 Dei gynllunio niferiaeth gwnawn i ddigon i gynllunio y Cyfeirio Cymru yn 2018, a chawddui gwneud i ddim yn gweithio ddatblygu i gyd i ddim yn ei gynllunio yn chi, a ddim yn fwy oherwydd hi-wyleu i ni o'r unig wedi cyd-dyniaeth. Da finishedar o gychwyn ni'n gwneud i ddim yn Llyfr slavell yma i yma iELA. Westi Shell Ballantyn yn y gallu bydd yw i'r nodillydd. Tavys Scott yw Ross Greer llawer o'r Llunio Cymru ar y trafodol Unigoedd Cynghwladol y diddiwylliannig yma i ddefnyddio'r symud o'r penigfyrdd y Llywodraeth Llywodraeth ddiwydiannig o'r reitio i'r hanfformiad? Rwy'n gwneud i'r holl bryd, i'r hyn o'r Cyffrediniddau a'r Menys is the second of a series of three, ask the minister, evidence sessions. Today we will hear from the minister for employability and training. Can I welcome Jamie Hepburn, minister for employability and training, Victoria Beatay, head of workplace equality's team, directorate for fair work and Dr Paul Smart, deputy director of advanced learning and science and Scottish Government. I understand minister you'd like to make a short statement. No, can you not I'm quite happy to be on thanking you for the invitation today to move create into your question-answer session. is an incredibly short statement, thank you very much for that. As you are aware, the committee invited suggestions from stakeholders and members of the public for today's session and we want to thank everyone who has contributed. My last question is in person today and anything that is not asked now will be sent to the minister for a formal response to the committee. All responses will be shared by those who have asked the questions. Before I invite questions from members of the committee I would like to start by asking a question we have received from Aberdin and Grampian Chamber of Commerce. Can you tell me, what have local authorities been asked to do to ensure that the DUI agenda is seen as a priority in our schools? That's a fair question, I suppose. I would answer it in the sense of it's not so much asking local government to do anything beyond working with us as a partner and similarly you could ask local government what have they asked of us. It's in that vein in we are taking forward developing the young workforce agenda collectively and together. On that basis, it is not really that we ask them to do much more than beyond ensuring that within the school environment, of course, they have responsibility as the education authority in their respective areas to ensure that that ethos is being bought into in the particular schools that they have responsibility for. Of course, we can help facilitate that and through Education Scotland we work to assist schools to take forward that agenda. Each school should have a DYW lead officer who is responsible for ensuring that DYW has been taken forward as part of the life of the school and through Education Scotland we will be regularly engaging with those leads to ensure that they can share practice and ensure effective co-ordination of efforts across Scotland and within their specific school. I can ask what guidance would you give to local authorities to ensure that schools are giving the same importance to things such as apprenticeships as they are to further register in higher education? I do not think that it is so much a case of providing guidance to local authorities, my estimation. If you look at it the way that DYW is structured, for example, we have a national group that is jointly chaired by the Deputy First Minister and the co-zilla lead on those matters. Councilor Stephen McCabe from Inverclyde, he leads on those issues for co-zilla. Again, it is a joint effort, so it is not so much having to provide guidance to local government but to ensuring through the prism of local government, through that partnership approach that they are working with their schools to ensure that the vocational pathway is of equal importance and just as important as the academic pathway. It is not really a case of having to issue guidance, it is about trying to ensure through the work of the national group. Of course, the critical importance here are the 21 regional groups that we have established that are much closer to the local environment by their nature, by being regional groups. They will be the ones that are interacting with schools on a regular basis to ensure that ethos is embedding the school environment rather than having any form of guidance. I thank you for that, Ruth. Good morning, minister. Last week was modern apprenticeship week, and many colleagues took part in that. I had a visit to Irvine paper mill where I met a very interesting and bright group of modern apprentices at different phases of their apprenticeship. They all had one thing in common, which was that they had not been told about the possibility of apprenticeships in their school time. They all come to it later on. Those are young folk in really high-quality apprenticeships. They have good job prospects within our local community following that path. In our report, one of the things that further progress was needed in was in employers taking young people straight from education. I wonder if you could say a bit more about what else is going to be done to make sure that modern apprenticeship has the parity of esteem that university has, for example, and that people know that there are high-quality pathways that young people can take? That is something that I encounter as well when I am out and about. I was surprised to the committee that, similarly to Ms Maguire, I was out in a range of visits for Scottish apprenticeship week, given my role. I have seen the picture to be quite mixed, but I agree that there is still a significant number of people who come to apprenticeship without having been discussed as an option whilst they are in the school environment. Increasingly, that is less the case. It is unfortunate that that was the case for all the apprentices that you spoke with, rather than that when you undertook the visit in your constituency, Ms Maguire, but I find that increasingly there are those who are engaged in apprenticeship, who will say that it is discussed within the school environment. It is patchy. I think that developing a young workforce is a concrete to changing that, to ensuring that apprenticeships as a post-school option are something that more young people are aware of. We want to see that further rolled out. One of the ways that we can achieve that better is through broadening the careers guidance, the careers and information guidance that is offered in the school environment, and ensuring that it is offered earlier. Young people are thinking about it as an option earlier in their experience of secondary education so that they are considering the subjects that they may choose with an apprenticeship as a possible outcome. One of the big game changes, I believe, will be the provision of foundation apprenticeships in the school environment as well. There has been a substantial increase in their number over the past number of years. Two years ago, we were offering something in the region of about 340 odd starts for foundation apprenticeships in our schools over a limited number of frameworks this year. We have had about 1,200 young people start a foundation apprenticeship over 10 frameworks, and this coming year we will be offering something in the region of 2,600 foundation apprenticeship opportunities across all 32 local authority areas. I am writing and saying about 70 per cent of Scotland's schools, so there is still some work to be done in terms of ensuring that every young person in Scotland has that opportunity. Nonetheless, we are growing it, and we have a commitment to ensuring that there are 5,000 such opportunities in Scotland's schools by 2019. That is a critical element of ensuring about its very nature. If you can begin the pathway to an apprenticeship at school, it will open up people's minds to the possibility of doing an apprenticeship after they have left school and in and of itself ensuring that there is greater parity of esteem in the school environment. I suppose that my understanding of foundation apprenticeships was that it was almost like a slightly and a big supporter of giving young people many routes to succeed. Specifically for the young men that I was speaking to, they actually had higher passes in sciences and they have gone into engineering apprenticeships, so actually it was not the foundation skills that they were needing. It was being alerted to the apprenticeship as a route to get a high quality engineering job rather than university, so it feels like it is a different thing than the foundation apprenticeship route. I might be mistaken though. No, I suppose that the point that I was making is why it is a multitude of things, so it is about ensuring that that gives information and guidance that is better available earlier on. Again, we may touch on the 1524 learner journey review, which we are progressing, and we want to make sure that pathways into vocational education are as critical an element of that as they are to tertiary education and to higher education. I suppose that the point that I was making about the provision of foundation apprenticeships is that it increases awareness of the apprenticeship pathway. Of course, if you are successful in securing a foundation apprenticeship, qualifying through a foundation apprenticeship, then we will ensure that that is set at the equivalent level of a higher qualification. It might be that the young men and, hopefully increasingly, young women who are undertaken modern apprenticeships may have gone up to six years at school and got all their hires. That is something that I am relaxed about in the sense that, again, the DIYW is about ensuring that young people have an understanding of the range of options available to them. If a young person is, again, I increase and encounter this as well, that there will be young people who have got five hires who have decided that, for whatever reason, higher education, despite them being getting the qualifications to go to university, they decide that it is not for them that they decide to go on to modern apprenticeship. Equally, it could be felt that if those young people, for example, did not have the option of a foundation apprenticeship and they might have found that quite attractive if it had been available to them earlier on, that is what I am determined that we provide the opportunity for more young people to experience that early on so that they can begin their pathway to apprenticeship at school. Joan, what is the command just on foundation apprenticeships in the shell? I think that I would certainly underline the importance of foundation apprenticeships and I understand that you said that the target is 5,000 by the end of 2019, but I also understand that the Skills Development Scotland board was advised that the contracting number that they were to deliver of 3,200 has been revised down to 2,600, which is a cut of 1,600. I wonder if you can explain why that has happened. What do you think that you can do about it and to ensure that you will be able to reach a target of 5,000? I cannot see how you can reach a target of 5,000 by cutting the number that will be delivered in 18, 19 by 600. We are not cutting the number that will be delivered and it will incidentally be over two years. Of course, it is 18, 19 and it will start. It is up to 2020 for the completion. I have already made the point that this year there were 1,200 such opportunities to start on this coming year. There will be 2,600 opportunities. Two years ago, there were about 340 such opportunities. If you look at it over a two-year period, that is an over 600 per cent increase in the number of available places for foundation apprentices to get that opportunity. I am also aware of the report to which you allowed to, Deputy Convener. I think that there is a degree of misreporting around those figures. What Skills Development Scotland will do is to contract for a certain number of available starts to ensure that they can reach the target that they have set. They have a target of just over 2,600 to hit, but that might involve them going out to contract for more so that they can reach that target. Can we just clarify what the misreporting is? Is it your understanding that the Scottish Development Scotland board was advised that their contract number of 3,200 would be reduced to 2,600? Or is that not the case? The target of 3,200 does not exist. It was not reported to Skills Development Scotland that they would have to revise down the contracted number from 3,200 to 2,600. The target that was agreed between the Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland is 2,660 something. Is that now? Was there a contract figure before that of 3,200? It may be that... Was there or not, minister? The Scottish Government