 Mae'r ddaen nhw'n gwestiwyr yn gwybod eich cymryddion dros yr ystyried â'r Cymru. Mae hynny'n ddymol eu teimlo i gael y cyfrydd yma, ac mae cymryd ei gallwn ar gyfer yw flydd fyddfa wedi gweithio eich cyfryd i ymgau 3 i gyfryd 3 i gyfryd 4 o'r agenda yna yn economi. Oni, yn cyho, ar hyn? Yn cyfryd hynny'n ddenddo i gael ymgattig a'i gweld o'r ddymol pheiddyllol o ddymol percy scissors ar gyfer y byddfa o pob deimlo a gyfryd yn cymryd. I welcome to the meeting this morning, Mrs Linda Allen, and Kate Wallace, chief executive officer of Victim Sports Scotland. Welcome to you both. I refer members to papers 1 and 2. I thank both our witnesses for coming along today and sharing your views on the Scottish Government's proposals. I intend to allow about an hour for this session, and I am aware that Kate Wallace will need to leave us by no later than 10.45, as I understand that you're also giving evidence to the education committee this morning, so you've got a busy morning ahead. We'll now move directly to questions. I wonder if I can just open things up and maybe come to you first, Kate. I wonder if you could just provide the committee with a broad overview of the work that you are involved in in relation to children and young people. Thank you. We at Victim Sports Scotland support victims of any type of crime, and that will be victims of crime committed by adult perpetrators or children and young people. We provide support to anyone who needs it both in the community setting but also within the court setting. We've had some feedback from some of the people that we support around the bill and some of the key concerns that we have. One of the things that we had in particular that we've raised at the consultation stage as well, and that unfortunately hasn't been picked up in the bill just in the way that we had anticipated, and I know that others have given evidence to the education committee about this is to do with the provision of information that I thought this committee would be interested in. The reality is that people who have been harmed by children or young people are not entitled to the same information as if that was an adult who had harmed them. There is no victim notification scheme in place. Children may be placed in secure care, as is obviously proposed to do more of through this bill. For example, there's no victim notification scheme, so victims who, for example, could have been subjected to a serious sexual assault are not told when someone is being released from secure accommodation, meaning that they can't effectively plan for their own safety. I realise that that wasn't a specific question that the committee wanted to ask, but I did want to raise it because I thought from your perspective that it's something that you would be interested in. The reality is that people who have been harmed by children or young people are not entitled to any information. They're entitled to ask, but they don't get any information about what's happened to the child who has offended against them. I know that members will be interested in that specific issue that you've raised about victim notification and the differences in relation to situations in which you've got a child perpetrator versus an adult. I wonder if I can just pick up on the broad work that you do and whether or not over time you've seen changes in perhaps the numbers that you are supporting, the profile of children that you're supporting, just as a general overview of how things are developing. I haven't looked at the figures in detail, but it is a component of the work that we do for sure. We support, for example, people where the adult process might have been pursued first and then there's a decision taken that it will go through the children's hearing system, so we have supported children or young people through that and adults who have been harmed by children or young people as well as I know other organisations have too. I think that in terms of a profile, I haven't seen necessarily any changes to that except in terms of numbers that I can share with the committee, but the types of crimes, particularly around sexual crime, violent crime, those kind of things. I've spoken to this committee before in the past around the relationship between the adult system and the child system and what the issues that that places victims and the challenges that they have around that. For example, bail conditions that might be put in place in the adult system that then a decision is taken to take the child through a children's hearing system. Those bail conditions are dropped because they're obviously not relevant in a hearing system, but there's no other alternatives at the moment in terms of protecting safety. We are involved and have been supported and the committee members will be aware of some pretty difficult cases of people who have, at the higher end, been harmed by children or young people and some of the challenges of those complex cases where, for example, you may have children who've been harmed by another child or other children and are in the same school environment, for example, and I know that that's been discussed in the Education Committee last week too. There's nothing that I'm seeing in terms of trends, but I haven't particularly looked for that, so I could do more digging around that and send any further information to the committee if that would be helpful. I'll come to you now, Linda. The committee is very aware of the traumatic experience that you have had of the criminal justice system. I wonder if you'd be able to sort of articulate that experience to members and how it's brought you round to the work that you're undertaking now. We've not experienced traumatic, we're experiencing, it's not finished. So our daughter Katie committed driving offences in 2017 and was a first-time offender and was sentenced to a custodial sentence in Pullmont Young Offenders Institute, where she took her own life. Obviously, I'm a researcher and part of coming to terms with and trying to understand what had happened to her daughter in the establishment. I started doing some digging and collecting data along with my husband, who's a, hopefully, a data analyst. Together we started collecting data on deaths in prison custody in Scotland, so we now have quite a comprehensive database going back to 2005, which led on to us looking at fetal accident inquiry outcomes and the role they play in death investigation. With colleagues at Glasgow University, we've published some findings from that work. Our own personal experience is we still wait on a fetal accident inquiry for our daughter's death and it will be five years and the fourth of June since her daughter died. The main reason for that is we're pursuing criminal conviction and it's taken the crown off this length of time to investigate and they are still doing so. I'm just going to open it straight up to members now and bring in Rona Mackay, followed by Jamie. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. The provisions in the bill ensures that no child under the age of 18 can be held in a Young Offenders institution or prison either on remand or while awaiting sentence or having been sentenced. Can I start with you, Linda? Can I ask you your view on that? I don't think that it'll be a surprise to the committee that I don't think it goes far enough. It's quite confusing in terms of the new sentence and guidelines that were published in 2022 and the robust research into neurodevelopment and they apply to under the age of 25 why a bill would be introduced that didn't reflect that robust research. I can only speak from our experience and prisons are not therapeutic environments and Katie was probably a bit different from many young people that end up in custodial sentences and in custodial settings. It makes no sense to me why we as a society put traumatised, disenfranchised young people into a traumatic environment to be stripped searched despite the previous justice secretary saying no under 18 should be stripped searched in 2019, still being stripped searched, still being isolated, particularly in remand. I had a quick look at our database before coming to the committee and there's been two young people under the age of 18 that have died since 2005, Regent and William. If you look at under 25, that increases to 49 people, 70 per cent of which have taken their own life within the first three months. We're pursuing what we're pursuing because that's what we want to change. Young people should not be dying in prison. Assuming that you see this as a step forward because it's referring to children under the age of 18 but you would like the age to be more in line with the sentencing council guidelines, you see that as an anomaly. Our concern that's been raised by victims with us is about making sure that the issues that there are within young offenders' institutions aren't replicated in secure accommodation. We're really getting an understanding about the reasons and what has happened in there and making sure that young people who are in secure accommodation, who are there either because of welfare concerns, have been victims of crime themselves and their serious concerns about their safety and there's been a decision to place them in a secure environment, making sure that those vulnerable children and young people are not placed at risk because at the moment the proposal in the bill is regardless of the seriousness of the offence that all children up until the age of 19 would be placed within secure accommodation. Our key concerns around that are about robust risk assessment and making sure that that does not have a detrimental impact on and increase the risk for other children and young people who are in secure accommodation, who will, as we've just heard, perhaps be there for welfare reasons, have welfare concerns or have it been fairly low-level offending? If I'm understanding correctly, are you saying that children under the age of 18 who have committed a serious crime such as murder or rape or whatever should be held in young offenders' institutions? If our response to that would be that we can see that there would be merit in not having them in young offenders' institutions, but only if they're in secure care and secure is going to be different from that, so making sure that we don't replicate that, so potentially looking at how we can create something for children who have committed very serious offences so that they are perhaps not in as much contact with other young people who are more vulnerable or who haven't committed those types of serious offences, that's our concern. We wouldn't, so we're not against it per se, but it's about making sure that the same issues aren't replicated within just a different institution. Good morning, and thank you for coming in and sharing your experience. I know it's been a horrific couple of years for you and your family and it's very brave of you to come and share that with us and committee and it's very important as well, and I'm sorry to hear there's an on-going process. What I'm trying to get my head around though, just as we, you know, it's important we take as wide a range of views on it, of evidence as we can on the legislation and the Government's proposal, the Government obviously has, you know, there are three places that someone can be sent either on remand or haven't been sentenced and held in custody and that's obviously secure accommodation, young offenders, institutions or adult prisons, and what I'm trying to get my head around is where people think is the right place for certain cohorts of people. Now at the moment it seems to be based on an arbitrary age cut-off, so the bill will propose that up to 19 years of age effectively, so in your 18th year you can only be held in secure accommodation. With an expectation you would probably then move to a young offenders institution depending on the length of your sentence, it'd be unusual to be so long, but in the unlikely event it was longer than that, you'd then be moved to an adult prison at some point, perhaps over 25 plus. Is that a setup that you are comfortable with? Do you think that it works? Do you think that age is the factor that should be taken into account? Do you think there are other factors which should be taken into account? How should the Government best create rules to know that those settings are the right settings for the people that are put into them? That's where I'm a bit confused by perhaps some of the evidence that I've heard so far. I'll start with Kate, then I'll come on to you, Ms Allan. As I mentioned just before, from our perspective, risk and seriousness of offence would be the two main criteria. The provisions that are in place to monitor, supervise and support the therapeutic interventions that have been discussed. I've said this to the committee before, for victims, it's mostly what they want is to make sure that what happens to them doesn't happen to anybody else, so it's about the most effective approach to that. They are concerned about their own safety, about being able to plan for their own safety. They are concerned about justice, but that tends to come in my experience after making sure that what's happened to them doesn't happen to anybody else. We would see the main criteria being around seriousness of offence and around risk and risk management and risk assessment, and then the most appropriate setting from there. There may well be decisions to be made about timescales to do with that, because you may well have independent, and we can think of some fairly high profile cases where children may only have six months where they might be moved out of a young offenders institution into secure accommodation, then back into a young offenders institution, and then, as you say, move into adult prison for those very small number of children young people who have committed very, very, very serious offences. I think that there's a decision to be made about whether that level of disruption, particularly in potentially risk around other children young people, as I mentioned earlier on, is the right approach. More generally, we would be saying risk assessment and seriousness of offence. I guess what I'm trying to work at is what is the role of a young offenders institute, because there seems to be opposition at both ends, people who think that they're people who are old enough to be in adult prisons that may be in YOIs, but there are people on the lower end of the age spectrum who absolutely shouldn't be in them at all. It's difficult to actually see what their place is in the justice system in that scenario. To pose a scenario, should a 24-year-old adult male who's committed a serious sexual assault or rape against someone be held, is it appropriate to be holding them in young offenders institutions? Or equally, an 18-year-old who's committed the same offence who may be of sound mind, would they appropriately be held in secure accommodation? Are you saying that it would be okay as long as they're separate from children, other younger children, if you like? I guess there's a moral philosophical question here about how we treat people because everyone's an individual and where they're at in the system is very unique as well. I'm trying to get my head around how we can use arbitrary rules to deal with what are quite complex individual cases. From our