 Good morning and welcome to the ninth meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2021. We have had apologies from Oliver Mundell. I would like to welcome Megan Gallacher, MSP, who joins us for the first time today as our substitute member. I take this opportunity to thank Megan. If you have any interest relevant to the remit of the committee that you wished to declare. If I could refer members to my register of interests as I am a serving councillor in North Lanarkshire and thank you for having me along today. Thank you Megan. Moving on to our main item of business this week, the committee will take evidence on the impact of Covid-19 on children and young people with additional support needs and care experienced young people. We will be taking evidence from two panels and I am delighted to welcome our first panel of witnesses, Bruce Adamson, Children and Young People's Commissioner, who joins us physically in our committee room, and virtually we are joined by Stephen McGee, who is the manager-director of Spark of Genius and is representing the Scottish Children's Services Coalition, and Linda O'Neill, who is education lead for the Centre for Excellence for Children's Care and Protection. As I say, both Stephen and Linda are virtual, but we welcome all three of you to our committee this morning. Thank you for the time you will spend with us. We hope to be able to make good use of the next hour or so, and I am going to turn immediately to Bob Doris to lead us in the first set of questions. Thank you very much, convener, and thank you to all our witnesses, those online, and Mr Adamson, who is here in committee. There will be a wider ageing set of questions that has been asked this morning, but can I focus initially on the lockdowns? In particular, when schools were closed and the impact of school closures, there were learning and wellbeing hubs for the children of key workers, but also for additional support in these children. I think that about 6 to 8 per cent of children across Scotland attended those hubs in some fashion or another. Any thoughts, and clearly it is not a satisfactory of having to deal with education, but it was a support. To what extent witnesses thought that there was meaningful support there for young people, particularly those with additional support needs, and what worked well and whether on balance we got the criteria, I suppose, for identifying those with additional support needs, because I am sure that it was a rashard resource, unfortunately, due to the pressures at the time. I do not know which witness would like to go first on that. Mr Adamson, by default, because you are sitting here, do you want to go first on the witnesses? I did warn Bruce that it would happen. Absolutely. It is a really important point in ensuring that there is a right to education, and the broader rights that school attendance fulfil in terms of we know that schools are more than just places of education, but for many children places of additional support and socialisation, which are so important for children with additional support needs. The concern that we have is that for many children and families with additional support needs, while they were told that places were available, there was not the specialist support or the relationships that pre-existed at Covid were not in place. The access to the type of individualised support that many children, particularly those with complex needs, were not, in my view, particularly well met in those hubs. The hubs were incredibly effective for the children that were there. The evidence that we have from the discussions with children and young people and their families is that they did work effectively. It is a useful model, but where it struggled, I think, was with some of the children with complex needs, who really needed some of that specialist relationship by support that they were relying on. That is very helpful. Thank you much, Mr Adamson. Stephen McGee, do you want to add anything to that? Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to the committee today. Our perception from Sparkard Genius in the Scottish Children's Services Coalition is very similar. There are 32 per cent of young people with additional support needs of the cohort in Scotland. As you mentioned, 68 per cent had access to the hubs at the time. The hubs were vital resources for young people who were in need of that particular type of service, but probably the issue stemmed from there being a lack of clarity universally around who was able to access those hubs and how the access was administered in terms of the staff teams that could attend, because, obviously, during the worst parts of the pandemic, staff members in their own right were subject to having issues around Covid and staffing in their own right. You have adjusted the position of young people who have a greater level of need and a staff team who are diminished. The feedback that our members and associated agencies felt was that that was probably where the stumbling block was, even though the understanding of the hubs were that, ultimately, they were well intentioned to try to meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable young people in our society. Importantly, you put that on the record. I will explore it further simply because of time constraints. I think that it was really important that you put that on the record. Linda O'Neill, do you want to add anything? Good morning. Thank you very much for having me alone this morning. Just to let the committee know that I will be using the term care experience wherever possible this morning. I looked after children and looked after our terms that have specific legislative meanings. Care experience children and young people are told that that is the term that they prefer to use to describe their circumstances wherever possible. Similar to Bruce and Stephen, the hubs were well intentioned. We know that not all children who would have benefited from that support managed to get access to them. Something that our networks have told us is that the inconsistency in how local authorities assess the term vulnerability was something that initially provided quite a lot of rigidity and access to services for children and families. We also know that all the children that did attend the school hubs only 0.5 per cent of those children were children with multi-agency plans, so those are children that already had input and support from more than one service. That indicates to us that the number of children attending was not as high as it could be in terms of those that did need the support. We also know that the children who have care experience under the additional support for learning legislation are presumed to have additional support for learning needs unless assessed as otherwise. That goes wider than in physical and learning difficulties are needs that they might have, but it also takes in the social, emotional and relational needs that those children might need. If they do not have access to the hub support, that means that they do not have access to the social, emotional and welfare support that they needed during the pandemic when they were in support to others. However, access to other supportive services was also managed at that time because of the public health response. Linda Neil is very helpful. We have a very specific question back to Linda Neil, convener, before we move on to the next area of questioning. All three witnesses are agreeing about challenges and identifying consistently who vulnerable young people were across Scotland's local authorities. Clare, you specifically mentioned care experience young people. Was that patchwork across the country? By definition, was a care experience young person seen as being at a greater degree of vulnerability? Were they offered a place at a hub as a matter of course, or was that patchy? That would be helpful for the committee to know, I think. We have a range of networks that we work with in services from foster care networks, residential workers, virtual school headteachers, education forums, and what we have heard through networks is that it was not consistently applied across Scotland and local authorities to differing approaches to how they assessed vulnerability and how they allocated places in hubs. It is also important to recognise that, when some young people were offered places in hubs because of quite complex circumstances, they were not always able to access them. For example, young people who were living with kinship carers because of the demographic of many of our kinship carers who contend to be older family members or might have other health issues. There was a concern about attendance at hubs potentially impacting on health at home should people be exposed to Covid and, therefore, there were other barriers and complexities that presented themselves for this group of children because of their living circumstances, so that was an additional consideration for many kinship carers being children and families. Thank you. I defer to your self here. There are a number of lines of question, but we will get an interest in it. Do you want to continue at this point? Yes, so I will ask your next one and then I would like to come in. I think that Steph will want to come in as well. I am conscious of the time period. Well intentioned at times of very well performing the hubs, but the self-evident challenges that all three witnesses have put on the record here this morning. For young people with additional support needs who did not make it to hubs because they did not fit the criteria or for young people who had other barriers to accessing the hubs, what is the witnesses' experience of what support was like across local authorities and education services for those who could not attend hubs? I am sure that there are examples of very good practice and examples of not so good practice, so it would be good to get an example. It would be good to get a sense of where it went well and get some of that on the record. We were listening to Linda Neil earlier, and perhaps Linda could kick off with that, and then the other two witnesses and then we can pass on to colleagues after that. As you have already said, there are a number of really good examples of the support that services were able to provide to children and families. Initially, while it was very difficult to understand what children and new circumstances needed, services really did speak in effort as we progressed through the lockdowns and through the pandemics to try and understand children's voice. We know that there was a very rapid response among services, social work, health, education, third sector and voluntary organisations to go beyond the more traditional ways of collecting children's voice through surveys and things like that to make a move to more digital and participative ways to understand what children needed. There were some lovely examples in local authorities where services started to go out to families doorsteps and do sessions around music and art and creativity with people in the doorstep, where people would go for socially distant walks because they recognised the need to continue those crucial relationships that people have with trusted adults in their lives in order to support wellbeing throughout the pandemic. I think that the hub provision also became more bespoken, as I said earlier, less rigid in the criteria that was applied to allow children to access hubs. What we have heard from practitioners and leaders working across the system was that the removal of processes that can be viewed at times, particularly within local authorities, is overly bureaucratic. That allows workers and practitioners to respond in a much more attuned and relational way to children and families. For example, cash payments directly into people's bank accounts, which are just stigma and allow families to use money in a way that they need to do, rather than putting something to be stigmatised in a way of providing vouchers or to provide spending of money and things like that. We would be keen to make sure that the positive licence that has been learned in the pandemic and what children and families have told us are built into COVID recovery and practice going forward. Very helpful, Bruce Adamson. I strongly agree with what Linda O'Neill was saying. The important point about the hubs that she was saying for care experienced young people also applied to lots of other groups. If there were family members with vulnerability, I think that communication is a real key learning point here that we need to be able to make sure that we can communicate directly to families and to children with additional support needs to make sure that they know what services are available. I think that one of the challenges in the early stage of the pandemic is that it was very inconsistent across the country in terms of what was available, and it was proving very difficult to get the information to families in order to make the choices about accessing services. At the beginning of the pandemic, in April 2020, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called on states to take a rights-based approach to all of this and recognised that, while we are talking about a global health pandemic, the appropriate response would have been to take a rights-based approach and to look at all of the different rights that are affected. I think that one of the concerns is that because we were so focused on the health risks, we perhaps took our eye off the ball in terms of the broader rights impact. Education is key here, but also health, family life, particularly mental health and the disproportionate impact on those whose rights were already most at risk was really apparent here. One of the things that children and young people have told us is that they felt that there was a real lack of participation in decision making. No-one was really asking them what they or their family needed, and there were particular concerns around things like poverty and getting money to families. The direct impact that had on digital access, which was absolutely key for those who weren't in hubs, was a huge problem early on and making sure that the mental health support was there as well. The evidence is very clear that the experience from the early lockdown, as opposed to the second lockdown, was very different. We struggled a lot more early on. Some of the real positives that we can look to for those who weren't in the hubs, for some children who weren't engaged in school previously, actually benefited from some of the digital support and engagement. We've had discussions with a number of children who weren't in school previously, but we were able to access some of the home-based learning and support and re-engage with education, which is useful as well. Lots of the things that happen in communities and children and young people have said very clearly that they don't want this to be seen as objects of pity or to be talking about catch-up. What they want is to focus on the real positives that they are able to build up even when they are outside school. I'm just wondering, Mr McGee, if you're chiming with what we've heard already, I think that we're conveners keen to move on and bring in other MSPs, so my apologies for not bringing in at this point. I'm sure that we would be minded that that might be an appropriate thing to do. I'm sure we'll bring Stephen in very shortly. Can I go to Linda for a moment and just say one of the things that jumped off the page to me