never agreed any other target. That's not what I asked you. The Scottish DS had a contracted number of 3,200, which was reduced to 2,600. If you're not aware of that, it would be good to get a commitment from that. You would go and examine why it would appear that that's what the board was told. I obviously don't attend the Skills Development Scotland board, so I don't know what it said at the specific board meeting. I suppose the point that I'm trying to make is that it might be the case that Skills Development Scotland will contract for a certain number of possible starts to reach the target that they've been set. The target that they've been set is the one that I've mentioned. So there is a target of 2,600. Can I just ask then what extra action you think is needed to get the 5,000 by the end of 2019, given we're in the first quarter of 2018 now? That will be what we'll do in the next financial year. We'll move to ensure that we, or Skills Development Scotland, contract for enough places to ensure that we hit that target of 5,000 to now. I can understand that on face value might be felt that that's something that might be difficult to achieve. I would go back to the point that I made a few moments ago. Two years ago, they put out to contract 340 odd, or achieved 340 odd starts. Last year, about 1,200, next year 2,600, so you can see the trajectory of growth that we've achieved that we can be well confident that the target wave— I'm not just talking about the trajectory, I would be concerned if the trajectory was slowing down given the importance of those, I think, and the emphasis that a lot of people would place on previous apprenticeship programmes in schools in order to draw young people in and give them awareness of apprenticeship that kind of progression they might make. Given that I've set out that there's been something like a 600—unless I've got my maths wrong, convener—about a 600 per cent increase in two years, a two-year period, I don't think that we'd need to have any concerns about us slowing down our pace in terms of reaching a subjective. OK, morning move on to Michelle. OK, good morning minister. I want to just focus a little bit on disabled youngsters and their ability to progress into work. Through a number of visits I've been doing and last week I was at the Blind School, one of the things that's come out very clearly is the importance of habilitation for young disabled people so that they can obtain independence and are able to get into a workplace and hold down a job effectively. One of the great concerns around that is the increasing lack of the ability to refer our young people to get places in special schools where habilitation is focused on. I know that Elaine Brackenbridge from the Blind School has raised the question of those who've got into university, who have got first-class honours degrees, who've got doctorates but find it difficult then to get employment and perhaps the lack of recognition by employers of just how hard they've had to work to get that and the barriers they've had to overcome, but also in terms of how the key performance indicators, because I've pointed out that for disabled people, for children who have been looked after and accommodated, some of those KPIs are being missed. I wondered what the minister's thoughts were around that extra support that is needed and what focus we should be giving coming up through school and the ability for parents and youngsters to get places in special schools where that habilitation element is focused on and really does prepare them for that transition to work. I think that the first thing that I would say, Ms Ballantyne, is that we can't look at those with disabilities as just one group. There will be different groups within those with disability who require different forms of support, but that said, I think that the approach that we should take in the school environment isn't entirely dissimilar to that that we're taking across the board. We need to ensure that young disabled people, young people with disabilities, are also getting the experience of vocational education as well. I've been lucky enough to be able to be able to see how that happens first hand. Linda Fabiani, I'll call her Linda Fabiani, asked me to visit Sanderson High School in East Kilbride, where they are undertaking some extra work to support the young people that they educate to get that experience of vocational education. Indeed, my own constituency, Glencrime School, which supports young people with a range of barriers, a range of disabilities, undertakes a fair degree of vocational education. We need to embed that across the entirety of our school environment, and that includes those who support and educate young people with disabilities and specialists in virums. Of course, we can't just rely on activity within schools themselves, because I think that you've alluded to the fact that there will be people who go on to achieve great success academically in the university environment, but then who will have to struggle to get into employment. One of the things that we, of course, are taking forward as a Government is the Minister of Social Security, who has overall lead, although I will be taking forward elements of the work through the disability action plan, Fairer Scotland. One of the elements of that, or several of the elements that relate to employment, is that we've already taken forward a range of commitments to try and ensure that employers can better understand the contribution that those with disabilities make to the work environment. I think that we've already run a successful media campaign targeted at small media enterprises to talk to them about the benefits of taking on those disabilities. We've established a workplace equality fund of some £500,000, which is open for bids, the first round of which we'll close at the end of this month, the second round of which we'll open in June, which is designed to secure and foster better diversity in the workplace. Of course, there are other initiatives that we have supported as well in other groups. For example, through Enable Scotland's Stepping Up programme, we have worked across a number of secondary schools, 70 secondary schools across 11 local authorities. That's supported through the 14 to 19 fund that we provide funding for, which is delivered to Inspiring Scotland, working with young people with learning disability, which has achieved 98 per cent positive destinations. We need to learn from that and better roll that out. The fundamental point in relation to your question is that we need to ensure attitudinal change among employers. That's activity that we will be taking forward in the back of Fairer Scotland. One of the things that we'll be doing next month is having a summit on employment for those with a disability. A considerable focus on that summit will be in this area, in terms of changing attitudes of not all employers, there are many employers out there doing good work, but clearly in terms of the employment rate, the gap that we see in terms of those with a disability employment, by comparison to the overall employment rate, there's still some way to go. Does the minister think that enough is being done through the educational years for these young people, in terms of habilitation, in terms of building their confidence as they go through their education, that they are ready and prepared to go into the workplace? You seem to be saying that you feel the problem is about employers and the workplace needing support and change, but I'm concerned about whether the young people are getting the necessary habilitation so that they themselves are ready and able, as well as the employers at the other end needing to then open their doors and be more understanding and be able to work with them? No, it's both, I suppose, of making that point in the back of your question on behalf of the headteacher at the Royal Blind School, making the point, the reasonable point about the difficulty of some of the young people that she has been involved in educating, who do go on to good academic attainment in post-school, still struggling to get into employment, so that's why I was referring to that, but no, I would absolutely recognise there's still a job of work to be done in the, across the entirety of the school, of ensuring that vocational pathways are better understood. That's true of the entirety of the school population, but in particular for those who face additional barriers to getting into the labour market, and quite clearly through the evidence before us, through the statistics about participation in the labour market, that includes those with disability. Yes, and certainly those who've gone on to do extremely well have often benefited from the very things that I was just talking about in terms of habilitation, and they've been able to develop their skills and actually go on to progress, but I do think that we have a gap there, and I think it's something that, as Minister for Employability and Training, the consideration of what comes before that transition period is going to be really important. No, I don't disagree. Work is under way, but there is more to be done. Joanne, that's followed by Mary. I'm going to ask some of the questions that people have written in to us about, as well as some, as you would expect, north-east-related questions. First of all, I've got a question from Megan Hear, who emailed the committee, who has got a background in employability programmes and working with young people to get them into work. She wants to ask how to encourage people who are not quite ready for work to consider employability programmes as a valuable option. She says, There used to be pre-apprenticeship courses to help transition, sometimes run by local authorities, which, with a good starting point, with work-tasters induction assessment process and employability skills. Now there are activity agreements, but young people don't always buy into them, especially if they're not eligible for an EMA and the progression into work is not obvious. She wants to ask if there are any plans to invest more funds into employability programmes. If I can just add a little extra question of my own on to that, which is a similar question to what I asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education last week, around EU social fund money, which has been funding a lot of these employability programmes in colleges, the gap that will exist when that's gone, how is that going to be filled by Scottish Government? It will take him the last point clearly that is an issue of concern to us as an administration. It's an issue of considerable concern to those who draw down on ESF. Right now we're seeking greater clarity from the UK Government about how they might seek to bridge the gap in terms of ESF funding, so we'll wait further clarity on that. I'm not going to presume that they might not breach the gap, sorry, that they won't breach the gap, but we do need to consider that they might not. In such circumstances we'll need to look at our own budget settlements and how we will continue to take forward the range of programmes that we offer. This coming year we've maintained funding for the range of employability programmes that we provide by and large. I am clear that they are making a considerable difference in terms of those, not just young people but usually young people, given the focus of them. They are making considerable difference in terms of making them more ready to engage with, if not quite the world of work immediately, but other programmes that can get them closer to the labour market. It does be a wider question, because we are in a new period in that next month the employment programme that I have a responsibility for, Fair Start Scotland, will be going live. That in itself is a significant investment from the Scottish Government. It's a £96 million set of contracts over a three-year referral period. Along with the point that was made by Naomi Eisenstadt, who was talking about, I think that she used the term, the cluttered nature of employment services. It does, I think, cause us to consider how they interact and work better with one another. One of the things that I was very clear when I first came into this post was that it was quite hard to get your head round the variety of different programmes that are on offer. Each of them is doing good things and achieving good outcomes in their own way. I think that there is more that we can do to make sure that, collectively, they are better aligned and integrated with one another. That is an area of work that I am actively considering. I am looking at how we can better ensure that that is the case going forward. Thank you very much. Slightly related to that answer, I have a question from Louise Muir, who is the head teacher at Mackey Academy in