perspective, we think that risk assessment is key to that, as is our real understanding about the setups of the different institutions that you've just referred to and what's in place. I know that others have given evidence to other committees about resources and what's required. It's quite difficult to answer your question on the basis of what's in place just now, other than, from our perspective, we would be saying that it's a robust risk assessment. As part of that, we're taking into account the seriousness of the offences that have been perpetrated. Thank you. Did you like to comment on anything? Yes, thanks. I think that it is a philosophical dilemma, but I also think that it's a moral one. I think that what we're doing just now is not wise, from a rights perspective, from an economic perspective. My answer to your question is that no child or young person should be sent to prison. They should be sent to a therapeutic environment that reduces re-offending and keeps them alive. The facts speak for themselves. Re-offending rates, the number of deaths and custody of young people, all we're doing is re-traumatising young people. What we're doing just now does not work. What we need is a model that does work. I'm not an expert in secure accommodation, so I can't comment on whether that would be the answer to this problem, but certainly young offenders' institutes are not the answer to the problem. What do you think the role is—because this is something that I've grappled before the last year, as we've taken a lot of evidence on issues around this—do they have a role in Scottish justice? That's a broader question. What's the role of prisons? We still have a Victorian model of retribution, and we stick on top of that a label of rehabilitation. That doesn't work. We've got one of the highest imprisonment rates in Europe. We've got the highest deaths and custody rates in the UK, if not wider. Those are just facts. What we're doing—a Victorian model of retribution with a label of rehabilitation—is not working. What would you like to see from the Crown Office? I'm not talking about line-of-life proceedings that might be appropriate, but clearly five years is an awful long time to be waiting for anything to happen. You're not the only family to be waiting that long. What improvements would you like to see in the Crown Office? Would you be your big ask of the new justice case? I would like to see our domestic law reflecting European law, because just now it doesn't. We have no legal redress because of Crown immunity in Scottish prisons. The Scottish prison estate, not the private. Katie had died in Kilmarnock prison. We would have legal redress, but we don't because she died in Pullman. The corporate manslaughter homicide act has not been used against any state organisation, let alone the prison service. I had a very wise friend describe it this way to me. If you go into a restaurant and you get food poisoning, there might be some discussion about that. If somebody else goes in and dies of food poisoning, there might be an inquiry. However, if that happens every single week, there would be a Root and Branch inquiry and an investigation in the police. That's what's happening in our prisons. I'll bring in Pauline Fulton, followed by Fulton. Thank you very much. Good morning. I wanted to explore the area of policy, whether you think that if we did explore, as Slinda, you've said that we should go further if we're actually equipped to do it. So, like Jamie, I'm trying to get my head round all of this. Kate, you said earlier that your concern would be that you focused on the need for the risk assessment for secure accommodation. In policy terms, does it all fit together with my limited understanding? Secure accommodation, for a start, we don't have enough of it, so that's a question that we'll have to address to ministers. However, the principle of the welfare of the child is the overriding principle of the children's eating system. Regardless of any offences looking after the welfare of the child. However, if we go beyond the age of 18, I think that we need to explore how that then is going to operate, because between the ages of 18 and 21, they're not children. So, if we're going to put them in secure accommodation, you see that it doesn't really fit together. I'm just wondering, as you're speaking, that maybe actually, if we're serious about it, then perhaps it'll be a bit of a redesign needed then, because when I'm reading through the briefing, if we, so you're not going to hold under 18s in polemitt any longer, if you're a young offenders institution, you might go beyond that. Now, there's a reference to cases of remand, but it can either be secure accommodation or a place of safety, and I really don't know what that means. It just feels that the policy doesn't really fit with the system. You need to really have a whole-scale change to the system, because I have the same own view as I don't know that risk assessment would be enough in a serious offence to satisfy victims or victim families that simply putting everyone together in secure accommodation is really a satisfactory solution to that. So, if you want to respond in any way to that, I would be very grateful. The other challenge that you've raised is around balancing the rights of different people within the system. One of the challenges at the moment, so linking back to the point that I was making earlier on around information provision, what we've got at the moment is a system and an approach that prioritises the rights of children who are harmed over either adults or children who have been harmed, because they're not entitled to it and don't get any information about what has happened in terms of their case, if you like. At the moment, and I noticed it in the Education Committee last week, one of the sessions discussed that, so that for the rights of children and the welfare of children to be paramount, what you've actually got is, because of that lackey information, you've got the children who have harmed being prioritised over if, in this case, the victim has been a child who are not able then to participate in proceedings like the UNCRC would suggest. So, there is a set of challenges, I think, around that. As I said earlier on, the other challenges around seriousness of offence, you could take an approach that is murder, culpable homicide, certain domestic abuse offences, rape, serious sexual assault are dealt with as a group, but you're right in a way, because unless you address some of those challenges that there are, that is partly what I'll say in my next committee session, because there was all sorts of discussion around that in the consultation period process. It didn't materialise in the bill. Just on that point, if you look at serious offence, murder, culpable homicide, you're thinking then that perhaps there should be a separate element of the secure accommodation estate, if we're going to extend the... I'm thinking both about seriousness and about age as well between 18 and 25, if you like, that maybe the answer lies in actually reorganising the secure accommodation estate. Would that be something that might work? Possentially, yes. That's one of our suggestions, but I am not an expert in secure care, but I think going back to the point about other children and young people who are there for other reasons and protecting their safety and their welfare, I think we do have to think about how we would manage it. Linda? I think you're absolutely right. There needs to be a complete overhaul and review. If we did have enough secure accommodation, William Lindsay would still be alive today, so we don't have enough for the existing population of under 18s, let alone if we extended the upper age limit. I think there is a danger of recreating a young offenders institute under another name, and that's not what any of us would want. It might be helpful to commit to him that I was reflecting on something Katie said to me when she was in Pullman, and she said, mum, there are three types of women here, because there's older women in Pullman, as well, that were moved from Cortenbale. There are women like me who have made a mistake and are here for the first time. There are women here who find this place safer than it is at home for them, so they'll go out and re-offend, so they're back here because it's safer, and there are women who are really unwell. She didn't describe any of the women that were with her in Pullman as criminals or murderers or whatever. She described them in that way, and I think if you look at it in that way, there's a solution to all of that. So is it about forensic services? Is it about what it's about? It's certainly not the model that we have just now. One thing that might be interesting for the committee to find out is that since the introduction of the centres and guidelines, has there been a reduction in under 25s being sent to prison? I think it's a very astute observation that she made, and it does beg the question, and people will be divided on it, but it does beg the question. In sentencing terms, whether or not in the first place custody should be the first thought in cases like that, but I've no further questions, but thank you very much. Thanks, convener, and thank you both for your evidence today. I think that that was really powerful when you spoke about your daughter's description of people that she was in Pullman with, and I think that it's quite so important that we hear that sort of evidence, and I just want to, as others have done, put on record my thanks to you for coming forward. My question is a wee bit around, I was going to say it's a wee bit left field, but it does relate. So I know that Kate will be aware, because she's given evidence, and you might be aware, Linda, through your research that this committee is actually looking at another bit of legislation just now, the bail on release bill, which we've moved into stage 2 on. One of the purposes of that bill is to try and reduce the number of people who are in remand in the first place, as if that's its aim essentially, and there's debate about how that or will it work, but that is its main aim is to reduce the number of people in remand. How do you think, I'll start with yourself Kate, how do you think that that bill overlaps with the work of this bill? Because clearly here, as well, we're looking at, you know, children under 18 not being placed in custodial settings, so do you think there's an overlap between the pieces of legislation, and how can the bits of legislation work together? Do you think, in your view? Again, I think it comes back to the point that I made to the committee before around bail and release bill, and the point I'm making here around seriousness of offencing about risk being posed. You know, I haven't looked at the, I think, Linda's, maybe got them actually in statistics about, you know, who is in young offenders' institutions on remand, what age they are, and what is the offence that they have been accused of. But in the statistics overall, as I said to the committee before, 60 per cent of people on remand and the Government's own figures were there because they'd been accused of sexual or violent offences. And there is, you know, and as I said before, there's an important thing to remember about remand in terms of what is the purpose. Now, we've never been in agreement about the inappropriate use of remand, but we do think that for some people it is the only way of keeping victims safe for a period of time. So, yeah, and how that interplays with this, I don't know enough about the figures about who's, you know, who's on remand and for what being accused of what crimes, but I think, yeah, that the same approach would remain, from our perspective, victims would be very concerned about their safety if the alternatives to remand were not keeping them safe in the way that we know that at the moment, bail supervision doesn't, you know, I gave the figures to the committee the last time, which was that 11 people had been convicted of murder whilst they were out on bail, and a whole host of, you know, nearly 200 people convicted of attempted murder and serious assault while they were out on bail. So the concern from victims would be that the alternatives that were in place would ensure their safety and would be a proper alternative to remand, and that would be the same for children and young people as it is for adults who have, you know, from their point of view, perpetrated crimes against them. Thanks, Kate. In terms of yourself, you've already said, I think, in response to Rona Mackay, that you don't think this bill goes far enough in terms of the age, and I would probably agree with that as well, to an extent, and I'm conscious, though, of the seriousness of offences. I think that's an important part, isn't it? So how do you think that the legislation either here or other legislation, neither the one I referred to or legislation that doesn't currently exist? How do you think that the Scottish Government can make things better in terms of the appropriateness of remand, I think, to use Kate's expression there, you know, when making sure that we're using remand at the right time, and we're not perhaps coming across situations where people are in remand, the situation might be more difficult for them, in the production of the bill? I think that the difficulty is that, you know, it's the court, it's the, you know, that will meet these decisions that will be the sheriff or the judge that will decide whether a young person is to be remanded or not. I don't know enough about the bail and release bill to add much, but I do know that children and young people on remand are more likely to take their own lives, and I do know that over 60 per cent of the under-21s employment as of February this year are on remand, which is quite staggering. I know that inspection report after inspection report have highlighted the difficulties with the opportunities that young people have whilst on remand in young offenders' institutes, access to education, access to, you know, time out of sale, you know, 23 hours in a sale, you know. Covid restrictions are not all away in our prison estate, you know, many of our prisoners are still spending inordinate amounts of time within their sales. Thanks, Linda. Thank you for coming around. I can't imagine what you've been put through these past five years. Now, in that time, we know that more than 200 people have died in Scottish prisons, many of them will be young people by suicide also, and you're still waiting for your fatal accident inquiry to begin. This has partly been due to the attempts to criminally prosecute people, which, in October last year, was rejected, I understand. Do you know if that rejection was based on the crown not being able to, or is it entirely at their discretion? In terms of a prosecution under the health and safety act, it's because they are unable to because of crown immunity. So the crown office, I don't want to say too much because obviously it's an ongoing case, but certainly the crown are unable to prosecute under health and safety despite what they believe is credible and reliable evidence. For a successful prosecution, they cannot prosecute under health and safety legislation because the Scottish Prison Service has crown immunity. There wasn't the final word. That