from your written evidence was about 0.5 per cent of children with multi-agency child plans who access these hubs. I found that quite an alarming statistic. It did jump off the page at me. Maybe you could just, for clarity and explanation, explain why a child might end up with a multi-agency child's plan. I think that that's an important context that we should bring out. Children with particular needs, which can't be met by universal services under the perfect principle. Services that would support all children in any circumstances would need what we would refer to as more targeted support, which would be support that will be required to be provided by specialist agencies or a number of agencies, but young people who have very complex or difficult home lives whose parents are maybe suffering from mental health issues or there's domestic abuse at home, which might impact on children's wider health, wellbeing ability to engage in education, children's own needs such as physical learning needs or their education attainment, they might need support with that or children's health needs. The aim of the multi-agency plan is to use a perfect approach to bring the right people around the table to produce a robust and proportionate plan that is based on what is in the best interests of this child at this point and to make sure that all professionals working alongside children and families are listening to the needs and rights of children and families advocating for them and making sure that the plan around them supports their progress in what other area they might require additional support in. Forgive me if this seems too obvious a question, but it's one that I feel I need to ask. If only 0.5 per cent of these children are accessing the hub, where are the other 99.5 per cent at this point, where are they? Just to clarify, it was of the children that did attend the hubs that 0.5 per cent of them had the plan. That isn't in relation to all children with multi-agency plans in their hub attendance, but it's of those children that did attend the hubs. We know that only 0.5 per cent of them had multi-agency plans, but I do think that your point is valid more widely and that we know that more children with multi-agency plans had attended hubs in that number would have been higher in terms of representation within the hubs. That's a very important clarification. I'm very grateful for you clarifying that for me because that thought has kind of haunted me since I read this paper last week. Where are the children with the multi-agency child plans if they're not at the hub? Where are they? They would have been at home with their parents or carers in the carer arrangements that they live in. Some children might have been at home with their parents, some might have been in residential houses or with foster carers or with their penship carers as well. We know that for this group of children who require multi-agency support, the issues that they are facing are often more complex and difficult than they are for all other children, so the support that they require needs to be more complex and more robust. Therefore, there are additional vulnerabilities for those children if they were accessing hubs. Those very vulnerable children were in extremely vulnerable situations and were not getting the help that they needed. Is that right, Bruce? Many of them might have been. We know that services, social work and particular prioritised face-to-face visits for children who are on home supervision orders. We know that those in residential care and foster care continue to receive support from the teams and staff around them, but those children would not have had the usual protective factors that the school would have provided or that the hub support would have provided. We also know that, because of the public health response, many of the third sector of voluntary and community services that children and families would ordinarily have access to, we would have supported them and were just not available during the pandemic. We are beginning to see ramifications. Are you beginning to see issues that have arisen because of this situation? How do you describe the consequences of that? We did initially, in the lockdowns, see an increase in child protection concerns being reported. That did not translate into higher numbers of child protection referrals, but I think that what it did show was that, as I said, the protective factors and the wider support that is available through school were concerned about children's vulnerability, because that support from school was not there. We know through a range of data sources during the pandemic that children themselves have reported higher levels of anxiety and more problems with sleeping and concentration. Parents have also reported that about their children. I also noted in the EIS response that school staff were reporting more distressed behaviours from children, particularly younger children, and how they were presenting at school. Our concern is that there will be more children and families who will have moved from that universal level of support into the middle part of the triangle that requires more targeted support and intervention, not just through education but from other supportive services. At a time when there is even more demand and squeeze on resources and capacity for staff, there will be a higher number of children and families requiring support, which will continue as the recovery from the pandemic progresses, and at a time when there is less access and capacity within the workforce and the wider system to provide that support. I am going to bring in Stephanie at this point. Thank you very much, convener. Sorry, I am just writing down a little important points that Linda made there as well, although they are out of my head. Just the fact that you mentioned there about the targeted support for children in that area. As far as the hubs go as well, I am looking at it and thinking. I am wondering—and it might be in the papers here, so apologies if I have missed it—what proportion of children we are looking at that went to the hubs that were vulnerable children? I know as well that, initially, I need to declare that I am a current councillor here as well at South Lanarkshire Council and I am also a parent statistics as well. I am wondering what proportion of children it was that were vulnerable children as opposed to a childcare element with the hubs for emergency and key workers or NHS workers who were not going to be at home to look after their children and their partner was not there to look after the children as well. I am just wondering if you know what the statistics on that were. I am not sure which of you might know that answer. Why was your that Stephen answer? He has not spoken for a little while. I do not have the specific detail on that part of the recount, unfortunately, but what I can say about the hubs in general for the type of services that the SCSC offer was that the vast majority of young people who were accessing specialist services were above the profile of young people that you would call vulnerable. Of course, there is a certain degree of hard factor in the original part of the discussion, which is what encapsulates vulnerable and who meets that criteria and needs. What you have is a cohort of young people who would access services like ours, of which some would be placements into services of young people who live at home, and there would also be a cohort of young people who would potentially live in kinship care, foster care, residential care type placements. There were protective factors around that group of young people because of them living in those types of resources, but for the cohort of young people who lived at home and there may have been issues with vulnerability, neglect or issues that came from home, those were the young people where there was a concern about being able to meet their needs, both in terms of safety but also in terms of their access, for instance, to digital computers and things like that, which would allow them to continue with their learning. As a result of that, those were the profile of young people that I think we were most concerned about and the profile that it was unclear whether or not their needs were being met in the same way that the other cohort needs were being met. I apologise that that is not a direct answer to your question but I just felt that it was a useful link to the discussion. That is great, thank you for that. That is really helpful there as well. I suppose what I am quite interested in as well is maybe about those balances of risks because the children that we are talking about today, you know, crisis can quite often be a part of their life. It is something that is very much a part of their life and there are existing distress behaviours and existing anxieties that were quite exacerbated and so on. However, we also had the kind of balancing out those risks to their mental health and their wellbeing against the risks or the threat to life, if you like, in spreading the infection and the physical health and so on. I wonder how you feel that balance actually was. Did we kind of get it somewhere in the middle or was it really kind of way off? I suppose I am coming round to thinking about, you know, there were some positives that were mentioned there about some of those young people being able to engage better, getting access if they were maybe struggling with mainstream school, being able to cut red tape, some digital access as well again for non-attenders at school and about opening up the doors to creativity. Linda talked about the kind of doorstep stuff, et cetera, there as well, but then balancing out against that, we have got the idea that, you know, it was a bit of a lottery depending on where you were. Although those kind of sessions were things that, you know, cutting that red tape, opening the door to that stuff there as well. I am just really interested in any further positives and what you really see has been the priorities going forward as far as learning from this experience and incorporating that into policy making going forward. I know that that is quite a big question there. I have been interested in my being Linda answering that one first of all and then my becoming to Bruce, thanks. I think, as Bruce had said earlier about the children and some hearers as well, telling us about the learning experience that children had at home, that we know that some children felt engaged in their learning, that they felt that they were able to make more progress, that they enjoyed learning and school and the new way in a very different way than they had when they were actually attending school. I think that that is a really, really important thing for us to hold on to as we go into Covid recovery, because what we need to do is understand why was that the case. Some young people have told us that it is because they did not have to switch between classes during the day. They found it easier to learn with maybe one adult or fewer adults or to learn in the same small group during the day. Some managed much better without a commute or the transport. I think that that is a pivotal moment to go into Covid recovery but also with the education reform that is being consulted on and thinking about what the curriculum looks like. We know that the Morgan review of additional support for learning has recommended that we think much more broadly about what the curriculum looks like and what attainment and achievement looks like and how that is visible and how it is recognised for children and families. I think that there are real lessons that we can learn here if we listen to what children and families tell us to think about how we embed that in the curriculum going forward. I think that it is also important to recognise that recovery will be different for every single child and family depending on their experience of the pandemic, because the pandemic is something that is touched all of us over the past two years. We have all experienced it very differently and at different times we have faced difficulties and vulnerabilities. That is the same for key experienced children and young people with additional support needs. We need to make sure that any recovery takes a kind of long-term planning, long-term spending and making sure that we embed that support in going forward, so that there is no particular end state about that, because we do not know how long children and young people might need that support for. We also need to think about the good practice examples that we have seen in the way that services have responded and the way organisations and practitioners have responded and what practitioners have told us has been helpful for them to provide really good quality support for children and families and build that into all of our Covid recovery plans and think about how we make that systemic across Scotland, so that there is not that lottery that you spoke of that every child and young person gets the support they need when they need it based on what they have told us works for them. I strongly agree with everything that Linda O'Neill said there. It is important to take a human rights-based approach here. Protecting life and public health is obviously a key concern, but it has to be set within the context of the impacts on other rights. The right to education, which is around developing children to their fullest potential, but also in terms of issues around safety, issues around the mental health impact, as well as the physical health impact. We know that the experience of many children was really poor in relation to those things, particularly care experience for young people, disabled young people, young carers and those experiencing poverty. Some of the things that I think are really important are the focus that we put on poverty, getting money to families as quickly as possible, and that made a huge difference. The discussions that are happening at the moment on the Scottish child payment and other ways in which we can provide direct support to families are really important. Families notice that money is so important in terms of being able to have the flexibility to make decisions to ensure that children can access the services that they need. That participation element is really interesting because we know that the more that children and young people are involved in designing their own education and the more flexibility that is built in with education, the more that connects. For many young people, they found the online learning and the flexibility of it really positive. Even in terms of the time of day that they were able to work and the flexibility between classes, something really positive. The flexibility that we built into education was something that was really of huge benefit. As Linda mentioned, travel, particularly for young people in rural communities, not having to travel to school was a huge, huge benefit to many of them, but there was offset by the fact that they then weren't able to socialise and did the mental health impact of not seeing others as well. There are many things that we can keep. I think that focus on individualised learning, the focus on support to families, particularly financial support to families, the focus on increasing digital access, but where we really need to focus attention, I think, is on taking a rights-based approach involving children and young people and their families and decision making about what is needed for them and those