is a plan to expand for children of secondary school age and future too. You can see that there has to be a universal offer while we are targeting the children who need it most. There has to be improvement for everybody wherever you want to buy in, if you like. I believe that Jonathan McLean would like to come in now. I think that it is a really interesting question, and I think that the fact that people have struggled to provide definitive answers shows that it is an area as the policy develops that is going to need a lot of work, a lot of consultation, a lot of engagement and a lot of thought. Obviously, if you approach it at the highest levels conceptually, then universal offers are always better because, as Iron mentioned, it gets rid of stigma. It increases awareness, so you are not having to go out and find those groups. Everybody knows what they are entitled to, but we have to deal with the reality. As Matthew McLean has highlighted, the financial position that Governments and local authorities and providers are in, there is not that capacity to deliver a universal offer. It would take a lot of money to make it absolutely universal for all one- and two-year-olds, as well as what they have at the moment. I think that there are important lessons to learn from the initial expansion. Initially, it was talked about in terms of vulnerable two-year-olds. Now, we talk more about eligible two-year-olds just to reduce that stigma a little bit because families do not like to necessarily think of themselves as vulnerable, even though any agencies might use that as a useful classification. I think that there are lessons to be learned from elsewhere as well. In terms of the groups that have been talked about, ethnic minorities, we know that where there is English as an additional language within families, that can be a barrier. There are cultural elements as well, so there is not a stigma necessarily about being eligible for these places, but other people expect to look after children and not be seen as handing them over and passing them off on to settings. I think that there is work around—I come back to the importance of the first five years—that it is not saying that parents are not the primary educators of their children. They are, and that is where all learning starts, but that there are benefits to children from accessing that high-quality early learning and childcare, where there are qualified and experienced professionals working with them. I think that we have touched briefly on disability when we are talking about children with additional support needs. That is absolutely a core question to get right, especially post-pandemic. We have seen a lot more issues around speech and language, a lot more issues around personal and social development. I think that there is an underreported and underrepresented issue happening within these young cohorts of children. Again, that might not come to the fore until they start coming into schools, which is unfortunate. I come back to Irene's point about not being seen just as childcare but that there is an important amount of work happening there. In answer to the question, children from disadvantaged families absolutely have the most to gain from these policies. In an area where resources are tight and limited, we appreciate that there has to be that focus. It creates barriers, it creates stigma, so it is important to address that. One interesting thought to throw out there is that it is not to say that this is a solution, but when local authorities were rolling out the 1140 originally, we saw lots of different approaches being tried in different areas. Some areas said that we are going to offer it initially to all parents from lower income backgrounds. They are going to get the full offer as we expand. Other areas said that we can offer a halfway house between the 600 and the 1140 and offered 900 hours. Local authorities have looked at staging different offers, so there is potentially something to look at that says that if we cannot do everything for everyone, what can we look at in terms of eligibility for the universal offer and what might be deliverable? I know that Graeme wants to come in. I am also conscious of time, so I will move on next. If you can be as tight with your time as possible, I will move on to Miles. I will try to be concise. In an ideal world, of course, we would favour a universal offer, but realistically where we are, we are pragmatists. We believe that the right thing is to focus on targeted provision. On eligibility criteria, I think that the six child poverty criteria are well established into Scotland. What we are doing is rather focusing on that. We are currently working more looking at parental employability in the sense and the role of parental employability and actually reducing child poverty in addition to that. I mentioned earlier our recruitment work that we started in rural areas. We are now piloting in urban areas. We have had to be really creative with the source of funding for that, because local authorities do not have flecks within their ELC or early-year budget support recruitment. The Brotland employability teams who are using parental employability funding are potentially a really good fit, because the main entry point to child mining is predominantly female, 30 to 39. Someone who has started their own family makes an informed choice to care for their own children but needs to earn an income. You have a really good fit between parental employability funding and child mining, and if that