Stonehaven. She says that the role of SDS within schools has changed to help to support the DWI agenda, which is also starting to bear fruit from my perspective as a head teacher. However, there still appears to be barriers to effective partnership working with schools through the lack of effective data sharing, especially in relation to destinations data, which hampers timely intervention and learning by schools. Our question is, how does the Government intend to enable more effective data sharing between SDS and its partner agencies to support the learner's joining? My view is that there is legislation in place to achieve that right now. Through the post-16 education Scotland 2013, there is a mechanism by which SDS can exchange data with schools and vice versa to inform the support that young people require in the school environment and how they might be better supported as they leave the school environment. There can also be information and data sharing between the Scottish Funding Council on a similar basis with SDS. My view is that there is provision there to allow data sharing now. I think that your question is predicated on, while it is a question being asked on behalf of a head teacher. I guess what that would tell me is that there might be a particular issue in that school environment, so I do not know what that might be. My view is that we have the framework in place to allow for that data to be shared. Clearly, one of the elements that we are looking at through the Enterprise and Skills Review is how that can be embedded as part of that further, embedded better, embedded as part of the education system. Without clarity as to what the particular problem might be there, it is hard to comment in great detail beyond my view that the framework exists. Now on to some north-east specific questions. I am sorry, but I will try to stop myself. Of course, the minister will know that we have a situation in Aberdeinshire in Aberdein where we are feeling the after-effects of the lower oil price, although it is starting to recover. There has been a lot of work done by the Scottish Government to give funding to transition training, for example. Aberdein and the Grampian Chamber of Commerce are asking how can the Government support the north-east in generating demand for engineering training among young people, which has fallen during the downturn in oil and gas industry? There is a considerable amount of nervousness, I find, in young people and actually going forward for engineering, because they now see it as not the safe bet that it once was. Of course, we are now seeing an oil price that is coming back. We are seeing a lot of contracts around renewables. There are lots of opportunities for young people in engineering. How can we foster that confidence? That is obviously an inherent difficulty in that some of the young people will be informed about the periods of their parents who they may have seen have had to move into other occupations or maybe are struggling to move into another occupation despite the sport that we have put in place to try to facilitate. Clearly, what we can do is provide the overarching framework to support young people to have the opportunities. To go back to the point about foundation apprenticeships, the significant focus of that effort is in the area of STEM. Engineering is self-evidently part of that. There are opportunities for young people to get the practical experience around the industry. The best way for them to do that is to engage with the developing young workforce. If they want to influence it in the school event, they should actively engage with the developing young workforce agenda. That is led primarily on a local basis by our regional groups. The Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce will be well aware of the developing young workforce agenda because they are an integral part of the north-east developing young workforce group. I would urge them as a group to ensure that they are better involving those sectors that can provide engineering opportunities to go into schools to say, yes, there has been this difficulty in this sector, that sector is starting to bounce back, but there are also huge range of opportunities in relation to engineering beyond oil and gas. We need industry to play its part to say, here are the opportunities, and we, as a Government through Skills Well in Scotland, will provide the opportunities through foundation apprenticeships and modern apprenticeships. Indeed, we have not even touched on graduate apprenticeships yet, convener, but we have increased them as well. Last week, in apprenticeship week, I went to Sparrow's and met some former pupils from my old school who very much were taking advantage of the renewables opportunities and apprenticeships. My last question is that the oil and gas downturn will not just have affected people who actually work directly in oil and gas, it will have affected people in other sectors that have flourished as a result of the high-wage economy. Those people will of course not be able to take advantage of opportunities that are funded by the transition training scheme. What would you say to those people who are feeling the bite there that are maybe not young, they are not school leavers, they are not the 18 to 24 bracket for their older and they are wanting to access modern apprenticeships who might just think that apprenticeships are something for young people? We have seen an increase in those aged 25 and above taking part in modern apprenticeships. In terms of the age cohort, they are the growth sector in terms of the numbers taking part in modern apprenticeships. We sought to facilitate that in a number of ways. We, whilst bearing in mind the recommendation from Ian Wood's report, the developing young workforce report, that the majority of modern apprenticeship activity should be focused on younger people. We are also alert to the fact that there are employers who would like to see more support for those who are in the, it seems odd to say, those who are 25 and above, but they are the older cohort. That is something that we have sought to facilitate where we have thought it was reasonable. We have increased the number of frameworks where that is possible. We are also going back to the qualities agenda for those with a disability in part in a modern apprenticeship. You can get additional support across all frameworks up to the age of 29 and, similarly, for those with care experience too. Thank you very much. Mary Fawrd by Richard Lyle. Thank you, convener, and good morning, minister. I wanted to pick up on the theme that Michelle Ballantine explored around disability, and Gillian Martin has just touched on it in our final question. It is around the on-going and changing support that young people with additional support needs and disabilities often need, because one of the things that I have heard frequently is young people that go into either apprenticeships or enter university. The support that they need is there from the start, but because of the changing nature of their disability, their packages are not adaptable enough to support them and they quite often drop out. Do you wonder if there is anything in particular that you are doing, or are you looking at something to make sure that young people have the support that they need? Well, in relation to modern apprenticeships, I have just made the point about the enhanced contribution rates so that that additional support can be provided. I should say that the completion rates for modern apprenticeships are high. They are, and, if I remember correctly, going in a positive trajectory as well. That is across the board now. I do not know if I have seen the information disaggregated. I suspect, and I could be wrong, that it probably has the case that those with a disability with a completion rate will not be quite as good. My views are still likely to be good overall and still likely to be high, but one of the ways that we have responded, of course, is through the provision of enhanced support for providers to ensure that they have that additional resource to make sure that they can support young people to complete their apprenticeship. Would it be possible to get the disaggregated figure so that we could actually see any young people with disabilities complete? I am quite happy to look for any information that the committee would like. Of course, that is the first request. Yes, we will look for that. I think that it would be really useful to see that information. The other area of question that I wanted to ask you was the figures for MA level 3, because the targets for 20,000 MA level 3 are above by 2021. That is correct, is not it? The figures for level 3 modern apprenticeships have gone up and have gone down over the last decade or so. Between 2004 and 2006, level 3 were consistently above 20,000, and then there was a dip in the figures for level 3 modern apprenticeships. In 2009, level 2 framework modern apprenticeships were introduced, and they replaced existing training courses, or skill seekers courses, is that correct? Yes, level 2 apprenticeships are offered on the basis that some employers may find them useful for the provision of certain elements of training. The level 2 are foundation courses? I would not describe them as that, because I think that that could start to cause confusion with foundation apprenticeships. Are the level 2 figures included in the figures for level 3 apprenticeships? No, they are included as part of the overall modern apprenticeship target, but what I can say is that we are currently meeting the target that we have set ourselves for. I think that it is two thirds at level 3 or above, so we are performing at the level that we have sought to. The level 2 that we are introduced are not included in the figures for level 3? No, because they are level 2 and not level 3. Will you be able to give us the figures for level 2 and separate them out? No, they are already available separate, so if I go back to last year when I sat here with a calculator to work out the precise numbers, I can send you the figures, but last year we exceeded the target of 26,000, we achieved 26,262 more than apprenticeships. A level 3? No, overall, and from my memory we hit the target that we had set ourselves of some two thirds of the mean level 3 or above. The figure of 20,000 by 2021 is that only on level 3 or is that inclusive with a percentage of them being at level 3? Is this in terms of the overall number of more apprenticeships? The figure is not 20,000, it is 30,000, so we have an ambition of 30,000 more apprenticeships by 2020. We have set interim targets, which we have managed to hit thus far. We have said that the target for this coming year will be 28,000, target is 27,000 this year. That includes level 2 as well as level 3 and above. I am keen to understand and forgive me if I am laboring the point the difference between level 2 and level 3 and what is included in that figure for level 3 because it certainly was my understanding that level 2 is included in your overall target figure, which would mean that level 2 is bolstering the actual number of level 3 because they are badged as level 3, but they are not because they are inclusive of level 2. They are not badged as level 3. I cannot make it clearer, convener, that, publicly hearing now, level 2 apprenticeships, part of the overall target, are not badged as level 3 or above. I do not think that it would be much clearer to describe the fact that it is level 2 and level 3. I wonder if there is some confusion here because the minister is saying that your target is two thirds of the overall, which would mean that 30,000 and 20,000 would tie in with those figures for 2021. We have an overall target of 30,000 modern apprenticeship starts by 2020, of which 66 per cent will be level 3 or above. That would be 20,000. The rest will be level 2. Indeed. OK. OK. Thank you very much. Richard, followed by Liz. Thank you and welcome minister. I had the pleasure of attending a developing the Young Workforce events at Murray College, organised by the local programme a few days ago. There was a panel at our apprentices, and I think there was four or five people on the panel, and you'll be glad to know that they're all female. I hope that Murray is playing its role in tackling the gender balance, which is one of the issues that is still outstanding. In terms of rural areas, one of the biggest challenges that we face in Murray is retaining young people to live and work in the area. I was asking the question at that event, will apprentices play a role in retaining people locally and clearly there was a view that that would play a big role. I know that the social mobility commission south of the border is calling the UK Government to develop better skills and education policies for rural areas for young