relationships are absolutely important. One of the things that I think links to the plans that Linda was talking about is the low numbers of co-ordinated support plans, which are the statutory plans that have alongside them mechanisms of access to remedy. One of the challenges is that for a lot of children and young people who are entitled to services, it is very difficult to have a remedy if you are not receiving that, so I think that that is a really important aspect. That is why the incorporation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was passed by the Parliament earlier this year, and I would hope that we will come back very quickly for reconsideration, is really key here. One of the big gaps is the accountability. If you are not getting the services, how are parents, carers and children able to get that resolved? There is a big, big gap there at the moment. Do you want me to just mention the Morgan report just now, while we are at this part? Let's come back to that, because we are nearly halfway through and we are not halfway through in terms of colleagues, which was fairly predictable, but there we go. Would you mind, Stephanie, if we move to co-cab, because digital divide was mentioned, and I think that that is a nice lead into co-cab's question. That is fine, and I think that it is important points that are made as well there about poverty and the kind of impact that has. Absolutely. There is lots of really good stuff coming out of this evidence, co-cab. Thank you, convener. This is a good place to be. I am particularly interested in the digital provisions. I was a teacher before I got this job, and I taught during that time, so I have some awareness of what happened in mainstream education. Schools did have digital devices, and certainly in the upper schools, and then they were also redeployed devices, councils had access to it, but clearly we know that access was wanting, shall we say? There were not enough digital devices, and I exposed that. The Scottish Government has committed substantial amounts of money in hardware and software, so I am interested in what lessons can be learned and how we could maybe input to the Scottish Government the best use of that money to support digital learning, whether that be online academies, access to syllables, and I am also mindful that there is no replacement, especially for children with additional support needs and vulnerable children of socialisation as well, so I have got that in the back of my mind. Bruce, I will come to you first and then I will be interested to hear what Linda says, and Stephen, if there is anything missing, please do come in as well. I am particularly interested in illustrating a couple of areas where access to the hardware and software could have been better and could have been more appropriately matched to children with additional support needs, knowing that that is a big umbrella and that different things will fit for different children. It is a huge question, and one that is very important. Even pre-pandemic, we were focused on digital engagement and digital inclusion, and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child issued a new general comment on rights in the digital context, so the pandemic really accelerated that massively. Some of the positives were that there were significant funds, eventually it took a little bit of time, but significant funds were made available and the use of third sector partners to make sure that people were able to access them. There were some real positives there. Many of the children that I spoke to were feeling happy, particularly later in the lockdown, and the devices were working very well. Some real limitations, I think, particularly for disabled children and other children who may not be able to use the same technology as others. Real gaps in specialist technology that suited the needs of children and some issues around WiFi connection, which I know members have been experiencing as well. The other thing that I would say is that, as we have all experienced in the last couple of years, it is not just enough to get a device and have a connection. It needs to be maintained, software needs to be updated, so it is an on-going commitment and it has a shelf life as well. I think that that is something that we really need to be thinking about in terms of what on-going support was, because some of the children that we spoke to were saying that devices worked very well early on and that they all broke down within six months or a year. There was not that kind of on-going support, so I think that that is really key that there is on-going support. There are also questions about transition. If it is being provided through a school or if you are moving between services, does that device travel with you? There is a huge amount in that. The real positives were the recognition of the need for substantial investment in it and the real challenges of upskilling all of us, but particularly within teachers and schools. I think that that challenge was incredibly well met by the time that we got through the second lockdown. The experience that we have had from children and young people and from teachers is very different. That shows the incredible skill and dedication that we have seen from teachers and school communities to really increase skill levels. Thank you for saying that. At the time, I recall that the differences between the first and the second, we literally had to turn on six months. Everybody was adapting to quite shocking set of circumstances at that time, so thanks for acknowledging that. Linda, would you like to come in there? Thank you. I strongly agree with what Bruce has said, particularly around the response and getting kits out to people. As we have said, at the time that we got to the second lockdown, that was a very different picture for people as well, and I was very welcome at the time that we got to that stage. Another issue that we have been aware of from our networks and our contact with the children and young people is not just about getting access to the hardware, software and broadband, but about digital literacy skills. We know that children and young people are on my side. We have spent a lot of time on phones and iPads, but particularly in relation to working with a PC. The programme that is required for Excel PowerPoint is not something that a lot of us would be as proficient at using apps on our smartphone. We heard that from children and young people as well, that they would like more support around how to use software for turning in assignments, writing things and also from parents and carers as well about how to support their children with those things, because, again, it is not for everyone something that they are very familiar with. The speed of response that we had to switch to working in that way was very rapid and caused some difficulties for some people as well. We also heard from teachers that it was a completely new set of skills that they had to develop, not just develop the new skills and how to use some of the new software, Zoom, Teams and all those types of applications, but also how to support children and families to use them as well. There was a huge push from people learning how to do that in some really creative ways and a real effort that went in from schools and across children's services to do that and to do it well. We need to bear in mind going forward, particularly if that way of working is to become embedded into the curriculum and to think about doing things more flexibly. To do that well will take time and resources and capacity, but it can be something that just becomes part of workloads to be absorbed, that people will need the time and space to be able to do that well to make sure that those new responsibilities can be fulfilled and that we can get the right support to children and families to be able to use that technology well. I will pick out a bit about the family support. A digital device goes into the house and it is for educational benefits and improving digital literacy, which Linda mentioned. I think that it takes the family, does it not? How best do you think that we could support the entire family in order to support their child, to improve the digital literacy skills and to have the maximum amount of benefit from having digital devices? I also ask everyone to please be very succinct in the answers and questions because we are very much running out of time, so I would appreciate that. Of course. A lot of the points have already been made, so I can cut an element of the answer out, but the infrastructure for IT support needs to be beyond just handing a computer over to a child or young person or a teacher and saying, off you go, start to learn. The common sense move is that there is a community approach to that, where families are involved in digital literacy in their own right. A lot of the stumbling block can be parents or grandparents who are being asked to set computers up or given to children. I would like to pay quick cognisance to the point that you made at the start. We need to be careful not to move towards a completely digital style of education because young people with ASN often present a need that requires socialisation. It might require a physical element of education to come in and do things like that. What the pandemic did in a positive sense was caused education, especially for those with ASN, to have a more personalised approach. That is important to remember as part of the whole gamut of discussion when it comes to digital accessibility and literacy. That is a fair point. I am not dismissing any of that. I acknowledge the whole child and a holistic approach. My line of questioning was just that part of it. I found some of the written evidence that we received to be—there are parts that are deeply concerning—parts in that. Post-lockdown effects might be reasonably described as profound feedback from our members saying that there is a widening of the attainment gap. A lot of that feels quite anecdotal to me. A lot of the here is verbal discussions. Are you aware of any substantive research to try and determine the actual effects of that so that we can assess, as politicians and policy makers, the scale of the challenge and what the response required is? Bruce? It is a real challenge. I think that the papers that you have got in front of you for this session are really powerful. I think that the price briefing is useful in terms of capturing the evidence. One of the problems is that we do not know. It is very difficult to research something that we cannot map out the effects. We know what has happened and we have really good evidence in terms of what has happened. However, the impact of that, particularly on things such as mental health, long-term physical health and educational attainment, is really hard to measure because we do not have the frameworks in place. What is really important, though, is that we need to take an holistic view of this. It is not just about—it has got to be a broad issue around education and developing children to their fullest potential. I think that there are some real important underlying issues such as poverty and how that played out across and back to the digital point. If you are in a crowded house, if you are worried about paying for power, if you are sharing devices, the experience of children in poverty was very different from others. I think that there is more research that needs to be done, but it will probably have to be longitudinal research in terms of where that plays out and recognising children in particular difficulties, such as children who are in Poland or in secure. That is a really important group that we have not touched upon yet. Linda, do you have any comments that you are aware of any substantive work going on in this area? As Bruce has touched on, there is research and work going on at the moment to understand what happens during the pandemic. However, we do not have any data that we could use to my knowledge that we could look at from before, during and after. I think that what that shows us is where there are gaps in our data. We have known that for a long time. It is something that Promise highlighted strongly about the needs for our data systems around not just empirical data, but using data to understand how children are experiencing education in their wider lives and how we, as adults, understand that and plan services to support them so that we need to be better in not just collecting data but how we triangulate and use that for improvement. I think that there are lessons to be learned there about where the gaps are and what we might want to look at going forward to make that much more robust and to understand children's journeys. Stephen, are you in the same position? I think that Bruce and Linda are in common there. No awareness of any substantive work to assess the overall impact. Yeah, broadly similar. In terms of overall impact, I think that there is a piece of work that will be required to bring elements of education, mental health, the ASA and co-ordinated sport plans, all of it together into the one place. There are emerging figures from things like Public Health Scotland on young people accessing CAMHS, but there has been a doubling of children and young people who have been waiting over a year from 2021 in June to the year previous, who have been waiting for a year to access CAMHS services. However, the information that comes independently in silos and what would be quite useful, I think, is a central place where a lot of that is brought together to show a pre- and post-pandemic impact. That is really useful. The lack of a baseline in that conveyor to me is really concerning for a Government level. I find it really difficult to assess. I hear from people deep disappointment in their recovery education plan from different stakeholders, but nothing in terms of what is the challenge that we face. Can I very briefly touch on the little snippets in you that evidence answers to other questions about positive experiences? I think that we are all keen not to lose those in particular to young people with ASN, but there is not a lot in the papers, not a lot in your written evidence about what that was and what it made. Maybe rather than going in depth to that now, if there was something that was substantive, as Mr Amonson, you mentioned that, but maybe in further written evidence you could tell us a little bit more what those were. What I am seeing is a very negative picture, but there are maybe little sparks in there. Is that fair? Yes, it is not. I am very happy to do that. I have got the best job in the world because I talk to children and young people every day and they were real positives. One of the strongest messages from children and young people, particularly children with additional support needs care experience children, disabled children, is that they do not want pity, they do not want to be seen as objects of charity. They want the incredible achievements that they have made over the last 20 months to be recognised and they want additional support. They want to be part of the discussions. Again, we would hope to bring along children and young people today, but it was not possible. It is really essential that all decision makers are hearing directly from children and young people. I am up to a secure unit this afternoon and I am up to an outdoor nursery tomorrow. I know that all of you do that within your constituencies, but that is really key for decision makers to hear directly