process is still on-going. We're challenging the Crown's decision not to prosecute under corporate homicide manslaughter. Remind members to make sure that our lines of questioning are not about a specific case and instead about the bill. I want to establish where we are just now in the background because we're talking about legislation and I wonder if there's anything that you could see this bill doing that would help address these issues of immunity from prosecution, for example. If we don't send young people to Young Offenders Institute, they won't die. It's as simple as that. Therefore, families like us, such as the Lindsay family and the Marshall family and many other people, won't be in the position that we're in. In terms of immunity from prosecution, could the bill do anything about that if there were tragic cases like these? I believe that Crown immunity is reserved. I'd be delighted if it could, but I believe that it's a reserved issue. Okay, thank you. Kate, you spoke earlier about the prioritisation of the rights of those who've harmed other children over the rights of those who've been harmed. The Daily Record newspaper is running a campaign now, Our Kids, Our Future, which just talks about a large number of such cases, many of which are recorded on social media and adding to the distress of those who've been attacked. One such case involves a 12-year-old who was beaten quite severely. It was filmed. It's a profound effect on this individual's entire life, understandably. In the past few weeks, there's been developments in that case, in that they believed that the alleged perpetrator was subject to bail conditions, only to discover that they were no longer, and this hadn't been communicated to them. The alleged perpetrator has also allegedly committed further offences. I know that this is a specific case, but what I'd like to ask is how, what measures could the bill take to give greater protection to victims? So from our perspective, information sharing and addressing those issues and those deficiencies that are described, some of that was discussed in the consultation preceding the bill. I think this is the place to do it and I think those information sharing provisions and being clear about what information can and will be shared with people who have been harmed by a child or young person, I think that just really needs to be spelled out and the types of information that will be shared and because what you've got is someone who, if you go through an adult system, you have rights to information about updates to do with your case, you've got rights to information about, for example, if somebody escapes from or abscones from a prison setting, you're entitled to that information if you sign up to the victim notification scheme, you're also entitled to know when that person has been released. None of those provisions translate when it's a child or young person who has harmed you. So I think that the bill needs to, that whole part of it needs to be looked at and provisions need to be put in place really around that and I know that in the Education Committee last week someone raised the point about if the person who's been harmed is a child as well, the imbalance in terms of rights and how the UNCRC for the child who's been harmed is not, they're no able to fully participate in proceedings in the way that the convention sets out. So I think that there's quite a big bit of work to be done on that within this bill. Do you think also that the children's hearing system is understandably essentially private in the main? Do you think that there should be any scope to be of more transparency around these proceedings generally? I think that's what we need in the bill to allow that to happen within the hearing system because that's where many children will go through. But I think that that's absolutely right because at the moment people can make a request from SCRA but SCRA won't provide information. Is it the case that more cases of violence, for example, committed by children against children are ending up going down that legal route with children's panel? I know that the Crown still have the option to prosecute but because this is the direction of travel, if there was more transparency around hearings generally that would be a good thing. Definitely. It's one of the biggest issues that comes to us for people in this situation is they're really quite struck and surprised by the lack of information and there's a lot of effort put into explaining the process to them but they don't get any information about their own particular circumstances and therefore it was very difficult for people to understand around what's happening to the perpetrator, if you like, but it's also really difficult for them to safety plan for their own recovery as well. That all becomes really challenging when you're operating in a total information vacuum and you certainly don't want people relying on social media because in terms of factual accuracy I would suggest that that's not the place where you're going to get that factually accurate information. For all the frustrations with the criminal justice system for adults, which we've heard much about, there's a complete vacuum in respect of children's hearings so if someone's a victim of a crime they don't get told about what's happening up until the point of disposal, what the disposal is or any details whatsoever, there's no entitlement whatsoever. Because if you remember the children's hearing system is not, if you just use the phrase, disposal, that's not how the hearing system works. It's not about that. People don't get information about their own situation specifically at all. They get information about the processes of their experience but not information about their own particular case. I'm going to have to jump right in. I'm just watching the time for you leaving Kate Wallace. Can I just let you go? Thank you very much for coming in. We'll just have a quick pause to let you leave the committee room. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much members. We'll just continue with our questions and I'm going to bring in Rona. I think you've got a question for her. Yeah, thanks. Thank you, convener. Linda, it was just when you were speaking earlier about 60 per cent of children on remand. Do you have any stats to say roughly how long they spend on average in remands? I'm sure Wendy will be able to answer that question in the next panel. Obviously to Ms Prolong, they're just an average vote but thank you. It's certainly increased during the pandemic for obvious reasons and it is a vigorous factor in suicide. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. I'm going to bring in Colette Stevenson now. Thanks, convener. Good morning, Linda. Thanks for coming along and sharing your story. Despite the trauma that you're still experiencing, the research that you've done is absolutely amazing and it's absolutely heartening to hear that that might have an impact going forward for our young people who are affected by the justice system. Thank you so much for that. One of the things that I want you to touch upon about therapeutic pathways for our young people who are going through the justice system. I don't know if you've got the opportunity, but there was evidence from St Mary's, the secure accommodation, about therapeutic millow of secure care. What can that look like and how can we check on that to see how is that working for the young people and should it be regulated in order to see how they're getting on and how they're progressing? Especially if it is more of a serious case where there are transitions back over to a young offenders institute. I'd like to know more of your thoughts on what that should look like for our young people. What a therapeutic environment should look like? I'm going to pull on my professional experience now as 38 years on the NHS. Certainly, as I said, we're incarcerating some of the most traumatised and disenfranchised young people in society to re-traumatise them or traumatise them more. I'm sure the committee is aware of the depth of health access to health professionals across the prison estate. If we're talking about, I don't think any child wakes up in the morning and thinks I'll go and murder someone or I'll go and rape someone, what's going on with that child that's led them to or young person to that situation? Is it a spur of the moment decision? Is it somebody's learned behaviour? What is it? One of the critical services that a child would need access to is psychology services and there just is not enough of that across our prison estate. I think from my personal experience and the trauma as a family that we've experienced and the access to psychology services we didn't have, but we luckily had the resources to access that privately and that's only in the last five years, but a child that's had from formative years of trauma up to the date of offending needs some pretty intensive support from very skilled professionals and I don't think that can be offered in a prison setting. That's not how our prisons are function or that's not what they're made up to be. The whole access to a range of skilled professionals is required, as well as education, as well as taking a child from the offence to you're actually a worthwhile individual that has a place in society. It's quite a journey to go on. It is indeed and thanks very much, I don't have any further questions. Jamie, you'd like to come back in. Thank you. Thank you. I've just got one or two other questions that struck me while you were speaking. I was quite taken by the story you shared about what Katie had said to you about what it's like inside a young offender's institution, the sort of people that are in there. I presume she was talking about women in mates rather than the general population. So this idea that the three cohorts of people, those who have been sentenced by a judge or a sheriff for making a mistake in life and presuming something quite serious would have had to have happened for that to be the custodial decision, those who seem institutionalised, if you like, the sort of patterns of re-offending because they probably feel safer and more comfortable in that type of life away from harm outside in the real world, and those who are very unwell. I presume by that, do you mean traumatised or by historic experiences of adverse experiences in life and mental health? Yes, serious and enduring mental health issues or personality disorders. It's obviously quite difficult because we don't have different institutions for different types of offences or different types of people, if you like, in that respect. It's very much a one-size-fits-all environment. It sort of goes back to my earlier question. Do you think that that is, you know, if custody has to be the solution, if that has to be the disposal that is used, is it that you could make those places better places or that there are other places that could be? Have you done any research into international models, for example, or experiences that you might want to share with us? No, not extensive research, but I'm aware of some of the Scandinavian models that seem to be working. I mean, I don't think that the prison establishment is just now can change. I mean, I just think it's fair in prison officers, for example, to be experts in mental health or experts in trauma or experts, you know, that to be that then we need to have a whole look at what prison officers are trained to be. So, you know, I think, including myself, I've given prison officers very bad press because of our experience, but, you know, as you recover in your grief and trauma and you take a step back and you look at that and you think, how can a prison officer deal with a severely mentally ill woman who's perhaps displaying challenging behaviour, you know, when actually what the response that's needed, as I've said, is expert health responses. So, I don't see how you would remodel. I think we've tried to do that within the prison set and we've tried to make it something that fits all. But, as Pauline said earlier, I think there needs to be kind of a root and branch look at, you know, trying not to fit this into this Victorian organisation, historical organisational structure that we have. That's very interesting and of course many of the, much of the prison state is very old and antiquated and not fit for purpose in that respect to do what you ask, but the other thing that struck me was this idea that it's the first three months that are really vital and key and it's not really an area we've explored. Certainly it's not necessarily in the bill as such, but it seems to me like quite a vital period of time when someone enters into custody, whether they're adult or younger. What is not happening at the moment when someone enters custody that should be happening? What could be done better to reduce the risk involved in those first three months of custody? So, the figures that gave earlier were, you know, if you look at under 25 where there was 49 deaths and 70 per cent of them happened, 70 per cent were suicides and 65 per cent were in the first three months of the sentence. Yeah, I think it's a well-established fact now that early in sentence is a risk to someone taking their own life. What's not happening? What I don't think's happening, I don't think that the current suicide prevention strategy is working. We've seen over 40 per cent increase in suicides across the prison estate since its introduction. Interestingly enough, we've also seen an increase in death rates since the NHS took over where you would think that that would be reversed took over responsibility for healthcare provision. So, there's something not working in terms of the assessment. Again, what we're trying to do is ask a prison officer who's not a trained health professional to look—it is trained in the strategy—but look for cues and clues, and I have to go back to her own experience. My daughter had lost 95 per cent of her hair, she had weight loss, she had self-harming marks, she was severely distressed. I think that was a lot of cues and clues, and she was locked up and she took her own life. There is something about—it's more than cues and clues. Evidence and suicide—I'm not a suicidologist, but I have read a lot of articles and research on suicide for obvious reasons. Lots of people who are intent suicide will say, I am not suicidal. The final thing is that we've talked a lot on this committee about the differences between those who are held on remand versus those who are convicted. I do appreciate that there's a legal difference in being in those two different states, but it clearly comes with very differing approaches to what they have access to, what their rights are, what can and cannot be asked of them or offered to them. Does that need to change as well? Absolutely. I think that even taking it back a step to the actual court process, as the centre of the guidelines are attempting to do, again, in our own personal experience, there were no victim issues. The victim's parents in Katie's case wrote to the sheriff and requested a non-custodial sentence, and yet there is something about the power of the judiciary in Scotland. Thank you very much. Linda, thank you very much for coming along to today's meeting. We appreciate your time. I'm now going to ask for a short