disadvantaged people. I wondered if you could comment on what steps you're taking to help address the particular challenges that you have in rural areas where there's perhaps a lack of large employers. That brings in the apprenticeship levy issue, which is generally only paid to be paid by large employers. If you get a lack of large employers, albeit I know that the Scottish Government is not constrained by where the money is spent in Scotland, do you want to comment on that to be helpful? That's a useful first point to make. We haven't taken the decision to introduce the apprenticeship levy, and we have put in place an offering for apprentices that is rather different from what is being offered by the UK Government in England, so that you don't have to be a levy payer to draw down on any voucher system or the rest of it, you just have to be a willing employer who wants to take on an apprentice. Now, some of the challenges that I suspect are faced in the rural environment reflect the lack of large-scale employers, so there's sometimes a reticence from smaller employers to take on modern apprentices generally irrespective of whether it's a rural or urban environment, but because there might be a preponderance of them in a rural environment, it poses a particular challenge. That said, we see the number of small medium enterprises taking on modern apprentices growing, but it does speak of the need for us to be constantly engaging with such employers to get them to better understand the great value to them as an employer of taking on an apprentice, the value to their particular working environment. I've certainly seen firsthand the difference that that can make to an individual employer. In terms of the greater support that we can offer for the rural environment, one of the things that we have done, I've already referred to enhanced contributions for those apprentices who have a disability or who have care experience. We also, for those apprentices whose employer are based in a rural environment, we've introduced a rural supplement that is an uplift payment to the training provider again to be able to ensure that the additional costs faced for the provision of training for that person can be met. We've introduced that financial year on the basis of identifying specific local authorities who might be felt to be more rural than others. This year, we're going further, so it will be available on a wider basis. Now it's not confined to specific local authorities. It's done on the basis of whether the employer's postcode is classified as meeting what would be determined as rural, remote rural or remote small towns. Again, the provision of that rural supplement for the provision of apprenticeship training will be more widely available this coming year than it has been this year. That's one of the ways that we're trying to better support the rural economy in terms of the provision of apprenticeship training. Of course, developing young workforce as well is organised on a regional basis, and that will reflect the distinct nature of the economy of each region. That's why the great stuff that we'll be seeing through developing young workforce money is because the people are the best place to determine what needs to happen there are those who are based on the ground. The employers, the colleges and the schools so I've been up to see what's happening. I've been very impressed and I'd be very happy to return. Good. Welcome back anytime. My final question is in relation to the rural economy and the wider question of skills and training as you'll know, Minister, I've raised with you before the chronic lack of chefs and workers in the hospitality sector, which poses a significant threat to the rural economy given that tourism is such a successful sector and is one of our big, great hopes for the future, especially post-Brexit, but ironically, Brexit, of course, may undermine the number of workers available to work in that important sector. There's a plethora of measures underway which I very much welcome and I'm encouraged by the interest you're taking in this issue. It would just be really helpful to have an update as time goes on as to what's being achieved by those measures and I don't know if you've got any update just now but if not perhaps you can write to the committee with an update. Of course I can do that, convener. I remember the question that you asked and I remember the very full answer or I remember giving a full answer. I can't remember every detail of the full answer I gave to Mr... I think it was the longest answer in the history of Parliament. The reason was to demonstrate the great range of activity that we're undertaking but this is an issue that I am alert to. It's not the only sector that faces skills shortages. One of the issues that we face, convener, I'm very delighted that right now the labour market is such that we have high levels of employment by historic measurements and low levels of unemployment by historic standards but that does where those sectors who face skills shortages exacerbates it because it's obviously easier for people to find employment and this is a particular sector that faces the double warming because people will be leaving it potentially through Brexit. That said, there is some really good activity taking place in this sector to try and extol the virtues of it as a place that you can have a career. I think historically it's been viewed as something that you can be quite transient and you'll work in for a short while you can't really get the basis of a good career now. With seasonality of course that will be the case. Some people will only work at it for a very short time but increasingly I see from hospitality sector and through Scottish Apprenticeship week one of the visits that I undertook was to Blisewood hotel in Glasgow to see I think it was about 40 plus young apprentices working in the hospitality sector getting the range of experience they'll need to work in that sector, great enthusiasm from them and if we can get more of them then it's a sector with a great future ahead of it. Good morning minister. Tom Hunter earlier in the week was extremely blunt about the problems that are facing many youngsters in school not having the right skills. Could you tell the committee what discussions you're having with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and the Minister for Higher Education and Science about the strategy in government that is required to deal with his concerns? Well of course we're undertaking as you will be aware with the 1524 learner journey review and that is specifically predicated along with youngsters such as developing young workforce to make sure that young people have come out of school with the skillset they need to transition to the destinations they want to and the destinations our economy and society needs them to. Developing young workforce in particular has a role to play here of course because I think certainly what incidentally the comments may have been blunt I don't think I saw them so I need to catch up with the blunt commentary that you are referring to. They were very blunt minister. It probably reflects what we have heard historically from a number of employers about a concern about young people not coming out equipped with the skillset ready for the world of work and that's what developing young workforce is all about. It's about ensuring that through employment engagement with appropriate employment engagement with the school environment through developing young workforce regional groups that they can give young people that practical experience of meaningful experience of the world of work also through foundation apprenticeships that experience the world of work that they can come out with an accredited qualification at the end of. And that's ensuring that they and also those who educate them the teachers can better understand what employers are requiring of young people as they come out of the school environment. Thank you for that minister. Can I be very specific about what engagement you're having with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and the Minister for Higher Education and for Science because what Sir Tom Hunter is pointing at and also several other employers including the chambers of commerce is that many of the youngsters who are coming out of schools don't have the necessary skills for what is a very changing world particularly in terms of the digital activities and technological changes. They are being very specific about the need for a holistic policy that addresses this. So could you tell the committee what engagement you are having in other senior levels of government in Scotland to address these concerns? I'm not quite clear what you mean by engagement. The Deputy First Minister is one of two cabinet sectors. I have direct responsibility to who I work with. This is a matter that we discuss regularly in that I suppose I'm trying to make the point that developing the young workforce which the responsibility for which I share with the Deputy First Minister and I've made the point that he is the person that, along with Councillor Stephen McKee, shares the National Development Young Workforce group. We regularly discuss the progress of developing the young workforce and, along with Ms Somerville, we are actively engaged in the 1524 learner journey review. So this is all an area that we are in regular dialogue around and that we are actively engaged in as our programme for government commitment in terms of the learner journey review. Minister, those employers are pointing to some of the difficulties in schools in a younger age where they feel that there isn't sufficient holistic strategy to address some of the skills need in Scotland. I would have thought that, as a department, because in all our papers here are very cross-curricular in the sense that a lot of things are interlinking, that there would be a strategy to address some of those employer's concerns, because they are the ones who are at the cutting edge of what's going on in business and industry and in the job market, and they are, I think, telling the Government quite a blunt message just now. It's just to reaffirm to this committee that you have a strategy in place to deal with that and that you have engagement with bodies like the SQA or Education Scotland picking up on the concerns, because I think our job here is to scrutinise what's going on in the whole gambit of education and skills, that's the title of the committee after all, and I would like some assurance that there is a full-scale engagement about some of the strategic aims. Well, let me provide you with a reassurance, Miss Smith. The developing young workforce isn't confined just to secondary school environments, so it's also working in the primary school environment as well, albeit in a slightly different fashion as you would expect. We're not expecting 11-year-olds to begin a foundation apprenticeship, but nonetheless we are trying to ensure through developing young workforce regional groups that there is engagement between primary schools just as there will be with secondary schools with employers so that at an early stage young people can also understand what the world of work is like and can start to think about the options ahead of them in a more focused way than has happened in the past. In terms of the engagement the SQA, Skills Development Scotland and the SFC, for example, amongst others we'll have. Of course there will be cognisant of the concerns that are raised. Skills Development Scotland actively engage with a range of partners, sector skills councils, for example, to hear what is required of our skills system from an industry point of view. I think that we have a system certainly in terms of the provision of apprenticeships across the full gamut foundation. Modern and graduate apprenticeships is now a subset of modern apprenticeships that is responsive to an industry demand. I'm not going to pretend that I don't hear from time to time certain employers saying that they don't find that to be the case but I will do what I will do then as I will ensure that a discussion can be facilitated between them and Skills Development Scotland who I find to be very responsive to that and will invariably meet them very quickly to hear whatever concern they might have. My final point minister I asked the question because this is in the context of this committee that has heard recently from SQA in Education Scotland where I think on a cross-party basis we've found it very difficult to be responsible for the overall strategy and the interlocking of how those bodies come together particularly when it comes to the question of employability and skills. What I'm really asking in the context of these discussions that this committee has had is where that overarching strategy is