 Good morning and welcome to this, the eighth meeting of the Equality and Human Rights Committee. Can I make the usual request that mobile phones have switched on silent or airplane mode? We have received apologies from our colleague David Torrance this morning and our other colleague Annie Wells will be joining us imminently. At 9.33 this morning, the committee will hopped in order to observe a minute silence. I will just lead that so you will know when that happens, but we will observe the minute silence and then go back in to committee work. Just to alert you that that will be happening in case you are mid-flow. Moving on to agenda item 1 this morning, which is our inquiry on destitution, asylum and secure immigration. I would like to welcome for our second oral session in this inquiry a number of witnesses at the table this morning. We have Andrew Morrison, who is a policy manager at COSLA, strategic migration partnership. For information, we are having Derek and Mitchell next week, who will specifically focus on unaccompanied children. We will maybe keep those questions for Derek next week and fire the other ones at you, Andrew. We have Alexis Chappell, who is a service manager at Dundee City Health and Social Care partnership. Good morning. Rachel Morley, who is a principal clinical psychologist at NHS Glasgow, Greater Glasgow and Clyde psychological trauma services, and Annette Finan, who is the head of various services, and Arun Singh, the child and family services manager at South Lanarkshire Council. Welcome to you both. Finally, we have Sean Bell, who is the acting senior manager at the children's practice teams, the City of Edinburgh Council. Finally, he's not with us yet, Alan McEwn, but hopefully he should be joining us. Alan is the community's strategic director at Angus Council. Welcome to you all this morning. I thank you for your written evidence that you have provided to the committee. We have had a lot of excellent contributions to this inquiry and a lot of very good avenues for us to investigate down. You will realise the breadth of this work and how complicated it can be on the areas that are devolved and the areas that are reserved and some of the tensions that arise from that. Essentially, what the committee is looking at is how we support people in Scotland. That focuses mainly on the areas of health and social care and advice services and accommodation and things like that that help people out. We are not just focused on the Syrian resettlement programme or just unaccompanied children, we are focused on anyone who has that insecure immigration status, and we have looked at many aspects of that. However, I want to address an opening question if you could give us some of the insight into the work that you are doing. Maybe I will come to you first because I know about some of the work that COSLA is doing, but maybe if you give us an update on the work that you are doing. No problem. First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak to you today. As you said, I work for COSLA's migration population and diversity team, which is a small policy team that looks to support local authorities in a whole range of pieces of work that they do to support their migrant populations and to help to integrate them into Scotland's communities. We do a huge amount in relation to migrants as a whole supporting their integration, but in the past couple of years our focus has been very much on asylum and refugee issues. We all know the context around the Syrian resettlement programme that really has shifted the emphasis of our work back to work on refugees. There are probably just a couple of points that I want to make at the outset. We obviously listened with great interest to the discussions last week, and a lot of the panellists were talking about destitution being an inevitable consequence of the UK immigration system and the hostile environment that the UK Government is seeking to create for those that they deem do not have a legal right to be in the UK. We absolutely agree with all the points that were made around that last week, but for us, trying to represent the interests of local authorities, the biggest issue for us is in relation to resources. I want to make a couple of points first around the work that councils do to support those who the Government has no recourse to public funds but that we have a responsibility towards. The local authorities spend many thousands of pounds every year supporting those individuals and families, but they do not receive any funding, whether it is from the UK or the Scottish Government, to support them in that work. That was the one resourcing issue that I wanted to flag up. The other one is in relation to asylum services. Over the past few years since the introduction of the Compass contracts, we have seen that millions of pounds have come out of asylum services and are essentially out of communities as well, with local authorities and third sector partners forced to pick up the pieces. It is an unsustainable picture. I suppose that a reflection of that is that we might come on to discuss the moves that the UK Government is seeking to make around widening asylum dispersal. We have a serine resettlement programme that is adequately funded and that gives councils funding over five years and 31 out of 32 are signed up to that. We have a dispersal policy, which Glasgow is still the only dispersal area, and I do not think that that is any accident. That, for us, is the key issue and I am happy to discuss any of those. I think that we will integrate some of that. In Arun, I will come back to Alexis as well to give us some of the specifics at the front end and the actual support that is given from councils leading on from Andrew's question. I do not know around your sort of a pectup, so if you want to come in and explain maybe the actual interface with families and individuals. Yes, not to worry. My name is Arun, by the way, but that is okay, not to worry. I have got responsibility for social work, field work services in South Lancer and I also have got the partnership lead, such as across health and social care, in terms of ensuring that we have got a coordinated response in terms of unaccompetent, silency and children, but also more broadly in terms of those individuals who present with no recourse to public funds. At the moment, we are supporting 12 unaccompetent, silency and children, and they have various immigration status, whether or not it has been temporary refugee status or whether they have had their claim rejected. They have come to us through a whole host of means, whether that is a police or home office notification, whether that is spontaneous arrivals or whether it is not that sort of request by Dungavel, which is the only immigration removal centre in Scotland, who have requested an age assessment post to them being there. Some of the work that, as a local authority and as partnership we are involved in, is working with COSLA around the national framework, looking at the dispersal scheme, recognising that the home office protocol was far short in terms of what was needed in Scotland. We are also actively engaged with the child protection team here at the Scottish Government, looking at age assessments in particular for unaccompetent, silency and children. We also deal with a number of households with no recourse to public funds. It is important to recognise that. The cohorts of both unaccompetent, silency and children and those families or households with no recourse to public funds are very different to those that we deal with on a day-to-day basis in terms of those residents within South Lanarkshire. We will explore that a wee bit more. From a social perspective, our staff on the front line deal with very complex and very difficult human stories on a day-to-day basis when they are dealing with this cohort of individuals. We do add up most to uphold our social values but, as Andrew has just said, we are working in a system that is not really conducive to being able to maintain that. Thank you very much. I like this Dundee because we have a bit of a difference here between South Lanarkshire, big and small or tighter. We have some rural areas that might have different challenges. Do you want to come in on that? First of all, I thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I would say that, in terms of refugees, it has been a privilege to support refugees through the vulnerable persons relocation scheme. Within Dundee, we have welcomed refugees and taken a local collaborative approach with our colleagues in the third sector and the colleagues across Dundee City Council and Dundee Health and Social Care Partnership and NHS Tayside. That has helped us to work with refugees to take an approach that is based on their views and wishes and enable them to integrate within Dundee in a positive way. The feedback from refugees has been very positive about the approach that we have taken. I echo the comments from my colleagues in Cosland and South Lanarkshire that, for the approach to asylum seekers, it seems very different in terms of the approach to asylum seekers. What we have suggested in our submission is that it might be helpful to learn from the approach to that of refugees and how that could be perhaps adopted to that of asylum seekers, so that we could find a solution in a way forward that resolves the concerns around destitution that has been very clearly evidenced. In terms of no recourse to public funds, within Dundee, we pride ourselves on working collaboratively with the third sector and working in a very partnership and respectful way. Through our partnership approaches with the third sector, what we identified a couple of years ago was how we approach and support people who are consistent and lawful in a fair way based on the principles around human rights and respect and dignity for those who seek assistance with no recourse to public funds. We brought together a group from across Dundee City Council under the health and social care partnership to develop a cross-sector procedure and approach that goes across children of families, health and social care, legal services, welfare rights services and housing services, so that we can meet our principles around a consistent, fair, lawful and approach that is based on consideration of human rights and the complexities and a personalised approach based on what we know as the complexities as they have been identified by my colleague here. We have tested and piloted that approach over the last couple of years, and we have found that that has been a very helpful way of approaching no recourse to public funds, so those who seek assistance through no recourse to public funds. One of the things that we have done within Dundee is invested in our welfare rights services, who we see as valuable support. We have had staff trained within the Office of Immigration Services Commissioner, so they can provide free-of-charge immigration advice. We think that that is so. Within Dundee, our welfare rights services are now the first board of call for assessments in relation to no recourse to public funds. We have picked up quite clearly in the inquiry as to the many different ways in which people seek asylum, and the many different schemes that the Home Office has got in order to process that through. One of the issues that we are looking at is how do local services engage with all of that and how do you decipher it? It is really quite challenging for some