 Felly, rydw i chi ddod i. Thank you for turning up at an early hour, I presume, and managing getting regardless of the traffic. It's a cold one this morning but it's bright and it's set now, and we're welcome for you all here at this committee, just welcoming me all to the first meeting of 2017 of the social security committee. Can I just remind everyone to turn off their mobile phones as it does interfere with the sound system. The second agenda item is to take items 3 and 4, in private, so the committee agreed. Our next item is group 2, which is a main agenda item today. An evident session on employability programmes, including sanctions. We've got two panels of witnesses today and 45 minutes each for questions and answers. I welcome, as I said previously, our first panel today. Today, Rachel Stewart, Senior Public Affairs Officer of the Scottish Association for Mental Health, Dr Sally Witcher, Chief Executive Officer of Inclusion Scotland and Tommy McDade, Assistant Director of Employment, Training and Skills, Barnardo Scotland on behalf of the Young Persons Consortium. If I could just open up a general question to the panel, then it will be open to other members to come in and ask questions. Can I please start by asking each of you what your view is of the Scottish Government's proposals for schemes for those with disabilities? Although Mr McDade, you can feel free to respond more generally, if you wish, on the long-term unemployed as well. I will open it up to whoever wants to go first. Thank you very much. I think that our starting point is that if you are going to deliver successful schemes for disabled people and with disabled people, you first need to really understand what it is that prevents disabled people from getting into employment. The basis of our case is that the barriers are very often understood as something to do with the person, the individual, the individual's lack of skills, their lack of confidence, their health condition and needs to manage it or learn how to self-manage it. Now, whilst that may be so for some people, it is also the case for a lot of disabled people, none of that applies, because those aren't the reasons. Now, it is the case, though, that down the years, employability support services for disabled people have been based on the limited, I think we feel, understanding that it's something to do with the person that is the problem. If that's what person-centred means or whole-person means, I think we have a bit of a problem with that. The kinds of things that can stop disabled people getting into employment can also be things like employer attitudes, the fact that employers don't have the information or the support to know how, for example, to advertise roles in a way that's accessible, how to frame job descriptions in a way that don't inadvertently discriminate, that they don't know where to go for information. So there's a whole load of barriers that employers can both create, but also barriers that employers both experience when it comes to employing disabled people. Unless you give equal weight to that part of the jigsaw, you're going to miss quite a lot of the point. I think alongside that, people have often talked about employment as the route to inclusion, and I think we would like to suggest that actually you basically need to deal with inclusion before you get into employment, because it is about things like the environment in which you live in, you know, about inaccessible buildings, transport, all kinds of attitudes. It's about other surfaces. If you don't have the PA support you need through social care to get up at the morning at the right time, then you're not going to be able to get into work at the right time. So it's really important to look at how these services come together, not necessarily integrated, but certainly coordinated and aligned. So in a way, what I think we are starting point is, you need to kind of take a wider lens to this. You need to go beyond the focus solely on the person to look at the variety of different players, the variety of different barriers that will never be resolved by the person themselves beyond their power to do anything about. An individual disabled person cannot change employer attitudes, cannot bring about accessible transport, and that is, I think, in a nutshell, the reasons why sanctioning disabled people becomes so unjust because they've been penalised for barriers that are not of their making and over which they have no power whatsoever to do anything about. Much. Yeah, just a bit more wider description of this young person's consortium. It's a description that we seem to have taken on. It's essentially a partnership between Action for Children, Barnardos and Princess Trust across Scotland. Original drivers around being able to deliver quite a large-scale European programme across local authorities in Scotland focused on helping, obviously, young people. That's what the three charities are about. Around about 25 to 30 per cent of the young people who we support actually declare some kind of disability. So we welcome that focus on a disability-specific programme, but we would also point out that that specific disability programme doesn't, in itself, provide the whole answer to helping young people and adults who present with a disability of some sorts. So there's a wide range of, when you say someone describes himself as having a disability, that means quite a wide range of things. I would echo Sally's points around support. Any programme that we try and support young people whether it's young people with disabilities or young people with particular disadvantaged needs care system or ex-offenders convictions, we essentially make sure that there's the right level of support in there for that young person, and not just for a young person but for the employer as well. So there may be employer attitudes towards recruiting young people with disabilities or young people from particular vulnerable backgrounds, but we find that the vast majority of employers don't think that it's a bad idea to take a young person on, regardless of the issues and capabilities that they come with, but they really appreciate the level of support that comes with that and a huge level of support. That isn't just about supporting the young person and gaining employment, it's about beyond gaining the initial phase of employment, it's about helping them to stay in employment, grow in employment, develop their skills. We see that as being one of the key tools in order to improve the economic vibrant of the Scottish economy. We would very much support a specific disabled focus, but we would also point out that a wider look at what's actually out there supporting disabled young people and other young people from what we would termlyndr represented groups. We've seen that data coming out from the DIW reports around modern apprenticeship participation. We're encouraged to see what looks like an increase in participation from those underrepresented groups, but I think there's more to do. I would very much echo my colleagues' remarks on the structural discrimination that people with disabilities experience and the need to ensure that all aspects of society are mindful rather than just having quite a blinkered view towards the person who must get this job and a dissolve on this person to do that. We very much welcome the language that the Scottish Government has been using since it started consulting on its fairer Scotland employability programmes and wider into social security benefits. The use of the word fairness and dignity in respect is something that we hope will be realised by the new programmes and to do so would mean a much more holistic approach to an individual when they are starting that programme in terms of their assessment taking into account all of the barriers that they're facing, whether that's about their disability or the other reason why they're not in employment or multiple reasons. We know that people with mental health problems represent an enormous cohort of people who will be supported in the new programmes and they tend to be amongst the highest rates of people who have disabilities who are out of work and as such we were really pleased to see some language from the Scottish Government about the 2018 programmes about the use of IPS for those individuals who have fluctuating conditions and severe and enduring mental health problems because of the nature of that kind of support. That requires quite a lot of coordination with the NHS. It requires a lot of integration with talking to and working with employers both before and after the individual has been placed. So we're looking forward to seeing some more detail whenever the tender information comes out in March, which the minister alluded to in his letter that was received last night. We are really welcoming of the proposals for a more specialist disability service within the third most intensive tier. I think that the devil is going to be in the detail. Thank you very much. I think that a number of questions will probably raise that as well. Alison Johnstone, do you want to come in on that particular one? Yes. Thank you, convener. I thank you for your comments about the need for that specialist support. The current programmes run for relatively short periods of time and there's very much a focus on getting the person into work and ensuring that they stay for as long as they get sustainment payments, but often we're aware that a lot of people are not in work after three and six months, so that difference between getting folk into a job and into a long-lasting meaningful career, to what extent do you think employability should be focused on that longer career path? That's a crucial element, to be honest. Whenever we start to support someone through our individual placement and support programmes, we have a rapid, holistic assessment of the individual about what their skills are, what their desires are for work, where they want to be. It's not just a case of trying to find a job for that person that will do them and get them off the books. It's trying to find a career, something that they will be able to sustain. Sixty per cent of the time that our employability staff spends is actually with employers finding the right employer to fit the person, which will then ensure that that individual gets support within the workplace, but also that there's opportunities for progression as well, and that can be sustained. In terms of the timescales of support, IPS is not a fixed-term amount of time, and we've seen, through previous DWP programmes such as Work Choice, that it was a six-month contract that people with disabilities were being supported. I think that there can