is targeted in areas where there is currently very low provision, that is probably where we are getting into that area. Again, it is not without challenge in the sense that it is a national funding stream, but there is also variation in terms of each local authority has its own eligibility criteria. We are hoping to try and capture learning about that criteria around parental employability funding, if that makes sense as well. I want to ask a few questions further to the topic around eligibility. I think that a number of them have been answered, but I wondered in terms of income thresholds being used, how we can avoid that becoming a disincentive for parents to increase their earnings as well, and if you have any views on that specifically. Probably not a huge amount to add to the interest of time. I suppose that there is always that challenge I think around any incomes threshold, and we have annual challenges in terms of upgrading them and what that means to try and make sure that you are looking at the same target group at the end of the day. I suppose that there is something for me about the more general work that we are doing around the creation of a fair work economy more broadly and what is the role of employers in some of that as well, not only in the remuneration that they are providing, but also more generally in terms of what support they provide around childcare and a more flexible approach to working hours. Obviously, the pandemic has impacted so much of that, so trying to understand what that role could be is really important to look at that sort of issue. If no one else has anything on that, I think that this goes back to some of the responses that we have received from our call for evidence on that, and it was with regards to their ask for universal free provision. Jonathan, you have touched upon capacity issues and resources, but do you think that that is feasible for under-3s and school-aged children currently, or would you all be on the same page with regard to wanting to see that targeted support that you have all touched upon? I suppose that there is just a small clarification of our position. As I said, we are pragmatic at this point in time. I think that it is the right judgment call to go with targeted provision. That does not mean that we should lose sight of trying to get it to universal if we can make that happen, so I think that that is important that we try to do that. Hi, thank you and thanks for the question, Miles. I would echo what Graham said, that what is good for children and good for parental employability is more support with childcare because that brings down the cost for parents, but that has to be done in a way that is sustainable. At the moment, the sector is facing a workforce crisis. We have had settings having to close because they have not been able to recruit the manager that they need, so it is a legal requirement to have that graduate-trained manager in place if you cannot find that person. It comes back to an early question on rural pressures as well. However many other qualified staff you have that whole setting has to close because it is just not sustainable to stay open. The previous expansion sold a local authority workforce growth by over £8,500. There was a similar growth needed in primary voluntary settings, but a lot of that recruitment was drawn from existing settings. Our members had to go back to the drawing board and recruit and train up staff. Time and time again, we heard the story, I train up my staff and then they are recruited in a local authority setting where they can afford to pay them better because they are better resourced. I think that addressing the workforce crisis would be absolutely crucial because if we barrel into delivery and try to offer that universal to everybody everywhere, there is just not the professionals in the sector to deliver it. We are talking about needing a longer-term workforce strategy in really exciting and fusing kids who are in school now about the possibilities of working in childcare and that it is not just babysitting, it is not just if you do not make it academically, then try working in care. Actually you are making the difference that lasts a lifetime and that is a big part of our campaign on promoting the sector. We also have to look at areas where traditionally you look at the workforce, it is predominantly female, it is predominantly white. We need to look at how we draw in people who have maybe not thought about working in this sector before, working with ethnic minority communities, working with more men into childcare, better representation, older people coming back into the childcare workforce. We have done some really good work in Wales through our childcare works programme where we help people who have been long-term unemployed but have good life skills. They have raised families, they have been parents and grandparents. We give them the fundamental skills and knowledge to work with children and bring them into the workforce. We need to look at all options because, with the workforce that exists, that cannot be done. Thanks, Jonathan. If you get any further questions, Miles. It is not within this set but maybe coming later. Moving on to theme 4, which is childcare workforce, I will invite James, who is online, if he would like to come in. James, thanks. I suppose that I am going on to the subject of expansion, recruitment, retention and the salaries around that. How feasible is it, given the current reported problems, recruitment and retention to expand