of the groups and the people that we have been to meet here in all the different routes that they go through. If it is complicated for the person that is in the middle of it, how complicated is it then for the people who are providing the support services? Before I move on to any other questions, we are just about at 9.33, so I am going to hope proceedings now and allow us to observe the minute silence and solidarity with our friends and colleagues at Westminster. We will do that now as soon as it hits 9.33, and we will come back into questions with you. Thank you all for observing the minutes silence and we will go back into our evidence now. Sean, I think that I wanted to come to you next. Just given that Edinburgh City Council has maybe got a different experience from Glasgow in that sense in the work that they have done, and then we will come and talk to Alan about Angus and the challenges that a rural area in Scotland has. Thank you for inviting me this morning. I am really pleased to be able to be here and give evidence to the committee. In Edinburgh, we have been working with families, well, refugees across the scale, but certainly with families with no recourse for public fans for many years. I have had the strategic and operational lead for working with families in that area for about 10 years. We have been in touch with councils all over the country. In fact, colleagues from Dundee came to see us several times and looked at what we were doing, and we helped them to develop their guidance. We have done that with a number of local authorities. Any given time, we will be supporting around 40 families who have no recourse to public funds over the course of a year, probably 60 to 70 families. This year, I have just been looking at figures. We have paid out something like £375,000 in rent and maintenance to families. That is not staff costs, but direct payments to families to support them. In the main, there are families who have a human rights claim to remain in the UK. However, some of them are asylum seekers who are doing that under article 3. The UK Government policy keeps shifting and it gets more and more difficult for people to get support when they have a claim in, so we will support people pending them getting support. Post a successful claim, it can take some time for them to get support. We have seen a number of changes, for example, in what is called Zambrano cases. I do not know if the committee is aware of Zambrano. It was a case that went to the European Court where there was a judgment that said that if you were the parent of a child who was an EU citizen, then you had the de facto right to remain in the EU to look after that child until they were 18. We have parents, mainly British citizens, who themselves do not have a legal right to remain in the UK, who are then given temporary leave to remain until the child is 18. However, when that judgment was made, the rules then changed and many of them are given leave to remain, but still with no recourse to public funds. Where they have young children and obviously cannot manage to work and also provide childcare, we are again continuing to support those families. There is often a huge emphasis on families to get asylum support to prove that they are destitute, which is very difficult to prove that they do not have an income. Again, we support families through that process. We get a lot of presentations on a weekly basis. We make sure that we have OISC-trained staff. We also refer them immediately to immigration lawyers to look at their human rights. We support families through that process. We do that to a great extent. We get no financial support whatsoever from the UK Government or the Scottish Government to do so. We also have a lot of presentations of USCs appearing in the city. We are currently supporting 27. We took some direct from France, but we have 27 at the moment. Again, when they turn 18, we get no support for that, so we continue to support them as children who are firmly in care. We have taken, so far, 153 people through the Syrian refugees settlement scheme, and we have another 50 coming. We have a huge breadth of experience. We have been often asked to help and support other agencies with policies and to speak at conferences on NRPF and impact on families. Alan, the challenges of a rural area was one of the issues that came up through your evidence. Do you want to give us some insight into your situation? I suppose that one of the things that I wanted to say was to give a lot of tribute and thanks to colleagues in COSLA, but also colleagues in other local authorities. One of the things that was really impressive about the immediate response to the Syrian refugee crisis was the way that we all pulled together with a common cause. The support that we received from COSLA, but the support that Angus and Dundee were able to give each other and the work that we were able to do with colleagues in Aberdeen and Aberdeinshire—some of which was done on the train, it has to be said—was very impressive. That collegiality focused on the outcomes for individuals was key. For us and Angus, the key was to make sure that we were able to provide the package of accommodation and support in a very low-key way. We have provided all of that in one of our larger towns. We have done nothing about publicity. Our message and our political message was that we will support as much as we can and we will do it as quietly as we can. We have, at this stage, had eight Syrian refugees families all in one area, but we have worked closely with colleagues in Dundee. The reason why the challenge is more difficult for us is that the cultural, the religious and all the other support issues are not present in our communities. That is not to say that we have not had and we have had some fantastic volunteer support. That has been integral to mainstreaming support. Angus language courses have been fantastic and the support that we have managed to get through for the financing of that is important. We have managed to do this very sensitively. We have reached out to get support where we can get that. The families are supporting themselves as well. We are starting to see more interest from the UK Government around the dispersal scheme. That one gives me some concerns in terms of whether or not in our really small borough towns is this the right place. Nonetheless, we will offer support to the UK Government. Although that one I will keep a very close eye on because I am not convinced that, for all parts, it is necessary that coming to a place and some of the places will be the best outcome for individuals. In terms of Syrian refugees, we have seen fantastic outcomes. We are saying that people are engaging in education and that language skills are increasing considerably. They are much more independent and much quicker than we have anticipated. That is to their credit for the efforts that they are putting in. There is no question that the need to reach out and to use the cultural support and the religious support that sits in areas such as St Andrews and Dundee and the co-operation of our colleagues has been a huge success. I hope that that will continue. I have to say that we have seen some pretty destitute people who have been in some dire straits over the past few weeks and to hear such a positive contribution where that integration, education and all of that is all happening. However, it is not just about statutory organisations but local communities who are engaging in that. It is excellent, because we have met some brilliant volunteers who have put their heart and soul into this and that makes a huge difference in ensuring that independence and resilience and reliability are built in straight away, so it is really good to hear that. On that note, some people are very seriously affected by the experiences that they have had and whether they have had in their journey to seek asylum or their experiences with the system. Again, we have met some people in the course of this inquiry who have been very badly damaged. That is the word that I would use by a very uncaring system as far as asylum process goes. The praisey song of all the organisations that are involved but still the challenges of the legal route. Rachel, I wonder if you can give us just a wee insight. You have given us some great written evidence if you can give us a wee insight to that. Then I am going to open to questions. I have a whole list of questions from my colleagues this morning. Yes, thank you. Absolutely a good concur with what you have just said, but thank you for the privilege of being able to contribute to this inquiry. I lead the asylum and refugee part of the service at Glasgow's psychological trauma service. We work with unaccompanied young people and adults who have experienced very severe traumas, which include torture and rape and trafficking. We help to support psychological healing and recovery. As a team, we have concerns that aspects of the asylum process are exacerbating people's mental health difficulties and contributing to people being retraumatised. In relation to destitution in particular, the process can systematically erode people's emotional and physical resilience and lead people to be vulnerable to further trauma, further re-victimisation and further experiences of violence. Thank you, Rachel. I think that we are going to interrogate some of all the aspects this morning, but my colleagues are anxious to get in. I am starting first with Jeremy. Thank you, convener, and good morning to everybody. I suppose that just for the record, I should say that I am a councillor, a friend of my city council and was for a short period of time part of the working group of COSLA. I think that I have to put in writing that I fundamentally disagree with the opening statement by Andrew. I think that it over politicised the issue and actually showed the fundamental weakness that COSLA is as an organisation. I would like to put my question to Alexis and maybe to Sean. One of the things that came out very clearly from the evidence that we heard last week was the different practice that happens across Scotland and actually the different practice that can happen within one city, particularly perhaps Glasgow, which I appreciate that you cannot comment on. How do we share British practice? You have done this scheme and it has worked really well in Dundee. How do you then share that with Edinburgh, Aberdeen or other cities? We are in danger of being quite a small country having lots of different models, some of which are good and some of which are less good. From your experience, do we have to have lots of trains on us so that we can discuss these things, or how do we do it in a more structured way? I vote you or Alexis. I mean, there are a number of ways in which we do that and do that very effectively. I mean, there is a NRPF network that has run out of Islington Council, which is a UK-wide NRPF network that allows local authorities to share information that they employ officers who constantly update us on issues, changes in legislation and best practice. They publish a lot on best practice. COSLA also have a similar setup, which is because some of what comes out of London is so focused on UK or English and Welsh legislation, and there are a lot of complexities in this area of work. What COSLA has done is pulled together an NRPF network for Scotland, which does not duplicate what goes on down south but enhances that and looks at that in a Scottish way. We