from children and young people. They have talked about greater community cohesion. Many of them have talked about more time with family, the opportunity to be more involved in learning new skills around digital, but I think that what is really missing is the feeling that they need to be involved in decision making. They want decision makers to hear directly from them, not through all of us all the time. Again, if there is the same appeal to Stephen and Linda in terms of if you have information on that and you could provide to the committee those individual positive experiences, that would be good because I think that what we are seeing here is a very negative picture, understandably. My last question follows on from that. In figures that we have so far around school absences since the pandemic, there is a large variation in those figures from pre-pandemic. There are changes in behaviours that are coming through that are quite clear. Obviously, issues of self-isolation and so on are working into that. Quite importantly, there is an increase in unexplained persistent absence across Scotland. I wonder whether you have any indication through your work whether there is any relationship to ASN or care-experienced pupils in that grouping. Is there anything in terms of the research of the discussions that you have had? That is looking like maybe one in a hundred children in Scotland longed, unexplained absences rise, which is a very significant number of people. Is there any correlation that you could identify? Only anecdotally, but that is a consistent pattern across Europe and across the UK. I work very closely with commissioners in those countries and with the World Health Organization, looking particularly at schooling. Again, that is a consistent pattern. Anecdotally, there are still high levels of anxiety around school. There are significant numbers off at the moment with Covid-related. That is all mixed in as well. There is still confusion around whether you are supposed to be isolating and whether you are not. Some people are taking a very cautious approach. The way in which this is recorded is really important. The key thing, I think, is those relationships with families, getting that support and addressing concerns and making sure that there is that re-engagement. Stephen, do you have any insight there? Again, it is probably more anecdotal. My perception is that a cohort of the young people who have additional support needs a lot of support to get to the point of learning, which requires them to be ready to get into the physical construct of a school or to have the supports that allow them to do that. I know that you have further witnesses coming forward, but to give an example of a young person with autism, for instance, it is not that you open the doors on Monday and then become. There can be significant barriers to allowing young people with those sort of needs to be able to access services, because it may have taken months or years to get them to the point of access and education in the way that they previously did. That is a wider discussion. The impact of Covid on particularly young people with ASN and the reintroduction into learning will be more potted than simply as it did pre-pandemic. Unfortunately, at the moment, because of the national data, much of what we discussed in terms of attendance is anecdotal, but that can still be really helpful in understanding how this has been experienced by children and families. Nationally, the attendance and exclusion data for looks after children is only published every second year, which makes it really difficult to understand trends, but because of the timescales involved, that is being published is often very out of date for the time that it is released. It is very difficult to use it to understand what the picture looks like for care-experienced children and young people. At the moment, we are very reliant on our networks of leaders and professionals in terms of their feedback and telling us how that is impacting children and young people's attendance. Bruce and Stephen have already touched on some of the reasons for that, particularly for care-experienced children and young people. However, what would be really helpful is if, nationally, we had a better understanding for children with care experience and additional support needs more timely and more robust data around attendance, both short-term and long-term, to help us to think about how children might be experiencing that and what we need to do as services to be able to improve that for them as we know that attendance for care-experienced children is on average much lower than for all children? I think that that is really useful. I thank all the respondents on that. I find the discussion on hubs and looking back useful in some respects, but that is happening right now. Many of those young people are absent from our schools and our systems, and we have to have a commensurate response to that as a set of institutions. I really worry that the use of the word anecdotal is an awful lot through that. I think that it is based on some conversations that we have had with people. We do not have a proper understanding of the impact. I have another line of questioning, but I would like to stick with this point around attendance for a moment. At the start of the session, you mentioned the group of young people who had been disengaged with schools before the pandemic but found remote learning quite beneficial and allowed them a route back in. We know that, overwhelmingly, the pandemic has thrown up barriers rather than taken them down, but that is one of those examples where it has done the opposite. Have you had any discussions with young people in that situation recently, i.e. since August, where schools have moved back to the default of in-person learning? Has the progress made with that very specific cohort been undone by what has happened since as we have returned to normality, or has something been maintained there? I think that we have unfortunately lost some of that. A place in childhood research that was done was really useful in that. There were young people within that. In fact, one of the quotes that I got from a 17-year-old here was, we have been back to school like for a week, and I feel totally overwhelmed. There was this young person who coped very, very well, engaged with that online learning, back to the very busy school environment, particularly for neurodiverse children or autistic children. There is a real challenge in going back into that very busy, the huge levels of uncertainty, as well, particularly around exams and some of the issues around going from learning digitally, and then suddenly having a pen and paper to be sitting assessments and things. The level of anxiety for children really shot up with returning to school. Schools are generally, for most children, a really safe and supportive place, but that transition back raised a lot of issues. I think that we need to make sure that we are providing that individualised support, providing some kind of hybrid opportunities and things to allow for that socialisation, but also allow for children who have really benefited from some of that online thing, to be able to concentrate on that too. It seems daft that a group of young people who were, by definition, some of the hardest to reach and engage had, in a way that was entirely unplanned, finally been engaged with. For us to lose that, that progress would be more than frustrating. My main line of question—again, I will direct this primarily to Bruce, but I would be definitely interested in Stephen London's thoughts as well—is going back to the issue of children's rights. We saw recently the issues with the Scottish Qualifications Authority and their relative lack of familiarity with the quality impact assessments, children and young people's rights and wellbeing impact assessments, etc. That largely predated the pandemic. During the pandemic, thanks to interventions from your office, from the Equality and Human Rights Commissioner, a lot of progress has been made at the SQA. However, I would be interested in your reflections on local authorities going into the pandemic and writing at the start, as things had to change rapidly. Did that demonstrate that local authorities had a pre-existing level of familiarity with equality impact assessment processes, with children and young people's rights impact assessment processes, or the opposite? Was there consistency across the country? Were some local authorities demonstrating that that was already embedded into their practice? Unfortunately, it really showed up, that we are not quite there yet. My office did a comprehensive children's rights impact assessment last—early in the pandemic—in the summer. That was in response to the fact that there was a real absence from the Scottish Government and local authority level of a rights-praced approach to decision making. We published that to try and support, but also to show good practice. However, there was a real absence of children's rights impact assessments, there was a real absence of rights-based budgeting, there was a particular absence of participatory decision making, and children and young people were not involved. That shows the importance of the fantastic work that the Parliament has done to pass the bill to incorporate the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Six weeks after the Supreme Court told us that we need to do some more work on that, I am concerned that this is not back before Parliament because we need this commenced in order to deliver the culture change. The absence of statutory obligations in relation to some of those things means that they are generally not done and not done well. There are some good practices, there is a strong willingness there, but I think that the legal underpinning is really important. The same flows through with things like co-ordinated support plans. It is only when you have the statutory underpinning that people are able to concentrate resources and energy. We have huge commitments, huge positivity, but we need to convert that into changes in practice that lead to changes in the results of children and young people. Just before Stephen Arlynda came in, taking on board Michael's point that looking back is useful but looking forward is more important, some local authorities have made significant improvements, partly because of the additional scrutiny of their practices that the pandemic provided. From your experience of what you have seen so far, have local authorities taken an approach of embedding those processes into what they are doing permanently, or are we in danger of having seen that as a one-off experience that Covid required an additional level of impact assessment and so on? We are just going to go back to the way that we were doing things before. Have we normalised that, or is there a culture of seeing it as it was all pandemic-related and therefore we do not need to continue that into our quote-unquote normal work? There is certainly a risk of that. There is a lot of good intentions and a lot of positivity, but what does normalise it? I am strongly of the view based on experience in other countries that we need that statutory underpinning. We need to get the incorporation legislation through, because without that obligation the other pressures come in, so it is really important in order to normalise that we need the statutory underpinning. There has been some really good practice. There is a huge willingness, but we need to make sure that this becomes the norm. Particularly the participation elements are still lacking. There are some fantastic great examples, but the experience of children and young people generally across Scotland is pretty poor in terms of their involvement in decision making and in terms of the understanding of the importance of things like impact assessments, proper rights-based plans and rights-based budgeting. Stephen Rylund, do you have any thoughts on the normalisation of impact assessment and that culture of children's rights within local authorities? As Bruce Rylund said, the legal underpinnings for us is absolutely crucial. What we know is that legislation and policy on their own will not change practice. Bruce Rylund said as well about the participation of children and young people in this is crucial. Alongside the legislative instruments, what we also know is that practitioners need to know what really good practice looks like and they need support to put that in place in order for that to be dealt by children and young people. We know that the quality impact assessments to understand the impact on children should be absolutely essential to what we are doing, but we also need to ensure that, alongside that, in order to implement it robustly, we are providing the right support to the right people to be able to do that. Just to give a very quick example, our virtual school head teacher network works together around the time that the SQA has updated its guidance on the alternative certification model, because, on looking at the guidance, it felt that the needs and rights of care-experienced children and young people needed to be amplified in terms of the additional considerations that they required in order to ensure that there was equity for them during that process. What they did was work together and we were able to publish a practice guidance for SQA coordinators in schools and designated managers in schools, which gave really good examples of the additional support and the additional practices that might need to be taken into account for care-experienced children and young people during the alternative certification model. That is a really nice example of how the legislative instruments alongside providing really robust support for practice can go towards making a difference in how children are experiencing really difficult and complex situations. Stephen Boyle's perspective is moving away very slightly from schools. In terms of the promise, a lot of the underpinning parts of the promise are around the voice of children and young people that probably has not been heard often enough for care-experienced children and young people in our sector. The underpinning elements of particularly the section of the voice within the independent care review focus on things such as access to digital tools and the underpinning values of children's rights. Again, it is embedding what Linda and Bruce have already said, which is that if there is a legal framework around that, then it makes it easier to embed it across all the different services around Scotland. At the moment, the care review does not have the legislative underpinning, and it is a sectoral reform, if you want to call it that. I think that that is appropriate and correct, but it does help to strengthen the viewpoint of the practitioners in the field if they understand that, particularly children's rights, there is no longer an expendable element of that. As I suspected, we are probably not going to get through all my colleagues' questions, but those who do not get called in this session, I promise you, will be the first to be called in the next session. For the last question, I think that it will be the last question. I would like to touch upon the pandemic recovery and local authorities approach to ASN. The first question relates to pre-pandemic firstly, as councils, one council being North Lanarkshire Council, where I am a serving councillor, undertook a review of ASN provision in 2019. The ASN