at this time? That is what is going to happen, so how can that be addressed? I think that it is a really good question. A lot of what Jonathan flagged out there around some of those concerns around the workforce as it stands at present, I suppose that we have just come through an expansion that required a workforce. Obviously, there was disruption which caused it as part of that. I suppose that what comes to mind is that we need to think about, and it comes back to that planning, time and resources. What is the pipeline that we can build towards an expansion and make sure that we have the people coming through, colleges coming through schools coming through universities who want to be part of the sector and how do we make sure that it is an attractive place to come to? The pressures that exist for private voluntary providers also exist for local authorities in terms of them trying to recruit staff across a number of roles. I think that there is also something to think about the fair work agenda in the round as well. Obviously, in the adult social care world, we are seeing a lot of focus on what we do to try to increase pay in that area, which we absolutely need for the pressures that we are facing there. What type of an impact does that have on the workforce that would be available for childcare? We are just trying to think about all those things within the round. I suppose that it comes back to some of those questions around the investment that may be available for all the different types of expansion versus some of the questions around the workforce at present. It is a difficult thing to manage, all those things that could take a huge amount of resource to resolve, so difficult choices are probably there in terms of what is sequenced in what way. One of the issues that is coming out just now is the fact that there is a feedback here for particular reason. No, it is just me. One of the things that is coming out just now is that we are seeing some people saying that businesses have been closed down and so on. Other people are saying that they cannot keep staff if they cannot pay them a loving wage. How do we square that circle? I would like to go back to Matthew and then ask others if they would like to come in on the round question. I think that it is that challenge fundamentally of the competition that exists. We talked a lot about the competition inside the childcare sector, but it is looking at what is going on broader in the economy. Obviously, there has been the broader cost crisis and what that has meant for wages. Obviously, you have seen a number of private businesses up in wages as well, whereas the challenge that we have in childcare is the commitment and the funding and the guidance that we have today has been around the real living wage. What does that mean in terms of the competition perhaps within and without? It comes back to the point that I made before about adult social care. If there is an ambition to go further and faster in adult social care, does that incentivise people more to work in that workforce as opposed to the childcare workforce? What is the trade off? Where does the resource come to address some of that? I am sorry, James. I have got a list of people online who want to come in, Irene and then I will bring Graham in and then Jonathan is indicated that he would like to come in as well. Do you just want to come in, thanks? Oh yes, thanks. Do you like childcare workforce as a very part-time and low paid and shared results of our workforce survey with the committee? One of the two issues here is the amount of regulation. The school of childcare workforce has to register with the Scottish social services council and obtain the same qualifications as the early learning and childcare workforce. Although it is older children with different needs, it is much more about play and leisure rather than the educational element of early years' work. What we are suggesting is that we want to see the living wage at least in the sector, but when you introduce the view of living wage for your lowest paid workers, that means others who are more experienced and more senior. They may have to go up to beyond that, and that is currently unaffordable for most services. That would have to be subsidised in some way, because they could not then increase the fees to charge the parents. Parents in the UK pay more for childcare than any other country across Europe, yet the staff are very low paid. Our staff are in good lead childcare and are below the real living wage. It is part-time hours, so many of them are also accessing universal credit. If you are on universal credit and you are working part-time hours, you are put under pressure to increase your hours. That is another reason why we are not just losing staff to early learning and childcare. Some are going to go and work in a big supermarket, because they can get a full-time job and less pressure to increase their hours. Our solution to that, and we are having a discussion on general childcare workforce, but particularly for school-aged childcare, is that we need to widen the range of skills experience and qualifications that are accepted to register with the Scottish Social Services Council. The care inspectorate also has a role in judging whether you have the right mix of staff with the right mix of skills. If you have too many staff that are just on support work and are not enough with relevant experience, that will downgrade the quality of the service. Fair enough, but at the moment, power services and many