also have really good networks with each other and pick up the phone and will speak to each other about issues as they come. I think that what is being described from colleagues in Angus and Dundee is very similar for me in Edinburgh. We have a very close relationship with Fife Council, Midlothian, Eastlothian. We have regular meetings and network discussions. We help each other, for example, in things such as age assessments and age assessments training, so that we will cover for each other and support each other in these areas. I think that the work in practice that is taking about where we have a UK network, a Scottish network through COSLA, and then we have those local connections for me that are working particularly well. I would echo the comments by a colleague, Sean. I think that there is a range of good local networks and good local collaboration, particularly across Tayside, across each of the local partnerships, across Tayside, and what we find is that by sharing good practice across each locally and also nationally through COSLA, it helps us to learn from each other and particularly the refugee scheme through the vulnerable persons relocation scheme has been particularly helpful because we have been able to share practice at a national level and learn from each other about what is working well in different areas. For me, it is about building upon that focus on local and national collaboration. I think that your point is very well made in terms of maintaining and to strive towards the supported individuals who are experiencing difficulty. We need to have good, contentable structures around local and national collaboration so that we can learn from each other and continue to develop and improve what we do. On the NRPF, which is the national no recourse to public funds, we would be quite interested to know how that works. We have heard how two councils work with it, but it is obviously a strategic part of that. Can you give us some information on that? Yes. As Sean said, there is a UK-wide network. There are regional networks as well, and we host the Scottish no recourse to public funds network, and we host discussions and try to disentangle some of the complexities that are particular to Scotland. Sean, Edinburgh City Council and Glasgow City Council are involved in the NRPF Connect, which is for local authorities who have a large number of cases of people with no recourse to public funds. Again, Sean is more of an expert in that than I am, but that feeds into the home office as well and allows local authorities to focus on trying to resolve cases in a more timious manner. That is what we do. Thank you, convener. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for coming to see us today. I would like to start by picking up on something that Rachel said. I should declare that, before I came to this place, I worked for Abel Airo that manages the Scottish guardianship service in partnership with the Scottish Refugee Council for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Rachel, you gave us quite a clear description of the very important work that you do working with some very vulnerable children who have come to these shores looking for sanctuary, some of whom have been trafficked, some have been victims of torture and other atrocities in the countries from which they come. While I was working there, I was aware of the lack of differentiation between the way in which UK borders agency works with children and with adults in terms of assessing claims and the rest of it, that sometimes children, in order to get any kind of extension to prepare a case, would have to evidence a historic subjection to torture. It was really not a child-friendly process. In some extreme cases, that led to some children being re-trafficked because they just absconded and went back into the clutches of their handlers. Can you see any progress in this area? What can we do to make things better for these children? There has been progress in relation to the Scottish guardianship programme, which has been a very important programme that Scotland has led the way on. That has helped young people to navigate their way through the asylum process. There are still real concerns, as you say, about the ways in which young people are interviewed, often in very adversarial ways that can be very distressing. Young people are still going through huge delays about their claims being processed, which leads to lots of fear about the future and a lot of difficulty in settling and feeling that they can belong in Scotland. There are lots of parts of the process that is to do with the way that the asylum process operates that are still very detrimental to young people. Progress has been made. I think that the Scottish guardianship model has been really helpful. I think that, in some ways, it would be great if we could have a similar scheme, a sort of advocacy support project for some of the adults going through the asylum process as well, because I think that there is a lack of support and advocacy for adults. Thank you. A question to you and to the wider panel. Last week, we discussed with the panel the application of the section 22 orders and section 25 orders in respect of young and accompanied asylum-seeking children. The legislation should be clear that we should be regarding young and accompanied asylum seekers and victims of trafficking as looked after children and all the comforts and rights that that affords them, particularly with the enhanced protections that that has been given under the Children and Young People Act. We have a picture that that is not universally applied in the same way across the country. I wonder if you could give us your reflections on that and then perhaps open it up to the wider panel to talk about how your individual local authorities or the wider local authorities handle that application. I think that what you say is true. I think that there has been some confusion, probably particularly for young people arriving when they are 16 or 17. I think that that is an improving picture. I think that it should be very clear across Scotland that young people who are seeking asylum who are unaccompanied should be considered as looked after children and receive all the support and benefits attached to that. I think that there probably is still a need for further clarity and guidance that that is absolutely the picture across Scotland. I do not know if my colleagues who are directly working in local authorities would concur with that. Arryn, you mentioned earlier about young people needing age assessments in South Lanarkshire Council being the referral point from Dungeval. Is that a particular issue that Dungeval is in South Lanarkshire that you would just get the ones that have disputed age assessments? One of the things that we did here last week in questioning was that that debiety between 16, 17 and 18-year-olds being assessed in England is being adults. Coming to Scotland and the staff may be in Dungeval or in local authorities realising that person as a child and then having to go through the process of reassessment. You had mentioned earlier about taking part in some of that. Would you be able to elaborate on how your council handles that and how that information is then shared? I think that we have just spoken. It is a very complex issue because some of those young people who have been exploited, etc., who have been age assessed in England, might have said that I am 19 years old, come up to Dungeval, feel a bit more safe and secure and enable them to tell their real-life stories. Dungeval will normally contact us at that point in time to do an age assessment if they feel the young person has advised that they are under the age of 18. We have a very pragmatic approach to that, which is that if the young person is obviously under the age of 18, then you do not do an age assessment, then you take it as green, that that is a child according to the legislation and we would accommodate that child under section 25. If there is an age dispute, so if the young person, for example, said in England that there were 23 and then they said to Dungeval actually I am 17 and a half and our staff go out and there is still a question mark in terms of no obvious signs that it is actually a child, then we would undertake an age assessment and we do that at the young person's pace. We do not go in and make a decision straight away, it is important and I think I wrote here that trust is a really important element that these young people are really, you know, if they have been trafficked or if they have been, you know, come through a number of continents to come here or have been through a number of hands to get here, they will be extremely resistant, you know, cagey in terms of what they can say, how it will be taken, so we are always very clear that we need to work at the young person's pace and provide them with the safe space to allow them to tell their stories and I think what we see is that and I think sometimes it can be a danger is that we see these young people as being quite resilient and in many ways yes they are because they are probably an autopilot actually, you know, to get to A to B and I think a lot of the evidence has come from down south and from Kent in particular has been, it's not actually until maybe three, six, nine months after the young person feels safe and settled and has got that trust in relationship which is where some of that kind of trauma that they've experienced in their own countries actually comes to surface so that can be really difficult at that point in time and that's when we're then linking with our health colleagues around that health assessment as well. So we are, as I said, we are very clear in terms of the presenting picture that young people have whether if it's obvious then we follow the guidance in terms of not traumatising young people throughout that process but where there is a question mark then clearly we have a duty in order to explore that further as well. Thank you. Do you want to come back on Alex? Yes, no thank you for that, I really appreciate that. I think also just widening around the issues of human trafficking, I think also not just with children and young people who have been trafficked but adults as well that destitution can sometimes present a dichotomy where they actually think well I was better off while I was with my handlers and that leads to re-trafficking. I mean how much, I mean obviously we can't really measure that because sometimes we don't know what happens to people when they abscond and drop off the radar but what sort of resources and services are available to intervene in that particular aspect and how much has the new human trafficking act helped in that regard? Alexas, you were nodding away there so I'm going to pick on you and I think that's a very good point that you make in relation to how do we support victims of violence and how do we make sure that we've got robust local measures to go and do that? Within Dundee we have a violence against women partnership who's considered exactly the type of questions in which you're asking today and we have very good partnership arrangements with our local third sector in which we would then be able to go and support victims who support people who have been trafficked and do that as a partnership approach between my health and social care partnership Dundee City Council and the third sector so that people are supported and safe and that we are considering