estate, like many estates throughout Scotland, was inherited by the former region, which made up the former council process, and many policies and practices were out of date. One of the main concerns that came out of that review was the updating of the policies and practices that were required. I would like to ask the panel, do they think that local authorities could learn from the experiences of the pandemic and use that as an opportunity to update ASN provision to ensure that they are meeting the needs of ASN children and young people and to make sure that that is strengthened? If I could start with Bruce, please, and then Linda and then Stephen. That is a strong yes from me to be succinct. Again, we have touched upon the Morgan review. It is a short piece of work, but it is a powerful one in setting out the way forward. I think that it is absolutely important that we take this period in time to change things. Many of those issues existed before the pandemic, but they have been exacerbated by it. So absolutely, this window that we have now is the time to change practice, where things are a bit more fluid and turning this real challenge into an opportunity. So I strongly agree that reviewing, updating and taking forward the recommendations of the Morgan review and linking that to the promise and other work is absolutely essential at local authority level. I strongly agree with what Bruce said. I think that we do have really significant opportunities now to take the lessons learned and think about what they mean in the context of the current education, the proposed education reform, the recommendations within the additional support for learning action plan and also in relation to the promise. I think that it is really helpful, the international council for education advisers talks about the concept that comes from architecture around universal design when we are thinking about designing buildings. That is about making buildings as accessible as possible for the maximum number of users possible right from the planning stage so that later adaptations are needed. I think that that is the approach that we should be taking to future policy. It is about making them as inclusive as possible for all groups of children and young people and ensuring that the children and young people's voices are absolutely at the centre of the policy decisions and the policy that we develop. There are certainly opportunities for us going forward around that. My perspective is exactly the same as Bruce and Linda. The underpinning principle of the Morgan review is probably more pertinent today than it was even at the time of publication. The number of young people with additional support needs has continued to balloon. Their access to specialist teaching or resources continues to either stay at the same level or slightly drop. From my perspective, there has been a real lens on that specific element of the review. It is probably worth thinking about what the physical construct of mainstream school and mainstreaming is and how that meets the needs of our young people with ASN. The concept of mainstreaming is something that we strongly support, but there has got to be consideration of the fact that, for those with ASN, the profile of the way in which they are taught or access education changed as a result of the pandemic. As we have already touched on, it is quite key to pick some of the positives that have come out of that and hopefully feed it into some of the ways in which we will reform education for children and young people, specifically those with ASN, in the future. Thank you very much all. If I could leave the Morgan review and the ASN provision and the requirements for strengthening ASN provision and move on to Covid guidance for pupils with ASN. I recently read an article by the EISASN network and they suggested that Covid guidance is totally inadequate for pupils with ASN. One of the concerns that was raised is that, due to the wearing of face masks, ASN children cannot see their teacher's face, and that impacts their ability to communicate as they would usually. With that in mind, as we have the commissioner here this morning, I would like to ask his view on the wearing of face masks in schools, particularly across the ASN estate, and if he believes that that has an impact for ASN children to be able to communicate effectively with their teachers and their peers. Face masks undoubtedly impact on our ability to communicate and that has a disproportionate effect on some children. There is a balance to be struck in terms of all Covid mitigation measures, and again, we have been very clear with Government about the need that any interference, such as wearing face masks to protect public health, needs to be proportionate, needs to be time limited, needs to be reviewed, but it is for Government to assess that balance. If there is a general view that face masks are necessary and proportionate, then there has to be exceptions, particularly around communication, and so that proportionality is different for children who have additional communication needs, or, again, for many neurodiverse children, having a mask on is particularly challenging for communication. Any child who has a benefit of not wearing a face mask in terms of that proportionality has to be taken into account because it is not proportionate to ask them to wear masks in terms of the overall public benefit, but the broader decision around where that balance lies is really important, but we have to realise that it applies to each individual child and needs that assessment of proportionality. We are very concerned if we are in a situation where children are being forced to wear masks and it is providing a disproportionate interference, and particularly communication needs, neurodiversity and other health needs. It would not be proportionate to require them to wear a mask in terms of public safety. Thank you. I am just wondering if Linda or Stephen have anything to add on that point. I apologise to colleagues who have not had their turn yet. That will come at the beginning of the next session. I want to be fair to everybody, but I especially want to thank Bruce Adamson, Stephen McGee and Linda O'Neill for giving us the evidence that you have given us this morning to be very useful and very interesting and very informative. Thank you all for your time today. I will now suspend our meeting for about five minutes to allow for a change of witnesses. We continue to take evidence on the impact of Covid-19 on children and young people with additional support needs and care experienced young people. I am therefore delighted to welcome our second panel of witnesses. We have Laura Black, who is convener of the ASN Committee for the Educational Institute of Scotland, the EIS. She is with us virtually. We have also got Ramone Hutchinson, the co-ordinator for Autism Resources Coordination Hub Arch in South Lanarkshire. He is also with us virtually. In person, Sally Cavers was delighted to have you with us, head of inclusion, children in Scotland. We really appreciate you giving us an hour of your time today to speak to us and give us evidence, sharing your experience and findings. The first question in this session is going to Willie Rennie. Thank you very much, convener, and thanks to the witnesses for coming in today. The situation seems pretty stark to me. We demand from young people's up. We have heard that in the previous evidence session and written evidence as well. The weight for diagnosis, whether it is mental health or autism or other areas, is a longer. Coordinated support plans, the numbers are down in the last eight years. Additional support teachers are down, funding is down for ASN, referrals to social work are down. The system was already under considerable strain before the pandemic, and we know that demand is up since. So what chance do young people have of getting the support that they need under these circumstances? Who is that question directed at, Willie? Anybody who wishes to answer? I think that the EIS had a particularly strong view on this, but, Tess, no, Laurie may wish to start. Laurie, if you would like to start, and can I just say to the other witnesses, when you hear what Laurie has to say, if you have something to add, please feel free to contribute. If you feel that everything has been said that you would have said, that's absolutely fine. Laurie, over to you. Welcome. Thanks for having me. I'd have to agree wholeheartedly with what Willie Rennie has said. Yes, I think that Covid has certainly exacerbated ASN needs across the board, but what we were already facing were already quite acute needs in ASN prior to Covid, where we saw that there was chronic underfunding, underresourcing and understaffing. What we're seeing now is a change in ASN needs, whereas pupils previously who perhaps did not have a decision to bring from EIS members that a number of children are displaying quite either violent behaviours or really distressed behaviour, which is also impacting their learning and the learning of their peers as well. Did anyone else like to come in? So, in response to Willie Rennie's question, what chance do we have? I think that you've already heard this morning about the level of challenge, but I think that what we have to do, what we owe it to children and young people to do, is to look at their needs to involve them in the planning for transformation and to make sure that we are really taking evidence about what has worked and what we needed before the pandemic, so what came out of the additional support for learning review, what is in the additional support for learning action plan and to make sure that we accelerate the pace and the progress against those actions. That needs to be led by children and young people. We have got, we're in the fortunate position of having many fora and opportunities to bring in, to take a rights-based approach to listening to children and young people and making them the drivers for the change that's required. I think that we know the scale of the challenge. There's a lot of evidence about where resource, support and capacity are required. We have that, but now we need to make progress on making that change. Ramon. Hello, thank you for being invited to make a contribution. Just two things I'd like to say. The first thing is that when the committee was asking about research as opposed to anecdotal references, I would just like to refer the committee to the centre for children and young people's participation based at the University of Central Lancashire. They undertook a fantastic paper entitled Covid-19 children's participation in shaping responses. It was an international analysis of the responses from children across Europe, so I would refer you to that. I can show you the paper if it's any good. I'm quite visual in my own learning, so... We can't read it. I'm okay, sorry. Basically, that can be accessed. There's a lot of really valid information in that that would substantiate some of the anecdotal evidence that's already provided. Secondly, and more importantly, I agree completely with the points that have been made already that there is a systemic and structural approach required. I would wholeheartedly endorse the earlier witnesses' statements that what we obviously require are mandated duties through legislation as opposed to current discretionary powers, which within a whole list of other priorities that are faced by local authorities loses the priorities that are placed in the list of priorities, so that was the only other point that I wanted to make. Willie Rennie. No, thank you for coming, convener. That's me finished. If I can now come to James Dornan. Convener, I suspect this session might be a little bit shorter than the last one then. I've got a couple of questions around how much of the responsibility for recovery from the pandemic in schools should be devolved to school and local authority levels. If there's a substantial amount there, how would you see them being held accountable for the progress? I think I'll start with Laurie Rennie. I think that schools and local authorities are already accountable for their progress, but I do think that, again, there are some other systemic issues that we do have to address in order to help schools and local authorities to move forward, and until that's addressed, I think that we can find ourselves going round in circles. When we're talking about chronic underfunding and chronic understaffing, it's quite absolutely essential that we get that fixed in order to support schools and local authorities to meet those children and young people's needs. I have to say that I've never been at an education committee for a few years, and I've never been at an education committee with the EIS where it's not been asking for more money, but there can't be the only solution for everything. We're in the middle of a pandemic with very difficult times, and I do accept that there are systemic problems in the provision beforehand. I'm not trying to hide from that, but we have to look at the reality and see how we can best work poorly, see where it is that's going to work best, as opposed to always asking for more money. I do think that local authorities are rising to the challenge. I think that local authorities are implementing specialist roles for Covid recovery, and that should be acknowledged and using those particular roles for bespoke needs within their geographical area, and that is taking place above and beyond what was already happening prior to Covid. I do think that those things are happening within the budget resources that they have. I would like to offer a couple of things if it's okay, and I completely understand James what your point is. People make schools no money, and I think that there is a skills deficit. As far as I'm concerned in relation to neurodivergent understanding on neurodiverse accommodation and adjusted services, I think that there is a general need for greater workforce development about creating adjusted services within the provision that we already have, as opposed to just creating more services or ploughing more money in. I think that there is definitely, for me, a lacking in autism-informed and additional support-informed practice. I think that workforce development, certainly for me, alongside legislation, would go a long way to maybe contributing to some of the things that you mentioned that's not just about let's get some extra staff in. We know, for example, that it was quoted earlier by the other witnesses that pupils with additional support needs now feature a third of Scotland's entire population within the schools. Between 2014 and 2018, there was a 101 per cent increase in autistic children within that population, so what we're facing is a skills deficit as much as a resource in deficit. Angela Morgan made recommendations that were accepted about accountability, but what we found over the past 20 months is that the youth work and childcare sector have got such a significant role to play in supporting schools. That's not only during the school day but outside of the school day and during holiday times. All of the empowered schools' guidance, the work that's been done to ensure that partnerships are as effective as they can be, is really critical now. We have to look at the community around the school and the expertise in working with and supporting children with additional support needs and care experience young people that come from the youth work sector and make sure that they are part