that involves your department the skills department to ensure that there is not only a regular dialogue with those bodies but there is a feedback to the wider public because I think that you mentioned Miss Eisenstein earlier in your comments she has made this very point about the cluttered landscape and what this committee is trying to drill down on is exactly where the overall strategy is and where the transparency is in the accountability of that that's the point. To be fair not the SQA but in terms of Scottish Fund Accounts of Skills Development Scotland and our enterprise agencies a critical element of better alignment of those areas has been taken forward through the Enterprise and Skills review and that will provide that area of focus to make sure that their individual activity is far better aligned with one another to that purpose of ensuring that the skills requirement are matched with the economic requirement and that can I think be better facilitated by the outcome of the Enterprise and Skills review but in terms of the transparency I mean that if there are specific concerns and it's obviously incumbent on us to consider them but Skills Development Scotland for example published their skills investment plans their regional skills assessments they're available for people to see and that comes around through the process of active engagement with us as a Government in terms of us seeing this as for example one of the ones that was most recently published in terms of skills investment plans for early years in childcare so clearly given the Government's ambitions we've been involved in that dialogue but also discussion with the sector itself I think we have a transparent system but if there are particular concerns then of course we'll consider it Thank you Just before I move on to George I think that part of what Liz Smith was getting at is that cluttered landscape that you talk about sometimes we've found that the evidence that we've been given that it still is cluttered and we're not quite sure where layers of responsibility are for decisions that are getting made in regards to the things that Liz Smith and others have talked about so I think that's really it and I'm not sure what we're looking for and if there's any way that you can help clarify that situation by letter or whatever then we'd be eternally grateful If you want to write to me convener with the specific points then I'll respond That'd be very helpful George Yes thank you convener good morning minister it's on the back of Liz Smith's question that we meet apprentices from St Myrn football club but the whole point in Renfrewshire was that that was a joint programme with apprenticeships and schools and everything else that Renfrewshire council did a while back and recently they've had a report where council employability programmes in Renfrewshire are ranked first in Scotland and they're doubled the national average and assisting people into work Now is this not the case in answering Liz's question in Renfrewshire programme which is the council's delivery mechanism for this is in the same building as SDS in the Russell Institute in Paisley you know is that not an example of actually getting that to work together and decluttering the landscape effectively with the council being proactive in that area no doubt there'll be other examples throughout Scotland Well let me say convener the only surprise from that question is that Mr Adam didn't announce he's sought an apprenticeship with St Myrn football club I feel the test I mean the specific example that is being posited is I'm aware of what's been done in Renfrewshire and it's a good example it's been delivered locally by partners coming together and what we want to to see is where there is that type of good practice others learning from it and saying well if it can work in Renfrewshire it can certainly work elsewhere now that's not to say there isn't other types of activity happening in other parts of the country but certainly where something is working well in one place then I think it's important that other areas look at that as well again if you go to look at developing young workforce for example that approach is very much taken through the leadership of Rob Woodward who was the chief executive of STV who has led in a lot of activity for developing young workforce for us he's helped to drive the creation of the regional groups and he brings together the various regional chairs and also the various regional leads each regional group will have someone who is employed to help to take forward developing young workforce in that particular area and he brings those groups together for that very reason so they can share a good practice so that's something we want to see across the board and of course it's not me that's leading on this area convener and doubtless you've pursued it with Deputy First Minister already but through some of the education forms through regional improvement collaboratives for example that's the same philosophy there it's about ensuring that people can learn from one another and learn what's working effectively and adjust accordingly okay, thank you and finally Joanne thanks very much the first question I've got is from someone who's contacted us and called Isabel Taggart and it's really asking a question ahead of you'll be aware it's Down syndrome awareness week next week and she asked in supporting young adults with Down syndrome into work does the Scottish Government have any plans to emulate the excellent support provided by the Down syndrome Association to work fit in England and Wales? well just having made the point that we should always be willing to share good practice and learn good practice then I wouldn't close down the possibility entirely Muslim what I would say is where something's working effectively in one place then of course at the very least then we should be open and willing to learn from it I would go back to the point that I made earlier I think in response to Michelle Ballantyne's question about how we can better support young people with a disability and I made reference to what the range of activity that we'll be taking forward through the disability action plan in relation to employment but also talk specifically about the stepping up programme that enables Scotland is the living which we've supported and we are 14 to 19 fund which is working with young people with learned disability which will include young people with Down syndrome which is having a very high success rate in terms of achieving positive destinations so of course we'll be happy to look at work fit and see how it works in practice just as I hope the UK Government is willing to look at stepping up and see if they thought it was working then it might be something they're willing to look at as well the other area of activity that is of relevance here is that we asked the Scottish Commission for Learning disability to undertake a scoping exercise to understand the scale and effectiveness of employability support for people with learned disabilities so I've referred to it but it would be wrong of me to suggest that we're getting this right here because I've already referred to the low employment rate of people with disabilities generally by comparison to the overall employment rate and we know that those, we don't know the exact scale, there are different estimates but we know that those with a learning disability are even less likely to be employed than those with the overall disability employment rate so it is incumbent on us to consider what more we can do there's a group being pulled together to look at the recommendations from the report that the Scottish Commission for Learning disability pulled together and they'll provide recommendations to me in due course and if the committee's interest they'll be happy to provide more information I think it might be useful to look at the effectiveness of some of the work you can do to support sheltered workplaces are people who you'll know the European director of the number which allows you to protect contracts in order to ensure the support for people with disabled people I wonder, I should know this but is there a target within the overall target on apprenticeships for disabled people yes there is so through the quality action plan effectively we have said we want to be represented of the Scottish population if that makes sense is to be represented of the Scottish population in the whole participation in the modern apprenticeship programme if that's clear it would logically mean that you will be putting more resource and effort, disproportionate effort into supporting disabled people into those apprenticeships because they're so far away the gaps just now is so wide in comparison between there's been some growth in terms of the numbers of disabled people taking part in modern apprenticeships actually if you look at last year from the year before it actually showed quite significant growth still not great figures overall what I would concede and have to be quick candid with the committee is that I actually think that that was probably more reflective of us asking Scotland to be a bit more assertive in counting the numbers so actually the figure we had last year was probably just more accurately reflecting what was there and what was being reported before so there is still work to be done and that's why I referred to the enhanced contribution rate for those with a disability taking part in a modern apprenticeship up to age of 29 so we are taking steps to ensure that we better support those with a disability into modern apprenticeships the other thing, of course, though we need to reflect on apprenticeship if someone in an undertaking modern apprenticeship is someone in employment so it goes back to the fundamental challenge of speaking to employers to make sure they better understand the great benefits that people with a disability can bring to their organisation you come on to my last point because I'm interested and I'm old enough to remember when the only people that offered apprenticeships were local authorities during the period of the 80s when you desperately would have needed and there was a massive challenge so I'm interested in the extent to which your commitments influence the broader picture around good quality work and the business pledge and maybe say a bit about that in a moment but you also know that I heard what you said about the apprentices in hospitality we also know there's a massive issue in hospitality around precarious work massive poor quality training lack of rights not paid 11 wage and so on so my first question is what are you doing to create within the business pledge incentives to do good things on training and apprenticeships and in particular sectors addressing that and we have a discussion before but I wonder if at least the minister would commit to looking at the argument about the union and others who support the hospitality charter and certainly something I feel very strong about myself that when we talk about positive destinations if that positive destination is precarious work with no training and poor not the living wage would you accept that in terms of creating incentive for business it would be good for you not to count those as positive destinations maybe the argument is that you can't disaggregate it but I feel very strongly it's a very powerful message for government to give to see when we're looking at what happens to our young people we will not define as a positive destination a job that we also define as precarious work I think that the First Minister's on record is saying that it's unacceptable we don't have the time to go into detail of it now but I wonder if you would at least make a commitment to look at that because I feel very strongly that providing high quality training is undercut when we define that kind of work as a positive destination I mean of course we can look at it I think that it does come back to the I think that there is a difficulty about disaggregating the information so and that's been our early estimation of things but we'll look at it again I would caution against the view that how we count destinations would act as an incentive or a disincentive to individual employers because of course it's not broken down to the level of employer X, Y or Z I think that the other work that we're undertaking in terms of living wage accreditation in terms of the business pledge which is around investment in your workforce in terms of investors investors and young people I think that's where we can make a bigger difference in relation to casting a light on to who's operating good practice and who isn't and in relation to the I think that we've done good work with living wage accreditation we see that Scotland's best performed of the four UK nations portion of the working age population