be an element of challenge for those kinds of programmes, because it means that the people who are closest to the workplace can be the most desirable for providers. We have welcomed the language about not necessarily focusing on those closest but helping those who are hardest to reach to. With that comes challenges, which we wrote about in our written evidence in terms of the volumes, the funding and the process with which people will go through. I think that the main challenge is making people feel invested in it. It's that they have the power to steer towards their goal of finding a job, because I think that everybody wants to find a job. We spoke to some people who are getting our employment services last week, and they told us that, had they been going through the job centre plus routes rather than having their meetings in a health setting with an occupational therapist present, they would have been just taking every single job that was going for them, and then two weeks later their mental health would have deteriorated to the point where they would have been unemployed again. However, because they were sitting with an employability adviser and the occupational therapist and the three-way conversation around the table meant that people were able to say, well, do you think that's right for you? Can you manage this with your medication? She's actually ended up getting a job recently, so that has been a much more successful approach because it's been working in partnership and the person at the centre of it has been co-producing their support. Perhaps the other witnesses can touch on that further. It seems that you're suggesting that there is hope that the culture of creaming off those who are closest to work and perhaps parking those who face more barriers may be tackled. There is hope. As I said in my opening statement, we're still awaiting a lot of the information, which will be crucial to how the services will be delivered from 2018. We are hopeful that there will be more information about how people can be supported and what the ratios will be within the programme in terms of how many people will be going through the core programme, advanced and intensive, because that will determine the amount of money that's spent, and that will determine the case loads. I don't know what forecasting has been done to work out how many people will be supported in each because that will have an impact on how services are provided. I think that there's always a risk of funding driving behaviour when it comes to supporting people into work. The term work first, and I know that one of the programmes has been called Work First Scotland. It's conflicting evidence, but some evidence suggests that you can take a pure work first approach, get person into a job, everything else that's going on in their life just falls into place and everything's fine. That may be the case for some people, but young people that we work with tend to have lots going on in their life. Those external factors can get in the way of them even starting to think about starting work and taking a job in the world of work, even thinking about it. A lot of them haven't even experienced the world of work. We tend to describe an approach that's more around a capability approach. What are those issues that are going on in your life? Housing, money issues, substance misuse, for example? Can we support that? Can we give you the capability to support that? We're not here to solve that for you, but we can help you to cope with it yourself. If we do that, you're more likely to move into work and succeed in the workplace. One of the issues that we've got in our labour market is that we're seeing a positive in terms of a high employment rate, but within that we've got about 27 per cent part-time employment. Within that, we've got significant numbers of people who would like to work more hours and maybe don't have the opportunity. I think that there is something in our system on an opportunity that we've got to recognise. It's not just about getting into any job and keeping that job, but is there anything that we should be doing in supporting you while you're in that job to grow, develop your skills and gain more skills? As a result of that, increase your hours? As a result of that, develop a really worthwhile career? I think that that's in all our interests to try and encourage as many people as possible to do that, rather than simply just saying, we've found you a job and a way you go. I think that we've got an opportunity to do that, having devolved powers and creating our own bespoke programme. It's about linking what we're trying to develop with the devolved employability programmes, with what we already have around skills, modern apprenticeships and potential in work support and workforce development opportunities. I agree with a lot that my colleagues have already said, so I won't repeat that. It is indeed the case that for some disabled people it can take a very long time for a person to get anywhere even close to the labour market, for a whole range of reasons. That may be health-related, it may be barrier-related, it may be all kinds of, as I've said, multiple barriers that get in the way. In a way, I suppose, it's important to look not just at the starting point and straight to being an employment. There needs to be a focus here, I feel, on the trajectory, the journey that people make and all the interim phases that people may go through as they move or inch their way towards paid employment. Bear in mind that some people will never get there, but they may, nonetheless, be able to do some useful work, unpaid volunteering, work-related activities that enable them to feel valued and productive and do make a contribution to the economy and to society, even though it is not branded and it isn't actual paid work in the way that the employability schemes generally require to be the intended outcome. That's the first point. I think the second point, though, is that, as I think my colleague here, Tommy, referred to, so much of what happens is driven by funding regimes. If your funding regime is predicated on payments being made not at the time through which people are being supported to get to work so much as when they actually get it and they stay in it, I think that's going to mitigate and really drive behaviours around creaming off. It will just set in place dynamics, which means that the focus will be about getting people into work as fast as possible. It also means, for example, that smaller, perhaps specialist third sector organisations simply don't have the funds to maintain that level of intensive and long-term support, even though they may indeed be the right organisations and the best-placed organisations to provide it. I think it also mitigates against innovation, because people don't have the space and time to do that. That's, I think, a key part of the picture. Let's have a focus on these intermediate, interim, smaller-scale steps. Bear in mind that some people make two steps forward, one step back, or even three steps back. It's not a straightforward, linear progression always. Finally, just to draw attention to other things that may get in the way, such as the permitted work rules, which we'll say, basically, that if you're working more than, I think, it's around two days, your benefits start to be effective. There's an awful lot to think about in terms of how employability support services and the kinds of goals that we have and the recognition of gradual progress interface with other areas of policy that, in fact, prevent that gradual trajectory, that gradual journey, and require that, beyond a certain point, suddenly people's benefits are affected and they cannot just move slowly towards that destination. The solution may be to pay for progression towards work, whether it's specific intermediate goals such as securing a job interview or completing a course. It may be that, yes, but again, it comes back to exactly what you're really wanting to do here. Employment is obviously a very important way in which people contribute to a Scottish society, as in paid employment, but it's not the only way. The extent to which the sorts of work-related activities around volunteering, for example, around maybe work trials around all sorts of intermediate things can be important ways in which people can contribute in all sorts of ways to the economy and society. It's partly driven by your overall vision of what you're trying to do here, but it's also driven by a recognition of the reality of the situation for many disabled people. The amount of resource that might indeed be required to make the adjustments that they would need to get into work and how realistic that is, bearing in mind that sometimes these adjustments don't cost a lot at all, if anything, but sometimes they will require expensive equipment and all the rest of it, and also the fact that this needs to be a gradual process for some, very gradual, it can take a long time, and the right organisations need to be able to support that process and they need to have the funding to enable them to do it. Thank you, convener. Just on the point that you've been talking about, what I'm wanting to ask, having discussed with individuals who have dealt with the system and some of their concerns about how their own cases have been treated, how important is it that, if someone has special needs or mental health issues, that that is identified from the very beginning of their contact with the system? And, second, what practical steps or what key practical steps would the panel members think could be put into place to ensure that that identification takes place right from the outset, if it is important? Our experience is hugely beneficial to the support that we put in place and agree with a young person if we are fully aware of the issues that are getting in the way of obtaining employment. That kind of disclosure of those issues is something that we work on from the outset, but in our experience quite often, perhaps understandably, it's not disclosed at the initial engagement stage purely because relationships are not developed as well as they could be, and at times it's maybe three or four weeks into working and supporting that young person that actually discloses issues around mental health or disability or other issues that may be getting in the way of them progressing on to employment. While on an ideal world it's great to get that information, and quite often if we are focusing on work first here or the workable programme, the conduit for referrals is jobcentre plus, and again we rely on the information that jobcentre plus may hold for that person and that information being shared in full to be