 Felly, mae'r 15th meeting of the Welfare Reform Committee for 2014. We have apologies this morning from Linda Fabiani. Can everyone please make sure that they have their mobile phones and electronic devices on either silent or switched to airplane mode, please? That allows us to start with agenda item 1. The first item of business today is a decision on whether to take item 4, which is our consideration of the committee's work programme in private. That takes us to agenda item 2. The second item of business today is the committee's third evidence session on the Welfare Fund Scotland Bill. In previous weeks, we took evidence from both local authorities and third sector organisations on the bill. For this week, we are taking evidence from users of the Scottish Welfare Fund, as well as representatives of non-traditional banking and COSLA. We will round off our evidence taking on the bill next week with evidence from the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, the Office of the Social Fund Commissioner in Northern Ireland and the Minister for Housing and Welfare, Margaret Burgess. However, this morning, we have our first panel, and I would like to thank various organisations who have worked with us to enable us to have a panel here today. We are joined by Conor, by Laura, Charlene, Peter and Lana. We have invited you here today to share your experiences of the Scottish Welfare Fund, and the committee will ask you a range of questions. We are keen to hear about what you think worked well and anything that you think could have been improved. That could be about any aspect of the process, from the application to receiving the grant, to your interactions with the Scottish Welfare Fund staff. However, if at any point you feel uncomfortable or that you do not wish to answer, that is entirely okay. Simply signal to me and we can move on to the next question. I would like to kick things off with the first question. In general, you can indicate to me who wants to answer, but can you tell us how you were first made aware of the Scottish Welfare Fund and what was your initial impression of that fund? When I was in my house, rather than in my big sister at first, she moved out and I took over the house, and that is what I heard about the community care grant. You had already been working with an organisation that was aware of the Scottish Welfare Fund. You had not heard of the Scottish Welfare Fund yourself, but you were looking for some assistance in Barnardo's point of view towards the Scottish Welfare Fund. Is that something that you all recognise or did you find your way to the welfare fund yourself? I found it through the job centre, so they led me. It was a community care grant first, and then they said to me, apply for it, but I have had a bad experience with it. Okay, we will move on to that later when we talk about your experience. We have had a lot of evidence that, for example, job centres that previously administered the fund but has been transferred now to the Scottish Government and then on to local authorities to administer, but some witnesses that we have had previously have told us that they were not signposted, as it is called, by the job centre, so your experience is that it was. I have got my information through the job centre and plus one parent family Scotland who I am with at the moment. Laura, did you want to go? It was through a friend that I found out. I actually did not know anything about it, and it was a friend that had passed information on to me that it was there to help. I thought that they had just done away with it altogether, and they had done away with the community care grant. I thought that that was it, but my friend pointed me in the direction and that was how I came to you. Had you had experience of the community care grant before? Yes, I had experience of the community care grant when I first took on my house and then I knew that it had been done away with and I thought that that was it. The help was not needed any more, and then I pointed me in the direction. Someone else told you that it was still there? Connor? I actually heard about it through my brother. He had used it for a crisis grant prior to me, so I went to him and asked what it was all about. He explained it to me and I then used the crisis grant myself, because I had blood and care since age of eight, so I didn't really have much knowledge of that kind of thing. There was only one person who did not answer, Charlie. How did you find out about it? I found out about it through the job centre, through my personal adviser who told me, because obviously I was getting a lot of flack and stuff. At the same point, I thought that it was still the community care grant, and it was obviously being changed, but there was no information before that to say that it had actually been changed until I actually got my own flat, and then that's when I found out that it had been changed, so I think there was a lack of information before it. But the job centre staff volunteered the information? You didn't have to ask them about it? No, no, they gave me the information. I told them that I was moving into my own tenancy for the supported accommodation that I was living in, and they told me that you had to go through the welfare rights, and it was at John Street in Glasgow that you had to go to, if that's what you wanted. Okay, I'll open up to committee members to ask any other questions that can take us forward at the minute. Ken? Can I ask you that you've obviously experienced both systems. What was your experience of the old system and how is it compared to the newer systems better, like that you get the stuff, because I think the stuff was really helpful to me anyway, and I think the way people maybe treated the old system wasn't very good, so I think now that you get stuff, and the stuff that I've got was really good, and they were really helpful, and they came and they brought it to me, and they fitted it and stuff for me, so I found it very helpful. So you were asking for crisis support, you were asking for furniture and stuff? Yeah. So the old system would be administered by the DWP, but the new ones by the local authorities, and they just found them more supportive. That's good. Lanna, you didn't sound so encouraging. Well, I applied for the new one, the social welfare fund. At the moment, I applied for that one, but I got told off my social worker. She applied for the one in Glasgow, and it was a base of the crisis. I had to leave my house. For a crisis load, I suppose, that you mean to care? I had it as well, and I've got three kids, and I lost my purse. I phoned them up, and I had to wait 48 hours to get a reply, and that was on the Monday. I got a reply back on Thursday, and I got given £38 to last me from Thursday to Monday, and my child, my youngest son, was only six months old at the time, so the £38 had to cover, basically, nappies, electricity, gas and things like that, and I had to get even a good bus fare to actually go up to the place, and I was out without 48 hours, without even knowing if I was actually going to get anything from them, so I wasn't. So you phoned first, and there was a big delay until it actually happened? Yeah, 40 hours, they said to me that they were going to get back to me within the 48 hours. I had to actually phone up myself and chase it up to see what was actually going on, and then they finally told me that there was a payment waiting in John Street for me, and when I explained to them that I couldn't get up there, they said to me, well, you're going to have to, because your payment's sitting here, which was only £38. And I was like, well, that ain't going to last me for the Thursday to the Monday to get me everything that I need, but they weren't helpful again, they weren't helpful, so... Can I also check? They gave you cash, did they...? It was a... Yeah, it was a... Or was it? Cat, no, it was a... A cheque, then, and they took it to the post office. Right, okay, okay. Henry, else have a crisis grant? I applied for a crisis grant. Grant, about a year ago. I had applied because at the time I had turned 18, which meant supports from social working stuff had to end, and I had just lost my college placement, so I was having to sign on with the job centre. I'd applied for it because I was told by the job centre I was going to have to wait between six and eight weeks before I would get anything, and as I had said earlier, I had went and spoke to my brother who told me to apply for that. When I did, I didn't exactly have a great experience, I got £30, but when I was speaking to the person on the phone, it just felt as if they were kind of looking down on those at me and judging me quite a lot. I also felt as if I had to lie to them because at the time I lived in a supportive care placement, which I still do, but supportive care placement just means that you're responsible for yourself. You need to be independently, things like your finances and all other types of things, to a certain extent, because you're one step shy of being in your own house. I just felt as though I had told the person on the phone that I was in that placement that I wouldn't have got the crisis loan, because they might not have seen me as someone in a crisis. How quickly did they take to deal with the application? By the phone, by the way, or did you? I don't know by phone. I was the same as Lanna. I waited 40 hours before I got it. I had phoned them and they had said that we were going to go speak