suspension while we change over our witnesses. I welcome to our meeting Mr Jim Shields, service manager and Professor Lorraine Johnson, consultant forensic and clinical psychologist at St Mary's Kenyer Secure Care Centre, Wendy Sinclair-Geeben, HM chief inspector of prisons for Scotland, Gerald Michie, governor at His Majesty's Young Offenders Institution, Polmont and Sue Brooks, interim director for strategy and stakeholder engagement with the Scottish Prison Service, Alison Bavage, national director of the Scottish Association of Social Work. I warm welcome to you all. I intend allowing about an hour for this session, so up front can I ask for as succinct questions and responses as possible, so that we can get as many questions in. I will just move directly to questions and I wonder if I can just open up with a general question and I'm going to try to come to each of you. I wonder if you can just give a brief overview from your organisation's perspective on what your view is on the provisions in the bill, which set the cut-off point at under 18 for children who are entering the criminal justice system and whether that is appropriate. I'm going to come from my left to right and I'll start with Sue. The Scottish Prison Service supports the provisions of the bill. I was a previous governor in Polmont, and I'm sure Gerry will echo that, but working with children in a custodial setting is not the best environment. You want to do something that is age-appropriate, and so our clear view is that 16 and 17-year-olds are best managed in a different setting. Just to repeat that, we fully endorse the bill, the ambition of the promise that no 16 and 17-year-old child should be in our care. I think that it is absolutely morally the right thing to do. I endorse the principles of the bills, but I would also expand that 18 is a rather arbitrary cut-off and we do know that the development of the brain continues far and beyond that. We also know that the cohort of young people who will enter into the justice system have significant language deficits, cognitive limitations and neurological difficulties, too. That chronological age is very different from the developmental age. When we talk about 18, in reality a lot of our children will present in a much younger way. Similarly, when you think post-18 into 19, 20, 21, we will not see adults as we might have a stereotype or a prototypical view of what an adult will look like. It is a phenomenally good first step, but it is definitely not the finished article and I hope that it is just the building blocks. I concur that it is a welcome progression. We are definitely moving in the right direction. We are not yet aligned with the sentencing guidelines. We are looking at a chronological age when we should really be focusing on the research and what we are understanding now about the developmental age of a child and the vulnerabilities that come with that. To answer your question directly, it is a welcome progression. Likewise, I welcome the bill in line with so much of what Scotland is trying to do for its young people. I completely agree that this is a naughty problem. I listened to the previous panel trying to get definite answers to what are really naughty issues around development age seriousness. For that reason, we want to really think about brain development, what we know and neurological development, and the experiences of young people who come through the justice system. It is children who come into conflict with the law. It is a symptom, as Kilbrandon said so long ago. It is a symptom of things that usually have gone far wrong, adverse child traumatic experiences. How do we, as a nation, move that forward into something much more progressive? That is welcome. There are questions. We will come to you later, particularly about resourcing and implementation, but absolutely in support of direction travel. I wish I could be so succinct. I could quite happily say yes, I agree with all of them. As you know, we produced a proposal some time ago that made exactly this. Age 18 is a first step, and I think that, as a first step, Scotland is to be applauded for looking at that. I think that that is really important. I would like to look in future years at an individualised approach where you have someone who is 23 with a mental age of nine, it would be inappropriate to be in an adult prison. If you have a 17-year-old that has done a serious and heinous offence and is clearly very mature, perhaps an adult prison is more appropriate. I would like to see that possibility built in, if you could. I think that, for me, the important thing, because we are a rights-based organisation, is that you are meeting, by doing this, the UNCRC article 1. Hold on to that. That is the justification. Thank you. Fairly good start. Broadly welcoming, but with some caveats that would appear. On that note, I am just going to move straight to members, and I will bring in Collette. Thanks, convener. Good morning to all of you. I want to touch upon your role in the agreement about not having young people in young offenders institutes or adult prisons, which is good to hear. I want to touch upon secure accommodation and the definition of secure accommodation. Why is it that you feel that it is better than putting somebody into a young offender's institute? Are they secure? What should they ideally look like? Pauline Iloody, in our earlier session, said that there is not enough of them. Where will I start? Sorry, there are six people to choose from. I do not know if anyone has a strong enough opinion that they want to come in on that. Perhaps I should start from our perspective. Prison services travel some distance in terms of trying to become more trauma-informed in providing more training for our staff, but we fundamentally take the views that, as Wendy said, the issue really is one about children's rights and that taking decisions is about the best interest of the child and the right thing to do. Prisons, by the very nature, are custodial environments. They are not purpose-built, certainly for that age group. They can be quite busy places. The staff to young people ratio in secure units is much higher. There is far greater depth of skills base around things like child development and attachment. For those reasons, we think that it is more appropriate. I do not know what Jerry wants to add to that. We were downstairs a little while ago and a very similar question came up. We talked about the physical environment of a prison. Prisons, by the very nature, are incredibly large establishments. Pullment itself has a design capacity of around 800. They are large cellular halls. Today, there are seven children in our care in Scottish prisons. Five young men, they are in a half a gallery, 44 single cells. They have young offenders below them and above them. Prisons can be quite noisy, busy places, etc. In terms of the environment, we try to do our best to soften the environment in which we keep the young men. Five young men and two young women in the prison setting, but they are, by definition, much bigger and busier. You can see a child in a Scottish prison. They are not difficult to identify. Jim and Lillian, on the secure care perspective. The secure care exists to care for children. That is not to say that prison guards do not care, but their primary role is to provide care and protection. The vulnerability for young people in secure care broadens beyond the criminogenic need, which we are mainly discussing today, but we support children with their welfare needs. The demographic of young people in secure care broadens at both ends, so we are broadening it by looking at the 16 or 17-year-olds, possibly going on to 19, and we are seeing traumatised children as young as 12. That is where the skill set lies and the environment that we respond to. Secure care, as it is just now, is an advantage of why we are prepared for the young people who are coming through and familiar with them. However, there is still a journey for it to go. If we are going to work with the critical, critical view around the vulnerabilities and risk management, then we need support to do that, but we are best placed in that we work in smaller environments, in line with the promise and what is expected from the promise. We adopt a residential care approach and a family-type environment within the constraints that is definitely focused on care. However, we recognise that we are the earth for risk management and the safety of the young people there, but then the broader safety of the community. There is a broad responsibility on secure care, and it is just about to broaden. I will try and be succinct, but I have to be honest and say that I have probably spent 20 years thinking about an answer to that question. Secure care definitely has the potential to do something transformational for children, but you need to have the right physical environment, you need to have the right relational environment, and you need to have procedures that are trauma informed, child informed and family informed. For me, the vision is not really that complex. You have a purpose-built facility that resembles a community resource, its house, its small units, it has a kitchen, it has a sitting room, it has a bathroom, it has access to, you know, within the perimeter fence, so to speak, access to education and socialisation opportunities. You normalise that as much as possible, because I think in contrast to a prison setting, we often remove the opportunity to build the skills that we require people to reduce recidivism rates, so to speak. You have that, but absolutely critical, your staffing, their skills, their knowledge is absolutely critical. I think that front end, as I was listening to the previous session, you have individualised assessments and formulations. Now that incorporates risk, and you work with the risk, you tolerate the risks, the complexity of the risks, but across time, when you do assessments in these children, you do tend to find three or four pretty common trajectories. So you have the children who have lots of adverse childhood experiences, you have children with really complex neurodevelopmental profiles, but they're not quite at the threshold to get into health services, or their social circumstances don't allow it to move around the country. You have delinquency-type profiles, you know, through virtue of socialisation, maybe coming from criminogenic families, so that's a pathway. And you also have the critical few, which I would articulate are your unusual presentations, low base rate but major impact, the ones that define your case law thereafter. So coming into secure care, you need to have an environment that is healthy and conducive to child development, you need to have opportunities that promote socialisation, but you absolutely must have skilled staff that can recognise what trajectory the kid is on and wax and wane to meet that need. So big assessments and formulations, and I don't mean by any stretch of the imagination, time intensive, because we do ours within a fortnight, which, and you know, I have a background in health service, worked in CAMHS for many years. We are lean, because we know we need to get it right. You have a small wind of opportunity with these kids to engage them. They'll work out quickly if you're in group or out group, you know, test you. So you work really intensively, get as good an understanding as you can, work out what their needs are, get them on board and deliver. But, you know, there's an approach in England called the secure stairs approach, and one of the straplines is every interaction matters, and it is from the smile that you give the young person into the door, it's how you react to them when they're high risk, it's how you recognise them when they're distressed, or when they're just being teenagers and they're pushing the limits. So my view spent most of my care thinking about that question. I think it's absolutely achievable. I do think it can produce good outcomes, but there is a real reality about investment and resourcing, and also seeing it as a part of a pathway, because secure care gets maligned quite a lot with a necessary evil, I would say. I'd be happy for my role to become obsolete, but it's part of a necessary pathway. So, with that in mind, there are lots of principles, research, evidence, experience across our own country and the world that we can draw on, I think, to make something quite transformational. Can I quickly just come in on what you've just said there? Thank you, convener. It's just that, you know, obviously my next question was going to be anyway, was about, you know, preparing the young person and you've seen that trajectory and pathway as well. Do you think, then, that we would be setting them back in terms of the transition, depending on their sentence, and, obviously, in the disposal they've got, setting them back by putting them in a young offenders institute as they go through their sentence? Possibly. I think Wendy's comment is absolutely right. We need to individualise care planning. The ideal would be that we would have a suite of resources that could meet the need from the first formulation and the individualised need going forward. I can tell you, being professionally, there is nothing more frustrating than getting through two thirds of a care plan and somebody being moved to some other organisation. With the best will in the world, the transition isn't it? In the reality of working with young people in secure care, you might literally have to play connect four with them for four months before they'll speak to you. And then they're brave enough to speak to you and two months later they're moved. So, if there was a way to envisage a future where it was a needs-led care plan suite of options, some young people do need to go into the criminal justice system. It is the right place for them. Some people need much more bespoke, low sensory, you know, high support interventions. Some people need trauma-informed places where they can heal and recover as their brain allows that to happen. So, I would absolutely agree. There's a lot to cover. I wonder if I can maybe just in the spirit of timekeeping maybe just bring Wendy in on that? I mean, for me, there's a primary consideration which is the victim, the victim of the offence, okay? And I'm not arguing that children aren't victims, they often are, in fact frequently are. But at the end of the day that person's going to be released back into the community and what you want to do is reduce the risk of that person going back into the community. That's the primary consideration. If you look at the difference between how prisons are funded and resourced, so prison staff have about 12 weeks training and then extra bits added on, staff in secure care have full social work training and have to be accredited by the general teaching council or the social services council. Big difference. Prisons are inspected once every four years. Secure care is inspected every year. The staff-child ratios are completely different. They are so much more in favour of secure care. So, in terms of straight facts, you've got the human rights pathways, you've got the standards, all of those wonderful things which they share, but in straight facts, are you more likely to reduce the risk if you are concentrating intensely on