able to then understand exactly what that person needs. Again, that's an important part of what we need to get right with this, is working in partnership with jobcentre plus to ensure that all information is shared, but again I would probably suggest that there's evidence that young people or adults don't disclose that right away to jobcentre plus either, so they can't put the right level of support in. Quite often that's because they feel that they'll go to the back of the queue in terms of support, and we're not getting that support right away, and that's why a lot of young people in our experience are reluctant to disclose right away any issues that they do have, but it does come out once relationships are developed pretty quickly and it ends up coming out. In terms of key practical steps, I think that, as I mentioned, it is about strengthening that relationship with jobcentre plus. I think that one of the biggest risks that we've got with the devolved employability powers is that the welfare, vast majority of the welfare powers are remaining reserved, and evidence has shown throughout the world that closely aligned and joined up welfare system to employability system is the most effective, and if you've got that potential disjointed system there, then that can get in the way, and I think that information sharing is potentially one example of that. Yes, please. I suppose that it does, as Tommy said, depend on the route through which people arrive at an employability support service. If that's been the case where some of our service users who've been supported through homelessness or social care come to us, then there is an automatic awareness that they have a mental health problem, and it allows for a disclosure and a trust to be there because they have a relationship with the organisation. Our IPS services are very much integrated within a community mental health team, so anyone who is getting support and is asked, would you like to find a job, or be supported by occupational therapists, community psychiatric nurses, psychiatrists and social care staff who would be able to link up with the employability worker and be able to phone them up if they didn't attend an appointment, for example, to say they had an episode last night and they weren't well enough, and therefore, rather than have them go to the back of the queue or for their support to be withdrawn, that flexibility is in place and that awareness is in place, which allows for the relationship and the trust to be built up and continue over time to a much more successful end result, whether that is progression towards volunteering or a training course or something much softer than the job outcome. I think that training of staff is crucial to make sure that they can ask the right questions and know where to sign post people for help if they seem to have a mental health problem, whether that's someone who's working for a mental health organisation or outwith within the job centre. It's important that they have that in the back of their mind. We know that the voluntary nature of these programmes will hopefully be beneficial because the threat of sanctions should be removed and that is something that our service users tell us just looms over them and has a cumulative effect on how they can engage with the service. Both work choice and IPS neither of them have a threat of sanctions because those people are removed from it. Mr Button, in that particular one, you've mentioned IPS on a number of occasions and having read your submission, you would say that IPS is the way forward, that's the best programme. It's the most evidence-based way to support people with mental health problems into work and it does so because it's voluntary, because it has the link with health and occupational therapy and other ways that take away some of the barriers for those people who are getting support. The approach is very much a place-then-train, so people are rapidly supported into work, into competitive employment. Our staff will help people to meet with employers, they'll be supported for a period of time after they start the work and the employer will also have the confidence to take that person on because they will have the knowledge that Samhich or someone who provides IPS is going to be supporting them to put in reasonable adjustments but also to make sure that that person's mental health stays on an even keel. One aspect that I wanted to talk about in terms of the mental health training or others was the consideration of how their disability impacts them, whether they have to take medication or others, which can have an impact on their participation in a job-seeking process. That could mean having appointments in the afternoon rather than in the morning because sometimes the first thing in the morning, the medication can have an impact on the person. It's having a much broader view and trying to make those very small reasonable adjustments, which will lead to a greater success rate. I think that the more you know at the start of the process about the individual, the kinds of barriers they face and your much better place to then develop something that's appropriate and is going to be effective. However, in order to get to that point, you are having first to engage with the unbelievable stigma that is out there around disability and the fact that disabled people themselves very often will reject that label. Therefore, it is, as I think my colleague here said, of critical importance that the nature of the relationship between the person providing the service and the individual concerned is built on one of trust. It is also the case that you need to reposition or reframe it in a bit in a way so that it's not necessarily kind of coach client, but partners and its co-production. It's a different, more equal kind of relationship. It's also, bearing in mind the stigma and the fact that anything that's marked out as this is for disabled people is probably intrinsically likely to deter a lot of people who it's designed to cater for because they won't accept that label is that there are implications here for mainstream programmes. The more accessible and you deliver ways you deliver mainstream programmes, say like modern apprenticeships, the more you just make the way that everybody does things that are standard more accessible, the less there is a need for specialist intervention. So I think part of the strategy here is about looking at how in the standard way that you go about things and the employers go about it, you do it in a way that is as widely accessible as it can possibly be so it doesn't require a person to first self-identify as a disabled in order to access that support. I would say that yes it is about the impairment and getting to a place where people can explore the needs and so on, absolutely, but I think probably in some ways an even bigger problem is that there's more of a, where it's a visible impairment, there's more like to be an overriding focus as that is the thing that needs to be sorted and less attention paid to the fact that actually that may not be the thing that needs to be sorted at all, it might be the fact that the person can't find any childcare support. So you need to look beyond this but when you're talking about the whole person, the whole person has a lot of characteristics and a lot of roles and just again dealing with part of that picture isn't going to work. So I think those are probably the main points I'd want to make on that. It does come back to understanding that the individual themselves is going to be best placed to know what they need and what gets in the way of that and what's going to work and what isn't going to work to get around that barrier and therefore that says a lot I think about the nature of the relationship and potentially the time that is required to build that relationship if that is going to be effective. Thank you very much to Adam Tomkins. Thank you, convener. Clearly this is an incredibly complex area and you've touched on occupational therapy, you've touched on health, you've touched on education. I just wanted to build on the back of Alison Johnston's questions about the difference between job outcomes, sustainable or sustained job outcomes and high quality job outcomes. I wanted to drill down a bit more into trying to understand the relationship between employability and skills training because the devolution of employability support is new but the devolution of skills training is not. That's been with this Parliament since its establishment in 1999 and I think one of the bits of the picture that a number of us are struggling to understand is the relationship between employability support programmes and skills development Scotland. We debated these issues in the chamber in the autumn and we had a very helpful briefing from SCVO in preparation for that debate which said, for example, that 90 per cent of new jobs require digital skills and yet there are still more than 800,000 people in Scotland that don't or can't access the internet. So I wonder if you could help us a little bit in terms of understanding the specific relationships between employability support programmes and skills. On the skills side of the landscape years, the skills focus on the work that the SDS commission's obviously flagship programme being the modern apprenticeship programme but they also commission the employability fund which is aimed at 16 to 24 year olds principally. I think there's a you mentioned about confusion, I think there's an argument of there being a bit of a cluttered landscape when you look at a lot of programmes, a lot of funding, a lot of support that's out there and I know there is that desire to align a lot of this funding going forward post 2018. In terms of the skills focus we find Barnardo's delivers employability fund has a contract with Skills Development Scotland and we find our focus is very much on a combination of employability skills and development of skills for work. We combine our offer that recognises soft skills development but also access to specific certification that allows that young person to have that to move into the job. I think there's that kind of muddeeds at a landscape at the moment if that's probably the best way to describe it. The programmes that our own offer in the skills sector and to again come back to employability fund does offer a degree of flexibility for us to offer things that suit this individual that we work with but there's also a set kind of structure to them as well and similarly with employability programmes there's a set structure what would perhaps maybe an opportunity in an ideal world is that you have that alignment of funding that allows a more flexible