paid at least the living wage although there is a persistent group not being paid the living wage we have a disproportionate high number of employers accredited of the overall UK wide figure again I think that comes down to the efforts we've led but now we need to move beyond that and so the other critical difference we estimate that about 25,000 people actually had a wage increase as a result of the living wage accreditation scheme but now I think that we need to move beyond that and that's where our next phase of work with the living wage is moving on to focusing and targeting specifically the very sectors where we know there isn't the same commitment to paying wages investing in your staff sector where we know this isn't an issue not across the board because I've just referred earlier to some good activity taking place in the hospitality sector but yes there is still bad practice so that's where we're taking that effort I think now focusing on on a sector by sector basis I'm very conscious of time but just to say that clearly isn't just about wages it's actually about uncertainty, insecurity lack of training, lack of guarantees of access and tips shifts that are very short and all the rest of it my fear is you can have theoretically a strong economy with lots of people in precarious work we see that at UK level we would regard that as unacceptable and my fear is that simply to define these jobs as positive destinations distorts what is happening in the economy and which disproportionately impacts on young people and given your commitment on high quality training and fair work I wonder if you recognise that there is such a match there and it's something that we need to look at further there is an inherent tension here between what we define as zero hours contracts that are flexible in the terms of that work for the employee that might not be felt to be exploitive and those that are exploitive because an employee isn't able to take that but specifically because we're talking about positive destinations for young people now it may be that a young person is studying and does a bit of work while they will be counted as a student that's correct we're talking specifically about young people coming out of school into precarious work that being defined as a positive destination it's not what we would aspire to for these young people and all I mean I hear what you say that you will look at this further and it may be that I can communicate with your father on where I think that some further work needs to be done I wouldn't want anyone to have the impression that everything that we are doing through developing young workforce training through apprenticeships is geared to ensuring that people are in high quality not working in precarious circumstances are properly and fairly remunerated that is where the focus of our activity is in terms of recording information we know it's more straightforward in terms of the overall working population through the ASH where we see that the proportion of people in Scotland working as zero hours contract is slightly lower than the UK as a whole but yes we want to try and drive that down further where such contracts are exploitative I think it is slightly more difficult in terms of looking at destinations for young people coming out of the school environment but I've made the commitment we'll look at it without being able to commit absolutely to what the outcome of that might be That would be great and it would be good if you would update the committee on your findings Of course In that case can I thank the minister and his officials for their attendance today and I'll now suspend for a few moments to allow witnesses to change over The next item of business is a briefing from the independent care review The committee is taking evidence from the minister for childcare in early years next week and the minister's re-mic covers care experience young people So this session is in part to inform the session next week We're also keen in general to hear the progress of the reviews so far and I want to thank you for the invitation We're really pleased to have the opportunity to update you on the care review I want to talk to you a little bit about the health and well-being of young people and the health and well-being of young people of young people and the health and well-being of young people of young people of young people I want to talk to you a little bit about the highlights from the stage that we're in at the moment that we're concluding the discovery stage talk to you about what we're actually doing now and share with you some of the things that we're planning to do next In terms of the briefing that I sent across that outlined the methodology and also clarified the timeframe we're intending to aim to conclude the review in spring summer 2020 slightly longer than I think people might have anticipated initially and that's really because there was a huge volume of interest from people it's taken us longer to get around all the individuals and organisations that wanted to speak to us and some of the questions that we've been asking specifically of children and young people around what's your vision for care has taken longer to get to a point where we have a consensus emerging around a vision where conversations were really about fixing challenges in day-to-day life rather than what could the world look like we've been very clear that it was important for us to hear from as many diverse voices as possible and in ways that worked for individuals so we've not been prescriptive about how we've encouraged people to engage with a review we've been really open about that in addition to all those conversations including the ones with the workforce we spent some time doing really detailed analysis of everything that we have understood and at the moment we are starting we've started to frame that analysis into a vision a series of intentions for the review a series of outputs from discovery which will be happening soon and a series of inputs for the next stage journey the more complicated areas and all of those at the moment are being taken back to children and young people our go-to groups so that we can sense-check what we've heard so we're saying this is what you've told us this is how we've organised it this is what we intend to do next and this is what we hope to achieve at the end does this sound right rather than us just thinking that we've understood it correctly and that's happening right now it's happening this week we had our first ones on Monday and it's happening all through this week all this weekend and next week and we've heard a lot of people that have told us that they like what we've organised the next stage of the review Demolyn Bark we're very careful that the groups our go-to groups are not made up exclusively of the 817 children and young people that spoke to us initially because we recognised there was a risk that we would have an echo chamber so increasingly we're building new groups of individuals that want to talk to us so that's sort of where we're at there is more information in the briefing paper and we are happy to take any questions on any of our work okay thank you very much for that that was very useful and it was good to see so many people participate in the questions can I ask before I invite questions from members of the committee I'd like to start by asking Rosie and Kevin for their views and how the care review has sought to take into account the views of care experienced people and what they feel could be done later in the review to achieve this thank you convener following on from what Fiona said at the end of the discovery phase the figure of children and young people that have been spoken to has been at 817 and that's not including the new people that are part of the go-to groups half of the discovery group are made up of care experienced young people members including myself and Kevin and I honestly could sit and talk to you for hours about the lens that I believe that Fiona and the team have gone to to try and hear the voices of children and young people that are either in the system just now or who have left I think the ways in which the team are trying to gather such a vast variety of voices is really admirable within the discovery group members we've got people with a range of different experiences people in kinship care, foster care so you've got that diversity within the group and then obviously there's the diversity of all the different young people that the team are speaking to outwith of the discovery group meetings personally I feel that that my skill set is my personal experience of being care experienced and my academic and my professional and I think that it's all equally valued I think that when people talk purely from experience and opinion and things that have happened to them on a personal level that is not given any less credit nor should it be when people are inputting into the discussions that we hold together as a group I've never known Fiona to pass up an opportunity to go and speak care experience young people outside of the review and part of a care experienced young people advisory group for the life changes trust and I made a passing comment to Fiona that we had a well established advisory group of 18 to 30 year olds and Fiona instantly said when can I come and see you and there was no underlying motive we didn't have an agenda for that meeting she purely just wanted to come and speak to us update us a little bit about what on a few things and then open herself up completely for us to question her and that was nice for me outside of the discovery group to resort back to being purely a care experienced young person myself and asking her questions in a different role at that point so I've never known Fiona to be too busy she will make it make the time moving forward Fiona mentioned that there's recently been the creation of the go to groups a multi layered approach to sort of engage in with young people so they can be one to one meetings there's phone calls, there's focus groups from across the country it's not centred around any particular areas or the bigger cities such as Glasgow or Edinburgh moving forward personally I feel that there needs to be a continuing discussion around how we reach some of the harder to reach care experienced young people and one of the principles of the go to groups is to get new people so it isn't that echo chamber and I think that that's the responsibility of the review and partly the responsibility of people across the sector of getting together and thinking how we can get those people who are currently under the radar and if that's an issue to do with data collecting data not being up to scratch or being able to disclose their care experience due to stigma or shame or whatever reason I think moving forward that's a focus that I would like speaking from a care experienced person point of view that it's a cross sector responsibility and how I would suggest doing that I think there is a lot of underutilised resources that people aren't utilising and recently there's been the creation of the champs boards across the local authorities I think we're up to 19, 20 different local authorities have these ready made groups of young people who own their care experience and they're there voluntarily to create change and they'd love for people across different parties across different sectors to come and say what do you think because the voice of young people in recent years through the works of organisations such as Who Cares and Celsis and obviously most recently the review these young people are slowly being empowered to talk and to open up and some of the messages that come across from them are invaluable so moving forward in summary for me obviously to keep going the way we're going and for people to really get together so that after the review has concluded that's it and that it's people from health, education mental health people from different political parties really having that commitment to continue to engage with young people and listen because a lot of the answers are there I think we've just not taken the time thus far to to seek them out but they are there I think if people take the time Thank you very much for that Kevin Following on I suppose from what Rosie said from my perspective the scale of the review is fantastic in terms of numbers but it's the approach that the review has taken itself that I am really proud of the review has for me created the conditions for care experience children, young people and adults feel safe it has been as relationship based as possible by working in partnerships with agencies and companies to make sure that children, young people and adults feel comfortable and confident in sharing their experience beyond this the public statement that was made that the