of the recovery plan and are really embedded in it so that some of the issues around sustainability for the sector are addressed swiftly. I think that the innovation and creativity that Linda O'Neill described earlier is a key and positive thing that we need to make sure that schools have their partnerships and have the range of incredible services available to them so that we can properly support children and young people with additional support needs. Thanks very much. I can ask you then why I've got you on. What support do you think that is needed for schools and teachers to be able to identify the ways to support the wellbeing and any lost learning for the children with the ASN? In the written responses and in our engagement work with children and young people, they are focused on wellbeing and the impact on their wellbeing has been paramount. I think that the relational support, the collaboration that is required to address that wellbeing and needs and wellbeing requires time. Time is something that we know that school staff sometimes struggle to find to engage properly and effectively with pupils and with their families. We need to look at the system, we need to look at advice from international council of education advisers and what came out of the OECD report and look at how we can ensure that to develop wellbeing support for pupils that the team around the child has got the time and the connection to be able to do that. That itself leads to a number of other questions but I'll see if any of the colleagues are wishing to come in at the stage. Laurie? I just wanted to add in there for James Donan that it has already been acknowledged that there needs to be a better infrastructure for additional support needs and pupil support as a career pathway for teachers and that in of itself, if that is strengthened, would obviously then have a knock on it. Laurie, can you repeat that last sentence? We didn't get it. I was just saying that at the focus on improving the pathways for additional support needs and pupil support needs teachers were to take off that that would have a direct impact on the wellbeing of children and young people with additional support needs. Okay, thanks very much for that. Ramon? Throw the doors of the schools open and get other professionals in there, that's what I would say. Begin to have the kind of interagency or collaboration that, for example, has been promoted by the Christy commission 11 years ago. Let's get move out of those silos, let's begin to cross-pollinate, let's begin to get the expertise and the experience of youth workers, social workers, other health professionals, allied health professionals and have them in the schools as well as working collaboratively alongside teachers. It's not about expecting teachers to be everything for everybody, I think that that's unrealistic. I think that it's about working collaboratively together with the agencies and that schools should no longer be seen as the pockets of purely education repositories, education in its broadest sense as opposed to education in its narrowest sense, and that comes back to me from a podium, sir. That's very helpful because I've been advocating things up for the last 15 years, so thank you for that convener, I'll just leave it there. The evidence that we've been presented with includes the statistic that the number of ASN teachers in publicly funded schools has fallen by 578 from the period from 2012 to 2020, that's a 15.6% reduction. Laurie, that must have some impact in the nature of the support that's being offered, surely. Laurie? It certainly does. I would like to reiterate that schools already do work collaboratively with a range of different agencies. Schools work actively with active schools and educational psychologists and health practitioners, but that multi-agency support is already happening. Schools are no longer an isolate, but I would have to agree that, yes, there is an issue, the fact that the number of teachers that are specialised in people's support has decreased dramatically, and now that we're finding in a time of exacerbated need that is even more acute. Do you make any distinction between support at primary and secondary schools, Laurie, in what you've just said? Yes, I think that there is a particular issue that we've seen in primary education recently. As I mentioned, I touched on previously that there has been an increase in violent incidents and distressed behaviours, and we're now seeing that more at a primary level, particularly in primary 1 and 2, whereas previously that wasn't such a pronounced issue. We're also seeing at the prime and an increase in mental health issues, and whilst there's quite a lot of great provision happening in secondary... Oh dear. ...school, now out of the secondary estate, we're finding issues with primary schools that they don't have that same kind of access to counselling and mental health resources. Thank you. We are experiencing the limitations of being, you know, being hybrid this morning because you're coming in and out, but I think we got the gist of what you're saying. I think James Dornan, if I'm not mistaken, would like to come back in. James, and then we'll go to Michael Marr. Thank you, convener. Just very briefly, it would not be the case that the teachers, the specialist teachers numbers dropped as mainstreaming took its central place. I accept that there may be an issue just now, but that was the reason why things happened the way we did that. Come back on that. Laurie? Yes. Well, I mean, I think if you look at when the EIS did a survey within 2018, 78.2% of respondents said that they disagreed or strongly disagreed that provision for children and young people within ASN was adequate, and that was prior to Covid. So again, I think we have. Yeah. Yeah, James says, I think James, did you say you're not arguing that point, are you? No, I'm just asking the point that the numbers of the specialist teachers dropped at the same time as mainstreaming was becoming the way that the education was looking forward. Yeah, I appreciate that. Michael Marr. I think Mr Dornan's criticism of the EIS advocating for education resources is pretty ill-founded, but particularly in this area, I have to say, you know, I think that the statistics that the convener laid out in the evidence that we've seen and, you know, the testimony that we've heard shows that there has been a marked decrease in the resource in terms of the teachers that are facing children who have additional support needs. So the Morgan review was actually excluded a resource assessment particularly, but its recommendations have been accepted by the by all political parties. It's my understanding. Coming out of the pandemic, I mean, we heard from some, speaking to the EIS last week, tell me, they still feel that we're in a crisis situation rather than in recovery, but would the members of the panel today say that delivering the Morgan review outcomes or recommendations, will that be more challenging post-pandemic than it was previously? Mr Cavers. Yes, I think it will. I think that the scale of just in terms of the number of recommendations, they agreed actions, so I think there needs to be a prioritisation of some of those actions. There's some really the core principle of participation of children and young people, and you heard this morning from Bruce Adams and very strongly on this. For us, children in Scotland, that is a key principle that needs to underpin all of the additional support for learning improvement work. There has been progress made against the action plan, but the acceleration of that progress needs to happen for children and young people. There's been some work on the national measurement framework, and that will provide the evidence of what support interventions, what impact they have on children and young people, we need to make sure that that happens swiftly. There's other areas where co-ordination support plans long-standing concerns about the understanding of and implementation of that co-ordination and planning, so that needs to happen very swiftly. The things that are in the action plan are long-standing concerns. The predecessor of the committee heard on occasions from Angela Morgan, so it will be a challenge. Obviously, the capacity to be able to support improvement and change in schools is reduced because of the response to the presenting needs. On to the point of who we have available to us to support improvement and change. The pieces of the jigsaw are all there, but getting it to come together is the challenge that we face, making sure that the infrastructure and the people, so that the practitioners are there, is absolutely key. Basically, for me, my thinking is about the statements in the Morgan review or the findings of the Morgan review, but the attitudinal basis, far too many professionals within education had the view that additional support needs was not their job. That's something that needs to be addressed. I think that the attitudes within, and it's not just to make the education profession, it's within every profession that Fiona Duncan referred to. It's about othering children and young people with additional support needs in the sense that the mainstream assumption is for neurotypical children and young people. It's not for neurodivergent or children with additional support needs or learning or intellectual disabilities. Advocacy, for me, is a huge need, an unmet need, where we can give a platform to again what Fiona Duncan referred to as the quieter voices. I would say that our autistic children, young people and adults are amongst that group with a quieter voice and who would need some kind of advocacy services to ensure that things like CSPs and ASPs, co-ordinated support plans, additional support plans, education support plans and that the team around the child incorporates somebody who's there to give volume to that quieter voice. Thank you, convener, and thank you very much to the witnesses for their evidence thus far. I think that for all of us our lives evolve around our children to some extent, but I've been struck in 22 years, as a constituency MSP, that for parents with children with profound additional special needs, their lives are completely dominated by their children. Very often, convener, it seems to me that they're fighting a constant daily and uphill struggle battle to obtain sufficient provision, appropriate provision, for their children. I know that the witnesses will be acutely aware of that. I didn't really want to ask them what in particular should we as a country strive to do to ensure that the children with those most profound needs have access to the services that they and their families deserve. Sally, you go first. Absolutely, I agree with the point that has been made. Possibly what has been missing from the discussion so far has been on the support for children in the early years, and I think that for children with complex additional support needs in their families is absolutely key. What can we do in order to improve that support? The level of challenge again is very well documented. The family fund survey reported earlier this year on the impact of wellbeing of families with children with disabilities and complex needs. They found that 86 per cent of families reported a negative impact on their wellbeing. In terms of the earlier stage, it is the support pathways, so getting the connection between health and education and that transition point into services, making sure that there is a communication there and that it is effective. At the school stage and moving through primary and secondary and into transition planning, it is the GERFEC principles that are now quite well embedded, long-standing principles that support children's services, to make sure that that is the function of the team around the child and making sure that, in terms of the child's plan and planning that there is the mechanism in place to make sure that everybody is available and around the child and family to provide that support. Critically, again, as you have heard in the evidence session earlier this morning, it has to start with involving the child and the family in the discussions about that planning and support. That is about ensuring that there is a good, solid relationship with key professionals to make sure that family feels listened to and that there is a trusted and respected relationship, which is the experience of some children and their families, but not of all, so it is getting that consistency in practice that is really key. Thank you, Sally. Laurie is now on audio only because of the intermittency of the connection that we had with her. Laurie, would you like to come in on that question? Yes, I would like to agree that I think that GERFEC is well embedded within schools and I do think that it is an effective tool for supporting families and children and young people. It is an insufficient of resources because putting into place a GERFEC plan takes time and additional resources. One of the things that we have seen is that it is difficult, particularly in certain geographical locations, to get other agencies to support pupils. One of the things that was mentioned there is perhaps a lack of respite care for parents with children with profound and complex needs, and that is something that we do recognise. Basically, for me, the provision of mandated duties underpinned by robust legislation and data set even a commissioner's office for neurodiversity and learning intellectual disability as well. I think that the default position of advocacy services being readily available for every child is an automatic right, so it is about rights and no requests, and about making those services accessible. One of the big findings in some of the international research that I referred to earlier, the University of Lancashire, was clearly saying that accessibility is a massive challenge for our community. We heard from earlier witnesses about the absence of really good visual information for children and young people where additional support needs. We need the creation of accessible services to make advocacy a default position underpinned by legislation and a formation of a commissioner's office that can ensure that that happens. I am grateful for the answers. I do not wish inadvertently to paint an overly negative picture, because there are many positives. 