and bespoke offer for individuals that combines enhanced employability skills but also the skills needed to take a specific job that they're looking to do. Easier, I mean I'm not saying easy to achieve but easier to achieve with the devolution of employability programmes than it was before. Yeah, absolutely, because we would in the past quite often adjusting what offer you make and how you do it depending on what comes down the line through the DWP provision. The work programme would be a prime example of shifting the landscape in Scotland quite significantly and where you had a situation with the work programme that if you're on the work programme you can't access any of the other funding that's coming through the Scottish Government funded programmes and I can understand the rationale for that but it doesn't help joining up a support and joining up the facilities that we have to help people move into work. I think we still have that issue potentially you know job centre plus seemed to be intention is to take on more of a job search support role particularly for six months not clear about how the youth obligation land in Scotland as well through job centre plus so there is still that shifting about within the landscape to make sure that there isn't any duplication of what we offer whereas you know the opportunity we have with the devolved employability programme is to align that a bit more but we don't have complete control if you want to put it that way of what's on offer because of still some reserve things setting in job centre plus. Do you want to come in that could I ask perhaps maybe keep the questions and the answers to be bit succinct because a couple of other members want to come in no no I'm not done but you're talking I'm talking to all of us. Yes I won't say much about the cluttered landscape other than the fact that there clearly is one and the fact that these things are now becoming devolved does provide scope for greater coordination and alignment it is a case that for many disabled people the accumulation of discrimination through education so on means that maybe they do have needs to kind of develop skills and such like and it may also be the case that where a person becomes disabled or requires an appointment within work that they there is it needs to be a particular focus there around perhaps rescaling or redesigning work so I think that there are there are particular implications for disabled people in different situations and the only thing I would might add is that the one thing that is not devolved that could so useful you've been devolved is the access to work scheme and had that come along with it that would have helped us hugely. Thank you. Richard you've found that one. Mr Tomkins did you want to come back in again? If that's the right opinion yes very briefly I mean I was struck by something that was said by the all party work and pensions committee in house of commons about this recently where they said one of the clearest conclusion they looked you know at welfare to what they called welfare to work programmes quite broadly it's all party committee and it was a unanimous report and it said that one of the clearest conclusions we draw from the evidence to our enquiries that employment support for long-term unemployed people with complex needs relies on effective integration with other locally run services including health housing education skills support for alcohol and drug addiction and so similar question to the last one that was about the relationship between employability and skills development Scotland are you as confident or optimistic going forward about the future relationship between devolved employability programmes and locally run services as you are about the possibility of aligning skills training with employability support because of devolution? Are you referring to non-employability services that are locally run or some? Well I mean it's I think it's a reference to the whole of the complexity of the picture I mean we're talking about healthcare we're talking about occupational therapy we're talking about drug and alcohol addiction services you know all of these things touch on employability but none of them are uniquely about employability. Absolutely and you know I think again there's evidence of to an extent that not being joined up with you know health with even transport childcare you know make sure sufficient availability of these services within local areas and I do think there is more work that can be done on joining that together particularly with the challenge in helping disabled people into employment but again the general point I would make is that taking employability support and isolation doesn't work with particularly vulnerable people because they will be known to health they will possibly be known to social work as well and joining that together is certainly a challenge of the thing we still have but again we do have that opportunity now with more devolved powers coming in. I think we're waiting for more details of how the 2018 programmes will run but on the face of it it seems that the pathway into that support will be still through job centre plus which is the only reserves element of the the actual programme from that point of view other than some of the benefits as well and what we had recommended in our response to the fair of Scotland consultation was that there should be pathways into employability support from the likes of the NHS whether that's from primary care if someone goes to their GP and says I'm struggling with my mental health I'm struggling with debt it's really upsetting me there should be a pathway from there into an employability support programme because that is what is leading to their their mental health problems or certainly contributing a vast amount to it and I think what would be very helpful going forward would be a much more strategic focus within some of the other agencies and organisations within the government about employability as much as employability should be mindful about people's housing about people's mental health about people's disabilities about people's education and skills needs those other organisations those other government departments need to be thinking about well how do we think about jobs and work and skills and progression is something that we can help achieve our own health outcomes with we're looking forward to seeing the mental health strategy when it's published shortly and we're really hoping that there will be a comprehensive view and a strategic outlook especially within the NHS about employability within that. Thank you very much. I think the question that Adam Tomkins has already raised from me so far is the most critical question and I just wondered if you're good with it in the sense that so what you're describing so far is the progress we've made in employability schemes that will be designed for more people and you've made a case for wraparound services is what you're doing is trying to take on the individual needs of the person and support them through that process. I'm not crystal clear other than that what is contained within an employability programme in relation to skills and I just want to develop that point before you come back. Given what you've said about employer attitudes, given what you've said about the stigma and everything else associated with that, if we have to get serious about higher employment rates for people with mental health conditions or disabilities, it has to be a much greater connection with the agency which has had the overall supervision for skills development in Scotland. That's why I think it is a critical question. I presume that Skills Development Scotland already has programmes that are designed through the modern apprenticeship scheme or I don't know that, as I'm assuming it. It seems to me that that is the bit that's missing. If we're going to tackle the question of how do we seriously get those who are furthest away from the labour market much closer, it has to be based on some serious support around skills that any one of us would need, regardless of whether we're in any of the groups that you represent or not, because I think it was Adam Thomas who also drew attention to that. 90 per cent of jobs require information technology skills, which probably a lot of the population are not even meeting. I just wonder what your response to that is, because if you agreed with that, then it seems to me that, I suppose, when this committee looks at its work programme, we're going to have to push a lot harder then for that bigger connection between employability services when they eventually get commissioned in Skills Development Scotland. Sorry, who wants to go first? Could you keep your... What do you describe as skills in the programmes that we deliver? Skills for us is software skills, confidence building, interview skills, online job search, that digital element as well, but the other side of skills, which is supported by Skills Development Scotland and the programmes that they procure, is about formally recognising the employability skills that they've developed. The certificate of work readiness is a prime example of that, which we deliver, but our employability certification is achieved through the programmes that we deliver as well, so a young person has got recognition. For a lot of them, that's the first time they've got any recognition at all of what they've achieved with us, and that's used to move on into employment. In terms of links to the devolved employability programmes, again, those soft skills are delivered, but it may well be something that we have to push to be a key feature of that, as well as that some form of certification and recognition needs to come along with that to then help the person to move on into employment. I think that there is perhaps something around skills, on-going skills development in the workplace, going back to the numbers of under-employed that we have in the country that want to gain more hours of work. What are we doing there in terms of developing people who are already in work, but to improve their skills and as a result increase their earnings potential? Sally, do you want to come in on that? Just briefly. Yes, certainly a lot of cases for connecting where there are currently no connections, and it includes things like how local authority employability services connect with national employability, and I think that's really unclear. A lot of scope for doing so much better joining up than we currently have. Yes, it's about skills. It's about ensuring that mainstream programmes around skills development are delivered in ways that are properly accessible, and again, I would wish to be