our human rights and amongst that and again it's about to me and the focus on all of this is about people is that people are going through very difficult circumstances and we need to make sure that our processes and supports are robust enough to enable people to be supported through what is a very difficult time in their life and do that in the most sensitive and measured way that we can do and I agree with my colleague Arran that often the approach needs to be taken over a period of time because initially the present initiatives might not be what is really the trauma might not become more clear until quite later on until we know the person so that's why it's important that we have a good local networks good local collaboration good local support between each other so that people can be supported and safe at a time when we'll need it. Sean? I mean several pieces of that I mean the question about what happens when people go missing I mean in the last few years we've only ever lost one young person who disappeared he was then subsequently found a cannabis farm down in England and charged which is they usually are they're held accountable and responsible for having despite not having any language and any resources for having done so however we got him back through that system and we're managed to get him out of custody in England and brought back up we have currently nobody missing I say we haven't lost one for a number of years I spoke to colleagues in Glasgow very recently and they have no missing young people so I'm you know currently I don't know that you know we have a very different record I think in Scotland compared to the southeast of England in terms of young people going missing it's a it's a rarity and we tend to get them back very very quickly the presumption of age again is exactly how we work across what we do and our colleagues in the east of Scotland work in the same way where we will presume if there's if we think somebody is obviously under 18 then we take them if we think there's a doubt we take them and we work with them when we do that assessment we have a fantastic relationship with border force in the south east of scotland they cover in prayer port recite we have a memorandum of understanding with them where they come across anybody they think maybe a vulnerable young person they are in touch with us immediately and we will go out meet them and look after that young person and get involved they are incredibly good at picking up for example young Albanian women appearing on false passports and anybody they assume is under 18 in any way they will immediately hand over to us I think people sometimes lump the home office into one as though it's one entity I think it's a very huge complex organisation and certainly with the border agency locally in the south east of Scotland we have a very good relationship with them and the final thing was about section 25 I mean for a long long long time anybody under 18 turning up in a company we've seen in section 25 we've continued to support many of them for a good number of years post 18 and I'm aware of most colleagues locally doing that occasionally we have had I mean I think this is more and not recently but in the past you know I can remember the first young person who ever came off a container in fife and in the middle of the night and the five out of ours team being called and them saying well if he's 16 year old they're an adult and nothing to do with us what happened in that case was border force quickly phoned Edinburgh who phoned fife back and said no this is yours and we then helped them do the age assessment and work together on that and the bottom line is they learned and that's a few years ago I think sometimes what's happens is these kind of stories become apocryphal and they remain as though they're here and now I think people have learned a great deal in the last few years and we've moved on and I do often hear stories being cast up where actually there has been a very positive outcome we've solved that people have learned and we have moved on. I think there's been a bit of confusion on section 23 and section 25 and we are not sure whether that was council-wide or local office information so that's where we are attempting to interrogate that to find out whether it is maybe if it's a council policy it's a blanket policy or if it's maybe you know inexperienced staff or different experienced staff in local offices that are taking decisions that are maybe not the correct ones under under the act in that sense. I'm going to move on to Mary because we're moving on with time and get in some more questions. Mary. Thank you convener and good morning everyone. I suppose my question initially is directed at Andrew and it follows on from evidence that we heard last week from the Scottish Refugee Council. The Scottish Refugee Council submitted freedom of information requests to all the local authorities and 30 local authorities have responded to of not. Now they're specifically asked for three pieces of information, a copy of the policy or procedure for no recourse to public funds, a copy of the policy or procedure for conducting human rights assessments and statistics on the number of applications made and decisions reached. Now of the 30 local authorities that responded, none had a dedicated policy or procedure for no recourse to public funds. Four mentioned no recourse to public funds. Only one local authority mentioned the COSLA strategic migration partnership. None had operational human rights assessment tools, although one did state embedded human rights assessments. Ten said they received applications from individuals with no recourse to public funds. The statistics that they provided were incomplete and it was difficult to draw any conclusions. Now I'd be interested to hear your comments and thoughts on those responses. I suppose, first of all, to be honest, we were a bit disappointed at the Root Scottish Refugee Council went down around that, because we work closely with them on a daily basis and we really felt that it would have been better to come and discuss with us, then we could have worked together with them to help identify gaps if they do exist. The other thing with the freedom of information request is that it's a bit of a blunt tool in that it goes into a central pot of requests that councils have to deal with and it perhaps doesn't give you the nuanced feedback that you would have got if they'd gone down the route of contacting us. That's the first point that I'd make. As I mentioned earlier, we do have a no recourse to public funds network in Scotland. I'm sorry again to talk about resources, but another challenge that we've had around this is that there is one officer who runs that network for our small team and she's been working solely on issues around unaccompanied asylum-seeking children over the last couple of years, given the issues that have emerged around that. Those are the issues that we have. I think that colleagues around the table have talked about the work that they are doing collaboratively with ourselves, but also with individuals between local authorities to try and untangle the complexities. We're trying to support that. We're not saying that we have a perfect network and that every local authority is completely up to speed. I think that there is work that still needs to be done around that, but I think that there's a lot of good practice across Scotland that's going on. When 30 local authorities say that they don't have a dedicated policy or procedure on no recourse to public funds, would you say that it's accurate or not? Or have they asked the wrong person the wrong question? I think that that's the case. I think that a lot of councils will carry out assessments all the time, if colleagues around the table have said that if they classify themselves as a no recourse to public funds officer or whatever, might not be the case. I think that there is a lot more than 30 local authorities that have a dedicated resource to focus on no recourse to public funds issues. I don't think that it is a balanced reflection of the picture across Scotland. Quite often we hear in evidence sessions that at the top level we hear one particular answer and on the ground we hear a different answer, and I'm really keen to find out where the truth in all this lies, because for 30 local authorities to say that they have no dedicated policy or procedure, quite frankly, shocks me. It surprises me because I know, as I said, that we have a no recourse to public funds network that has welfare rights officers that have people like Sean coming along to meetings, so that doesn't add up to me either. Is it a breakdown in communication somewhere? Is it a mismatch in information? There will be a difference between having a policy and having a professional practice that follows good practice guidelines. My suspicion is that every single local authority in Scotland will have good practice approaches through welfare rights and assessments. They may not have a dedicated written policy, but that does not mean to say that individuals are not getting good professional assistance and support. I think that what we are at the point of is a professionalisation of that, and I suspect that one of the things that you'll tease out is where are those gaps, and where can improvements be made? My authority has written human rights guidance, and we work with NHS Tayside on a common platform for a leaf around diversity in human rights, policy and embracing equality. However, we have identified in our submission that we think that there is a need to get together and tighten up on the procedures of no recourse to public funds so that there is a consistent platform across Scotland. As we get more experience in that, and as other parts of Scotland are exposed to experience that they previously have not had, it is a good call to say, let's pause for a reflection. Are we doing a good job? We probably are doing a good job. Can we do a better job? Absolutely. Do we want to do that? Yes. Evidence to this committee and then work with COSLA and work with partners is probably the right way to go. It is the pace at which that is done. I am picking up a sense that we should pick that pace up, and certainly one of the things that we will take back from this and with you, Andrew, is to pick that pace up, and that is a piece of action that we should action without saying that we need to close that gap quickly. We should do that now. As your view, the work is being done without someone being assigned as a particular position, automatically councils just do this work? Yes. When someone comes through and requires assistance, as we have talked about before, we will treat that person as an individual. We will provide a bespoke set of diagnostics, and we will work through those within the guidance that we have. Where there isn't specific guidance, we will work out where the best fit is to what we know, and we will then go, well, we've got a gap in that. What do we need to do to make that better? At that point, one of the things that we talked about at the top of the meeting was the experience and the willingness now to pick up the phone to colleagues who we previously would not have necessarily worked with. That network is significantly greater, so we would go in touch with people in Edinburgh. Many authorities through causeless work have been in contact with Glasgow and both Lanarkshires to ask, well, you've got more experience in