that child at the early stage of their offending, even if it's a serious offence? Or are you more likely to do that in a prison? And I think the answer is clear. Secure care offers that opportunity. Thank you. I'll bring in Pauline and then Russell. Thank you very much. Good morning. So, I'm interested to explore the question that some of you said that it's a good first step. So, implying that we should go beyond 18 in this, as you might have heard earlier. This is what I'm struggling with. So, I'm open minded about that, but I'm struggling with understanding how we'd organised the estate. So, does it imply then, because Kate Wallace came back to me and said, well, you don't want to reinvent a young offenders institution if you do. But I prefer to join someone when you're talking about children, and that's why we're doing this, because we are signed up to the conventions and the rights of the child, which is a child to 18, but you're not a child between the ages of 21. No, not withstanding, don't need to come back at me, but I understand all the research about a brain data up to 25, which has implications for lots of policy areas. But if we were to extend it beyond 18, I'm wondering then how we can do it in the current configuration, and does that in effect then argue for the abolition of, or at least if you went up to 25? The abolition of a young offenders institution. I don't know if the prison service wants to start. I think that there are a number of interests and issues about how you manage transitions and maybe some factual information first. I think one of the important things to know is that the children who come into us at the minute are very often quite close to their 18th birthday, and the majority of them in any event are on remand. We certainly echo the issues that people have raised about the background of abuse and trauma and victimisation that they have experienced. Of the children who come in, many of them, of the very small number, they have committed really quite serious offences because happily lots of other alternatives have been explored before they get to us. They have committed quite serious offences. It's absolutely right that children should be in a secure unit setting, an appropriate, an age-appropriate setting, but at the minute, the pathway would still bring them into us at some appropriate point. That's why we think it's quite important that the age range within the bill allows flexibility around that. So your position is that you're content with the bill as it is? You wouldn't go beyond 18, which is what I'm saying. No, I was going to come on to that. We do think that it's really important that there is flexibility because maturity is quite different at different ages. My own view is that you can see exactly the same issues for the children reflected in the slightly older population, certainly in age 18 to 21, and that's partly why we also keep some of those up to age 23 in Paulman. In recent years—I know that you know this—we have done some really fabulous work with the women's population in engaging in a discussion around what a different model of custody in that instance would be. That has led to some really innovative work and, indeed, the opening of HM Prison Stirling in the summer and the community custody units. I suppose that I don't have a specific view, either, except to say that I would agree with Wendy and others that there is room for a discussion around what that would mean based on the evidence. I think that the 18 to 21-year-olds have a very similar background, and many of them have been in care. They've got all sorts of difficulties. Yes, but they're not children, and this is what—I'm only pinpointing this—they're not children on the whole basis of the bill. I don't want to sound like I'm against this, but I just want clarity. We're not talking about children. If we support a different policy, I just want to be clear. I think that's why your position is that there are obviously balance of rights issues between people who offend and victims. I understand that, and I understand the definition of a child versus an adult. I'm not necessarily saying that the model should be continuation in secure care, but what I am saying is that I think that there is space for a discussion around the needs of the older age group that we could engage around together. I think that we have to start somewhere, and we have to take a pragmatic decision at some points. I think that 18 is in line with the UNCRC, but I would completely echo that, just as long as we just don't think that that's assorted. There's another cohort, and I think that 18 to 21-year-old cohort is particularly vulnerable. Very often, that's when children are born, pregnancy starts, the way that age. There's lots of risks there, and it should just be part of a pathway that's much more sensitive to people's developmental stage. I share that opinion. It is part of a pathway that you need to draw a line somewhere, but the 18 to 21 is a vulnerable group. There's an increased level of offending that there are other discussions that we have to have around it, and some of those discussions have existed within the sentencing guidelines, and those discussions then need to continue around assessment prior to sentencing, assessment during sentencing remand periods, such as the formulation model, and assessment around transitions. The discussions exist, but they need to be broader, but I do think that we need to have a line somewhere with it for the purpose of law. I think one of the most obvious issues around this, and let's get back to the resources, is how much we spend on people in prison and how much secure care costs, and we've heard some of the really good reasons for this. Then what we have by having any age limit is a cliff edge, and that's partly the way that we arrange our prisons you heard from Linda this morning and from people on this panel, which is that prison is not a therapeutic environment, it's a custodial environment. There's been work done on health and social care in prisons, and one of the big gaps that we know that there is in prison is the capacity for anybody in prison to have the same kind of social care and social work assessment, adult social support assessment, as people in the community. There are options here in terms of how we smooth the transitions by not having these hard edges, but by also looking about what comes next. If we could get the support more effectively into prisons for adults, not only would we do what Wendy is talking about, which is about assure victims that people who go into custodial environments will return to the community, hopefully in a better place than when they left, which they don't at the moment. Let's be very clear about that. Our through care is not strong enough, is not supportive enough, and is not well resolved enough. We have to think about the whole system and the custodial lifespan, if you like. We have to, as people are talking about, make sure that transitions are smooth, that we do careful and minimal transitions. One of the words that nobody has said yet about secure care is about our brains, particularly when we're young, but all the way through our lives need nurture and need love, if they are to repair, improve, become secure, become attached, able to have relationships, able to manage difficult events in our lives in a way that doesn't harm our mental health or where we need to resort to substances. I suppose that that's my message, is that whatever cut-off we have, we also have to think about what comes next, how we reduce those transitions, how we take a really social model, which is what secure care is trying to do. It looks at the person, but doesn't just look at what they've done, it looks at beyond them, it looks at their family, their education, their hopes, their aspirations, their talent, how they're spending their days. That's what makes it different, but I would really like, on behalf of the Cabinet, I suppose the promise to talk about love and attachment and relationships through this, and not having that hard edge, and at this things we can do. Thank you very much. I just think it's a brilliant first step that we get, let's get legislation with the European Convention on getting under 18s out of prison, and let's look at transitions and look at individualising it a bit afterwards. I just think that, when this is for that answer, I think I have got some clarity there that it's a discussion we need to have, but there's a lot of things we need to work out, which is the transition and flexibility, because I know that up to the age of 19 you have some flexibility, and I think that was helpful to know that in Poland you've got some flexibility there beyond age of 21. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bringing in Russell, followed by Rona. Thank you. Now this may be a fairly obvious question, but in terms of secure accommodation, what is the current provision in Scotland? Is it just St Mary's or are there a number of facilities? 84 beds across Scotland. There's four charitable run, secure centres, and one in Edinburgh, a six bedded, and that's run by the local authority. St Mary's is the largest of the... St Mary's is capacity for 24 children. Another thing about secure accommodation is what restrictions are there on those who you're caring for? Can individuals leave at any point? No, the progression, there's three different ways children are secured, so they can be secured through the corp while that be through room and or sentencing. They can be detained through the children's hearing, and that gives a responsibility and onus on the local authority, or they can be cross-border, which I know is a discussion that exists around the bill. Children can work towards what's traditionally described as mobility, but the actual day-to-day care is within the secure environment. They are detained, it's a locked campus at night, it's locked doors, but when we speak about a trauma-informed environment, we understand there's traumatising aspects of it as well, if it's very much detention for young people. One thing we hear from the police quite frequently is high numbers of children absconding from facilities like this. Is that a particular problem or not? You'll hear about it, so we're involved in a programme called the Respect programme that's talking about children who abscond from care arrangements. That's not necessarily reflective in secure care. I, in my time in secure care, have not known anybody to abscond from the secure campus. We may have somebody try to abscond on a transition where that would be a hospital visit, or leaving or coming to secure care, but it will be worth it. Our security or environmental security requires improvement and it requires resources. We're a 23, 24-year-old service and we need to create and improve the environmental safety for young people, particularly with intention of the bill. However, absconding isn't a, for a better expression, breaking out of secure is not a common situation. It doesn't happen regularly, and I know it doesn't happen regularly across other centres either. There was also evidence from St Mary's about a lack of funding. I think the quote was, it's uncertain, underfunded and largely undermined, that being provision of secure care. There's a very simple start here, where you're looking about to move from a prison service or that's funded, essentially a government funded, to someone that's a charity that requires veds to be full to maintain the level of service. There's a precarious resource on issue around secure care. If this bill comes to pass, you expect more people to be in your, using your service. Yes. Yeah, and you've projected what that might look like in the funding that will be required, and that needs to be funded by a Government. There needs to be some today, so I'm learning the way you like to add to that. So we currently operate what's referred to as a bed rate, so there's an amount allocated to us from Scottish Exile, and that's our bed rate, that's what we get per child, so to speak. And in order for the facility to become viable, we have to have a percentage occupancy to enable it to become viable, because obviously we need to have staff for X number of children, we have to have staff for X number of resource, so if you fall below your occupancy, your organisation starts to run in deficit. So we have had, it waxes in veins, obviously. However, more recently, and I think you've heard it from others, that there has been cross-border placements. We have relied on cross-border placements at time to ensure the financial sustainability of the resource, so that we can then meet the needs of our Scottish children, too. What is possible, the principles, that you need to invest in the buildings? We want trauma in foreign security, but we don't want cameras in children's dining rooms or bedrooms. You know, it has to be discreet, these things cost money, but we also need to have highly trained staff, we need to recruit staff, retain staff, and the current bed rate just doesn't really allow that to happen. Because the written evidence was that the authorities elsewhere in the UK are willing to pay more than the separate in Scotland. So, again, this is just a pure anecdote, but we have a lot of success within a particular local authority in England. You know, crime changes, children are criminally exploited, sometimes we need to interrupt gang affiliations, so coming to Scotland is a good option for them, and we've delivered well for them. They pay significantly more for a bed than Scottish local authorities, and we are one of their preferred providers now because of the work that we do. Roughly percentage terms, how much more would they be paying? You're looking at at least 35% of an uplift from English providers from what the Scotland Excel rate is. Right, so that obviously, whatever happens with this bill, that needs to be looked at? Yeah, that certainly needs to be looked at, and it also gives us, with the cross-border arrangement, it means that we can be more bespoke and more assessment led, because we can be determining the level of need and support and the staff that we are required, the staff and resource that is required to meet the individual need and risk. We don't have that luxury within the Scottish arrangement. Can I just say as well that one other thing that's really important piece of learning from the English cases is we generally agree a care plan, so sometimes those care plans will be nine months, and they are not really interrupted, so we get to start and finish the job. So to speak, that's not always the case with our local authorities in Scotland. That's interesting, thank you. I've got a question for a couple of questions for Alison. One of them is an extension on what you referred to a moment ago about exploitation of young people. In the proposal, there's a suggestion that anyone aged 16 plus in police custody can nominate another adult other than the parent to be notified of their situation. I just wonder if there's any consideration being given to the risk to vulnerable children in that situation that they could be contacting people who are exploiting them, whether it be organised crime or others? Again, I think that that is one of the issues that needs to be worked through. That's an issue with vulnerable adults, you know, adults