95 per cent of children with additional support needs were educated in mainstream classes. Teacher numbers have risen from 52,247 and 19 to 53,400, and perhaps even more important than that, the achievements of children with particular needs have been extraordinary. As a result of the efforts of themselves, their teachers, their support assistants and their families, I can see that pupils with additional support needs to continue to achieve, with 89.6 per cent of school leaders, levers with additional support needs having a positive initial destination, nearly three quarters with additional support needs having left school with one pass or more at level five or better, and a staggering 91 per cent with additional support needs with one or more qualification at level four. I read those into the record, convener, because there is a danger here that we paint it negative, but we all want to see as achieved more. My focus was very much on those children and the convener with particularly severe needs, which I hope is an issue that we can come back to. I absolutely agree with the need for rest-by-care and bespoke services, and I recognise the excellent work that has been done in many schools in my constituency in this regard, which I have witnessed over the past couple of decades. I am grateful to the witnesses for their contributions this morning. I want to ask a little bit more about what you put up, Gremone, about advocacy services. Fergus Ewing was talking about the struggles that parents can have. As a parent myself, I have seen parent carer stuff coming through there. The Morgan report can back that up as well, that everything can be a kind of on-going battle if you like. Sometimes parents can be seen as being aggressive or demanding when they are just at the end of their tether and trying to get something to work to happen for their child. Another thing is parents can often be undiagnosed, so they can suffer some of the anxiety and communication issues that their children do as well. Another thing from the Morgan report is the fact that, quite often, it seems to be the children with the most disruptive behaviours at school that actually get the attention and that other children get ignored. You have a situation very often where children with complex needs, their strengths are not recognised, but children who are very high-functioning actually have difficulties with their struggles and their challenges being recognised as well, and, quite often, they can be minimised there. Advocacy seems to be quite an important factor. I was just wondering, if you have any evidential stuff around that happening locally and for the other panel members, if that is something that you would support and say that advocacy is a big part going forward? For Ramon, I am asking if there is evidence of that happening on the ground either locally or at a wider level when you spoke internationally, too. Firstly, I would like to say what constitutes. We talked earlier about definitions of eligibility criteria for vulnerable, and I would say what is distressed behaviour. Distressed behaviour for many autistic children on the spectrum, particularly females, is about flying under the radar, about masking, about not expressing themselves in an overt fashion. I believe very strongly that language creates realities and we should be using the terminology of distressed behaviour, because distressed behaviour can be challenging behaviour, but it can also be frozen behaviour, it can also be artistic shutdowns, as well as artistic meltdowns. It can be behavioural meltdowns, but it can also be behavioural shutdowns. I think that the four Fs, the fight, freeze, flight or fawn response, are very much pertinent to that, and that is about weaving in trauma-informed practice. That is my first point. I think that those who the term the squeaky wheel gets the most oil comes to mind, whereas those who are presenting the most obvious tangible issues are the ones who get most of the resources, and that can actually happen within families as well. There are many parent carers that we support who are saying they feel very guilty about the fact that they are devoting huge amounts of time and effort and energy into their railway additional support needs and autism, and that their neurotypical siblings do not get anything by comparison. That is an issue. In relation to advocacy, I have been a member of the Autism Network Scotland Roundtable Forum for the past two years. One of the members of that forum is Dr Tom Kirkwood, who was also director of the International Advocates Practitioners Association up until a few months ago. I know internationally but locally as well the provision of accessible advocacy services. It is important to distinguish between independent professional advocacy services, which are absolutely essential and overseen by the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance as a regulatory overseen body. I think that there is also, for us on the ground, a need for more accessible, locally-based advocacy services that includes peer advocacy, self-advocacy and group advocacy. That is something that within South Lanarkshire we have been actively trying to encourage and facilitate because we know that that is what our users and carers are looking for. We did a survey in 2020, but just before lockdown in January 2020, in something like 92 per cent of our respondents, they would not even know where to look for advocacy services. They would not even know what autism-informed advocacy services actually look like. There is a huge deficit, a huge unmet need that we could address as a country. It was just to see if the other panel members agreed that advocacy should pay a really big part on it there as well. Yes, absolutely, I agree. Children in Scotland currently delivers two parts of their MyRoute's MyC support service. Children's views service independently gather children's views for formal processes in relation to additional support for learning and advocacy for children who wish to exercise their rights. It is a support service that is embedded in the legislation. It is proving that the advocacy element that is delivered by partners in advocacy is very well used and that children are reporting its significant impact in terms of their confidence and ability to feel heard. In relation to parents and carers, I agree with the points that have been made. There are a number of independent advocacy services available to parents and carers across Scotland, but are they available to every parent care of a child with additional support? No. The power of quality advocacy is very significant. Alongside that is the importance of good quality information and support. That has been something that is well evidenced in terms of response from parents and carers. Children in Scotland manages and inquires Scottish Government-funded advice and information service. One of the most impactful responses from parents about getting quality information and bespoke advice is about confidence, to ask questions and to be engaged in the planning and delivery of their child's learning support. I think that good quality information and support is also crucial for parents and carers and the availability and making sure that that is accessible to everybody is crucial. I just wanted to bring in about the early years that are making sure that support for families, particularly in the early years, is crucial. We administer the early learning and childcare inclusion fund on behalf of Scottish Government. What settings are reporting over the past two years is that, because they have missed out on that informal and regular contact with parents and carers, there are worries, concerns and anxieties being raised because parents are missing that family support element. That family support element is crucial not only in the early years but throughout childhood. Some children's services are doing really well but, again, it is what youth work and childcare and family support services can ensure that it happens more consistently if they are ensured that they are around the table that they are brought into the planning for them. A very quick, supplementary question from Michael Marra. Panellas, I mentioned the importance of respite services in order to access continued education experiences. I have constituents who are concerned at the lack of remobilisation in respite services in Dundee and that Covid has continued to be used as justification. Do you understand the frustration that they would face when they see people in night clubs and pubs and atlack? Is that a shared experience across the country in terms of panellists or is that particular to my constituents? That is certainly something that parents have reported when they have contacted Inquire. Not having access to that respite is also something that has come through services that are being supported through the access to childcare fund. What we are seeing is that some of those funded services are providing that respite, but the gap in that provision has been really profound. That is certainly something that we are also hearing. Thanks, convener. It is a really interesting session. I was not enjoying the dots when different bits of evidence we had. I was struck by the convener's comments about the cuts in ASN teachers and assistants in specialist settings in Mr Dornan talking about the increase of the presumption of mainstream, the trend of young people being in mainstream settings. I do not want to get into debate about the sufficiency of funding. We will look at that during the budget screen and hopefully come here, but maybe a bit like the baseline that Michael Marra was talking about and how funding is used. The paper for this meeting says that, in terms of education recovery, more than £250 million was earmarked—not for ASN, but in general for education recovery—that £240 million of that has already been used to support staffing. Again, it is not specific to ASN, but staffing more generally, but probably more significantly. Non-recurring funds are welcome, but they do not necessarily sustain the improvements that they want to see. From April next year, £145 million in relation to that has been put in baseline to local government funds is my understanding. Sorry for giving you those numbers, but back to the baseline that Michael Marra was talking about. Do we have any idea as yet, or how can we follow how that money is used across 32 local authorities? How can we make sure that when that investment is placed in mainstream, where there is additional commitment to add more support assistance—and I see that they went up by a couple of thousands in the past few years—that they have got the correct qualifications and that they are there for the long term, and they are committed to supporting mainstreaming or, again, in the specialist sector? I am sorry for the length of that question, convener, but I think that it is important that we do not just exchange numbers as politicians, but that we try to drill down— Does that understand it? You are saying that what is the accountability for the spend? It is not about accountability, it is about understanding the spend. In April next year, there will be an additional £145 million to all the local authorities to give permanent contracts to teach us the longer-term rather non-recurring funding for additional support. That is fantastic. We will want to see that, but we want to make sure that young people living with additional support needs get their fair and ample slice of that additional funding, be that in a mainstream setting or be that in a non-mainstream setting. I think that it is absolutely critical that that equity of funding is there for children with additional support needs and for care-experienced children and young people. At the moment, it feels to me that there are gaps in being able to track what impact that that is having on children and young people with additional support needs. I will go back to my point earlier about the national measurement framework that is being taken forward from the additional support for learning action plan because we need to know what the impact of interventions are on children and young people with additional support needs. Currently, we do not. In order to understand the level of investment required and its impact, I think that the national measurement framework and its swift implementation are really key. It does not necessarily address your question of the funding available, but I agree that it must be equitable and of benefit to the children that we are talking about here. I suppose that rather than my assertion, it was for the witnesses to say, yes, we need to be clear about the money that is in the system and how it has been spent and to be accountable for how that has been spent and the political choices that are made. I think that you hit the jackpot with Sally because I think that that was very clearly what Sally just said. Do you want to hear from your discretion? Can you not give me the time to choose? It's fine. Laurie, do you want to come in on this? See if we can get your internet connection to hold up. Yes, look, I was just going to say that you could consider the model of how PEF funding was rolled out to local authorities into schools because PEF funding was conditional on measuring efficacy. Schools and local authorities are rather o-fae already doing that, so I think that that is entirely possible and reasonable, and that would ensure that it is equitable. It is consistent with what Audit Scotland told us when they came to give us evidence in the budget cycle that we need to focus far more on outcomes, what actually happens, and what is the benefit that is accrued. I would only say that, in relation to the whole issue of funding, clearly two documents recently, the evaluation report by Blake Stevenson, looking at analysing or evaluating the 10-year long Scottish Radio for autism and the accountability gap by the cross-party group on autism, both identified a stop-start investment, and that is something that needs to stop. If there is going to be any sustained improvement in supports and services, there needs to be committed budgets to ensure that that is happening. One of the main issues that I have in relation to this committee's remit is the fact that the Scottish strategy for autism did not include education at all whatsoever. There were a couple of references to it, but within the strategy that self-education was almost a separate issue. I know that within the accountability gap, the evaluation report and the two walls transformation document for the next two years that has been produced by the Scottish Government, education is referenced in about eight or nine points, but the integration of education, and as one of the other witnesses said about early years, is crucial if we are going to address the systemic inequalities that are faced by children, young people and adults within the autism community and with additional support needs generally. I turn to cocaw, because she has a question about diagnosis, which seems to fit in with some of that. Yes, it is connected. I noted the rise in numbers of children and young people who are identified as having additional support needs sitting at 33. A third of our pupils in front of us have been identified. We know that there has been a disproportionate effect on them in the Covid context. I am going to try to drill that down and ask about the continued underdiagnosis of black and minority ethnic cultural background children and families. That has been brought to my attention through my inbox as a constituency MSP, and certainly when I was a teacher as well. I wondered if the panellists could provide any examples of any engagement, support or evidence gathering to get the perspectives of children and families and young people from black and minority ethnic heritage and cultural backgrounds. Do you want to pick something to start with? Sally, do you want to start us off? Thank you. Absolutely. I think that it is a real gap in an area where attention is required. In terms of evidence, I cannot cite any direct evidence that might be helpful to the discussion. Children of Scotland has been working with intercultural youth recently around diversity in teaching, but I think that it is a real gap in an area where we need to support families, work with community organisations and understand the barriers and understand why there might be a difference in diagnosis. That family support element to me is really key as early as possible and looking at where those gaps are and prioritising them. There still appears to be a lot of stigma attached to seeking help and support. In the