this, can you help us? The local government family has come together in a way that I think has been very impressive, but that's not to say that we don't recognise that there are remain gaps in that, and we would not be adverse to identifying those gaps in any self-assessment and then looking to close those. Just before you come in, Sean, one of the other comments that the refugee council made last week was that the guidance that is available to local authorities needs to be quite urgently updated. While that update is being done, local authorities' causality need to work with third sector organisations and all the partnerships that work together in this, is that something that you would agree with? I mean, we do have a written NRPF policy. I know this for certain because I wrote it or collaborated on it. I first wrote it about 10 years ago and I've updated it several times. I see many FOI requests every day. They come across my desk and I'm constantly, I'm pretty certain I saw that one and I don't reply, but I give them to the person who does reply and I'm pretty certain that I attach the guidance, so I'm surprised that this hasn't come out. I'm also aware that I've shared it at length with colleagues in Dundee. They actually came across, we operate a system where we actually have a panel who review all our NRPF cases and they come over and they watch that system. They sent me drafts of the guidance that they were writing, their own policy in Dundee. Similarly, I did that with colleagues in West Lodian and I saw drafts of their policies that were going through that. They never shared their final document with me and they are different because you're talking about different departments and different ways that councils respond, but it would therefore surprise me that a number of local authorities didn't have those. I can also say that in terms of the cosla guidance, if you look at the front pages or the inside pages of that, my name's on that because I helped Sarah when she was doing some of her research. It ran to over 100 pages. That's such a complex area. If you go on to the UK Government website and what constitutes public funds, there are 60 pages of guidance. I keep saying to people, you can have all the guidance in the world. This is so complex that you need to refer people to solicitors and that's what we do. One final point on that. I've been frequently asked to speak at conferences, Shaq Tee, who have twice asked me to speak at their national conferences on the impact of domestic abuse and NRPF together when people are destitute. I've twice shared a platform with Pregnant Patel from Southall Black Sisters. Anne shared our guidance and our policies and procedures with Southall Black Sisters, and we've been commended in being told that what they're seeing in Scotland and the way we're doing things is an exemplar. It concerns me a little. We work hand in glove with Shaq Tee. We work hand in glove with lots of other third sector organisations in the city. When we're getting commended from somebody like Southall Black Sisters who are not known for their love of local authorities down south, I have to say, it concerns me that some third sector organisations here are not recognising the good work that we are doing. We can always get better. There's no doubt about that. One of the concerns that we've observed is that we've heard of all of those great policies. We've visited Shaq Tee and we've been to the destitution housing support scheme in Glasgow, and we've been to refugee camps and we've been to Red Cross. We've met many people going through all the different avenues of the Home Office system and all the different impacts that's had on them. They've all said that the support that they've had has been excellent, all of them, to a person. However, we have still seen evidence of those great policies and procedures not being implemented at the front line. I suspect that that's where our concern lies is that, yes, you guys will know this, you have the best written policies and the best procedures in place, but if they've not been exercised to that quality output at the front line, then it's the person who walks into that area team that morning and says, I'm destitute, or I've made a fresh claim, or I've had to leave my partner because of domestic violence, or I have a sick child and I have no recourse to public funds, it's that interface that really concerns us and we're still here from the families affected that, in some cases, that's not working. How do we fix that? Alexis? I think that your points are very well made about procedures, but also I want to keep views, I'll have, as if you develop a procedure like what we did in Dundee or I know recourse to public funds, you then have to think about how you implement that in a way that enables the workforce across health and social care, across housing, across welfare rights, across all the different areas, so that they understand what that actually means in practice. I think that's always one of the key things that's easy, in some ways, is that you're going through and develop a procedure and a policy and a practice, but you really have to make sure that you've got robust learning and workforce development so that people then can translate that into practice. So within Dundee, we went through deliberately a process of working to take a cross-sector approach to developing a recourse to public funds procedure across Dundee City Council, health and social care partnership, and third sector. From that, where we are now is developing a learning and workforce development programme so that that could be robustly implemented, so that no matter where a person presents, they should get the same fair and consistent approach. That'll be the next part of this, as part of the process of implementation. I think for me, one of the key things that approaches we've tried to take to this is a continuous improvement approach, so that what we do is we learn as we've went along, so that ultimately the outcome is that people who are affected by this receive a good service, that they have a positive experience to feel supported, and that we are them giving consistent, lawful and fair advice and support. To me, that's the outcome that we want to achieve and to get to. For me, part of that is very much robustly working with the third sector, working with colleagues and learning as we go along, and learning from people and learning from each individual circumstances and whatnot. I think that one of your points, very well-made, is that you could develop a process and a procedure, but then you have to follow that through implementation. One of the things that we've done to go into a company with a procedure is to develop a leaflet so that in two pages it gives an overview of what is no recourse to public funds, what are the principles that we've worked with in Dundee and how to access help. In some cases, what we've heard is that people who, in Rachel's evidence and in your evidence this morning, some people walk into that social work area team, they'll speak to whoever's on duty that day, they'll get a bad experience, and we've heard people saying that I was just going to go and walk down and jump off the bridge. The difference between how they can be supported at that very early stage could be a lifesaver, and that's what concerns us greatly. Annette, I don't know if you were indicating that you wanted to come in there. In terms of the work that we do, I'm the head of service for a housing and a homeless service, not for a social work service, but we work hand in glove with our colleagues from social work, from welfare rights and from health and social care. There is this collaboration around trying to get the best outcome for those who are in need, and there's probably similarities around clients who are homeless with clients who are destitute for other reasons, and how do you monitor that you're making a difference there? I think maybe there could be some look at how we do that, if there's a need to demonstrate that we are getting good outcomes for people. There's a very robust system of monitoring outcomes for homeless people. The work that we do is limited compared to the big cities' presentations in terms of individuals and households who have no recourse to public funds, but it is that joint work to try to make the best outcome. I think that guidance might need to be refreshed, but it is. We will work closely with our colleagues to make sure that we're supporting them where we can, but we will also take on our real advice and make sure that the individual gets access to advocacy services as well, which is really important. It's really just to layer on what others have said, that we are working together to try to get the best outcomes in terms of how you monitor and manage this process, then there might be lessons that can be learnt from how we support other individuals who are vulnerable. Thank you, Barry. Do you want to come back in briefly? Very briefly, because I suppose I'm making a concern about guidance. Guidance needs to be something that's live, that's embedded into people's daily work, because we hear quite often from panels that come to committees and not just in this inquiry. The organisations have shelf loads of dusty guidance books that are only taken out when they're updated and then they're put back in the shelf to gather dust again. We need to get to a place, and I'm not quite sure how we get there, but we need to get to a place when it's something as important as this, that the guidance is a live document and it's every single day people are aware of that. If it's updated and it needs to be updated on a weekly basis, that's what happens and it's embedded into people's working lives. I just don't know how we get there. Rachael, I would suspect that guidance in the health service when it comes to life or death situations is maybe a live working document. We can maybe learn from you on this. I think that in some ways our guidance is more straightforward, because we treat and help people whatever stage they are in the process, whether they've been refused or whether they've got an on-going claim. For health services, it's just very clear that we work with that, but obviously we are then responding to and picking up the effects of lots of what we've talked about. The other thing that I was going to add is that the new Scots process, there are real opportunities there for us to be trying to share training and best practice and support across different parts of Scotland, particularly if new local authorities do end up taking dispersed asylum seekers. We need to think about how we can make the most of those forums and be really up for sharing good practice, trying to help all health and social care partnerships to be thinking about their trauma-informed practice with this population when we know such a huge proportion of them have experienced trauma. Is it perhaps the case then that we overcomplicate guidance and we should have some kind of method of, we have almost a front page with six bullet points, the person presents, this is what's wrong, this is what we need to do, and the one who should do the initial supporting and assessing part is then that the rest of the guidance would kick in and do the rest of the work. Alan? That's largely what we would do. In any case, we would try and make it as simple as possible so that the diagnostic becomes kind of almost a flowchart and equals into a kind of, then a more, more kind of a