other childcare services are still reeling from the effects of the pandemic. I have lost staff. I have experienced managers going back to work on the floor, not just to make up the staff-child ratios, but because they are having to model and teach completely unskilled new staff. Sometimes, some of the trainees that they get are like, they do not know how to use a toaster or a kettle. There are a lot of basic skills that have to be taught in terms of bringing people into the workforce. If we want to expand all childcare, we need to expand who we bring to work in childcare. I would also add to the points that I made earlier about that it has to be far more diverse, more men in childcare, more people from different cultural backgrounds, and more people with disabilities and so on. We have to reflect the whole of our society here. Can I come back in here? Yeah, absolutely, James. I was just going to ask Irene. It seems that what she is saying for her staff is that the suitability checks should still be done, but there should be a lower threshold in some of the other aspects of it, for which she would say is a non-requirement part of the job. Would that be right? Yes. Right, okay. I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you very much. Okay, James. I think that Graham wants to come in and then I'll bring in Jonathan. Okay, thank you. I'll try and be concise, but what I'm about to say is quite complex in terms of the interconnected components. The two biggest risks to our workforce, I think, at the moment, in the childcare workforce are the real living wage and duplicative quality assurance. Until recently, there wasn't accurate data on Scotland in terms of the number of child minors that could pay themselves the real living wage. We did a large-scale survey last autumn, which confirmed that only 13 per cent of child minors in Scotland could pay themselves the real living wage at the new rate of £10.90. That is appalling. Most child minors come into childcare not because it's high in profession, but because they want to make a difference. What they find most rewarding is seeing children grow and develop in response to their care. That's why they do the job. The problem that we've got is that we have complementary but almost competing policy agendas between the real living wage and ELC. We're entirely supportive of increasing the value of pay, but at the moment, the requirements around the real living wage threaten to almost derail ELC expansion. What I mean by that is that, because of the funding formula that we have in Scotland for ELC, private providers and child minors are not able to pay themselves the real living wage. The rates that they receive for delivering ELC are not sustainable, so that makes you question, do we need a form of subsidy around that? There's a real risk for child minors because there's a requirement within a national standard. If you want to deliver funding to ELC, you have to pay your staff the real living wage. There's almost been a loophole up until now because the majority of child minors are sole workers. That's been seen. It doesn't matter that you don't pay yourself the real living wage, it's only a assistance. For those who have assistance, it is crippling their businesses. We have larger child mining businesses at risk of collapse at this time in rural areas because the child miners' business owners can't afford to take a wage themselves, but they're having to pay their staff the real living wage, so there's lots of anomalies that we need to work around. It's also when you layer on, as Irene was saying, around the registration duplicative quality assurance, we've had a situation during the last six years of ELC expansion, where we've had massive growth on quality assurance. We're supportive of quality assurance, but it needs to be proportionate and joined up. At the moment, it's not. As an individual child mind, you're undergoing three forms of quality assurance for the Care and Spectra Education Scotland local authorities. As a sole provider, we've now got the majority of our workforce working an extra four to seven hours a week unpaid in their own time just to keep them top of the paperwork. That's not sustainable. We've got to apply those lessons before we even look at expansion. It's entirely admirable that our First Minister is wanting to accelerate ELC for once, but we need to learn the lessons from 1140 first. Thanks, Graham. I'm now going to bring in Jonathan. I just remind everyone to try and be as concise and succinct as possible. Thank you. Thank you, convener. I'll take that on board. What I would do is echo what Irene and Graham have said about sustainable rates. In many instances, which they are sustainable in name only, were some local authorities struggling to provide any increase to the rates that they pay providers. We know that a lot of those debates are happening right now. Providers are facing rising costs. Inflation has only just gone below 10 per cent. Wage inflation is probably higher than that, somewhere around 14 per cent. To pick up on Irene's point, we've got a rising floor with the real living wage, which is great and really important for those low-paid staff, but sustainable rates are creating a glass ceiling. There's no headroom to pay the managers, the room leaders, the higher-qualified staff, the more experienced staff that you absolutely need. As a result, we're seeing staff leave for other sectors. Supermarkets have been mentioned. Leave for local authority settings is where they can get a