beyond 18. We do need to give children opportunities to have some control, however, I think that with good support from the police and good relationships with local social work departments, I think that there are definitely risks, but all these things need to be balanced quite carefully. Thank you. Final question, if that's okay. Earlier on, Victim Support Scotland talked about children who are harmed by other children having no right to any information whatsoever. It seems to be a complete vacuum of information. Your members will represent or assist families on both sides of these particular scenarios. Should the bill address this, and if so, what should it do? A lot more transparency around children's hearings or what? It depends on what we mean by transparency. Does that mean greater understanding of how the systems work and some sort of light or looking at the type of information that victims receive? It's very clear from what Kate was saying earlier today, Kate Wallace, that there is a significant gap for people who have had crimes committed against them by children. This is the balance of people's rights. Again, this is where it gets knotty. Depending on the situation of whether it's the young person who's a victim or the young person who's perpetrated a crime, the balance of both of those needs and the safety of those people to grow up with as much anonymity and psychological safety as we can give them is absolutely important. It will be interesting to look across the border and see what's happening in the children's courts in England as things open up in terms of reporting a bit more on how that's being managed. I'm afraid I'm not able to give you a lot of detail on that, but it's something that maybe we should look at and look at other models where there is a level of greater transparency and greater perhaps understanding in the general public how things work for children. It's not that children are getting off, if you like. That's the wrong way of putting it. We need to reframe in terms of how services are supporting children, both who've been victims and who have committed crimes to live safe and positive lives in the future. Before I bring in Rona, I'd just like to let members and witnesses know that I can extend the session. We're covering a lot of important ground, and I'm very keen that as many questions and responses can take place. On that basis, assuming that our witnesses are able to stay a little bit longer if required, then I will extend the session. If needs be, we'll reschedule our final agenda item to just after Easter recess. I take it that that is acceptable for you, perfect. On that basis, I'll bring in Rona Mackay and then Jamie. Thanks, convener. Good morning, panel. I'd like to address my questions to Jim and Lorraine specifically, just to say that St Mary's is in my constituency, and I've visited it many times over the past seven years and I'm always impressed by the ethos and the caring aspect of it. I think that the work that's done there is fantastic. That said, can I ask both of you if you think it is a place for serious young offenders who have committed very serious crimes? Can I have your response to that? Yes, I do. I think that it has the potential. I think that there is a reality check around what that might look like. Some young people come to us with terrible index offences or offences, but actually they're very easy to manage because it's a sort of criminogenic need, it's a cultural need, it's an offence that happens when they're with peers and intoxicated and none of these things really present themselves in the secure estate. So in general terms for most young people who present serious risk, yes. There are however the exceptional cases and I think that's where some thinking needs to happen. So cases maybe involved involving a child murderer or something really unusual but very very concerning and there you have a different type of risk that presents to you because some of the young people will take great umbridge at that other person too. So you actually introduce a whole new set of risks to managing the secure unit. So just some of the thinking we've had around that is that so you get these rare cases of really low, low frequency but high impact and you also get some young people who are incredibly distressed, so I call that the acute risk. So they're very maybe suicidal, really dysregulated and they need a real period of stabilisation. So within the campus we've certainly spoken about um you probably do need a space that maybe allows for that young person to be there for a period of weeks to get the relation of security to get them stabilised and then really think about how you would reintegrate. So you know we would need some physical modifications to enable that to happen but I think again it's about care planning, it's not about defining a care plan by the defence they committed, that's maybe the top line but then bringing them in the showcase what are your risks, what are your vulnerabilities, what is the risk to you here as well and managing that. And I think with some environmental restructuring and some training for our staff we would be well positioned to balance that tension, that's interesting yeah and as you see it is very rare but it would just be for I think Kate Wallace had intimated some concerns about that but Jim do you have anything to say? You know we are familiar with working with young people who have committed the most serious offences and as Lorraine said these are not necessarily young people that are most difficult to manage. So yes you know secure care is the environment and it can be the environment to do that. Where you have the where you need the professionalism and the input is the harm they can have on the therapeutic environment for the other young people. When you spoke about the broad demographic of young people in secure care and there is cross-contamination so you create a vulnerability, cross-contamination of vulnerabilities what we are needing is to that can be resolved through vigilance and good care and professionalism what we'd be wanting as an outcome of the bill is to increase the pressurisation of secure care to give it the status that the critical few merit. Do you know that they have the status and the ability to deliver that care in the environmental safety and the professional approach. I think it builds on the previous panel too so we do have psychology in very considerable access and comparison to what you might get in the community and for some of our high-risk people they will have a one or two sessions a day. I don't mean an hour, I mean there will be a really intensive co-regulation modelling to them, modelling to the staff and that is the type of resource that you require so there's the environmental part but really people really child informed specialists but also that no risk as well and having access to that really intensive at the front where you understand them and then regulate them back in to normalisation but we would need a facility to manage that really acute anti-risk. What's the average length of time that a child would spend in your secure care? It varies and as I mentioned there's three methods for your three journeys that young people can take to come into secure care and we do have such a broad variation of need. There's young people who will need care well beyond secure care you know and what we're doing is formulating support and creating safety and stabilisation and making that a shorter journey by supporting the people who are going to take them take the care into the community. There's other young people that need a much more intensive level of support over a longer period of time and then we've got to talk of community safety. You know there's young people who have a criminogenic need or are there are others and they require that level of supervision that perhaps only secure can offer or why you why actually. I think some people it's my point about secure care being maligned and it probably should be in lots of ways but we have young people who just do not want to leave us they absolutely don't want to leave. Do they become dependent? Well yes because it's the first time that they've had an environment where they're safe an environment where there's predictability where their love they're nurtured they're educated and we have had young people very clearly say to us as soon as I go out you know I won't be out for long or I'll see you on Friday you know and you know that they're going off and they will they'll either put themselves at risk or they will cause harm and they will come back to us. I think we've got one young person in their third admission with us. To add kind of not both outwards case specific this was previously referred to as institutionalised but as young people establishing a core belief this is the only environment that can keep them safe and what we you know through assessment intervention what we need to do is shift in the notion that it's bricks and mortar it keeps them safe but it's people and relationships and believing in their assessment and believing in their understanding and that takes you know that that takes a very skilled workforce and a lot of trust to develop that and go back to the points Alison made as well. I repeat I can only see skill and care whenever I've visited it's quite astonishing. Just finally just if I could go back to the cross border issue and the issue of capacity and finance etc is it the case that there are some young people in Scotland who can't get a place because of your need to take in cross border for financial reasons? Not currently. Has it been the case in the past? I understand it has been the case in the past we do have the pilot with the Scottish Government just now for the purchase of the last bed that has been it's only three months in practice it's been hugely successful the impact of that means all our recent admissions and I'm looking over the three-month period I think with the exception of one have been Scottish so then. Sorry could you explain what purchase of the last bed means? So the Scottish Government have an agreement with the four I'm not sure where it stands with Edinburgh but the four secure private centres that the last bed is purchased so that's available for a Scottish bed for a young person who requires secure care whether that's coming from you know the court or whether it's coming from the children's hearing or initially social work authorisation that that bed should be available across you know there should be four beds sitting across the centres however we're now at capacity so our last bed is no longer available I think you can predict we may be coming back to a point of saturation possibly we're seeing an increase in youth offending we're seeing a fallout of Covid you know we've got a cohort of young people who have missed universal services have missed the opportunities socialisation so that would indicate we're going to get spiked in what would be delinquent behaviour and social behaviours and we're also seeing a a surge in soft criminal exploitation sexual exploitation and in the time it takes us to get a handle on this as a as a country and as a response we can expect there'll be an increased need for secure care as a result. Thank you. Thanks, convener. Can I maybe just pick up on a point that you made early on, Llorian, in your response which was basically that secure care centres potentially could accommodate serious young offenders but that would need restructuring and training so are you aware if there has been or have you had any engagement with the Scottish Government around the potential or what would be necessary in terms of the additional resources required for that? We hosted a meeting so we've had discussions around it but we certainly haven't put together a very well thought out detailed proposal which I think would be so just to clarify what I would say is we can manage core delinquency that is what we do is not an issue the additional additionality would be for the low base rate high impact crimes that hit the media and you know they're very emotive and also you're really really high acute risk or I think we are actually very good at managing acute risk so there's additional training around the criminogenic risk need and the tension of balancing risk with children you know some people struggle to see a child as risky and then other philosophies will see the risk so there's just a bit of work to be done to bring people into the centre to hold the risk in mind work with the child but don't get pulled in either way so that's quite a common dynamic that you see across closed settings so you just seemed a bit of training but we did we have communicated this to the government and I think it would be really helpful to sit down and look at what that would look like. Thank you. Jamie Okay I'm going to start with Gerald if you don't mind so you made a comment earlier you said there are seven children in your prison estate, how do you define children? 16 and 17 year old so that's two females and five male young men in the estate at this moment in time that one English and that was a young man who committed an offence in Scotland was bailed but he has an English recall so he's waiting to be transferred back down to the English estate and we currently have one of the females HMP Grampian can legally hold female children so there's one female in Grampian all of the people in my care at this moment have came into custody since the 3rd of January and the last one came in on the 23rd of March there are four 18 birthdays in the next half a dozen weeks so when they go through their 18th birthday they will actually transition into the Y-O-I part of the establishment from which part of the establishment? So we keep young men in terms of the residential and sleeping accommodation separate for the rest of the Y-O populations so children sleep in different accommodation from the young offenders. So here's my question then of the 84 beds of secure accommodation which are designed to cater for under the existing legislation 16 and 17 year olds how many of those beds are available or were available at the time that people were placed into poem and I'm trying to understand why you have people all of the ones that young people can arrive at us two ways so there's the 16 and 17 year olds who transition from secure to the prison estate and that is a really well planned well orchestrated supportive journey between the secure providers herself often we have up to six months to plan and that will include site visits and personal officer visits in relationship building as we move across we we don't take children from the hearing system we'll take children from the criminal justice system and they often come to us unannounced at very short notice and the majority are on remand okay so none of the people that you have in poem on are there as a result of lack of capacity and secure accommodation I don't know the answer to that who made the decision to put them in poem on the sheriff does the sheriff assign people to specific institutions or just remand or hold them in custody and then it's up who makes the decision as to where people go effectively so yes poem is the national holding facility for young offenders and male children in Scotland right and female young offenders and