fuller process. An example of that would, would councils be able to provide an example of that and then visualise it? Does that answer your very quick question? Willie? Before I ask my question, I wonder if I could be back to something that Sean said. He said that he lost a person and they were subsequently charged. Could you tell us what offence were they charged with and is there a whole set of offences being created around asylum seekers and what they may or may not be able to do? I was specifically referring to a young person whose traffickers found him and he ended up being found in a cannabis farm, so basically in a flat that's been taken over and cannabis was being grown in it. Commonly a young person is found tending plants, doesn't speak English, they are arrested, the police in the past and again I think the police certainly in Scotland have changed how they handle these but at that point it was asked had he been trafficked and now most young people if you ask them that are going to say no because the last thing they're going to do is name and put up people who may harm them or their families. So he says no, so therefore he's then charged as being responsible for being for growing drugs. Willie was being held in remand in custody, we then found out where he was and then were able to intervene in that process and eventually had him returned to us as a child in care. In years gone by we did pick up children in Scottish prisons in exactly the same position and in fact I could remember speaking to the chair at a human trafficking cross-party group a few years back about exactly these sorts of scenarios that's moved on I think now the police are more likely to hand young people over to us in these circumstances rather than charge them and hold them accountable when they've been trafficked and basically being held as slaves and being abused to tending plants. It's not your guidance Lord Advocate's instruction now that there's a presumption against criminality if it's somebody that's trafficked. Is that only Scotland? Well it is the same in England but I mean I think the difference you have in England is so many different police forces and certainly in this particular case but again this is now a couple of years ago I would hope things have moved on that was where we found him. So young people are often or people who are trafficked are often found in the context of some sort of criminality and I think whether they are adults or children that's another reality for them and that we often work very very hard to help them through that position and make sure they get legal representation. Okay thanks. We heard last week from a number of agencies that the UK Immigration Act is directly causing and exacerbating destitution amongst asylum seekers and we heard a number of examples of it. We heard that people are forced to have to return to Croydon to re-enter the asylum process and that itself made them vulnerable to all sorts of interventions, abuse, exploitation and so on and so forth and we heard from you Andrew in your opening remarks what your views were on this matter. So could we test this by presenting some evidence to us on the ground? Is this particular act causing or exacerbating destitution in your view and could you give us some evidence on the ground from your own experience to support that? It's probably less about the immigration act for us at the moment obviously that there are changes that are going to come in that have yet to be implemented around the immigration act that we think will exacerbate things but the asylum system in general and that's what I was trying to get across at the outset, the nature of it means that the UK Government sees people as subject to removal if they are determined not to have a legitimate asylum claim. At that point the UK Government does not see them as people that should be supported and obviously there are protections through the Children's Act and so on and so forth that allow people to be supported if they're done families or they're vulnerable or whatever but the whole tenet of the asylum system is such that it creates destitution and that's a matter of course so it's not the immigration act in 2016 that created that it's immigration policy over many years and I think for us the challenge that I was trying to get across earlier on is that in the past when Glasgow City Council ran the asylum contract for the home office they were funded to provide asylum services for people and they used they reinvested the funding that they got into wraparound services that provided the asylum support that exists in Glasgow at the moment. Scottish Refugee Council were funded by the home office as well all the funding has been taken away from local authorities. Scottish Refugee Council has lost a huge amount of its funding as well in terms of providing advocacy or whatever so we have a system that needs investment to make it work and needs funding for local authorities for third sector partners to support those going through the process and those who are at the end of the process whether they have been given a positive or a negative decision. Does he have any idea how much that funding is worth, the funding that is being withdrawn by the home office? The challenge is that there is commercial sensitivities around it but our understanding is... Is that because the housing providers are getting that right? Yeah, so Serco are now delivering the contract but our understanding is that Serco received roughly half per person per night what Glasgow received when they ran the contract. Serco are on record talking about how they make a loss in the contract so if supposedly efficient private sector multinational companies can't run the contract then I'm not sure who can and the problem that we had when the new Compass contracts were introduced was a reverse option e-bidding process was introduced which frankly was shocking which local authorities, which Scottish Government, were in all an agreement was not an appropriate way to procure services for the most vulnerable people in society. That drove the price of the contract down to such a level that it's not sustainable so that's my view in the resources. Figure, we don't know what... There were figures in the home affairs select committee when Serco and others submitted evidence that gave us a sense of it but we don't have an actual figure in terms of that. It's maybe something that we could look into though. I was going to come to that issue but you've kind of led that line already. I just wanted to probe this issue that we did here in evidence that even as a policy history this is creating destitution and exacerbating it. I want to find out if there are examples that you can share with the committee to illustrate that problem. I happily give you a number of examples. The rules have now changed and I talked about people having to prove their destitute so we've had people who have, usually through housing colleagues to turn up destitute, they're immediately referred to social work. We do an assessment, we support them, we engage a lawyer for them and that lawyer will then work with them and we've had cases where people have then made a claim for asylum under article 3 that's been accepted as a valid claim, not accepted as an outcome. At that point, when we've tried to help them get support, they have to go through a very complicated system. For example, we had one family recently where when they ran an experience report, the experience reports showed that they had not, when they were filling in their form, they had not made mention of a credit card so they were refused support on the basis that they had not declared as a credit card which was seen as a source of income. To me, a credit card, I have to say, is a source of debt, not a source of income. We had to continue supporting that family who remained destitute and going through that process. At the end of the day, it turned out that it was a mistake and they actually never had the card in the first place, but it takes months to help somebody through that process to even get support. Now, if we were not coming in behind that and supporting somebody through that, they would be destitute, they would be on the streets, they would be homeless. You have to remember local authorities that we are doing this and we get no financial support from anybody to do this. We support families through these sort of situations on a regular basis so it gets harder and harder to claim that you talked about sending people to Croydon. Once upon a time, it was very simple for us to send people to Glasgow. They then decided, no, they couldn't present there. We've had families with one woman with three children. She's given an appointment in Croydon that she can't possibly get to, so what we did then is put her on an overnight sleeper so that she could arrive there in time to get a train to Croydon to be able to present, only for Croydon to say, well, we'll accept your asylum claim, but we don't believe your destitute because how could you possibly have got the sleeper here and kept her straight back out the door? We then had to go and transport her back from London back to Edinburgh. Well, again, we go back to the home office and try to improve that this person is destitute. On a weekly basis, we have more and more and more examples of how people are being treated. We are picking up the pieces as best we can, but, as you will appreciate, at times of shrinking budgets, that's incredibly difficult for local authorities to do, and what we would see as a set of rules being made that are designed to make it more and more and more difficult for people, and yes, in effect, drive them into destitution or leave local authorities responsible for coping and managing because we will not have people on the streets in those circumstances, but it is very difficult for us to do. I wonder if I could just come back in and say something that we are trying to positively do at the moment to inform this. The current asylum contracts come to an end in 2019, and the home office currently has an asylum transformation project that is on-going that we are trying to inform both as COSLA but also through the new Scots strategy as well. And another positive for us as well as that there has been some recent reorganisation in the home office that has brought asylum and refugee support together previously, they were separated, and there's a new directorship, so the person that runs the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation scheme is now in charge of asylum services as well, and to us that's a positive because we can say, listen, this is what works. Local authorities have stepped up to the plate around the Syrian relocation scheme, they're funded over a period of time to do so, and positive outcomes ensue, as my colleagues have said. What we have with the asylum system is one that we believe is fundamentally broken. Not dispersal per se, I think generally there's agreement that dispersal is a good thing that actually sets the UK aside from many other countries that basically warehouse people when they're seeking asylum. In our country, in Scotland, we believe integration begins at day one and we work towards that through the new Scots strategy, so I think informing that asylum transformation project is really important for us at the moment, and hopefully, maybe I'm naive, but hopefully there will be a better system that will come out post 2019. Rachael Yng Nghymru. In your