to the decision maker and see what the decision was going to be. I didn't get a phone call to them 40 hours later, and then I took up and came out to check and take it to my post office. You go cash now. That was two days earlier. Anyone else? On the community care applications, did you apply for that as well? Yes, I was. I'm sorry about you getting hungrier. At the moment, I've had to leave my house. I'm still in the house at the moment, but I'm trying to leave due to domestic violence. I'm trying to get out of the situation. I'm in a private accommodation that's fully furnished at the moment, and I've also managed to get myself an un-furnished house in a different area, which I had to leave. I've opened up for a community care grant. It was my social worker that actually opened up first. She applied for the Glasgow one and she got told over the phone that she's definitely entitled to all her white goods, everything that she needs, all the help. But because I moved to the West and Bartonshire department, she had to phone up them. So when she spoke to them on the phone, they said to her, right, that's fine, get her to phone. So I had to phone up to clarify all my information. They told me that I wasn't entitled to nothing. And that I'm not allowed any help with any white goods. I'm not allowed any help with the crisis. I'm not allowed any help with anything. So basically, my experience now is that I'm sitting in this house that I'm trying to get out of, but I can't afford to get everything that I need for my kids to move into this house. And they're not being helpful with me whatsoever. And the person that I spoke to over the phone was extremely cheeky. And he was asking me so much personal questions that I didn't really actually feel as though they needed to be asked because they knew the information from my social worker. So at the moment, I'm still sitting in this house. I'm trying to get help from one parent family in Scotland to see if I can get any help to get any white goods to get anything else. But according to the community care grants and according to West and Bartonshire, because I'm meeting myself homeless and because I've not made myself homeless with them and they've not rehoused me, I'm not entitled to anything. Whereas I'm entitled to something with a Glasgow one, but not the West and Bartonshire. Are they basically suggesting you stay with Glasgow? Well, they're just saying, basically, I've actually got my lease and I've got my keys and everything for this new house. I'm just waiting to get into it. But you see, the thing is, I need to leave this area because of domestic violence and they're not willing to help me anyway, shape or form. Right. And I don't know who else I can go to, apart from my one parent family in Scotland, that have been excellent. Can I speak up on one further point, which is, both Connor and Lana, you both talked about being judged or feeling that the conversation you had with in your application was cheeky or intrusive or whatever else. Does anybody else feel similarly in the way you've been dealt with? Stigmatised or anything like that. If you need to help with the job centre, like crisis loans or anything to do with furniture and stuff, young people are stigmatised all the time. And especially if you go for a crisis loan and stuff, people just see you as jables and all that kind of stuff, but they don't know the circumstances of why people need to get crisis loans or why people need to get furniture for their own flat. And I shared your feelings there, how you can get a welfare fund for your flat, because I was denied funding to get white goods and, obviously, carpets and stuff from my own tenancy. I had to save up for mums and mums when I got my job. I had to save up, so I was living with nothing at the time, so I totally see her. I see it as a negative thing of welfare rights, I see it as a positive. Kind of seems if you fit the right face, then you'll get what you want, but if you don't fit that face, then you don't get it. And I think that's the issue that some of us face with that, that we do get that stigma hoaded against us, and it shouldn't be like that. We should all be entitled to have furniture in our house, but we don't have that, and we can't get that. And I find that strange. The decision gave you an explanation which you understood, because you obviously feel as though they've judged you, but did they give you any explanations to how they had arrived at their decision so that you could assess whether you felt as though they judged you properly? Because I was starting a job in September, they told me that they couldn't help me. Once I started that job in September, I could be able to fund my own furniture, but bearing in mind it was a 16-hour contract, 16-hour week contract. So how am I meant to fund my bills, my rent, my furniture? It's impossible for somebody to do that on 16 hours, but being able to save up money I got the furniture that I needed wasn't great, but it was something to love with. But I just feel as that being my local authority and obviously the government putting this into place, that should be available for us no matter what, you know what I mean? And it was partly because I had put in for a community care grant like two years ago and they told me that I couldn't put in for the welfare rights. One to obviously get furniture from my flat, and I find it a bit strange that they're denying young people that are trying to move on, that have had maybe no the best experience of life, and try to make a home for themselves, and they don't get that help and they don't get that support and I think that's where it's lacking and like yourself, you know? It's frustrating when all you want today is to make your home a home and you can't because people are denying to help you. No, you're right, I'll inform you that opinion, I don't know when I'll show that. Jamie, first, sorry. Thanks, convener, obviously the Scottish welfare fund is now being administered by the local councils and Llanagh, you've already talked about how you've had contact with other parts of your local authority and I'm just wondering how if each of you have had contact with other parts of the local authority, I don't need to know the details, that's your private business, but I suppose the question is if you've had that contact with other parts of the local authority, you know, how have they sought to make you aware of the welfare fund that they are administering in their area because it was quite striking that none of you said that you became aware of the welfare fund through the local authority, so maybe the answer is no one has made you aware, but I'll put the question out there, has when you've been dealing with another part of local authority housing or whoever, have they said to you, by the way, there's this Scottish welfare fund which is another part of the councillor ministers? Is that the case for everyone? The council didn't tell you anything about it, and is that the case for everyone? I wonder if you wouldn't mind telling me what councillory each of you live in. I'm from Glasgow. I live in the country. Okay, so there's two from North Lanarkshire and three from Glasgow, okay, that's helpful, okay, and this is a wider question, obviously, the arrangements that have been in place thus far, have you seen it's been a temporary arrangement, it's been an agreement between the Government and the local authorities to administer the Scottish welfare fund, but now we've got this bill, which we'll consider the Parliament to try and put the scheme in permanently, so, and you've already been hinting at it, but I suppose it's an open question, of what's worked well from your experience of it so far and what could be done better. I was fitting, they were going to fit a new line home in my kitchen, but they said they couldn't do it because I had a cat, and they could catch them off my cat, so they went away, then I had to make another appointment for them to come back out, they said because I had a cat they could get a disease or something like that, and I was just looking like, well, it's a house cat, so it won't, so then I had to make another appointment. Okay. Do you think it's a good thing, like, you know how we, community care grants, we used to get them into our bank accounts, right? Let's be honest, right? I'm young, I get hundreds of money into my bank account, I'm not going to go and spend it on furniture, I'm not going to, and if I've got an addiction or something like that, I'm not going to go and spend it on furniture, so I see the welfare fund in that sense fantastic because then they're coming out, they're putting the goods into your house, they're putting your carpets down, so I see that as a positive rather than a negative, I see that as a really high positive, but on the other hand, like, frustrated that the fact that I didn't get it, and that I didn't fit some of the criterias that they wanted to take. That's an interesting perspective because we've heard some people have been critical, but I saw Lana agreeing that I don't know what others feel about that as being a positive that they'll come out and actually install goods. Yeah, because sometimes it's very difficult to actually, if you get a fair enough, you can get a new cooker, you can get anything like that, but it's who's actually going to put that in for you, so it is, and lay the carpets for you and do these sort of things, so anyway it is good because people are helping you do all that sort