female a female child would normally go to HMP cotton vale and they will go to the new HMP sterling but grampian can legally also hold for the distance in terms of north east of Scotland grampian can also hold a female child okay but you don't think you should be there in the prison estate no I think we all agree the prison service agrees with the ambition of the bill right but the problem is if if the bill was passed tomorrow we couldn't move those people to secure accommodation because there's no capacity capacity has been used up by people from other local authorities in other parts of the UK who are paying more therefore there would need to be a pretty substantial change to secure accommodation to accommodate that direction of travel no there is capacity okay right so you could accommodate a fairly substantive change to how and where people are placed immediately yeah yes there's vacancies so there's a website website that on a daily basis updates the number of beds if you like that are available across the secure estate so yeah there's currently vacancies there's about 11 at the moment the last look that we have but I think you're hitting on a really important point which is capacity and that that because there is a wider system where we cannot necessarily plan for or articulate what future demand is actually going to be and there are so many decision points in the variety of systems that one of the things if this this bill is to work and we all want it to we definitely the right direction is is making sure that not only is there capacity in the insecure estate because what happens I mean one of my questions is so what happens if that's full up yeah you know where where will where will young people end up and that's one of the questions that we need to think about but also beyond that because within if you have and you'll have heard from other people more people coming through the hearing systems more people having social services social work and social care support for much longer there is a there is a big capacity issue here I sit on the board of social work scotland I know in that that their response to to the care and justice bill is that we probably need around 176 social workers now that's no small amount when you have the pressure on on a workforce that is really struggling to recruit and retain at the moment that is already working crisis management you know and what what happens and what happens to the preventive supportive book that we all need no needs to happen to hopefully prevent people coming into secure so there I mean you know to use the whole systems approach as a kind of a program methodology rather than a particular piece of work is we need to we need to look at all the steps within this bill that is is quite rightly pushing pushing children to community services absolutely the right thing to do but if we're to hold them and support them and their families in keeping with UNCRC and the promise and the rest of it there is a significant amount resourcing for social work and social care and for local authorities and and capacity for the residential and secure systems I guess what I'm trying to get my head out I really appreciate your feedback there and I think all of that will be noted when we look at perhaps the financial memorandum around the legislation and its implications but and you may have picked this up for my the previous panel is trying to get my head around what you think the role of young offenders institutions are in Scotland and certainly if we if there's a general agreement it's not the place for 16 and 17 year olds and perhaps even older depending on the direction of travel of this bill then what type of people ought to be held in y OIs in Scotland is it around age is it around the nature of the offence is it around their perceived risk to the public or victims I mean it's quite hard to get your head around what sort of environment it should be and I guess that that's maybe a question for government because they are the people who ultimately control what what institutions are around but can I just I know that Sue you're wanting to come in so I don't know if you want to roll into Jamie's follow-up question north yeah it's so before that just on the issue about kind of numbers and variability maybe just a couple of things that might might help and then I'll come on to to the other issue that you're asked so the the kind of statistical average really for for young people 16 17 year olds with us is around about 14 although it has year on year gone down and at the minute Australia is saying we have we have only seven in terms of throughput though annually it's around about 60 young people who kind of experience that and that kind of custodial environment and there is some variability so you know from time to time we might have no girls and maybe only two boys and then at other times you know you're up to seven eight nine in fact post January I think we were up to about 12 or so yeah so there would so secure although there is overall kind of capacity would need to be able to manage those variability issues or something I think to think about in terms of the the kind of issue about what is prison for and I suppose going back to some of the discussions about the 18 to 21 year olds I mean you know as I said earlier that we have gone for a new model of custody for women and that was informed by a very comprehensive evidence base and a broad consultation with you know lots of people specialists from across different sectors in order to inform that so I don't I don't think there's an easy answer to exactly what that would look like for the slightly older age group and and as people have rightly identified there are competing rights issues and so I suppose it's back to that issue about we'd need to stand back create a space in which that discussion could take place based on the evidence and I do think a couple of other folk have commented on the fact that you know that's a in many respects it's a system issue it's not just a prisons issue so we would need to take account of lots of different perspectives in order to get to a position about what is most effective what is most appropriate and what balance is the rights and I don't know if that helps. It does thank you very much Gerald that you obviously spend your day and day out in in this environment and will have a lot of experience as to the the types of people coming in and under your care you may have heard the feedback from a previous witness about what she thought the different cohorts of people were is it your experience that you believe that the young friends young friends institution as an environment is the right place for the types of people that are being placed in into custody there or is it simply that you'd like to be able to do more incentives but are perhaps restricted by either people's you know it's legal status for example. Yeah, the Scottish Prison Service are contracted with anybody committed by the courts coming to our care and I think that at time to have a very difficult and challenging journey with some of those people the previous panel very emotive regarding their personal experience and undoubtedly we have a number of women in our care in particular that are extremely unwell whether that's physical or mental health issues and our providers in terms of NHS mental health services etc we do the absolute best that we can the women's environments actually can tend to be more traumatic noisier more difficult than some of the male environments and that can be quite distressing for people coming in to the custody for the very first time young men are very active they're they're quite loud they're quite boisterous etc so prisons have quite a buzz about it it's really quite interesting because a lot of the people who transition to us from secure are ready and able to make that journey in fact some of them see it as a natural stepping stone in their life journey etc but often in secure care providers will experience it we can receive admissions at 8 o'clock at 10 o'clock at 2 o'clock in the morning while a young person committed on a warrant and our job is absolutely for the next 24 40 72 hours to keep them safe to keep them well to see their immediate needs and that's incredibly difficult for us and we lose people in terms of they go back out a four week and even make a dent i think colleagues had said that the we could numerous overnighters arriving at five is six at night and going back to quote the next morning i did some number crunching just yesterday and i think apart from one young person who spent seven months and eight days with us the average time was 11 days in how much we can impact on that person immediate needs a care plan safety security family contact physical health nutrition are what we concentrate on yep it's obviously been quite a lot of criticism and i don't think it's all direct to necessarily the individuals who work in terms of the prison officers we know the huge amount of pressure and stress they're all under but nonetheless there are some start statistics around suicides amongst young people in custody do you have a view on that is that something that is preventable is it something that is inevitable or is it indeed something that you think could be improved but would require a huge amount of further investment and resource any death in our care is absolutely tragic we should attempt as an organisation in the society to prevent any death in custody the expert review mental health that happened a couple of years ago we have worked behind the scenes with the chief inspector's office CYCJ we're developing new strategies et cetera to support those in our care we are looking at laryne and Jim talked about training staff so you know we train prison officers and then dependent on the population of the work we're working with young people we've got specific young people in custody training women in custody training training trauma informed training from the chief executive of the organisation right down to our support staff mental health first aid and even a trauma informed approach to laying hands on we we don't search now in terms of laying physical hands on we have the ability to to bring people into the establishment without traumatic searching et cetera et cetera so we're working really hard and we continue to work with partners to to make the prison a safer more trauma free environment thank you and i appreciate those efforts i just want to find a question for wendy oh sorry yeah i was just going to bring in wendy on that yeah well that's perfect timing yeah because i was really intrigued by a comment i think you made it very opening in the session is that obviously the bill takes quite a prescriptive approach and black and white it's an age based parameter approach whereas i i seem to get the impression that there may be other factors that could come into play or should come into play when determining where the best places that a one size fits all approach or this form of progression from one institution to another to another as the age is the only way of dealing with it the scenario painted that it'd be entirely inappropriate for example of a 24 year old with serious developmental issues for example to be in an adult prison but equally be entirely inappropriate for a 24 year old who is of sound mind and committed a very serious offence of assault murder or rape for example to be in the secure environment amongst children could you expand a little bit about that and how perhaps legislation would be better used to deal with those scenarios it's a difficult one because it's much easier to have an arbitrary age that everybody can work towards but i think there is room for legislation to allow for a discretionary appeal so that if you were to go to a 17 year old at the moment or an 18 year old not quite 19 who has been assessed as having very high risk who is likely to be spending the rest of his sentence in an adult establishment anyway and who can no longer benefit from everything that the secure estate offers at that point a multidisciplinary team could recommend that they have the discretion to move them into the prison estate and i think that should be a possibility equally at a 22 23 year old in polmont who very clearly has got massive immaturity issues is there room to consider whether you couldn't be 23 at the moment but the 18 year old and 19 year old is able to move to the secure estate without having to go back to the court so i think there is that possibility i'm quite happy with the age being 18 at the moment i think it's a massive first step and you know while i know all the evidence indicates that brain maturation doesn't happen till 25 i know that work is going ahead for children who've experienced care to be supported later there's sentencing guidelines are looking at that actually let's just get the first step done and stop 16 17 and 18 year olds going into prison you know i think you hear it from the prison service it's not a therapeutic environment it probably could be but it's going to require considerable resources whereas those resources already exist in secure estate we you probably listened quite a lot to the work we did on bail and release some custody i'm sure you followed that and one of the comments made was that this really is the political decisions are often down to what the public appetite is for risk and do you do you think there is a public appetite for the direction travel where 21 22 23 year olds who have committed to those defences would be deemed as children in the eyes of the judicial system no i don't think there is at the moment i wouldn't be able to answer that i would have to look at any evidence on public opinion that's gone ahead but i think there is a public appetite for up to 18 year olds yes okay so thank you thanks again thank you kitty and then frilton yeah i mean just quite briefly it's really just to pick up on quite a few of the points that were raised by jamie and really just to get a better understanding of why it is that now we have 16 and 17 year olds in the prison estate and and i appreciate that you've said it's it's down to the court really i mean to what extent do you have children on remand in secure units now so currently we don't have any children on remand i mean that that's not representative of the whole secure estate but right now we do not have a child on remand so it tends to be convicted children or referred by the children's panel there is an anomaly that the the bill should resolve where we have young people 16 and 17 year olds who have had a short escalation within criminal justice who have not benefited from the children's here nor our services dedicated you know they identified their trauma and vulnerabilities throughout their life and it's hope i'm hopeful that the bill won't resolve and allow those 16 17 year olds to access that now there's the remittal provision that exists in terms of kind of remitting back to the children's here that isn't always exercised so what you might find is a young person who's now been a part or they've been involved in a serious offence without necessarily a pattern of ending the provision of the children's here that isn't open to them or or is not readily available to them and those young people are maybe the ones who are in for seven days or eleven days