comments, in your work, you feel you did mention that some of these people that are suffering trauma, often the experience is causing exacerbation of the situation that they find themselves in. Could you describe a bit more about any particular examples that you could share with the committee to illustrate that for us? I think that destitution often comes at the end of a very long process where people have been trying to establish their safety and their security in this country and in the context of a lot of fear and terror that they might be returned to experience the traumas that they had tried to escape. So it comes at the end of a very long process and I think people often are just ground down, I think, that they feel that they have no hope left and it's very difficult to help people to maintain their mood and their hopefulness because they feel that there is no alternatives for them. People have described feeling on the outside of society that there's no sense that they're now part of the community here. We definitely have people that have been vulnerable to further incidents of violence and exploitation and then that complicates and leads to further responses to cumulative trauma. So it becomes very difficult to work in this situation. We're obviously often having to go into a kind of safety mode where we're trying to manage suicide risk and trying to help people be as empowered as possible to not be in risky situations in relation to being taken advantage of by others. So it does become very difficult to work and obviously some of what we were hoping to be doing with people in terms of psychological therapy, we have to change and be sort of firefighting and doing advocacy and practical problem-solving and safety planning. Thank you for that other time for another one. Thanks Christina, it was to touch on the issue that you raised yourself. It involved the submission from Andrew in Coasal that was about the housing element. Suddenly there's a submission in your paper that talks about sometimes substandard accommodation that's offered to asylum seekers at Paragav 14, but you connected that with the whole resource issue and you've explained that quite rightly. Why would there be any sense of different standards of accommodation being offered to asylum seekers than to anybody else? I think that a lot of the discussion in the press and the media that everybody has seen has been about substandard accommodation. We perhaps don't have evidence of that directly ourselves, that's more what we are seeing out there, people talk about it. The circle are required to work to a contract for the home office as opposed to Scottish housing standards, so their contractual obligations are tied into the home office contract. We run a property procurement protocol that tries to allow statutory services in Glasgow to inform the procurement of houses in the city. Before the circle procure any houses in the city, it has to share it with us and then we pass that out to statutory services to Glasgow City Council, to the police, to NHS to comment on whether or not they are able to use that housing. What we can't do because we are not involved directly in the contract and aren't funded to do so, we can't comment on the individual housing standards and the quality of them. What we can say or what the police could say, for instance, is that we do not think that accommodation is appropriate because, and they don't tell why, they just say that it's inappropriate, but there may be a sex offender living in that close or an SDL representative or whatever, and we go back to circle and we say that you are not permitted to use that property. That's our only tool, I suppose, because Glasgow City Council is no longer directly involved in the contract, so we are just trying our best to inform practice. I think that what we would want is local authorities to be more involved in the delivery of asylum contracts and to be funded to be able to do so. Ultimately makes that decision then about allocating a particular house that may not quite be able to scrap. Who makes that decision, ultimately, if it's not the local authority? Ultimately, the circle presents the properties to us for this overarching view. It then goes, if we say that we are not aware of any issues in that neighbourhood, there are no community cohesion issues in that particular area, we have no reason to say that you can't utilise that. Ultimately, it's the home office that approves whether or not properties can be used, and then the home office, there are various standards that the accommodation provider has to meet, and the home office inspects properties, I think that they inspect roughly a quarter of properties every month. There are details around that, around the statement of requirements, so there is inspection that goes on, but I suppose that we are sitting out with that whole process just looking in and doing our best in the circumstances. I feel that I can add something here in terms of housing. Just to be clear, under the Syrian resettlement scheme, particularly within South Lanarkshire and most other areas, the council has control of that. It has full control of where our refugees are being placed. We have provided both council housing and housing association housing for all the refugees who we have settled in South Lanarkshire over 20 families, and that, again, is mirrored across most local authorities. Someone is using the private sector, but that's what our practice has been. It allows us to make sure that the housing is of a standard, of a quality, of the security of tenure, and it's in an appropriate area where there's the appropriate linkages to support networks, etc. We have real concerns in South Lanarkshire about the dispersal expansion in that we wouldn't have that control. That is core to some of the concerns that have been raised about other local authorities about being involved in the dispersal programme and the control that we would have over placements, volumes as well as where they are. I'm well aware that there's the protocol that COSLA has, but that wouldn't necessarily give a local authority the ability to have that control. We've already had contact from Circle around the potential accommodation in South Lanarkshire because of the close proximity to Glasgow. However, they were talking about rural areas, rural areas where we ourselves wouldn't necessarily be placed in refugees, and they were also talking about areas where we have high deprivation and, again, not necessarily the best networks. There are real concerns that, for this to work in terms of expansion, it has to echo and mirror some of the successes that the Syrian refugee scheme has, where councils can control and provide great services and great areas that get great outcomes, and that is not what the current dispersal scheme offers. Thanks, Sean. Alan, what did you do come in? Can I just say that of all the families that we are supporting, and as I say anytime, that can be 40 or 50 families. Public housing is public funds, so one of the things we definitely cannot do is use our own housing. We're bar from doing so. We thought that we'd go around at one point and I was signing the leases to a number of council houses and basically then using them to house people who are non-recursive public funds, but we were told that that was de facto still breaking the law. We are in a position that we cannot house people ourselves, and basically all the families that we are supporting, we are actually, we're out now, we've got great networks where our, some of our colleagues in the RSLs and housing associations and things will help us out there, but there are huge complexities in that. The reality is that we are often forced to go into a market where it's very difficult to control, so that's one area that makes that very, very difficult for us. We're currently at the beginning of the circle scheme and I would echo your concerns. The feeling I have, and it is just a feeling, is that this is around throughputing numbers and it's not about quality. What I see is where are your, where are your private sector houses available and what's the rent? It seems to me that there is a risk that you could draw the perception that they're looking at the cheapest option, not the best outcome, and I fear that, back to your earlier question, whenever our ability to provide support reaches the end of the law, essentially the only option we've got is to say, we can't help you anymore, and that, I think, means destitution and I think the widening of the dispersal scheme widens that risk and that limited choice that local government has to make and we will then be forced to make those destitution decisions because that's what the law says we have to do and as Sean has said, we're trying to do anything else, we'll be accused of breaking the law and a statutory body, so that's not something we can do. Thank you very much for that, that's very, very helpful. Andrew, do you want to come back in? Yeah, just very briefly, just to echo what Alan said, I think he's hit the nail on the head, I think the asylum system at the moment is a numbers game and Cercor forced down that route because they don't have the resources to provide anything else. What we have with the Syrian scheme is a scheme that is about integrating people in Scotland's communities, the refugee, the asylum system does not facilitate that at the moment. And you can see the clear difference, the clear difference in the outcome for families and people affected. Alex, you've got a quick supplementary. Yes, thank you, convener. I wanted to go back to something that I was reminded of in the evidence that we've just heard. In respect of children again, going back to this issue of when the Scottish system has in the past failed unaccompanied children, I'm reminded of the two 15-year-old boys who were arrested in Glasgow, I think maybe two and a half years ago, pretending a cannabis farm. They ended up in Pullmont because they didn't admit that they were victims of trafficking and section 25 wasn't applied to them. We fought for a while to get them out of Pullmont and that led to the Lord Advocate changing the guidance to an instruction about presumption of innocence. They were released from Pullmont but again section 25 wasn't applied and they were re-trafficked. They absconded and were re-trafficked. This was very recently. I just want to re-interrogate the idea that the Scottish system is fine now. I'm sure that you were quite clear that some of this and you might be absolutely right that some of these stories are apocryphal or have been brought up again over time to evidence a problem in the system. I just wanted to say from the panelist's perspective, aren't we now in a situation where that could not happen again? It wouldn't happen in—well, if it happened in my authority, it would be my head that would roll for letting it happen. I have to say that it should not happen. Young people who are under 18, who are in a company, should be looked after by the local authority under section 25. The Government have made that very clear. I think that there was confusion in the past. I think that you're absolutely right. I would hope that that position has moved and that if it did happen again that people would be held accountable. Arran, I'm aware of a similar situation in South Lanarkshire a few years ago. It might be pre-date. Maybe Annette remembers this. It was a similar situation with two young men in a cannabis farm in the top