of stuff, so that way it is good. Okay, thank you. Annabelle. Thank you very much for coming because it really helps inform the work of this committee to have people who have had direct experience of making applications for the community care grant and the crisis grant. Picking on a couple of points that have already been raised, first of all, in terms of the mechanics of actually applying, was that all for all of you on the telephone? Was it a telephone and a big long form? Was it a mixture? Was it a face-to-face telephone for you? What about you, Laura? It was online. Online, Connor? Yeah, it was a telephone. Telephone? It was application form. Application form? Telephone. Telephone. And we've had, I think, at least one witness come in a previous session to suggest that there should be a facility at least for a face-to-face meeting, at least that would be a possibility along with telephone, online and paper, but what would you think about that? Would that have made a big difference to you, or were you quite happy with doing it online, on the phone? I think I'd prefer it face-to-face. I get the stuttery and things like that when I'm on the phone. I get all frustrated and things like that when I can't explain myself correctly, but see if I was to actually sit down with someone and they can actually see that I'm being genuine, that I'm not just for and not just to make a claim, basically. Then, to be honest with you, I'd probably find that a lot more helpful and more beneficial for people. What about you, Peter? I'm just an elite face-to-face. Charlie? I don't think the application forms are pretty good, because when you go online it's like pages and pages and pages, and that can be quite disturbing for somebody following that in, especially if they've got writing or reading problems and telephone, I think that they've got to talk to people on their phone. So, I definitely face-to-face, I think that should be encourage them to how to apply for it. Laura? My songline was quite good, but I'd also applied on behalf of someone else, and I think that face-to-face that would have been easier for the person that I applied for, because it gives them the chance that they could have done that by themselves. It was just, they have feeling difficulties and stuff, so they couldn't go on the phone and do it, so I think face-to-face it would have been a lot easier for them, but my experience doing it online was, but I think other people have different capabilities and stuff, so they'll see things more different and more difficult. I would definitely say face-to-face would be better, because I think having applied through the phone, you feel quite a lot of the time, you feel as if they don't recognise you as a person, they just see you as a voice behind the phone looking for money, and I think if you'll waste somebody face-to-face, they can see that the reality is you're a human being who's getting nowhere else to turn. That is why you are applying for that grant, whatever it may be, community care or crisis grant, so I think for both sides it would be good to actually be able to have that kind of face-to-face me. I had to follow out, well get help to follow out, because I wouldn't do it by myself, because it's far too much of an issue. You had to get assistance to follow out. Hi, Pinedos, I've got work to do, because I wouldn't do it by myself, with far too many questions. I was going to pick up a point that Jamie, my colleague, alluded to, and where, and again, not for each of you to go into your person circumstances, that's your private information, but in circumstances where somebody already has involvement with the local council, social work level, as Lannis said or whatever, would you be happy if there was some mechanism to allow the information that social work, for example, Lannis case, already had, they have all of this information on their file already for that information to be passed to the people dealing with the welfare fund. Because there are issues, there are important issues of confidentiality and so on, but do you feel that there might be a way that would allow the information to be passed so that you would have to spend less time giving the same information that they might already have access to? Would that be something? I think that definitely, because it makes it a lot easier as well, if they can see that you're actually sitting telling the truth and there's another person that can actually clarify everything that you're saying and things like that, and they can actually hold, they've got the information and they're just confirming everything that you're saying and things like that, I think it'd be beneficial. Would anybody have concerns about that being passed to other officials in the council of that information about you? Obviously, you should be able to turn and say yes, or turn and say no if you want that information, but I think that if you are well, if you are wanting it to go ahead, I think that it should be, it should be go, definitely, especially if it's going to help you to get the things that you need. I think that it should very much be your decision how much that they get to know. Certainly, myself having been in the care system and stuff like that, it's not necessarily something that you want your entire family background passed on to this person, but I think there are a lot of circumstances that they need to understand, because I think, again, I kind of felt like I had to lie when I was on the phone, I didn't say that I was in care, I said that I love Manny, because I just felt as though if they had known that, I've told them that I wouldn't have got anything, so I think it would help for them to know those bits of information and your actual circumstances, but I think that you should very much be in control of how much they get to know. One other question, and all of you were talking about how you came to be aware of the fact that there was at least this possibility of applying for a community care grant or a crisis grant, and none of you said that it came directly from local authority. Thinking for other people going forward, what would be a better way to try to communicate the availability of the fund in terms of something that would be more directly meaningful and accessible to your lives and the lives of people that you know, what would be a better way to let people know that there is this fund there? Do you have any ideas that would be great? Maybe when people take on a new tendency, if maybe your housing association or landlord have some sort of information to let you know about it, or if there's maybe notices of it in, like your housing association or whatever, to let people know that the help's there. That's a very practical suggestion. I think it's just a bit getting the information of them. Because it is now really out there still, you only find out if obviously you get your own flat and things like that, and I think if we try and figure out is there a certain way that we get that information out, like I had a social worker when I had my own flat, but my social worker never told me about the welfare rights, and I think the lack of local authorities, local authorities should know that. They are our corporate parents, you know, and they should be looking out for our safety and wellbeing, and if they don't know that information, how we meant to know that information, and it is just about being able to get that information out to young people or people in general, but how you get that is a difficult one, but definitely, like social workers and stuff, should be promoting that kind of stuff. That's a very practical suggestion, so thank you for that, and I'll see if my colleagues have further questions for you. For the record, the forum that Peter mentioned that he had to complete for North Lanarkshire Council runs to 25 pages, so if anyone's wondering just how extensive the information is, that's how much it is. Way more than you would have to fill in for a passport, but it's a matter of judgment whether the information that they're looking for is actually essential. Having looked at it again, just for information, it asks you a lot of questions up front about your ethnicity and various other things, but there are questions that could be checked after a forum has been completed, when people then go back to get additional information that might be useful to the type of people who are coming to make applications, but it might be a bit off-putting for people to be asked those types of questions up front, because it makes you think, or does it make you think, why are they asking that? What difference does that make when I'm filling in this forum? Did any of you have that consideration? I can see a few nodding there. It's none of their business to know anything else, see what we're applying for, we're applying for stuff for a flat or money to help us, have a better home and stuff, so it shouldn't matter, and I think the forums really need to be looked at because I just don't think it's right. 