care experience the review will be driven by people and that care experience is a real strength in itself what we have seen as a result of this is Scotland engaging in a national conversation about how they in turn engage with their care population locally so for me it's went beyond numbers and it is starting to reach into communities and this discussion has been taken forward there and the third element for me is care identity the power of sharing and listening to stories Historically not long ago around five, six years ago there was a reluctance to listen to people who were care experienced in the fear that the kind of declaration of of their journey would cause or revisit trauma and I think what this review has done has created the conditions for Scotland to take confidence that sharing stories is a positive thing if it's done in the right way with the right support more than that this review for me has it's been tabled as an appreciative review however it has not ignored the lived reality I've spoken quite publicly and openly a number of times about my own experience 15 years ago both of my brothers died aged 18 one through suicide and one through a drugs overdose both care experienced and last week one of our members who cares Scotland who was aged 23 also died her name was Katie and this review has is listened and the reality as well as looking at the strengths and adopting the appreciative approach so for me the fact that the review can learn from the past that can listen to voices that will never be heard but can also more importantly build and look forward to the future is something that I think has real integrity moving forward I feel that the review needs to be care experience driven so the question there was about how we've taken into account care experience people's views and going forward what I would like to see is care experience people at the centre of this as the architects, as the builders and the creators for many many years care experience people have been oppressed through fear, through stigma through discrimination and this review is a marked change in a message to care experience people publicly that you will be listened to that we will take your views serious and that there is a real scope for you to deliver change so I've got every confidence that this review will achieve that under Fiona Duncan's leadership and the fact that to date care experience people have driven this and will continue and both hopeful and confident that we will deliver transformational change that will restore childhoods that will connect community and create a care experience that's based on love so that's it can I thank you both very much for that you were talking about the importance of care experience voices and we've just heard that very powerfully for ourselves so thank you very much to the two of you I've just got one question which is for you Fiona is how do you get the request out for people to participate in the review you know and I get that you're finding the next step is those ones that it's not easy to get to but how do you make sure that there's enough people participating which you clearly have succeeded in doing to some extent so we are trying as far as possible to work in partnership so you'll see from the briefing that we have approached and been approached by lots of voluntary organisations, umbrella bodies local authorities charities that have a specialism in disability or in children or or or I think we're building trust within the care experience community so there's a lot of the meeting I was at on Monday night was people that I hadn't met before but their friends or family members had engaged with the review and decided that they could trust the review so we're meeting new people like that the nominations and representation process that we used to create the discovery group was really effective so both Kevin and Rosie represent other organisations and we mapped out our key stakeholders and asked them to nominate or identify a representative and that was very good at extending our reach. We use all the usual channels as well you know we're on social media and we go everywhere we're asked to so I have been all over Scotland and we turn up to every conference as Rosie said I invite myself to things I haven't had many people say that they won't have me but has happened and we just make a point of being as accessible as possible and we we're not working Monday to Friday night it's evenings weekends it's whenever it needs to be and because we want to hear from children and young people it's really important that we're not compounding the stigma by saying we'll be with you at Tuesday at 3 o'clock and you have to come out of class so I guess we're just working around people's lives to make sure that that we're present and I suppose the last thing that I would say is we're listening and we're asking questions and to Kevin's point we respect the voices of the care experience community and they are going to be involved in the design, the delivery and the monitoring and evaluation of any care system they have to be and I do think we're at a point where there's we're moving from into hope and belief and I think that in itself is creating a momentum thank you very much Ruth then Mary Rennwas thank you convener good morning panel thanks for being here and for all the work you're doing I wanted to ask Fiona you mentioned that it was some of it was taking a little bit longer because I guess talking about consulting people and going out to listen to their views and have them shaped easy to say but when you go people have their lives that they're leading and there's almost getting over the current day-to-day issue and I want to think specifically for care experienced folk we'll have additional challenges it's not the same but I suppose what's in my mind is when we go and have focus groups with teachers and we want to speak to them about future plans and strategies and what's important to them as the stuff that's going on at the moment so is it just time how do you move past that and build that trust so that people feel they can be involved in the building of what's coming not just sharing what's happening at the moment so I think that there is a time element I think that the way we've structured certainly the discovery stage of the reviews this is a conversation to find an answer to our question there and then so I met somebody who cares or commissioned to deliver the thousand voices and everyone that takes part in the thousand voices gets a badge and I met a young lady who I think had five badges she was getting to the point where she was ready to share the things that she thought we had to hear and she knew she'd been counted once so she's not five of the 117 she's one who appeared five times and I think that's important I think there's something very powerful in the fact that as far as possible we're ensuring that the people that are involved in the conversations really understand the issues so it's making sure that you've seen for yourself the power of Rosie and Kevin and I think the fact that Rosie did invite me willingly into her group and said you should be part of this conversation means that that in itself makes it easier for some of those conversations to happen but I do think there have to be conversations that can't be any sort of right we've heard you, that's it, you've had your view and I think one other point which is possibly worth noting now is we where we've identified hard to reach communities or individuals we have tried harder we've not said oh you're hard to reach and therefore we're going to reach, we see the responsibility on us to try harder so we have both been wide and open but we have also been quite specific and targeted around voices that we have to hear and it's not just people that maybe and children and young people that maybe wouldn't be feel that they want to engage with the review it's also where maybe they don't have a voice or English isn't their first language or so we're very aware of all of that and my final point is that as Kevin said we create a really safe environment we ensure that there's always somebody on site if somebody is talking about something that they feel is traumatic or is triggering something we make sure that we have all the support structures in place so that people are kept safe during the conversation and kept safe after the conversation thank you I just have one question around harder to reach young people in the last session of Parliament I was for a short time convener of the Equalities Committee and we did an inquiry into young people and homelessness and we discovered that quite a high proportion of young people that were homeless had come through the care system and they were homeless because the system had failed them because there was no support there was no clear pathway for them when they left care and I remember evidence we heard from one young person who said they were taken from the care setting they were in a car and deposited outside a house and given a set of keys to their flat and told this was their new home and they had no skills to cope or deal with the situation that they were put in and I'd be really keen to hear that those young people were being engaged with and talked to because they needed to make some massive changes to the way we deal with young people that are care experienced to make sure they have the correct support and the proper pathway to help them when they leave the system and the other place that we found young people quite often and again it's the failure of the system it's no reflection on the young people themselves they're in and out of the criminal justice system because they have nowhere else to go and they don't have the coping mechanisms to deal with life basically so I'd be keen to hear that you're speaking to people that come from those situations We are absolutely we recognise what you've just said we have been targeted around working with charities that work with the homeless community to ensure that we're having those conversations one of the things that we've identified is a lack of data around that we see part of our responsibility in the next phase is gathering the data and trying to understand the scale of that so we also have done work in polement and we have identified those areas and many others that are of specific interest to us so we in the next stage of the review it's something that we are going to be even more focused on so that we can understand that issue I completely agree that that is a massive issue for me that needs improvement when I mentioned before that Fiona had been out and spoken to the advisory group that I'm a part of outside of the review the life changes trust one of the big initiatives that the life changes trust is currently focusing on and a large majority of that initiative is the problems that you've just mentioned Fiona has agreed to continue to work collaboratively with us as a group on the issues of homelessness to of my colleagues from the advisory group we're here not I think it was several weeks ago providing evidence as well on the homelessness issues and when Fiona's been out to speak with us as a group that has been one of the things that we have discussed at quite some length we also discuss it when Fiona's not there and feedback through myself being involved in both or through emails phone calls updates but just from that angle I can definitely say that Fiona and the team are considering homelessness and the issues that being expected to run your own tendency at 16 is common sense that that's not going to be easy and it's not successful and it does need looking at but the review's definitely taken that into consideration as I've been part of those conversations with Fiona yeah so I find this subject quite a dark subject and I'm hopefully going to be able to try and talk to this concisely so that it's understood when we or Government increase the age of remaining in care up to 21 and in 26 which was monumental and definitely the right thing to do we done that in 2014 and we've at the moment there's a collision of key partners in the sector Celsus who cares Scotland, clan child law a whole range of people coming together and there's a meeting taking place in the next week or so to talk about this issue the fact that here and now children from care still end up homeless and the average age of leaving care is still 17 so we're not seeing an increase but it still exists and when I joined this so this issue has come up during the review process and it's multi-layered and it's also come up in my role at Who Care Scotland managing our national corporate parent and training programme and one of the things that I found fascinating is that all of the reasons were different so for a foster carer it was the fact that they were registered as a foster carer