assured that that was the case. It's about ensuring that you're actually reaching disabled people in the first place, because I think that if communication barriers are not there, your starting point is that disabled people don't know about any of this. They can't be reached. The way things are advertised are not clear and accessible, and the whole thing falls down. If you don't deal with all the barriers, it just takes one thing to fall down, and the whole thing just collapses at any stage of the process. It's about looking at skills, as we've said before, yes, really important, yes, we need a clear focus on that, yes, that needs to be joined up, but it also needs to have that wider view about the other services and support. That may be available at local level. Scope to kind of maybe align and integrate more at local level, health and social care integration, but it all needs to be done within a national framework of rights and clarity about what needs to be delivered and local flexibility in terms of how that's done. Thank you so much. Richard, do you want to come in and try to that one? I don't know that I would add much more to it, and many of the people were supporting her in poverty. They wouldn't necessarily have the digital computer skills, but they wouldn't also have a computer in their house, so there has to be some investment locally as well about access to the internet investment in libraries where people can access time on a computer too, so it's not just all about the individual, there needs to be investment across society to enable people to gain those skills as well. Thank you so much. Ruth Maguire, you want to come in on that one? Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I was struck by the written evidence from Sam H that mental health was the biggest cohort of people unable to find work due to ill health, yet they had the poorest outcomes through the DWP work programme. I think that it would be helpful for us to understand what factors caused those poor outcomes and what role sanctions play in that. Do you want to go first, Rachel? I'm happy to go first, yes, that's fine. We know that 50 per cent of people who qualify for employment and support allowance do so on grounds of mental and behavioural disorders, and we know historically that there has been a sally that has mentioned the stigma against people with disabilities. I think that some of the invisible disabilities that people have with mental health problems have been poorly understood by employers, and there's been a reluctance to take people on, see me, have done some excellent work to shine a light on the stigma and discrimination that, whether someone who is seeking work or in work in the workplace, they don't get the support that they need. They're often afraid to ask for help in case that picks them first in the line for redundancies. From an issue of stigma and discrimination, people with mental health problems have suffered in this way. In terms of the fluctuating nature of their condition, that can also make their route into work very challenging because they can be making some progress and then something can happen and they can end up hospitalised and that can remove them from the programme or they can end up taking three steps backwards, so that can have an impact too. I'm delighted that there will be this voluntary element to the new programmes because many of our service users have been sanctioned and the cumulative effect of the sanctions have been so punitive and destructive to the people that we support and to the thousands of other people in Scotland who have been sanctioned through the work programme since it began. We know that around 73 per cent of sanctions that have been issued for people who have been claiming ESA have been for people who have registered a disability and that means that they will lose a huge amount of money every week for a number of weeks depending on whether or not they've had a sanction before or if this is their first offence and that has the loss of the money, the impact and the stress and not being able to pay their bills or feed themselves or heat their houses. That has had such a poor effect on their mental health that it's not a way to get people into work and the national audit office's report before Christmas which showed the inconsistent approach of sanctions and the lack of evidence behind them was very welcome and I hope it will be explored further by the Public Audit Committee in Westminster. From the point of view of people with mental health problems have been disproportionately affected by sanctions and they're not well able to cope with it either. We also know that just because there is the stigma that many many people self-stigmatise with their mental health problems too they're not necessarily wanting to ask for help or say I've got this because they may not be believed but there's also stigma about the employability support that they may be getting through other agencies where people aren't trained, they might think that they're at it that they're just using it as an excuse and that's not helpful. We all have mental health, we can all go through ups and downs in our lives and we are I think getting better as a country in acknowledging this and it is something that all the parties are very committed to so we're hopeful that it will form a lot stronger and better and fairer approach within the new programmes going forward. Did you want to come in and we've extended this session by 10 minutes, obviously it pinches on the other sessions so we really need to finish this session in 10-25 but Sally if you want to. Very briefly I think it's fair to say that the process of going through an employability service programme certainly down south can be incredibly stressful and therefore having a process that is based on dignity and respect is not just only morally right, it's also entirely practical in terms of being much more conducive to achieving the goals that everybody wants to achieve which is getting people into work. The only other point I quickly draw attention to is that there is a difference between people who are ill and disabled through ill health and those people who are disabled but not unwell and it's important that the service kind of understands that distinction bearing in mind though that things like flexible employment practices and so on will decrease the impact of either of those things. Thank you so much for being so succinct Sally. Ruth Davidson, sorry I've emulated to another party there. Did you want to come back in something for just a couple of seconds or is that? No, I suppose that the only other thing that sort of jumped out at me in terms of the written evidence was from Inclusion Scotland in that disabled people on the work programme were three times as likely to be sanctioned as to find a job and it was quite shocking to be honest. I don't know if you want to comment further on that. I agree with you but I'm not sure there's much else to say. It is indicative of the nature of the process and how utterly counterproductive it has been and the fact now is that we have the chance to do something so much better that's really going to work for disabled people and for employers and get the most out of the resources that Scottish people can contribute to our society. Thank you very much for that Sally but very succinct as well. Can I thank the panel very much and a suspended meeting for one minute to change panel members. Thank you so much for coming along. Thank you. Good morning everyone. Please help yourself to a glass of water and thank you very much for coming along today. I just want to welcome our second panel of the day. As I said we'd run the next session on 10 minutes so you will get the extra 10 minutes to your session as well so it's not a problem. Can I just welcome Marion Davis, senior manager of one parent Scotland, family Scotland, excuse me, Rianan Sims, policy officer, assistance and advice Scotland, Pamela Smith, people, group chair, Scottish local authorities, economic development, long title, that particular one. Similar to the first panel can I just start by a general question for everyone to ask how your views are and how the Scottish Government should be translating its stated vision for assistance for the long term unemployed into practice. I'll open up to everyone who wishes to answer first. I'm happy to kick off. In addition to our submission I'd like just to pull out a couple of key points from the submission. The first one being that local government already makes a substantial contribution to the local employability landscape. A sum of 85 million per annum, 65 of that prioritised within councils on budget and process and a further 20 million from the European social fund. Those monies are primarily targeted at the harder-to-help groups and those that are furthest from the labour market. That doesn't take into account the additional resources available in social work, education, community justice, social care, et cetera, which adds and works with some of the individuals who are likely to be the key client group for the new devolved programmes. The councils, as employers and service providers, have a whole range of relationships with individuals who are likely to participate in employability programmes, including those that are devolved, as well as in receipt of benefit. We feel in terms of the current approach and the previous approach that the whole system approach to individuals has been overlooked, we feel that we haven't put sufficient focus on looking at the root cause and we tend to deal with the symptoms and the consequences rather than the root cause, why people have multiple barriers, et cetera. We feel moving forward and certainly there's a lot local good practice in integrated assessment, so if we are moving to a needs-based service rather than a service based on benefit type or entitlement, then an integrated assessment is essential. Who's carrying out that assessment is also an important point because what you would want is an integrated action plan arising now that would cover things like housing, money advice, debt, health, skills, a whole range of factors that affect people being able to obtain and sustain employment and progress in employment. Also, I think that there has to be a recognition when we talk about employment. We are looking at a good job and we support the Government's ambition for fair work and therefore we have to be clear when we are looking at job outcomes because poor jobs can affect people's health and wellbeing and we are having to look at how we can achieve good work and fair work for the target group. We were encouraged by the Government's consultation and we indeed