25 pages, come on, who wants to sit and fill 25 pages in just to get furniture for their flat, it's ridiculous. So if they can have a break down to maybe two or three pages, how they can do that, I don't know, because well, if they take out all the personal stuff that doesn't need to be in there and stuff that they don't need to know, then I think the forums would be a bit better for people to actually sit and fill in. Laura, do you agree, I think you nodding some? It is a bit long, right? Maybe they could take, like, that important information that's to do with what you're applying for. There's a lot of information that's for it in the forum, it's really... Just personal information? It's not really so much to do with what you're looking for, kind of thing. I think maybe if they wanted to know any more information they could contact you in some way, if it's a wee bit more information that they think they need to know, then they should contact you, I think. But after the process has been completed? I think they'll have it off, put in the forums as well, because you'll get people that may not look at them and think God in the forum and put them off. Okay, Kevin. Thank you, convener. I agree about the forums. I mean, I really don't understand why they want to know your ethnicity or your religion or things like that. That should have absolutely nothing to do with this at all and it would be interesting, convener, to see forums from other authorities to see if they're all exactly the same. Going back to the point, so, about getting information out there and we go into certain places and there are posters, galore and all of the rest of it, which we don't really pay very much attention to. Doctor surgery, you could spend probably a week reading all of the posters that are on a wall. Can I ask, in terms of your tenancies, did you at the very beginning of your tenancies get a handbook, a handy-fax handbook from your landlord, whether that be council or housing association? If you did, do you think that information about the welfare fund should be in that handbook? Charlie? No? No? Peter? Lanna? No? Laura? Connor? I've never been in my tenancies, so all of you that are in your own tenancies at this moment in time never got any real information from your landlord when you moved into that property. That's very, very interesting, convener. Again, we should probably look at best practice that's happening across the country, because I think that these little things can often help. If you've got that book and you can put it away and take it out as necessary, I think that's always helpful. Charlie mentioned corporate parents. Obviously, Connor, you've said that you've come from a care background as well. How do you think that your corporate parents, which include us, perform in terms of helping you get to the initial stages of starting off in life? I think the issue is that a lot of people don't know that they're a corporate parent, and I think that's where the issue is that people don't know that they're a corporate parent. If people know that they're a corporate parent, because I've spoken to people from NHS and stuff who have mentioned corporate parents to them, they're like, what's that? I'm like, well, you deal with people every day, so you're looking after their safety. You're making sure that their well-being's all right. It all comes down to information. It all comes down to information and the lack of information that's there for people. So, as corporate parents, we're failing you and not providing you with the information that you need to get on with life. Not just for me, but there are hundreds of kids and young people and people out there in general, they're failing. Do you feel the same way, Connor? Well, I think, myself and Charlie, I've got slightly different experiences with corporate parents. I've experienced both battles. In times gone by, I had quite a lot of different support from corporate parents, but I think one of the things the older you get, the less support that corporate parents will provide you. I mean, I'm 19. A year ago, I had turned 18 and almost all form of support from my local authority was taken away from me just because I turned 18. Now, for me, that's a bit... At that point, I'd been within local authority care and been in the care system for 10 years. These people had been looking after me and being responsible, and then they just pulled a plug like that. For me, it's like at 18, not everybody's ready to make a huge step like that into their own kind of tendencies or whatever it may be. I think again, there is a whole lack of information thing that there are networks out there for after you turn 18 and stuff, but people don't know that they're corporate parents and people don't know how to... There's people who aren't corporate parents who are young people like myself and Shaleen, who don't actually know how their corporate parents are and they don't know how they can turn them. Again, I think I would echo what Shaleen said. There has to be better communication, but at the same time, there has to be better preparation from corporate parents when they're... Because they don't phase out, they just pull the plug like the sort of turn their lights, which are. And how on earth, when I had lost the kind of supports that I needed, I had just lost a college placement. Things weren't exactly great. I didn't have anything going for me. That was the appeal for me, and I left in a position where, well, where did I turn now? So I think it is that sort of preparation and gradually phase people to a point where they are ready. So I'm 46 and I still run back home to Mummy and Daddy to get advice and information at certain points, and you don't have that after, as you said, that cut-off point. At a certain point, you don't. I have still got social worker just now, but it's the bare minimum of support that I receive. As you say, in normal family life, at 46, you still go back. My uncle is 59. He still lives with my grandad. He looks after my grandad, don't get me wrong, but that kind of thing is how a corporate parent is just another word for parent, essentially. They're supposed to be like a family, yet when you get to that certain point, they're just not interested anymore. To me, anyway, it's just really not a fair thing to do. It's all about information and communication, and we're not getting that right. Can I ask one final question, convener? Obviously, you're here today and you're here because organisations who have helped you have put you forward to be witnesses here today. What would it be like coping without those organisations to help you and point you in the direction of the right places to go, including for the social welfare fund? Charlene, do you want to go first? To be honest with you, I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for the organisations that have helped me to get to where I'm new in life. It's pretty good for me to be sitting here today because I've moved on with my life and I've got my flat sorted and I've had all the support and I know work and I'm now a pure housing support worker. I give out the welfare rights information that a housing association should give out. For me, it's a privilege and asset, and I study it all the time, always printing stuff off, so for me, it's been good to work with organisations and be supported and now be on the other side of that and giving out the right information to young people and just people in general. Thank you, Peter. I wouldn't have my own house if it wasn't for like Barnardo's or Aberdale's. I would have been like the other of my sister if I didn't have Aberdale's, so it's pretty good. Okay, thanks. Lana? For me, at the moment, I'm in the middle of doing a training with One Parents Scotland to basically be somebody to help other One Parents to give them rights, to tell them their rights for benefits and things like that, so without that organisation then I wouldn't be able to help other people, so for me it's really good. It's helped me quite a lot and especially at the moment with the circumstances that I'm in, it is extremely helpful so it is. Thank you, Lana. The moment I'm working with One Parents Scotland and I've just recently done welfare reform, of course, and for me that's been really good because it now gives me the information that I can pass on to other people that's maybe in a situation that I've been in, that One Parents Scotland's helped me out of, so now I can pass on the information and help other people and tell them to pass on the right direction to get help and stuff. I currently work with Hooker Scotland and for me, Hooker Scotland's a big, big reason for me being able to even be here today and in front of yourselves. One of the great things about what I do there now, I've got a chance, I can go out and I speak to different types of corporate parents and stuff like that and help to try and influence change, even if it's just small change, because for me, if I change one person's mind, that's good enough, that's changed enough, but one of the other things I get to do that I love doing, and it's only in the past maybe three, four months that I've started doing it since my job role kind of changed. In terms of things that we're talking about, information, part of my job is actually like some of the more complex and bits of information that people maybe can't understand, like young people can't understand, like for example, 25-page application forms that are just nonsense. One of my tasks is to take forms like that and change it into simpler terms, change it into something that's easier for people to understand, and I love doing that, because I can relate, I've been in the situation where you read something or you see something, it's just total jargon and you just think, what is exactly am I supposed to do with this? Complete gobbledygook, basically. I'm sure I'd probably understand to have the forms better if it was gobbledygook. Thanks a lot, folks. Just