better pay. There is that budget differential between what local authorities will pay to partner providers and the costs that local authorities have to put into their own settings. Children and staff are not getting a fair cut of funding, which is putting that additional pressure on private voluntary providers. So, until you address that, you're not going to address the workforce crisis. I would say that there's other evidence in there. One thing that I just want to highlight is the volume of management, manager and senior practitioners who've gone on to local authorities and the fact that we've got a higher proportion in the private voluntary sector who are practising under a SSC, but with conditions on, so they're either having to work towards another qualification whilst they're doing their day job because they've had to replace more experienced staff in the settings. Until you address the funding challenges and the sustainable rates, that's going to be a problem for addressing the workforce crisis. Okay, thanks, Jonathan. I'm now going to bring in Marine McNeir in that I'll follow on to the theme 5, which is children who need additional support as well. Can I invite money? Thank you. Just before I move on to my theme, I just want to direct a question to Irene. Irene, in your written submission, you highlight that workers have been lost because of the conditionality regime and universal credit, and you've touched on it a little bit already. I wonder if you'd like to expand a little bit on it, if you can. In terms of the working hours of staff in school and childcare, I haven't got all the information in front of me, but there are five part-time hours often. Sometimes it might be 16 hours or 15 hours a week for a practitioner or a sport worker. The average hours for a manager in term time is 30 hours, so if you're paid below the real living wage and on the national minimum wage, it's part of the conditions of receiving universal credit support that you're actively looking to increase your hours. People who work in school and childcare love their job, so in our survey, one of the things that they all say is that love working with the children and seeing them develop over the years. You're maybe working with a child from four and a half years old until they go to secondary school. It's a long time to be involved in a child's life, but they're being pushed out because of this conditionality with universal credit and even if you really enjoy working in school and childcare. If you have the prospect for you and your family of a much better full-time paid job in early learning and childcare and you've got the qualifications to do that because the staff do the same qualifications, then you make these decisions on behalf of yourself and your family to go and earn more money and have a more secure job. It's like all those forces that you like to reduce our workforce and it's impossible to recruit. I know that that's part of wider society in terms of staffing shortages everywhere, in care and social care and childcare in general, but it's very acute within our services. Quite frankly, it's closing down some services or it's creating services that would have space to expand, to be allowed to expand in terms of the registration numbers, but they can't because they can't have—they don't get enough staff to do so. That, in turn, has a knock-on effect on the parents who are desperate for school-age childcare. Again, that experience is in this survey that I've shared with the committee that it wants to take up too much time on that. However, universal credit conditions are not good in terms of part-time workers and, once again, mainly women, and often single parents themselves. They are basically workers who are in poverty too, though we have to address this. I know that that's a UK. The universal credit conditions are a UK Government—they're not within the powers of the Scottish Government—and, hearken back, if I can just add this in, one of the things about the threshold for when people get help and then won't get help with free childcare is making sure that people know about support for childcare costs if they are on universal credit, or if they're a much higher earner, there's something called tax free childcare. In our survey, although three quarters did know about either or both of those benefits, a quarter of the parents didn't know about this help with childcare costs. In my own view, I would rather that funding wasn't used in a complicated system of parents claiming for help, but instead that budget is used to actually run childcare and then it makes it much more affordable for everybody. Again, that's not within the Scottish Government's power, this is the UK Government's policies. A bit of added opinion there. Thanks, Irene. That information is really terrible to hear, but thank you for it. One theme that was quite strong in our call for evidence was about the challenges about accessing childcare for children with additional support needs. Although a recent survey of parents found that the availability of suitable early learning and childcare for children with additional support needs had improved, a third of the parents still had difficulties finding suitable childcare. What can be done to improve this provision further and what do you feel the challenges are going forward in delivering further expansion and pop-out to Graham? First of all, what we've found over the past five, ten years is that there's been quite a significant increase in childminders supporting families