participated in that consultation individually as local authorities and collectively through Slade, through COSLA and through Solace. However, we are disappointed that we feel that we have lost an opportunity for greater collaboration, greater alignment and greater integration at local level. We are disappointed that the Government has chosen 100 per cent open procurement, which mitigates against, in our view, innovative and collaborative approaches. It also mitigates against the scope and potential for co-investment approaches with local government, given that we are talking on the devolved programmes, a £20 million budget and we already have £85 million throughout the country from local government going into this agenda. We fully endorse and welcome and we support the voluntary nature of participation. We remain slightly concerned about the continuing compliance regime and we remain concerned about sanctions. We await the outcome of the youth obligation and what that will actually mean for the 18 to 21-year-olds. An example of a voluntary programme that has already been devolved is the Employability Fund, procured through Skills Development Scotland and open to DWP eligible benefit claimants. While that programme is totally voluntary, DWP can determine through the benefit system what benefit claimants can undertake and participate in. The freedom to fully design and deliver a programme may be affected by the compliance conditions, as we have seen in programmes that are already devolved and operating. Again, that is just a slight concern. You have heard earlier from colleagues around the payment model, the 30 per cent service fee proposed, 70 per cent job outcome fee. Again, we know that job outcomes for the target group have been particularly poor. Again, an expectation may be in the realms of 30 per cent. Therefore, there will be real issues for those who are trying to do the pre-work activity from the service fee of 30 per cent. We do not yet know how that group will be segmented and we do not yet know how much waiting in the fees will be from that 20 million when there are different groups in the track, different funding rates, etc. There are other things that I am happy to come on to when we start the discussion around skills and the opportunity for some transformation or change, but I am aware that we are short for time. As you can imagine, I could have gone for hours, catch it there and I am happy to come back on anything in the questions. Employability is a very important area for single parents. I suppose that it is just to outline around single parents to let you know that one-point families work with around 8,000 families in Scotland and 8,000 single parents. We are talking about, in a sense, mainly women—most single parents are women—with an average age of around 36. There is a myth around that single parents are all teenagers. In fact, single parents are women returners, in a sense. That is what we are talking about. We are very pleased to see that the work programme and the focus of the work programme has now been devolved to Scotland. I would say that the lone parents' experiences of the work programme were not that beneficial. I think that the work programme itself was very generic and there were not a lot of tailored programmes for single parents. We are very pleased that, in Scotland, we have an opportunity to come up with something that is more modelled on what the needs are of people looking for employability support. On the Scottish Government's proposals, in our paper, we mentioned that we were a bit disappointed to reiterate to the previous speaker about the funding model and about the payment by results, which is very small at the beginning and paid later on in the pathway. The programme is voluntary. It is important that the engagement part at the beginning is resourced. We think that it is very important that there is not conditionality. People are not going to be required to be involved in the programme. They need to want to be involved in the programme. We think that there are a lot of agencies out there on the grounds that work with single parents and disabled people who are very good at that. One parent of family Scotland over the years has worked on various employability programmes, some of which originated from DWP Employment Zone, New Deal for Loan Parents. We have been recently involved in working for families, which was a Scottish specific programme, and a programme called Making it Work, which is funded by the big lottery. All those programmes have in common is that they had a tailored approach to the needs of single parents, recognising that single parents have that unique role in terms of so-responsibility for the children and so-responsibility for the economic well-being of the family. All those programmes are connected in different services than they are holistic, and at the centre of it is the importance of childcare. To build on what previous speakers have said, it is very important that the new programmes are connected into other services and other programmes that are already running. In Glasgow, for example, there has been funded through an ESF programme to have employability programmes. Glasgow decided to have a loan parents-specific package, which is tailored to loan parents' needs, which we were pleased to be involved in. There are very positive parts of the new proposals, as we described in our papers. Some of the concerns that have been mentioned by previous speakers are ones that we would like to discuss in progress. Citizens advice is not an employability support provider, and it has never been in Scotland, but we are one of the biggest providers of benefits and employment advice. We advised on over 220,000 benefits issues last year, and that made up 40% of the advice provided. Employment advice is around 15% of the advice that we provide as well. We see people at both sides of the employability programmes. The main point that we would like to get across is that we welcome the approach that the Scottish Government has taken to voluntary engagement in the Scottish programmes and also welcome that the UK Government has confirmed that participation will be voluntary. We are also concerned about how that might interact with the reserved benefits and issues around universal credit. People are expected to be looking for work for 35 hours a week. We recognise that engagement in employment programmes will be treated as that requirement for seeking work, but we would like to make sure that people are not at risk of sanctions if they are engaging in an employment programme for a number of hours that week—15 hours or something—that the remainder of the 35 hours is not going to be at risk of sanctions during that time. We would also like to make the point that we recognise the value of having a mixed approach to provision involving SMEs and the third sector, as well as larger providers who have experience in providing these kind of employability services. The reason for this is that a lot of those charities and other third sector organisations know their client base and specialise in particular groups who have particular kinds of barriers to employment. From the clients that we see, the previous panel made this point and my colleagues have also made the point that it is important to recognise that we need more than just a narrow focus on skills and qualifications. A lot of the barriers that people face are around much broader issues and often the financial situation that they are in. We are a bureau increasingly seeing people presenting who are in acute financial hardship and who are needing referrals to food banks and other forms of crisis provision. It is this picture of people who are unable to even afford the basic necessities that they need—food, heating their homes, paying for their rent and council tax—of these priority payments. It is really important that the approach taken recognises that at that early stage of engagement, people need to have access to those other services in the local area that are going to help them to sort out some of the more basic issues that they need to help and advise on. Thank you, convener. I had a number of points on the evidence that was submitted by citizens by Scotland, of which you have covered a substantial amount in your opening statement, Rhianon, but I want to pick up again on the sanctions and conditionality points. In terms of making sure that there is an integrated approach, are there any particular examples that you could give of problems that you could foresee if there is not that collaborative data sharing, collaborative working, collaborative thought going on between the two systems? One thing that is on the horizon, and we do not really know how it is going to play out as yet, is in-work conditionality under universal credit, which is the idea that those who are in part-time work or low-paid work may be required by the job centre to seek additional employment or to try to increase their hours up to full-time employment. Problem with this is that firstly, it is a completely new approach that has not been tried anywhere else in the world. There is not a lot of evidence on how that is going to work, but it is a completely different client group. People who are in part-time work already, by definition, are not reluctant to look for work. It is likely that they are experiencing other kinds of barriers, which may be more to do with the employers as opposed to the individual or the availability of work in their local area, and things like that. I think that there are some potential concerns around that and how that is going to play out. It is important that, in designing the medium-term and long-term programmes, the Scottish Government is engaging with the UK Government around what that in-work conditionality is going to look like. It would be ideal, from a citizen's advice's point of view, to get a confirmation that people are not going to be sanctioned if they are engaging at all with any Scottish employability programme, because they need to focus their energy on building up those skills and receiving the support that is available as opposed to doing that and additional requirements that are put on them by the job centre. Is there a potential for a mixed messaging within that? I did not mean to interrupt, but I just wondered if anyone else wanted to answer that particular question before you followed it up. Mary, do you want to come in on that particular point? There are cases now where people who have been sanctioned are working part-time because they have not increased their hours when perhaps the job centres thought that they should have, but they have felt themselves that they have had reasons not to