a couple of other questions. Have any of you ever been offered vouchers or cards when you've been looking for our crisis payments? I don't know if you have. Also, Lani spoke very well about when you were giving community care furniture, you were pleased that they fitted it for you, and so on. No, sorry, it was usually that way. Were you offered a choice at all? I was just speaking about how it's good in a sense that they do bring the furniture out of your flat. I've never had that, but I know of people who have had that, and how they do fit things for you, and they do make sure that it's all set up for you, and I find that quite good in the fact that the furniture comes to you and the money doesn't come to you. My car was in that, and it plugged my washing machine, so it's quite good. That's good, yeah. I think that one of the issues that we're looking at is that it goes back to the right—some of the comments earlier—about the way you're treated, whether you're made to feel, whether you're respected as individuals and given choices or a say, and it's a tricky balance, because clearly, when it comes to the community care, the furniture packages and so on, it's the support that you want as much as anything else, and whether the maker, model or machine makes no difference to you, it's just the support. Some of the stories that we've heard from evidence we've heard suggest that there's a lack of choice or a lack of respect, giving you vouchers or no choice in furniture or being made to take furniture that's inappropriate, but you've never had a bad experience like that in any of you. That's fine. That's a very good info. Just a technical question following on from some of the evidence that you've given, so for those who have their applications turned down, first of all, were you informed by the local authority—in most cases, Glasgow, the North and Alexshire Council—that you would have, at least in theory, a right to appeal, and did any of you appeal your decisions that were rejecting your applications? I was rejected the first time, and then I didn't want to open our doors. My work in that told me, so then I applied it again, but I had to send in photos when my couch was broke, and my freezer was broke. I sent in photos, so I looked it again, and then I got the furniture. Okay, so it was a new application in your case, Peter. Anybody else? I sent in photos, all my stuff. That was enough to change their minds. Anybody actually considering a appeal, or did you have information in a appeal that was possible? I had obviously felt the forum in, and also been on the telephone to them, but they said there was some information that was on the forum that needed to be felt in, and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, it got denied, so I sat down with one of my support workers, felt it in again, sent in an appeal, got denied again, sent it in again, and I just kept on getting denied all the time, so that was three times that I put that in to still be rejected. And it's quite upsetting, to be honest with you, to be rejected for furniture, especially if you've had a care background and been in care and stuff. Cos all you want is furniture to make your house a home, do you know what I mean? That's all we want is whether you've been in care or whether you've no been in care. That's all people in general want is furniture. Don't care where it's fae, or what it looks like. See if I've got a cooker, and I can cook a meal on it, and I've got a sofa that I can sit on. Happy days, but I never got one bit of that. Lanna, have you, I mean, I'm not quite sure where your current situation stands in terms of the application to Weston-Barchard County? It didn't tell me that I could obviously appeal it, but if it was it for my training, then I wouldn't have known because it didn't tell me. So when I knew, cos I'm doing my training, I managed to say that I wanted to appeal it, so I'm just waiting to hear it. Do you, you are in that process at the moment? Yeah, so I just don't know what's happening with that yet. Okay, thank you. Alex, do you want to ask Chris? Yeah, thanks very much for coming along. I think we've covered most of the subjects, but there's a couple of things that I wanted to go back on and ask specific questions about. Now, some of you have had experience of the previous scheme that existed, and have now had experience of the new scheme. But we've talked a lot about knowledge of the scheme, knowledge of the fund, its availability. Now, how much has the problem of accessing the fund or knowledge of the fund been caused by the fact that there was a change? Is it one of those situations that the predecessor funds that were available, everybody knew about them, everybody knew what you could do, and it was the change in the name and the administration of the fund that left people not knowing it existed? Would that be fair to say? That was the problem with me. I didn't know that it existed anymore. I had changed, and I just didn't know. I thought it had just been taken out of place, and that was it. There was nothing to replace it. I think I thought that as well. I thought it had just been imposed. We've already heard that a couple of you, at least, are training up to pass on information about the new funds to other people. Do you think that if we get continuity for a year or two, that knowledge of the availability of the fund will widen, and people won't be left in a position where they need something and qualify for it, but they simply don't know that it exists? We hope that you have to get more information and more training so that people can tell people. There's a new fund coming in with this bill. Hopefully, it won't be too different from the one that we've been working for the past year or two. However, there's a danger there that, if there's radical changes, if we give it a different name, if we have a different process, then we might find ourselves back at square one, as far as knowledge of the scheme is concerned. Because quite a lot of people that I've talked to still, if in this day, didn't even realise that it was still in place, but it's just a different name. So they were happy to know that it's still in place, but there are different ways that they've got to go around it now, obviously, but it's still in place, which, as people didn't know, it was still in place. The other thing that interested me, if what we're talking about earlier on, was the 48-hour wait. One of the differences between the scheme that we have now and the predecessor was that there used to be a 24-hour limit, and that was extended to 48. We've had various explanations of why it was extended to 48. Do you feel that it was taking them, the full 48 hours, to process your claim, or were they just waiting for 48 hours because that's what it said in the scheme? To be honest with you, I can't answer that one, but in my circumstances, it was ridiculous. You've got the children, and in my circumstances, I lost my purse, and to wait 48 hours just to wait for a decision, it's ridiculous. I think that it should be changed back to the 24 hours, if not that, then a wee bit more or less, because at the end of the day, when you're sitting with children for two to three days waiting for a decision and you've not got anything because they're not waiting to see if you're going to meet this criteria to get anything? Or even if whatever the reason was for extending it to 48 hours, that may be valid, but even if we have the 48-hour limit, if they can turn it around in an hour, they should. Yeah, definitely, because it's an hour that you're less having to sit there and wait to see if you're entitled to get anything. It's ridiculous, the 48 hours is terrible. I think I would talk with Gabie Lannart. There's no way it takes 48 hours for them to make the decision. I mean, when you're applying, I applied for a crisis grant, which means I was in crisis. So how are you expecting me to wait for 48 hours, knowing I'm in crisis? But at the same time, I think that there is very much a sort of level of crisis type of scheme there in respect that if they don't see it as when much of a crisis as the next call-up will say, then they'll just prioritise that one and yours can wait the 48 hours, but I don't think it does take the full 48 hours. I think they'll leave it that long just because they can, more than anything else. As I said, I just don't think... It's not even that. It's the fact that in that 48 hours, you don't know, you don't get any kind of contact with anybody for that 48 hours. In some cases, when I say this, well, you actually have to go and chase it up. That shouldn't be happening. If I applied, I expect somebody to pick up a phone to me or something and let me know what is going on in the process of my application, not have to chase them about for it. I think that I've exhausted all the questions, but given that you've come all the way through here to Edinburgh and you've got a line up of politicians sitting in front of you, is there something before you leave here that you want to make sure we're aware of? Something when you were coming through today, you thought, I'm definitely going to tell them this. Get it off your chest. Anything that you feel is that we haven't covered yet and you wanted to make sure we were aware of it when you were coming through here. Is there anything you've not had the opportunity to tell us that you wanted to tell us when you were travelling through this morning? Make it more easier, a wee bit more