with additional support needs. Childmining is quite unique in the sense that you have continued to care more or less from birth through to 12 or 16 in case additional support needs. Why parents increasingly starting to access childmining for additional support needs is because there's a smaller adult's child ratios, you get more one-on-one care, but conversely that puts financial pressure on a child managed business model because, again, if we're giving more time to that child with complex needs, they're perhaps having to reduce the number of children in their setting. There's some childmining support that we're finding increasingly specialising in that, which is certainly taking more demands for training. A lot comes back to informing parents about their entitlement. Even more generally, when we were talking about ELC, a lot of parents aren't fully informed about what they can actually access. From our point of view, the point would make is that parents are informed, but unless they fully understand that they can't make an informed decision, that's a problem that we're still finding barriers where local authorities, unfortunately in some cases, are not actually informing parents what they can access. There's still a tendency to go further to local authority nursery rather than actually thinking, is there a more suitable setting? I'll be very brief. The thing that I would like to put in context of, I suppose, is the much wider issue or considerations that we have around additional support needs. Over the past five, ten years, we've seen a substantial increase in terms of what's working and how it works. I suppose that what we've been trying to do through our joint work through the Angela Morgan review was to have a look at how provision was working just now. That was primarily focused in the school sense, but it obviously has implications across to ELC as well. On the back of that, the Scottish Government and COSDA now have a joint action plan and a joint implementation group, which looks at the issues around additional support needs provision and how we can improve and ELC members have recently been brought in to bolster that group. I suppose that the last point that I've made for briefly again is that, with additional support needs, that can be very different things depending on each individual child. I think that we need to be really thoughtful about that and also around what's the range of professionals, not just from the ELC setting itself, but the wider support that comes from across the public sector and how we support that family. Having that co-ordination is absolutely crucial. I believe that Jonathan wants to come in quickly on that, so I'll bring Jonathan in. Hi, thanks, Comedian. I'll be very, very quick. It's just a plea to say again that these places are delivered or deliverable within private voluntary settings. It's important to work with the provision that's already there in terms of identification and responding to children with additional support needs. It comes back to the workforce in terms of the number of people to offer additional support and the experience and training that those practitioners have in meeting those needs. I'm now going to move on to team 6, which is delivery models. I'm just going to reach out to each of you and ask how should the partner provider model develop as funded childcare is due to expand. I'm going to bring in Matthew first of all on that question. Thank you. I suppose that there's a really important thing that's come up throughout our session is that parental interests and needs have been so key in 1140 and it seems to me very difficult to think of a world in which that is not part of the future expansions as well. I suppose in that mind there's always going to need a mix of provision and there's always going to need to have that sort of joint working and the ability for partners in the private voluntary sector and child managers to take part. I suppose there's already work on going to look on at the process that we have around partnership just now, both in the review of funding for the child and the national standard, which are our sort of guidance around that and also a review of the rates process. I think that there's work that we're doing just now, which there'll be lessons for, but I also think that it comes back to some of the difficult questions that we've had so far about prioritisation and resources and where they go in terms of if the real call from the sector are around increasing salaries beyond the real living wage is part of that provision and the funding being there to do so that's got a cost and what will be the trade-off to be able to provide that, so that would be the interesting challenge for us to think about in that context. Okay, thanks Matthew. If I could bring Gailman in terms of what is the potential for child managers to provide a funded wraparand service alongside schools? I think there's tremendous potential in the sense that roughly 50 per cent of the children in child-manning settings are of school-age childcare age. You know something that child men are already doing, have extensive experience of delivering and child-manning is also a very flexible form of childcare in the sense that child-minders are based in their community. When we look at the independence search it's just been conducted by Ipsos Moray for Scottish Government from others. You know what parents are reporting back to us is that in addition to feeling a more child-led is the flexibility that they get from a child-minder