increase hours. There are other things around, apart from just the job itself, such as childcare in place, and there are other things that perhaps you are working part-time. A lot of single parents, apart from their children, are supporting other family members. I think that there are a lot of issues coming down the line around in work conditionality, and it is something very new, and it is bringing in a group of people that—in fact, job centre-plus staff themselves are affected by it—it is bringing in a group of people that maybe have not been brought into the conditionality regime up until now. I will reiterate that we have to be mindful that voluntary participation does not mitigate against sanctions and conditionality—they are not the same thing—and just to be mindful of that. Thank you. Ben, do you want to follow up on that? Just very briefly, thank you, convener. As we move to a different way of approaching the employability programmes with the conditionality being not mitigated and removed, I thought the point that you made in your statement and in the written evidence about how the concentration of resources at an early stage around the employability pipeline and ensuring that services are well integrated with our local, public, private and third sector support services, such as debt housing and benefits advice. I wonder if you could comment on how the tailoring of such services and the emphasis of such services in an environment in which you do not have conditionality might have a more beneficial impact in terms of moving people towards more positive outcomes and employment? Citizens Advice provides a holistic service in terms of the way that we provide advice. If someone comes with one issue around their benefits or debt, we are looking at their situation in the round and looking at housing and employment and how all of those things interact. I think that that is a good model to use for any provision of early engagement and early support at the first stages of the so-called employability pipeline. I think that it is that holistic approach and whoever is best placed in that local area to provide those specialist kinds of support around debt or financial inclusion or housing, especially if somebody's tenancy is at risk or whatever it is, it needs to be a holistic approach at that early stage. A lot of the services and advice that is being provided at the moment—I know this from casework in my constituency—is often mitigating and providing support to individuals who are under pressure because of the sanctions and the conditionality that is currently placed on them. I wondered in a different paradigm, a more supportive paradigm, with the change that is coming, whether those support services will then have extra capacity to do more positive and constructive work, rather than dealing with the negative pressure that there is in the system at the status quo? From previous employability support provided by the work programme, we have not seen that that has been particularly helpful at supporting people into work. We think that sanctions and conditionality are more likely to hinder people's efforts into employment. I have a case that I can provide that might demonstrate that. One of our west of Scotland citizens advice bureaus reported of a client who had received another jobseekers allowance sanction. The job centre adviser told him that he had been telephone enough times the previous week. The client says that he has a mobile phone and cannot afford to keep it topped up to call five or six times a week. He goes to the library every day to send emails to apply for jobs online, but the job centre adviser does not think that this is sufficient as he could come into the job centre even though this is a three mile walk away for the client. He has no food, gas or electricity. I think that case demonstrates how the sanctions regime really works to hinder people's efforts to find employment, as opposed to actually supporting them into those jobs. I know that you want to come in, but you can reply to that. I am sure that the questions will come into that. John Adams, do you want to come in on the same subject? Yes, just to follow up on exactly the type of case that you are talking about there is the fact that you said in your evidence here that that is advice Scotland and we are concerned about the structure, how the structure will sit alongside the current punitive regime, which remains reserved. The work programme provides the opportunity where they have to report absolutely everything that goes on that is regarded as not complying with the actual position, but what we heard earlier on is that it does not give the flexibility that is needed, whereas it could be because in a disabled person's case, transport issues, and someone being able, like the gentleman that you mentioned, or I am assuming that it was a male, the gentleman saying that he cannot phone because he does not have the money to literally do it. Surely, as you have said yourself, the work programme provider should be there to support people rather than monitor conditionality. As a whole programme, it is not getting us back to front and actually thinking maybe to coin a phrase that would be good to treat people with a bit of dignity and respect, because we seem to have a situation where the whole humanity, the whole kind of normal way about life is taken out of it and everyone is just suffering. We see it in our case slowed all the time. The fact that people wind up coming into our office is their last best hope to try and get something sorted. Surely, we should have a system that is better than that. It was directed at yourself, Rhianon, but, obviously, Mary and Pamela also have cases of that effect. Mary, do you want to come in on that particular one? I think that conditionality sets the context of the relationship between the person needing advice or support or doing an employability programme and the provider. If you are in a situation where you know that the person who is supposed to be supporting you also has the power to cut your benefit, it does not result in a more positive kind of relationship. We are really pleased that the conditionality and sanctioning part has been removed. I think that benefit is low enough as it is. I think that people who are on income support job seekers allowance, the fact that benefit is so low, actually is a barrier to moving into work and to taking part in employability, because when you do not have money, when you do not have holes in your shoes, when you are spending all your money on your kids and making sure that they have a decent standard of living, it is actually very difficult to move into work and then to be sanctioned and to lose even more than that and to end up visiting the food bank. It just does not match with looking for work and focusing on what you need to do to be able to do that or to even at the beginning of the pathway in relation to very basic things such as improving your confidence and meeting other people. That becomes difficult as well. That is all very important. At the beginning, as we have talked about before, this is a voluntary programme, so it is encouraging people to become involved and see the positive side of it. I think that that is much more likely than it would have been if there had been a sanctioning scheme. Pamela, do you want to comment on that particular point? Not really on that. Sanctioning is just an important point about the access to local services and support, and I think that that underlines the need for integration and alignment and the size of the contract package areas and the procurement. I would come back to mitigates against that added value at a local level because it will have providers covering perhaps seven local authority areas. I will not necessarily know all the local connections and support services. Thank you. Rihanna, do you want to come in on that final point? I just wanted to add a quick point, which is that I think that from the point of view of the individual, they will not necessarily know the difference between services provided that are the responsibility of the UK Government and services that are provided that are the responsibility of the Scottish Government. I think that we might see a situation of good cup, bad cup in terms of somebody being a bit confused about the different approaches that are being taken. I do not really know what the answer is to that, but it is definitely something that is worth consideration by the committee and by the Scottish Government in its development of the long-term approaches. Interesting point, thank you. George Brown. My colleague, Ruth Maguire, mentioned earlier about the fact that disabled people are three times more likely to be sanctioned than anyone else. Surely, it sits in the vice-scotland, they will be presenting themselves to yourself effectively on a lot of occasions. That is concerning, because it is absolutely shocking that disabled people are three times more likely to end up being sanctioned. It goes back to the flexibility to be able to get about and get things done. If you get any further opinions on that idea, I just find that incredible. I do not have any statistics to hand in terms of the number of the clients that we see who are sanctioned and also disabled. We carried out an analysis last year of the clients that presented at the Bureau who basically had some kind of gap in income, and the majority of those were to do with the benefit system, whether it was delays in payments or waiting for payments or benefit sanctions. We found that one in three of those had a disability and a similar proportion had a long-term health condition as well. It shows the kind of diastrates that people are in who have additional health conditions and other concerns. Mark Griffiths? Thanks, convener. There are a couple of questions around the evidence from local authorities. The first one was about the funding that local authorities provide for employability support. You said that £20 million of that came from the European social fund. Can I just ask if that is going to be impacted on, as a result of the EU referendum? Yes, it will be. We currently have an underwriting from the UK Government up to 2019. The programmes that are already legally agreed and committed will be funded beyond 2019. Who knows? It's part of all the discussions and negotiations. However, I would add that that is currently being matched funding by 60 per cent. It's a 40 per cent intervention rate. The money that I referred to is the money that's been allocated to local government. There is other employability and support money allocated to the third sector, and the Scottish Government delivers them directly to the