easier for lone parents especially, because we're not in that circumstances for the reason, so I think when we're applying for things, I think especially the forms and over the phone and things, I think people and especially the people that are actually speaking to you should be actually giving more training to understand that, like, listen, we're in the circumstances, don't sit and judge us because we're in the circumstances, we're needing your help. I think it should be made more clearer to people and more easier for us to apply for things instead of, no, you're going to have to wait to see if you're entitled to this, you should make it a wee bit more easier and things like that and just say, it should impact, you should just be able to give an answer within 24 hours if you're going to be entitled to say I'm going to wait two to three weeks to even hear if you're going to get furniture or anything like that. I think it should be changed in some sort of way, especially for lone parents and people like yourself that are just coming out of care and things instead of like, I don't mean this bad, but instead of like, the alkies can come off the street or the junkies can come off the street and they're getting help with everything the way that we see it and we are having to sit and wait and things like that and it's annoying. I think you should just basically make it a lot more easier for people that actually aren't in this crisis and that actually need the help that they actually do instead of the people that actually just don't even need it as much as we do. Was that I think when you're making an application and you're speaking to people, I think they should be clearer about what information they can check and how they can check it because I didn't realise until a couple of weeks ago when a couple of people the Parliament had come up to our office and it spoke to us a bit welfare fund that these people can go and check your Facebook accounts and stuff like that to confirm the information that you've given them and I think things like that they should make crystal clear to people that they can go and check that type of information, but also at the same time Facebook is not exactly the most reliable source of information either nor is any kind of social media, you know there are things that might be on Facebook that are true, it happens. My Facebook said that I was 50 a week ago, I'm no 50. It's one of these kind of ridiculous things and I just think it's about letting people know about making it easier for them to be able to disclose things as well. I mean I had to hide the fact that I was in care, I should never have had to do that. Someone should have actually asked me if I was in care to be honest that there should have been a question that there should have been one of the first questions but yeah I think just that whole kind of a what they can find out about you and how and why. Well on behalf of the committee and I thank you very much you've all been very open with us and it's been really helpful from my point of view and I'm sure my colleagues share that view that the information you've given us has really given us an understanding because we've spoken to professionals, we've spoken to people who are on the other side of the administrators but to hear it from people who are on the receiving end if you like has helped us to to get a greater appreciation of just how the system is operating so the time you've spent with us this morning has been really beneficial and I'd like to thank you on behalf of the committee for the information that you've provided okay thank you and I'll suspend the meeting for a period of time until we change to our next panel. For agenda item 3, agenda item 3 this morning is welcome to our second panel which consists of Dermot O'Neill, who's the chief executive of the Scottish League of Credit Unions, Nicola Dickie, Scottish Welfare Fund development manager at COSLA and Jackie Cropper, managing director of grand central savings. We've heard evidence that there are some people who, although in need, may not meet the agreed criteria for the Scottish Welfare Fund or qualify for a DWP budget loan. Because we've taken evidence on that, the committee felt it would be useful to explore what other options might be available. Things are not in the current bill but are not, according to the information that we've had from government officials, not excluded from the bill either. So the panel has been invited to allow us to explore what alternatives to the grants and the Scottish Welfare Fund make available at the present time. So can I begin by asking yourself Dermot, obviously you have had a look at the bill. Do you see any scope within the bill for credit unions to want to become involved in that system or if that was the case, where would they fit in? I think that there's very limited scope for credit unions to be involved as an alternative to what's already being proposed. We've approached this from four main perspectives, from a position of reputational impact, from a position of commerciality, from a position of responsible lending and borrowing and also from operational capacity. I suppose that the key thing for us is around the reputational considerations and that a credit union's membership must be balanced. For credit unions to be healthy, they need to attract a broad section of society. Just now credit unions are saddled with an unfortunate and damaging misconception of being a poor man's bank. We would be concerned that any direct servicing of a welfare fund type payment directly from credit unions would simply reinforce that misconception and further tip the balance of membership profile. Jackie, your organisation was mentioned specifically to us from your perspective, what's your take on what's just been said by Dermot or the question that I posed earlier? Obviously, the grand central savings does work with the most vulnerable people out there, from homeless to single parents to families who are struggling. You've just now demonstrated why there's a need for the grand central savings, so I didn't have to do that there. When it comes to facilitating loans, I'm not actually sure even with the most vulnerable I'm working with that as the best way forward. We're very much and very keen in working with people and working with their issues. It's not just a service that's money in and money out, but actually working with their issues and ensuring that they are managing their money, as sometimes as difficult as that can be. I was very impressed with the people that were speaking earlier, and they echoed a lot of views that I would have said here today, that people need to be managed much more better around the welfare fund and a much more communication. We're working with alongside different organisations and ensuring that the customers that we're working with are actually getting a fuller service and getting involved in making sure that they can apply for what their needs are. When it comes to small loans, I'm not so sure that's the answer. I just think that I'll put them further in today, the people that I'm working with. It might be my shoes for some other people as well. Nicola, you're obviously coming from the local authorities side of things. You're looking at the client group that you're dealing with. You'll have a view on what, as Jackie said, some of the downsides of considering going beyond the Scottish Welfare Fund? Certainly, when local government in Scotland took this on, loans was part of the original consultation and looking at where we've got to with the welfare fund and listening to the evidence sessions that we've just had with some of the people previously. Like Jackie, I'm not convinced that putting them into more credit would necessarily be the way to help them out of that. It doesn't fit with the enabling nature of the fund. The way that local authorities have approached the fund is to try and provide assistance, being cash or in kind, and also that wraparound support. If that wraparound support, I think that would be a very difficult decision for decision makers then to come to if we were to include the provision of loans in the grant. It's a discretionary fund already and we've heard some of the good and the bad examples of that discretion. If there was a further part being added into that decision making process about do you qualify for a grant, do you qualify for a payment, then do you qualify for a loan, I think that would be very difficult and I think it would be very difficult for customers and decision makers to understand just exactly what was the decision making process and how do I have to pay it back but my next-door neighbour doesn't have to pay his back and I think that's something that we've worked hard to get away from the concept of loans being available from Scottish welfare fund for crisis in Scotland and including it might start to muddy the water again, maybe. Okay, thanks for that. I'll open up to members and I'll go to Kevin first, followed by Alex. Thank you and I encourage folks to register of members' interests as I'm a member of St Machher credit union and I think that should be the record. One of the things which we've heard from the previous witnesses and we've heard throughout our discussions round about this is signposting and information. Do you think that it would be wise for the folks handling these things at local authorities as well as to deal with the crisis or the community care grant at that particular point