and their foster carer rate was being halved so they then couldn't look after that child so they then moved on to the agency it was a fact that they provided residential childcare it was at a certain rate so some of it was to do with money and resources and there was a whole range of reasons some of it when we spoke to professionals and agencies was when I asked them I said I think this issue is bigger than finance there's actually something very dark and cultural about this issue because the conversation we had in that room was not how are we discussing this young person is potentially going to be homeless the discussion we were having was these young people are homeless so the foster carers let them go the legal agency comes in and tries to support them at the latter end Who Care Scotland is an advocacy service the residential house that had held them for seven years, ten years and people that say that they love are letting them go so for me there are some real challenges that exist that we need to understand better but it's a really it's a really dark issue that talks about behaviour and society and culture when we take children from abuse and neglect bring them into the system and at the end return them in a very disruptive unsupportive environment so it's beyond finance and I think that moving forward in the next stage of the review how we understand the culture and examine that despite the fact that we all know it's wrong we collectively let it happen and that's not about blame that's just about the reflection of where we are at this moment in time Thank you very much for that Thank you and thank you very insightful comments this morning Can I just ask one question about the engagement of the 32 local authorities which you said were in the discovery programme did you get a good level of engagement from all 32 or was it patchy? It was they were all willing to engage but the level of engagement at each one was possibly different some of them we engaged at multi levels so we engaged with champs boards we engaged with their social work teams others heard workshops for us others encouraged us to meet children and young people for some of them we were with them for days on end and others it was shorter interventions I'm pleased that we've got all 32 and I do believe that we are at the beginning of a conversation with all 32 and I think that there is a willingness to engage we are trying to make sure that engagement is wide we are also engaging with Solace and COSLA and all the other agencies that are around at the Care Inspectorate of Scotland all the other organisations that work closely with local authorities to ensure that we can continue to have conversations with them Thank you Questions from Joanne First of all thank you very much for everything you said to think about and for those of us who are a bit hard-bitten about stuff there have been a million reviews and a million issues in this Parliament but you have given us huge confidence that this is taken forward really really seriously and I think across whatever party people come from they will be hugely encouraged by what you've said Historically I talked for 20 years and it was only later that people talked even with the fact that youngsters were in care and youngsters were brought down on to the island and nobody discussed why they were there even when they were trying to get back off the island so this is something that I accept that there's a feel that it's been progressed in some ways in that time but this is really a very important moment I wondered I think you're absolutely right that care experience people the younger older have to be at the centre of this one of the campaign groups that have been very strong in the Parliament have been kinship carers and they have spoken up for the young people that they love and care for and have really exposed a lot of things that we have prepared we used to talk about stepping away from things the extent to which as a system we have prepared to step away from that I think has been a shame on us all is how do you manage potentially what there might not so much conflict but a different perspective or whatever we're doing the best and perhaps failed how do you see that going and what is the balance between those some very powerful advocates on behalf of young people and the absolute centrality of the care experienced person themselves being at the centre of it I'll try and respond to that but I would be interested in Rosie and Kevin Sears as well there's a map of the care journey and it's A3 and it includes kinship and foster care and residential care and looked after at home and edges of care and actually we've tried very hard to ensure and babies and children of this age and this gender and these settings we have tried really hard to ensure that the conversations that we've been having have been representative and that's with children and young people and the paid and unpaid workforce so that includes people who are involved maybe through the children's panel foster carers etc etc and I think I've got three observations the first is that there is a huge amount of consensus around what has to happen and the need for change so there's a real appetite it feels that the moment for this review is now and there's certain things that everybody does agree on I think there are inevitably and I would imagine that's a symptom of the stage that we're at and we're understanding the routes and branches I think as we move into the next stage there will inevitably be divergence and there will inevitably be conversations about resource allocation and precedent and voice but I think one of the things that people do say to us a lot is they don't feel heard so kinship carers feel they don't feel heard foster carers don't feel that they feel heard at critical points of decision making and I think there's nobody that I've met that doesn't want the best for children and young people it's just where those tensions lie I imagine that those are going to come out around specific issues like voice in a children's hearing for example and I think at that point we're going to have to understand and go back to really what's best for the child, what's right for the child my final point in this is it's been a there was some interesting commentary at the very beginning of the review where children and young people had said this system is designed by adults and delivered by adults and children and young people have now got an opportunity to make it better and there was a young man I met who said to me if you'd asked me these questions at the age of 14 I'd have given you a very different answer so I think because we have been speaking to people in all sorts of different settings in all sorts of different ages and it's I went to the who cares summer camp and spent lots of time with children and got pelted on the assault course twice and the conversations that children want to have are really around what's not working now and what they would do if their best friend was coming in to care behind them or tomorrow and I think on those sorts of day to day decisions and day to day issues we're not necessarily going to bump into disagreements I think it's on the bigger issue around where does responsibility sit where does power sit where do the resources sit what do the risks look like how risk averse are different organisations going to have and to Kevin's earlier point there are so many different pieces of legislation in this system that's often where the creeks happen something has changed and it's considered to be a good positive change but actually there are unintended consequences or it's not taken up or I think those are where the disagreements going to happen I hope I'm answering this question for me so there's a lot of young people out there in kinship care arrangements or looked after at home that don't understand that they are care experienced because there's a lot of tension within the sector within families about their ability or desire to embrace a label the real challenge for me is that if you look at the way everything is being built in terms of opportunities and support a lot of it actually requires that person to know that they are care experienced so the fantastic work that the government's done in terms of replacing student loans with non-repayable bursary for care experience will transform lives but if that person does not understand that they are care experienced simply put they will never tick a box and they will never receive the benefits of that and you can look at that in terms of getting priority if you look at employment in terms of ticking that you're from a care experience background and a whole range of corporate parents automatically guaranteeing interviews and ring-fencing jobs free accommodation all year round in some of Scotland's universities these are fantastic developments but they require care experienced people to celebrate their care identity and I think that this movement is a very young movement if you look at the disability movement the LGBT movement there has been huge investment to get people to a place where they celebrate who they are and where they're from and with the care experience movement it's embryonic but it's something that we're building on so for me I think there's a real challenge in supporting kinship carers but there's a bigger challenge for children to have a very positive sense of self that being care experienced is not a bad thing and that by owning that care identity not publicly but internally there are benefits that exist out there that we are creating but it requires them to know that and to accept it and to celebrate it and I think that the review again moving forward this is an area where we need to engage in the discussion about care so that they understand it and so that people don't try and hide from it I went to university for four years and the only time I told somebody I was care experienced was in my last day because I knew I'd never see them again and that's a very real example of feeling ashamed of who I am and I've only felt happiness in my marriage when my kids and in my job since I'm raised who I was so for me it's personal and professional but there's a broader and wider discussion and I think that Fiona in the review can certainly aid that discussion in Scotland Thank you, Rosie, do you want to come on on that? Yeah, following on from Kevin's point another thing that I think is important to me is when we've been talking about discrepancies in data and not knowing just how many care-experience people there are out there how many kinship carers there are that we don't know about because it's done in private family life one of the things that I bought to discussion with the Discovery group was stigma and not the stigma of declaring that you are care experienced which is a massive issue which I believe Kevin was just talking about of families and carers to come forward and ask for help we spoke about this in relation to edges of care families who are providing kinship care for children and young people that we as professionals don't know about because they simply don't come forward and tell us and I think one of the large reasons about that is the stigma of being a service user of social work so for me one of the things that I used to continue to look at and that professionals across sector need to continue to work on is working out how to reduce the stigma of asking for help and getting rid of some of the disillusions that people and members of the public have about the social work sector and the health and education sector and I think a lot of that is coming from the media and misrepresentations of information so some responsibility for that lies with the review and that's a continual thing that will be looked at through the journey stage but I think because the review is independent I think there's a general consensus that Fiona and the team and Discovery Group members are accountability lies with the children and young people and making a better environment and upbringing and childhood for them so stigma for me is one of the big issues that I'd like to work on not only for children and young people themselves to feel comfortable owning their care experience but also to reduce the stigma of accessing services and hopefully helping families that are on the edge of care it's that preventative not intervention that for me would be a goal working towards Can I thank you very much for that that was on behalf of all the committee when I say that that was very useful and very powerful testimony from you all and I have no doubts that we'll be hearing from you again during this process and hopefully later in the parliamentary session so that brings us to the end of the public part of the meeting we're now going to move on to private session but I want to thank you once again