end of Hamilton. They ended up in Pullman as well. I think that that situation was retrieved very quickly. If my memory serves me right, I don't know if yours serves better than mine. Yes, I think that both those young people were looked after, so we brought them back in. I think that, as Sean has said, it's really a moving feast. As local authorities get more experience, more knowledge and more understanding, they're in a better position to respond to that. I think that the confusion, maybe a couple of years ago, was around if we had a young person who was 17, who had always been resident in South Lanarkshire and who presented his destitute, would we give them looked after and accommodated status? We wouldn't. So what's different in terms of this cohort of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children? I think that's really important about making that distinction, that there are additional needs and responsibilities that we have, and making sure that our staff and our partners are well aware in terms of that distinction. I think that's where the confusion comes from. I think that the work that we've been doing with Cossil and with partners over the last couple of years has helped to gain a better understanding around what our responsibilities are. Just quickly on that, some of the other evidence that we heard was about whether human rights assessments would take place alongside a social work assessment, an initial social work assessment. In some cases we've heard no that human rights assessment would be done after that, therefore elements of a good case could be lost. What's supposed to process now across local authorities? My background is in social work, and I suspect that it would be much easier to do an initial social work assessment and to piggyback almost a human rights assessment on that, because quite a lot is the same information. However, we couldn't get a clear answer from some of the organisations that we have spoken with, whether that was again a council-wide issue or just maybe a local office not understanding that you could do the two assessments at the same time. Have you got any experience that you could tell, Sean? I mean, I think there's a lot of mystification out there about what is a human rights assessment. I mean, basically I ask the question, do you think that this person's rights such as the right family of life will be affected? I have to say, you know what, if in any doubt about that, then what we say to social workers is that the answer is if you're not sure, then you're not sure and you say we don't know and you send somebody to a lawyer, in the meantime we will support them. For us to get into that, you know, as social workers to get into the complexities about, well, what does in law mean that this is somebody whose human rights have been affected or not? I mean, to be honest, a lot of cases I've seen have left me. You know, I've often been surprised at things that I've seen that do and don't. So that's, you know, to get into, to train social workers to get into an in-depth assessment of somebody's human rights would be not somewhere we would want to go. I mean, it's a very simple part about if you look at, for example, the NRPF network in London produced for us a format. It's a social work report that asks all the same questions that we would ask, and at the very end says, do you think this person's human rights would be affected by refusing to support them under articles 3 and 8 and it spells out what they are? So there's not a lot of detail in that, and that's something that I think is intrinsic to what social workers are doing. Often they don't actually realise that is what they are doing. And what they're saying is, well, you know, if we don't support this person's going to be in the street, if we don't support the children and parents are going to be separated, that means that their human rights are being affected and that's why they're supporting. There's a whole area around people feeling as if they'd be separated from their children, which is very disturbing. Can I just add to that? I mean, I think some of us in Scotland and certainly through COSLA have some concerns almost that human rights assessments are almost used in other parts of the UK in a negative way. I'm not sure that I would want local authority staff to be going down that path, that they become the kind of decision makers in terms of human rights. I think that that does belong in the hand of lawyers. Is that to say in partnership then? Yes, exactly. Aaron, did you want to come back in yet? I think that it's important to recognise that the social work assessment is really based on GoFec and the framework of GoFec, and to be honest with you, where we assess wellbeing on a day-to-day basis, and that forms some of those decisions and complexities that we try to navigate our way through the system around. So I think that it's important to say that we have a very sound base on which we operate, and I would agree in terms of that human rights complexities. We are always very keen in supporting families to access legal representation to give them the definitive around that. That's insane partnership again. Absolutely. Mary, because it's your birthday, you wanted to come in and supplement you, and Rachel, I'll let you come in. She's being indulged because it is... I've got a sore throat, so thank you so much. As a committee, one of the things that we are determined to do is to come up with a clear report that comes up with good recommendations that will actually make a difference. Now, if we set aside the issue of resourcing and the message about resourcing has come across loud and clear from all of you this morning, is there one thing that we could recommend that would practically make a difference to the clients that you deal with on a day-to-day basis? I would encourage you to look at what would be that, no recourse to public funds, and particularly the dispersal scheme just now. My experience has been that the Syrian dispersal scheme has been really well handled. There will, of course, be lessons to learn, but the other one leaves me worried and called that the good practice that we've built up over time will not be even counted or looked at in regard to this scheme, which I think is about a numbers-and-a-cost scheme, and that is not where we want to be. Okay, thank you. Rachel, I think that you were keen. I think that I was just echoing what lots of people feel working in this field, that it doesn't always feel clear that people's human rights are respected as they go through the asylum process, and I suppose that it feels really important that we have a very confident understanding in Scotland about what kind of standards we're setting and the interface between the Home Office immigration system and the devolved responsibilities, what standards we're setting there for best practice around human rights to be upheld. I suppose that over the last—I've been working in this field over the last 10 years, and I would agree that things have got worse. I think that's partly immigration policy. I think it's partly funding in relation to asylum and support services. It's partly in Glasgow, the fact that, for example, previously, when somebody got their refugee status, they might well then be able to stay on in their accommodation because they were in a Glasgow City Council flat, whereas now that's another point of—where people are often destitute. And again, there's no real reason for that. It's not an emergency situation. It should be a planned situation between the Home Office and local authorities here. So there's lots of points, I think, where we could do better. For me, I think that there is probably, if I was to say one, I think that there is some destitution that could be prevented if, right from the beginning, there was a stronger advocacy and support service for people to know their rights and for their rights to be upheld all the way through the process. Yeah, and that's something that was set in the pick-up. Is that an agreement, yeah, like this, yeah? I think that within the from Dundee health and social care partnership, what we suggested is that there's consideration to updating of guidance, but that goes across not only COSLA, but NHS Scotland, UK Government and with the Home Office and it takes a kind of integrated approach because it's health and social care, and we've also got to think about what are the health needs of individuals in the psychological trauma and what not, as well as the accommodation support. So we suggested that perhaps to enable a consistent approach and a consistent set of principles and standards on how we're working across Scotland. And recognising this is a very complex landscape in which we're working, that that overarching guidance might be a way of helping to get that consistency across Scotland, but also with that, be embedded within that as a clear learning and workforce development programme, because I very much take your point earlier on that it's about how do we enable practitioners across a range of different settings to be able to understand what is the nature of this, you know, how do we support people in a way that is positive, that enables a focus on outcomes and that gets away from a focus on the negativity that is around us now, you know. So for me it's not just about developing the guidance, it's also about rolling out a consistent approach learning workforce development, and it's across the range of professionals that will support people who are exposed to destitution or asylum. I just say that NRPF is a scourge. Treats people as setting-class citizens and pushes them into situations that affects them, affects every single part of their life, you know, where they can stay, what they can do. And so many cases where we come across, we get involved in child protection investigations, and it just so complicates and makes people's lives an absolute misery. You know, that's unfortunately, there's not a lot around this table we can do about it, but that is the burning issue here. We're about to hear, because we'll continue with this inquiry next week, some evidence on when home office support stops and people being locked out at accommodation and losing their possessions and the impact that has, and that leads to destitution. We're also hearing from some health and care professionals around about the instance of TB and other transmitted infections that if people are stressed, if they're unwell, if they're not getting the right support, if they're not getting the right nutrition, and they're out in the cold, and the impact that then has on, maybe underlining in long-term health conditions as well. We're about to hear some of that evidence going forward as well, but can I thank you all this morning for your evidence that's been extremely helpful in the work that we're doing? As I always say, we can't make recommendations to our Government or the UK Government on areas like this, unless we're well informed and you've helped us in that process this morning, we really appreciate it. For your written evidence, for your oral evidence, and again, my usual plea, if you go away and you think, I should have said that, please let us know, but we want to hear it, because it means that we can include it in the work that we're doing, and we thank you for the work that you're doing and wish you well when continuing that work. Thank you so much. Suspend committee, to go on to private session and allow for a comfort break.