in time to give some further financial information to folks and say, Luke, you may want to consider joining a credit union at some point because that may help you get to a stage. If you do hit a future crisis, you might have something put away for a rainy day or if you want further choice than what is being offered from the Scottish welfare fund, if you put that aside, a little bit aside, then you may be entitled at a later date to a loan from a credit union. Credit unions are best placed to serve members not at a point of crisis, but at a point of development and the habit of saving. What we're talking about today is the need for immediate help from a crisis situation. Very few credit unions are positioned to receive, process and turn around that crisis loan type need. Every credit union is absolutely positioned to accept a new member and educate them in the wise use of money, but that's a long-term process and something that needs to be fostered with the individual based on their ability to save and from a position of borrowing based on their ability and inclination to repay as well. I think that that's extremely useful, convener. I pay credit to the unions that there are throughout Scotland in terms of the information that they give out in terms of how to handle your cash. I'm not ashamed to say that I've had a loan previously from a credit union to tide me over at a point that was not so good. Obviously, you have the backup of the previous saving and all the rest of it above that. We're missing a trick in some regards, convener, because a lot of the difficulties that are created are often because there is no stability. I think that stability can be provided via credit unions. I just think that, as well as dealing with the crisis or the community care grant, if that further information was given to folk and directing them towards some of your organisations, that would be useful for all. Although you may be in a sticky wicket at certain points in your life, it may well be that in the future that you're able to put even more into your credit union account and thus create the balance that Darren was talking about. Can I offer a comment on that? I think that it's important as well that credit unions are able to manage the expectations of those approaching the credit union. I think that it would be wrong to give the impression that credit unions can help in all circumstances. Credit unions can only help when the member, the person, has the capacity to self-help. Self-help involves both the capacity to save and the event of borrowing the capacity to repay. I think that an interesting thing about the commerciality of credit union loans, if I can, the commercial viability of credit unions engaging in this type of activity is very much also dependent on the level of borrowing, the value of borrowing and the term of borrowing. For example, should a credit union lend £100 to a member over three months, the credit union would earn £2 in interest from that transaction. The estimated cost of processing that loan is around £100. For every £100 loan that is issued to a member over three months, the credit union is essentially affecting a net cost of £98 per loan. That can only be sustainable if the credit union has a breadth of membership. For every £100 loan that has been issued to a higher value longer term loans, the credit unions can help people, but they need to help all people and not just focus on a particular section of members who are in more desperate need for help. I think that, for grand central savings, most of the people that we are working with, which is about three and a half thousand at the moment, are living chaotic lifestyles. They are homeless, they are in the street, they are in crisis every day. What we are trying to do is manage them out of their crisis, educate them and basically get them ready for a credit union. That is a success story for grand central savings. We are not around to try and give out loans. We are certainly not around to hopefully be here forever. I absolutely 100% agree with what you have just said. I think that there are a lot of people out there who could take real advantage of a credit union. If they came into us and we felt that they were ready, and they have now got work and they are now bringing in, we would actually have a meeting with them and advocate that that is their next step. At the moment, we are doing a joint piece of work with First Alliance. I am very keen to see how we can work together and move people on. I think that credit unions should be focusing on the people who are not on the crisis at the moment and working with us closely so that we can help with what we are doing and have a seamless way of working with credit unions so that we can move them on when they are ready and educated to how to manage and how to save. I have a slightly different question for Nicola Cymru. Some local authorities have formed very good partnerships with credit unions, but it seems that some welfare rights officers in certain places are not quite so good at signposting folks on to other places or giving them advice about what is going to be best for them in the future. How can we improve that? Beyond that, again, some local authorities have very good partnerships in terms of encouraging their own staff to join credit unions to create the balance that Durham was talking about, again others do not. How can we ensure some kind of uniformity in terms of that signposting and that education about the benefits of continuing? Certainly a lot of what is happening around the welfare fund is iterative. It is an improving process and what we know is that you are absolutely right. Some local authorities have formed strong links with their credit unions. We have examples in South Lanarkshire where they have managed to speak to their credit unions and actually work out exactly what is available from the credit unions and manage the expectation of customers who they are referring to the credit unions. COSLA has obviously spent significant amounts of time looking at payday lenders and alternatives to high-cost credit. One of the things that came through in some of the evaluations that have been done is that the expectation is that there is a quick turnaround time. Customers are looking for cash to be available to them that day. There are very few credit unions who are able to service that type of demand. I suppose that it is the halfway house. It is never going to be the solution for the customers who are in absolute chaos. That is why I suppose that we see it as separate from the welfare fund. It is more about signposting. Once you have built up a relationship with that customer and you have been dealing with their crisis or their community care grant application, then working out whether the local credit union is able to service that. In terms of how we improve that across the breadth of Scotland, it is about sharing that good practice. It is about making sure that all of the local authorities are working with their local area credit unions, but also the other stuff that is going on in terms of what is available elsewhere in Scotland. That sharing of good practice continues to go on across local government, not just in the area of credit unions, but on all of the other things that we have all learned so far in terms of the welfare fund. There are people who apply and, for various reasons, are turned down. It is reasonable to consider what alternatives we might provide for people in those circumstances. A short-term crisis loan seems to be the sensible approach. There is a demand in there. We are trying to establish who might fill that demand. You mentioned payday lenders. Anyone who is driven into the predatory world of payday lenders is getting into a very difficult set of circumstances. If there is demand from people who wish to secure a loan at reasonable cost to achieve their objectives, there seems to be a complete vacuum. We have heard today that it is not appropriate perhaps to steer everybody in the direction of a credit union. The first question that I have to ask is, do you think that there is a demand there that is unfilled and needs to be filled? I think that, to quote your colleague Kezia Dugdale, she is often used as a phrase. There are too much months left at the end of the money. It is something that strikes absolutely with that notion that when someone has insufficient income or disposable income to live, then their natural reaction is to seek credit to bridge that gap and that solves one problem and creates another. The inherent danger for credit unions of extending credit, however affordable, is that you further indebt the member, which runs contrary to credit union's principle as responsible lenders. In fact, any lender needs to be able to demonstrate that the person borrowing has the capacity and inclination to repay and where no capacity to repay exists, then no form of credit should be extended. I ask a straight question here. If there is a demand—the one that you described—should we be trying to prevent that demand in the first place or should we be providing a means to satisfy that demand? I think that prevention rather than cure is the key issue there, is that you can apply any number of solutions. Each of those solutions may have short-term benefits, but each of them will have long-term consequences. If the issue is lack of disposable income, then the solution comes at this side of the problem, how can we maximise income, how can we reduce expense