for people are trying to resolve that because they haven't got the legal framework or the pathway that's been established pathway in place so that's where you'll find some of the short jumblies right and so in the past i mean are there ever children that are on remand that you have it's just that you don't have to have any moment yeah understand that and one of the other you know issues that's being raised by the bill is in relation to children being detained in police custody so children being kept in cells i mean is that something that you've looked at and do you think there are you know there are ever circumstances where that is just a necessity or what would your view be in terms of of those issues i mean potentially that you know it could be you know somebody's arrested on friday it could be that they're held um you know potentially to a monday does does that happen is that something that you're aware of or is there a different provision in those kind of very short situations it shouldn't happen it happens occasions are rare now again children who are subject to compulsory supervision measures they they would should not be held within police custody any longer than than possible that responsibility generally sits with the local authority to provide an alternative i'm using a legal terms in place of safety but to provide the provision that they would be satisfied satisfied the police and satisfied that the risk and would you envisage going forward that you know children that are in that position who have risks associated with them because of the nature of the offence are likely to be taken for short periods of time to secure units would that be your understanding of policy going forward is that what's being suggested as you understand it the barrier to that currently is largely financial you know so if that wasn't if that wasn't there if it would didn't have the financial barrier then there wouldn't really be the question you know i think the police you know a a des sergeant doesn't want a 16 year old and you know at his custody then in his care for the night when they don't have the the provision is placed to address their trauma to address the risk and you know the impact they may have you know on the other people you know this is a this is people are pushing an open door on this one but it's the financial barriers in place because a local authority could then be be held accountable like short motors for a child that's not really on their radar and having to make decisions around that with a on that i mean because a lot of this debate is about resources also how we shift resources is is part of the debate as well we've been given figures and we have figures in terms of the cost of prison which we're often told is about 40 000 pounds a year but there's actually a huge variation between different prisons and the newer prisons are a lot cheaper than the older prisons do we have any kind of data on the average cost of keeping a child in a secure unit just to get a feel for the resource issues around about four times as much as much as it would cost in the prison because our children you know that they have their out and about all the time and so we rely much more on relational security than perhaps the prison has the opportunity to do so that that's helpful gerald i was just going to say to to confirm your question we will have examples of children who go through the criminal justice system who will go into police custody spend a night or multiple nights of his a weekend in police custody and then be committed to prison thank you okay i don't know if anybody else wants to maybe come in on just before we move on on that at all i suppose it was really to come in on that and stress that um as wendy says this is this is you know we are all agreed that this is a good bill when it comes to implementation however um the you know there's again there's always the risk that there's simply not the capacity in the system to be able to respond to the newness um it takes time to train staff um to train social architects between two and four years for example um to get the the places of safety make sure that that you know local authorities have the financial resource and the the there are physical resources around to be able to do that so i suppose i would just stress that whilst this is is a good legislation in the completely direction no problem with that the implementation of this could be quite risky in terms of having the right resource in the right places as we go forward because one of the the difficulties we do have is recruiting and retaining the right staff the right care staff so these are high risk environments you know staff get assaulted they're high risk so we need to make this a a sector that is really you know where people feel really proud to be part of the fail supported and kept safe and the resilience as part of that that is just the norm that takes an incredible amount of investment to and we often have you know my panacea but it requires investment it requires money i believe it's a spend to save approach but you know i think there is a reality that whilst we require the resource there is a real risk as Alan says that we will pull resource away from other sectors so we need to ensure that that doesn't happen because we would recruit from the same pool of people okay thank you very much and felton thank you governor and aim the end of that conversation and it's been a theme throughout i know but it probably loads on quite nicely to my line of question which is about resource and then i'll split into two but i just wanted to say firstly which might be helpful in a previous life as a social worker i was often when i was in children families in secure accommodation visiting my young people there and i have to say that it's almost always been a very positive experience. St Mary's is one i visited several times several years ago now so i just thought that that would be good to put on the record and that it is and for colleagues a benefit it is very much a secure environment where you know the risk of absconding as you highlighted earlier gym is extremely low but also a very therapeutic environment and as i said can lead to really good results so on that basis more people accessing that seems to be sensible. In terms of the resource aspect i wanted to ask firstly probably for yourself Lorraine and Jim do you think that the what more resources can be put in if the aims of this bill are to be met is it about bolstern what's already there with the four four or five provisions or is it about creating more would you like to see the state either through Scottish Government or local authorities produced to replicate we've got or do you think it's about bolstern what's already in place? I think what would be really good is to sit around the table and do an options appraisal because i think there are pros and cons with every type of model at the moment the way the contracts are arranged for secure care where we compete against each other now there's lots of positives around that but also in habits collaboration as well so i think it would be really useful to sit down and explore and map out what those options would look like because on the one hand you know a national service would be potentially the answer and it's you know it's centrally funded and you know there's equity of distribution but it might be that you know you have lots of expertise around these secure centres have been going for a you know a long long time that you know there's pockets of expertise that maybe wouldn't want to fall into that too so i don't think that's a very easy question to answer but and i do think there are different ways to do it i don't think the opportunity to explore that has actually taken place the way that it should have at the moment and how does it just i know you're going to come in john but how does the sector already engage with the and it's the one that in my personal leave i haven't visited is the one you've referred to in Edinburgh which is local authority run how does the sector interact with that just now so this is the Scottish Government do facility regular conversations between the the five centres and we have interactions i think i could probably add a little bit to what Lorraine said my initial responses bolster what we have you know bolster what we have you've got a lot of experience in there people that went in the journey over the past 25 years effectively you know since the secure estate's been developed in Scotland um with the view to to you know creating what will learn material i cannot options appraisal or discussion about a shared way forward um what i do know is that the value base and tension across commonly referred to the secure estate is pretty similar you know the the morals what what we believe in what we're looking to achieve for children there is management strategies you know there's a pretty clear consensus um there's not many people pushing against that um that the competitive nature of the current financial structure prevents us making the best of it and maximising um and that's probably something i think the bill could support us with and certainly the government could support us with because ultimately you know we're we're talking about secure servers what we really should be talking about is the children you know we're talking about the children not going into why we're talking about the children not returning to secure care and not necessarily standardised approach because we want innovation we want people to to learn more and develop and for this to be a research and growing provision but we also want us to all have a share you know a share purpose um and that needs to be child centered we need to look at the children and focus on how we're going to stop children and that revolving door and for a long period within um the present you know secure them present and so on that basis who would you like to see a change in terms of how or who makes that decision because i can certainly remember that you know you got your chief executive for your local authority um and they make the chief executive for the social worker whatever the department is for any local authority um to to make that decision and you need to go back i think he's prepared to it wouldn't be nine months like some of the cross border ones are it would be every four six weeks perhaps um would you would you like to see who makes that decision change because you could obviously get a lot of variance between local authorities would it be somebody more central or are you quite hot or is it more about training of local authorities um the chief social worker decision is tested you know it's a 72 hour authorisation and then you have a challenge here with who that's going to have a bearing on that and make a decision albeit the chief social worker has the the option to not take that direction what where i'm not going to answer your question direct but what i would like to see in line with the bill is greater professionalisation of the challenge hearing process so you know get some real informed decision making and supporting you know i wouldn't want to disrupt the company the company and an approach because it sets us apart in scotland you know something we're very proud of and we've maintained a child in need approach longer than most you know we're kind of ahead of the curve on that one however given that we're looking to remove children from my eyes and we're working with the critical few that we need a professional eye on it you know we need the children's reporter just can't be somebody who's there to administer legal competence we'll be looking for you know the insight of a sheriff you know the there were you know jamey did make a point when we were discussing about sheriffs having a level of autonomy around savings and options they've also got a wealth of experience you know they've seen the young people who have progressed um the revolving doors and i think the bill presents an opportunity for increased professionalism around the challenge hearing system and the decision making process for the detaining children and just one further question if that's all right and it's for yourself also on the other side of that resources because i know you mentioned it right back in the start what what do you think the bill can do in terms of making use of other resources to prevent people needing i know it's a million dollar question but prevent needing people needing secure in the first place the resources at community level i know you've touched on it through some of the answers but i'll give you a chance to sort of expand on that i well i guess it's a range of things and there's a there's a there's a lot of things in the i suppose the children's policy arena we've got the promise we've got GoFec we've got the children's hearings we've got i've got a whole list of them somewhere and and for me there's something that all of these things need to progress in alignment and be sequenced very very carefully in order to make sure that where we are where we can move resource um and and i'm i may be a little bit skeptical that there is resource to move okay because i think if it was that easy we would have we would have done it right um there is an issue about resource and i think we need a growing up conversation um about that if we want to do this i mean you've heard how much how much more it costs to keep somebody to have a child insecure then in in prison and quite quite rightly too but that's the the kind of the the resourcing isn't simply going to shift so we need to take all of these things the children's hearing system the reimagining secure care um we need to work out where where there will be savings in the future because there will you know there will be that is the if we prevent and do early support there will be but that doesn't happen straight away there is a time where that things need to be probably double funded right as that movement and that shift and as our staff and our in the environments that we work in move to a more early support preventive family supportive model and you know and this is part of that that this bill is definitely part of that that whole um direction of travel in scotland um so i suppose what i would i would i would plead for is again it's around the good implementation which is understanding about what is in the environment the rest of the environment which is not just this bill it's about how it interacts with all these these other things in the um children families policy arena um you know and with anything that's going on in youth justice and and support for for younger adults um that um we just think very carefully and are prepared in the short term to do some double resourcing um on the basis that we really believe that putting early support in will reduce will reduce costs in the future you know we know that i'm afraid i didn't really answer your question but you know it's it's wider than this bill yeah great thank you thank you very much that's just coming up to half past 12 um i admire your staying power and your patience but i think i speak on behalf of members when i say it's been a really helpful and informative session for us so thank you all very much for attending this morning and we'll just have a short suspension before we move into private session thank you