Covid context, we were all isolated, but certain families from the backgrounds that I mentioned and the children were even more isolated. I wondered if any of the other panellists could give any examples of any reach-out or any work that was done around that. I know for a fact that the most recent piece of research that was undertaken by the Cambridge Autism Research Centre, headed up by Dr Simon Barron Cohen in February, concluded that there was significant disproportionate impact of autism on black and minority ethnic communities. The research is clearly showing a greater prevalence even within the autism statistics. At a more micro-level within the arch, we are supporting several black minority ethnic families through the Covid crisis. There are issues of accessibility, and we are doing our utmost to make sure that that is getting flagged with our authority. Getting things translated into minority languages and being able to link those families with support services in Glasgow or elsewhere that would be able to recognise particular cultural issues. Thanks, Ramona. I was thinking about the advocacy services that you were talking about, and having cultural awareness built into that is important. And interpretation services as well around that. I do not know if Laurie has anything further to add. I do think that diversity and equality training is well embedded within education, and I think that that is a really good thing. I would like to just highlight that I do think that there is perhaps more to be done prior to children coming to school, and perhaps more attention could be given to advocates in support via health visitors in order to combat issues with early intervention and certain groups having hesitancy about getting that support, like black and ethnic minority communities sometimes have. Thank you. There was a reference during a recent exchange that we have had about mainstreaming, and I know that Willie Rennie wanted to come back in on that. Willie, if you would like to take up on that. Because you were so economic at the start of our session as well, we give you plaudits for that. I prefer to be brief. I think that it is an important area to try and cover about the consequences, although I am sure that everybody supports the mainstreaming approach. As we have seen in the written evidence, there are consequences for wider learning and other pupils and the classroom environment of mainstreaming. I am just keen to understand a little bit more about what that looks like and what we can do to try and address that. I think that, perhaps, that it could come in first. If I could give you one example from a local association that reported back to the EIS that over a space of just a few days, one early primary teacher had suffered a broken jaw and damaged an ice socket from being kicked in the face by a pupil. In another school not far away, another staff member had a tooth knocked out. Those are both from children in early primary 1 and 2. How that relates to mainstreaming is that you are finding that practitioners are spending a lot of their time essentially firefighting, really challenging violent and distressed behaviours, and that is, of course, going to have an impact on the ability for other children to learn and for their attainment. The teachers feel that they get enough support when these incidents happen to try and manage those circumstances? No. Again, I do not want to down a broken record here, but it really does come down to people on the ground. When you have had a violent incident, no staff members need some respite themselves. They may require medical attention. They might be quite distressed themselves. There is also the issue of having to record those incidents almost immediately so that there is an accurate reflection of those things for religious reasons and for school information. There needs to be staff available to come in and work with that child to get into a point where they are, where they come. We are just not seeing that at the moment. Can we do any of the other witnesses like to contribute in this area? Maybe confirm the question, Willie Rennie. In terms of mainstreaming, I am just keen to understand about the wider impact of mainstreaming on other pupils and so on. What can we do to try and address the consequences that Laurie Rennie has set out? I would like to understand how widespread that is and whether the support mechanisms are in place to ensure that we can deal with the consequences. That is not a question against mainstreaming, it is just how we cope with some of the consequences and side effects of that. I think that mainstreaming education does not work for every child and young person with additional support needs. What children and young people will report is some of the environmental factors, the size of classes, particularly in secondary, some of the pace of learning. What children and young people will repeatedly say is that there is not the flexibility—you heard about that earlier—to respond to their needs. There is not an individualised approach taken as much as it needs to be. However, mainstream education does work for the majority of pupils. The vision for an inclusive education is something that is well supported. In terms of the presumption of mainstream guidance, it is very clear on the components of what makes effective mainstream and inclusive provision. The vision and commitment are there, but, as you have heard, the challenge for staff in order to enable staff to meet the range of needs presented in mainstream environments can be very challenging. There are a number of recommendations in the additional support for learning action plan to contribute to improvement. Children and young people must be leading the discussion and improvement planning on what will make a difference from them. There are many schools across Scotland that have very effective inclusion groups, diverse and equality groups, that can set the scene for improvement on what needs to change. Clearly, I completely agree that we need to hold the hands of those who hold the hands of children with additional support needs. That would be about supporting their front-line staff. However, I remind the committee about the fact that, in a document recently, although the last couple of years called dot-included, not engaged, not involved, it was quite clearly shown that 70 per cent of cases taken to the ASN tribunal are from autistic children, who are not having the reasonable adjustments within their education that they and their parent carers demand or feel that they require. Workforce development is certainly a big aspect to that. We also know that there is an ungainly amount of unlawful exclusions in anxiety-related absences because children with additional support needs do not fit into the mainstream. They are unduly and disproportionately suffering as a consequence of that. That is something that we face in archway here every single day. We have a weekly online support session. I do not think that there has been one of those weekly support sessions that has taken place in the past year and a half, where we have not heard parents and carers saying that their children have anxiety-related issues, particularly in relation to the lockdown experience. The mainstream assumption absolutely works for the majority, but for the third of pupils who have additional support needs, I do not think that it is working quite as well, particularly for those who are on the autism spectrum. Laurie, do you want to come back? Yes, I would like to reiterate that one of the issues with presumptive mainstreaming is that we are not meeting the needs of pupils perhaps with sensory issues. That is not just children with autism. The mainstream classroom can be quite a bright, hectic and loud environment. We have not seen that there is an alternative provision within school buildings to meet children's sensory needs, let alone their academic and attainment needs. That highlights that needs for children are individualised. They are bespoke. I would like to stress also that inclusion is not proximity to their peers. I think that that is still a misunderstanding. We put a child with additional support needs in a mainstream classroom and that is inclusive. It is absolutely not inclusive if they are still not getting their needs met and they are still perhaps socially isolated. We have found that there is a big need more than ever for, say, nurture provision across schools. Maybe schools have brilliant nurture groups and nurture provision, but they need more of them. I think that it is worth to come back in again. Just to add on the back of that, I think that another nuance of that, Willie, is that we know that something like 80 per cent of autistic children, young people and adults do not have an intellectual disability. Where do they go? What support do they get? Again, we come back to that squeaky wheel in the oil. They are not presenting the tangible issues, the challenge of behaviour or the aggressive outburst. They are not presenting any of those issues, so they basically do not get the support. We see that in the sequelae, the consequences and the life trajectories of our autistic children, young people and adults and of the children with additional support needs. We know that they are very disproportionately featured in suicide statistics. For example, between nine and 26 times more likely to commit suicide, 15 years less life expectancy than the average neurotypical child or young person. We also heard earlier a reference to the justice and youth justice system. We also know that they feature disproportionately there as well. In terms of the consequences outside school and in the broader quality of life issues, there are significant problems there. It is a holistic, systemic approach that we need as opposed to just purely focusing on schools and sales. Thank you, Willie. We have time for one very quick round of questions from Ross. Thank you, convener. I'll be as brief as I can. I'd like to return to the point around diagnosis that Co-Cab brought up a moment ago. The discrepancies are an area that we need to do a lot more to look into, the racial and cultural disparity, but also around gender in particular, when it comes to girls who really struggle to get autism diagnoses. I'm interested in the panel's perspective across the board with diagnoses, what the impact of lockdown has been, because despite the fact that the overall number of diagnosed additional needs has gone up, I'm working on the presumption that, in some cases, it would have been hard, if not impossible, to get a diagnosis during lockdown. Does that mean that we've been in a period since the summer of last year to now where a backlog has built up? Are there further delays in the system for getting a diagnosis, or is that part of this still working relatively well? The problem is assigning the relevant support once the diagnosis has been confirmed. Maybe I'll start with Rhamon on that one. I can honestly say that we know for a fact that paused services have had unquestionably a knock-on effect on diagnostic timescales within NHS Lanarkshire. We are reliably informed by colleagues in health that they are not even looking at any referrals after 2019 at the moment. There's a significant two-year gap, and for many families, we talk to that significantly longer than two years. I think that the other part of that is post-diagnostic support services, which is over to local authorities and care services to provide. That's been another issue. We know that the discussion about respect, for example, is another major gap during lockdown, and it continues to be. The provision that we've tried to maintain is obviously predominantly online, although we now are having in-person support groups as well, which has become a real bonus for many of our families. The diagnostic issue is a huge one. When we have health services saying that they're paused and that the wider health considerations need to be taken into consideration with that, families just have to accept that. Sally, is that a similar experience for the families that you work with? Absolutely. As I referred to earlier, the settings that are applying to the early learning and childcare inclusion fund are many of them reporting in their applications that they are seeing children in the anti and preschool year who have a range of additional support needs in their waiting for contact with paediatric teams or allied health professionals, so that's absolutely coming through there. Families contacting and choir reporting are the same in terms of not having that access to particularly health support. Public Health Scotland, in its research over the last 18 months, has shown that, for two to four-year-olds, there's a real need to look at the long-term developmental progress of some children. It's an issue. I've got a second question before I come to Laurie. I'll maybe roll them into one, given time. I hope you don't mind, Laurie, but a number of points have been made about the support staff, school assistants, classroom assistants, pupil support assistants—the job title varies, but the role is essentially the same—providing individual one-on-one support to children with diagnosed additional needs. My question is, do you think that there should be any requirement around qualifications for any member of staff providing that kind of individual one-on-one support? Standard practice at the moment in most schools is to assign general classroom assistants to that role without wishing to denigrate those people. They have no specific qualifications and additional support needs in most cases, so should it be the case that support staff who are assigned to help young people with additional needs be required to have some kind of qualification in ASN? To me, it's absolutely—I think that we've seen a deficit in that area for a long time. It's an inherent sexism or gender bias within education in that perhaps people who work as assistants don't need to be qualified. You're absolutely right that they do need to be qualifications, but there also needs to be an appropriate career pathway for people to progress as an ASN assistant so that they can be adequately remunerated and see it as a fulfilling and lifelong career option. That ties into strengthening the specialisms within the pupil's support for learning and initial teacher training as well. Thank you. If Ramon is looking to come in and be very happy to hear his thoughts on that as well. No, thank you. Sorry, I thought that I was raising my hand. Again, exactly as Laurie said, the career pathway has been an issue that was flagged up in the Morgan review that those staff who are supporting children with additional support needs are least recognised. There is not a status associated with that, so why would the system reward them by giving them a career pathway? Of course, it needs to do that. I think that it's an obvious gap that needs to be met. Thank you very much, Ross. I thank Sally Cavers, Laurie Black and Ramon Hutchinson for their evidence this morning. It's been a very useful session for us again. We really do appreciate you giving us your time. I'd also like to thank colleagues for the way in which they have co-operated given the time constraints that we were clearly working under this morning. The public part of today's meeting is now in end, and I will now suspend the meeting. I ask members to reconvene on Microsoft Teams. That will allow us to consider our final agenda item in private. Thank you and good morning.