that they don't get elsewhere. It goes away beyond nursery hours. The child-minders that goes above and beyond provide professional support to them. Parents who use it act to view it as family support. It's not just childcare. Again, to give credit to the Scottish Government, as Matthew has said, there's a lot of work under way. The Scottish Government has engaged us to do some pilot work looking at delivery models in terms of what that might look like for child-manning, both for ELC ones and school-age childcare. I think that the main license to take from 1140 is that we really do need to recognise the distinct forms of childcare out there and not the mistake of thinking that it's one delivery model and applying it to the different priders who are very different. How can that be delivered? Thank you, convener. I wondered in terms of other models around the world whether or not we've missed an opportunity to look at, for example, the NHS. I know people here in my own region in Edinburgh who have not gone back to work because the childcare offering is just not effective for them. Having to cross the city the time that takes and the lack of flexibility sometimes within NHS shift patterns as well. Is there also something that we need to look at in terms of public services and whether or not there's a few outcomes we're trying to achieve here, firstly, providing this opportunity for childcare, but also getting people to come back to work in our public services, the workforce challenges there, and why we haven't looked at maybe the NHS providing that in-house opportunity as well to cater for people's real-life experiences. Would you like us to respond? I think that we're in a creative space where we're looking at all solutions. In the sector, our colleagues from the Care and Learning Alliance who are not here today are currently looking at piloting on the Highlands, a sort of a shared model. You know, could you actually deliver adult social care, childcare in a similar setting given our rural challenges? It was interesting that during Covid, the child man actually stayed open more than any other form of childcare, and that was due to the small number of children in their settings, reduced risk of infection, and there was very high usage from NHS professionals because of that flexibility, but a lot comes back to that flexibility that they can get in our local community, which they can't get in other areas. We do need to look at other sectors in terms of how can you creatively respond to demand from those, because those other oppressions are seven days a week, 24-7, and that's not nine-to-three in terms of hours that we're working to. Does anyone else have anything that I want to add? There are some NHS crash provision on site, but we suggest that places that I purchased for parents, such as the employer, pay in to purchase places in the local services, and that helps with the financial viability of local services. In our survey with parents, a few were NHS consultants. Basically, there's a story from one of them where they do have access to skilled child care a couple of evenings a week, but they're having to use a mixture of teenage babysitters and juggling different hours, and they know that this is not the best for their children, and they would fare with that skilled child care place to be available for them. Certainly, what I would recommend is subsidising places from employers, big employers such as the NHS, and so on. Can I make another point? I don't think that it was covered, but in terms of delivery models, there was a statement earlier about, for many parents, the challenge of spending work that fits the school hours, and it says what's potential for closer integration between school and school-aid childcare, for example provision on school premises or provision managed by the school. I'd like to point out that there are about three or four services that are managed by a school. There are more than half of school-aid childcare services that are in school premises, however they are not managed by the school. However, to be honest, how do parents know that? Unless the service makes it quite clear that there's a voluntary management committee or that it's a private service and so on. One of the things that is registered to school-aid childcare services is very nervous about is that if there's a sudden, and there is going to be a lot of investment in the coming years that's further down the line, but when that happens, are schools going to just take this money and run their own clubs and then displace the existing sector? Now, I can assure you that that is not the quality direction that we see so far. Also, I do think that head teachers have enough on their shoulders. There are so many responsibilities already to then also be the ultimate manager of a school-aid childcare service, maybe a step too far for them. I just wanted to put this point in. Thank you. That concludes our session. Can I just add, Irene, that we are an added welcome to your cat who has joined us today as part of the evidence session? Okay, so can I just thank the witnesses for the evidence that they have given here today and we'll hold a further evidence session on childcare with a focus on the delivery of services in two weeks as well. That concludes our public business today, and we will now move into private to consider the remaining items on the agenda. Members who are joining us remotely, please use the Microsoft Teams link in their calendars to join the meeting. Thank you all very much.