ESF funding support. The Scottish Government is talking about a £20 million fund that it has created for the devolved powers. Losing that £20 million from the EU would seem to wipe that out entirely, as there has been any discussion with the Scottish Government as well as to what the plans are for beyond 2019 in the event that that funding drops off completely. We have been talking to the Scottish Government around the whole alignment and integration agenda, and they have an aspiration for that, because we think that we could get more value out of the system if it was decluttered, streamlined and worked more and more integrated in the lined fashion. We are keen to look at quality rather than quantity. I know that money is assigned against X number of places, but I think that the focus should be on the outcomes and the quality. There will certainly be a risk, because, year after year, there is less money in the system, and there is less money in employability overall this year than there was last year, because that £20 million has obviously been brought in from other resources. We touched on apprenticeships, apprenticeship levy, and there is money in other bits of the system to support job seekers and these clients. However, how aligned and integrated it is is the point that needs more investigation. My other question was about the evidence that you have given on the contract package areas. You have said that you feel that the four large contracts are not quite able to weigh as responsive and as localised as you feel that they should be. Are you able to expand on that? We have the minister coming to talk about that as well, perhaps setting out what you feel the ideal contract package award would be and what benefits that would bring. From a local government perspective, given that whether people agree that we should have 32 local authorities or not, maybe at the debate that we have in there is a respected tier of our local democracy and our governance, our starting point is always 32, albeit that we have a national framework. We would want a local delivery because we have community planning partnerships, we have the Community Empowerment Act, we have a lot of other structures, health boards, colleges that have certain geographies. In our pragmatic response to the Government's proposal, four is certainly too large. For example, in Fort Valley, Fife and Tayside, you have seven quite different local authorities as a contract package area. On the options that the Government was consulting on for 2018, they had between five and eight contract package areas. We would still say that that is too many because we do not feel that it is local enough to integrate and to get that added value. We recognise that they are working on economies of scale and viability, but we think that there is more of an opportunity cost than an efficiency gain to begin from going smaller than larger. We would still contend that even eight, which is where we looked at sensible geographies, is still too many. That is the higher end of what the Government was consulting on. Maureen Davies, we were talking about geography and Pamela. I wanted to read that as well. Thank you for reading that particular point. You mentioned in your submission about employability, support services and dividing into lots by geography. Do you want to comment on that particular? Yes. I will read out our submission. We touched on that about the challenge of being an organisation that is specialist when there are so many lots to bid for. For example, we were involved in Glasgow's ESF employability bidding process, and it was put out. The size of some of the lots were so huge that it would have to be a really big organisation that went for it. Basically, you sell your wares to various bigger organisations as to the benefits of us as a smaller organisation, often a specialist service. We touched on the link to that with the funding model because, with so much of it at the end of the process— That is when it is 30 per cent, before 70 per cent results. In the work programme, just to go back to that, we were involved in that at the beginning. We were in with a lead, but we never got cast as a side quite near the beginning. The funding model meant that we were under pressure. It was a profit-making organisation. If you want to protect your own organisation from deficits, you need to secure the model to cover your costs. What happened with that was that the specialist providers fell by the wayside. Therefore, a single parent who was involved in the work programme—two big providers—didn't really get a specialist service. They were dealt with as generic job seekers. That goes against the history of working with single parents on employability. There has been a range of specialist services shown to be more successful, but, unfortunately, Westminster DWP has gone down a very generic route. They are doing away with all their special staff and have generic work coaches, which we have lobbied quite hard against. That is why we hope that, in the Scottish model, there will be a recognition that certain groups—not just single parents but others—require that extra different approach. I picked up on that on your submission. It was not unsimilar to Pamela's group's submission. Alison George, you were coming at me. It was on that point about gender-sensitive employability services. That obviously has an impact on one parent family's huge majority of whom are women. In gender, I have said that current programmes that take generic approaches to employability are likely to replicate gendered patterns of skills acquisition and employment, entrenching occupational segregation and widening the gender pay gap. I presume that you would like us to take forward the message that we really need to tackle that, because it could have positive implications if we got that right. Pamela Smith pointed out concerns about the procurement process, which might mean that it is less likely that we can move towards that different model. As far as employability in single parents is concerned, gender is at the core. Because 92 per cent of single parents are women, the whole of sharing gender and gender monitoring of programmes is very important. Particularly for single parents, what we have felt and what they have told us is that it is very difficult to take part in generic programmes that do not take into account perhaps the experiences that women have had, that a lot of the single parents that we have worked with have been affected by domestic abuse or things that have happened to them in their life that completely lack confidence and self-esteem. We have always felt that it is very positive to have something where you bring women together and they can support each other. Some of that is missing a bit in terms of what we have read so far about the proposed programmes. Linking into that is the co-production part, which is on the other side of things in terms of devolved benefits and social security. There has been so much work being done in that area around participation about co-production, about having panels of participants commenting on the new benefits. It seems that that bit is not in there in terms of employability proposals and touching base with people who are going to be going through the programmes and asking them. It does not seem to be built in. It is quite a commercial approach. We were a bit disappointed with that. I think that a few other submissions that I did also feel that maybe it is replicating in some ways the model that we have already had. Having said that, we do not have the conditionality, which is fantastic, but it is perhaps not as innovative the option that is going down as we would have hoped for. Can I just ask a tiny bit of a question on that? A tiny bit of a question? We need to finish. I know that Adam Tompkins has wanted to come in. Are you sure? Just about the voluntary nature of the programmes, they will hear by word of mouth how effective they are and what an impact they have had. Do you think that the voluntary nature of the employability programmes themselves might mean that the quality and approach changes? All of the programmes that we have been involved in have been voluntary. We have had other organisations through working for families and working for families that have been evaluated by Napier Uney as incredibly successful and had really high success rates. The programme that we have been involved in is making it work. Voluntary has been incredibly high in working success rates. We recently have been involved in the March and Start programme, supporting single parents into working with March and Spencers, and that was voluntary. It has got a 60 per cent into work success rate. We have no worries around single parents. They want to access employability, they want to move into work and research shows that, so I think that it will be a vast improvement. People will enjoy it more. If something is something that you want to do and you do not have a cloud over your head that you are going to have your benefit cop because you are late for an appointment or you cannot attend a training programme because you do not have childcare, then it will be a much more positive experience. For about six seconds, please. I was just going to say that I think that it is no doubt going to improve quality of the programmes delivered, but I would say that even voluntary schemes are not necessarily without their problems. I would not like to be overly critical, but I heard a story about the Community Jobs Scotland programme that is delivered by SCVO and has fantastic results and helps a lot of people. One colleague of mine who works in a bureau had one of these Community Jobs Scotland placements. It was only for 25 hours a week, and it was on the national minimum wage. I do not know if it has changed now, it might be the living wage these days, but it meant that because she was under 25 as well, she was having to survive on a very small amount of money. She could not increase her hours, it was limited to that 25 hours a week. It was a step into employment, but it meant that she was really struggling to make the payments that she had to make to pay for her rent. It is worth remembering that, with whatever programmes that we have put in place and whatever options that we are offering to people, they are adequate to cover people's needs. Thank you very much. Sorry that it is so rushed and interesting because we have spent a lot more time, but unfortunately, because it is a Thursday morning, we have First Ministers, etc., and we have businesses to discuss in private afterwards as well. Thank you very much for your contributions. I am now going to private session and basically that's it.