or how can we, otherwise, rebalance a person's monies so that the crisis point is prevented rather than solved at the point of crisis? Yes. Effectively, it is about managing demand rather than satisfying demand. We would suggest so. Thank you very much. I want to turn to the COSLA paper. It says that we, the COSLA and our partners, are making some headway with customer perception of what the Scottish welfare fund will provide. It goes on later to say that COSLA would have concerns of the bill, had a provision to make loans and had to leave customers unclear over exactly what was being provided from local authorities in the welfare fund in general. Can you speak a little bit more about that, Nicola, about what the concerns are here? We spent significant amounts of time trying to rebrand the Scottish welfare fund, and we heard in the first session that there is some way to go to make sure that local authorities are the first places that customers turn when they are in crisis. The idea of putting the loans back into, as I said already, would definitely muddy the water for customers. The idea that we are a customer's corporate parent came up in the first session, and that idea around corporate parenting would sit uneasy with local government to be handing out loans to people who we are potentially social workers, tenancy support workers for, or indeed corporate parents for. That is where a lot of the issues that we come up against in terms of when we sit down and we think about that. Although we realise that there is demand there, for us we see the solution very much as helping to prevent that demand and managing the customer's expectations and managing the way that customers are dealt with across local government and looking at it truly holistically so that they are not being pushed into the high-cost payday lending that we know as many people's first protocol. We want people to have spoken to all the statutory agencies and to look to all the stuff that is on offer in the area before they would ever think about going elsewhere. The reason that we are having this session is that it comes from evidence from the Western Isles. The leader of the council suggested that there should be some sort of mechanism where its loans could be provided. In their submission to us, they say that they found that there are a number of people who do not meet any of the community care grant criteria but have no way of setting themselves in a tendency. The question is how does a local authority help people in such circumstances? It has been really interesting to hear the concern that was expressed about payday lenders that we all have heard in this place. I am a great supporter of the credit union movement, but I have heard in this place that it suggests that the credit unions are the alternative. I might be picking it up wrong, but I am hear now your suggestion that that is not really the case. It was yourself that said that the solution is better than Cure. What is the solution? The question is for someone a lot more educated than me to answer. On whether local government is that solution, the provision of loans is still available under the English local welfare provision, and the local government association has published an evaluation. The way that it was working down in England was that the credit union was providing the loans, but the loans were underwritten by local government. The statistics are that of 31,000 that was borrowed, only 6,000 was paid back. It would not appear to me to be a sustainable model for local government in terms of safeguarding the finances that are potentially available to the fund. I get that. My question is too ramblin, too long, and I will go back to the fundamentals. The Westerners are saying that they find people who do not meet the criteria for community care grant, but they still have problems settling into it. It strikes me that a local authority must still have a role to play. If it is not loans that cannot be the Scottish welfare fund, what can it be? A lot of the local authorities have other discretionary funds that they have available to them in terms of their house and other homelessness colleagues, and it is probably about joining up that support and trying to make the best links possible. Available alternatives, we are also working with the reuse sector to try and see whether we can get as many schemes as we can off the ground so that customers can get alternative furnishings, as opposed to going and buying brand new using payday lending. That is the stuff that we are working on trying to firm up and make sure that we can get the local solutions. Again, that is not the same across the bread of the country. It is about servicing and matching up what local authorities can do at the moment and what we can start to think about in the future. I am really glad that you mentioned the talk of better linkage between various elements of the local authority. I think that I heard right there that you were in for the last session, and I want to ask you a question in the back of that, because I was really struck by the fact that not one of the individuals that we had before us in our first session, who have all gone through the Scottish welfare fund, because various of them have had contact with other parts of local authority housing and social work, be it what it is. When I asked them the question, did any other part of the local authority meet you away with the Scottish welfare fund? Not one of them said that they did. That is a clear failure, I think, in terms of the system. I think that I will be remiss from you not to put it to you as the development manager for the Scottish welfare fund for COSLA. If we had an equivalent group of people before us in a year's time, how can we ensure that if I or another member of the committee asked the same question that we would not get the same answer? What I want to say about the panel session was that there were only two local authorities represented there. Again, I think that you will find that across Scotland there are varying degrees of knowledge about the welfare fund. You will appreciate that I and the convener represent one of the local authorities, so we might have to be particularly concerned. I have to add that North Lanarkshire's defence is a standard application form, so all the paper application forms are that length. To put that on record, it is not that North Lanarkshire is asking for anything. The application form is a separate issue, though. The issue is more serious than the application form. We can deal with the application form pretty straightforward, but the fact is that various parts of the local… When constituents contact me, they do not talk about whether I contacted the Scottish welfare fund, I contacted… Maybe they talk about the housing and the social work and the rest of it, but they think of it as the council. They think that the council is one entity, as well as they should. How can we get other different parts of local authorities talking to them? Do you understand and appreciate the point that you make that there are only two local authorities talked of today? It is something that COSLA, when we were preparing our submission for our evidence for the committee, made with housing associations and the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. It was something that flagged up to us, as well, that perhaps knowledge amongst the registered social landlord was not where it should be, but local authorities who have their own housing stock. We know that we need to work to bring housing officers on board with that. In a similar vein, there is lots of work that is on-going with social work departments. The idea of the corporate parent and pulling that forward and making sure that welfare fund is foremost in the mind is what COSLA will be doing over the coming months. We still regularly brief. We see the decision makers who actually make Scottish welfare fund payments and we try to make them aware of the issues that customers are coming up against. As part of that wider group, we are also working with stakeholders, if you like, to make sure that we are getting the Scottish welfare fund on their radar, as best we can. The best way to do that is to assume that it is difficult to achieve because you are not asking them to have to process the rest of all your app that is going to do the same. There is such a thing as the Scottish welfare fund and this is where you go. There is lots of good practice that we have identified in terms of some local authorities have briefed very specific groups of people and it is about sharing that practice where we are getting good results. Some of the authorities have briefed people who do tuck-in services for the elderly, some people have briefed health visitors in their area, so it is about making sure that all local authorities are aware of what exactly is good practice and what is going on elsewhere. As you say, it should not be something that is difficult to crack. In the main, access to fund when they became new tenants, in almost every case, I think it was. Some local authorities, some housing associations provide that welcome booklet, that booklet about all the information, when the refuse collection is in the area, access to that and the other service. Why is that not happening all over the place? That good practice has existed in some places for a very long time. How can we make sure that that goes throughout the country and how can we ensure that the welfare fund is advertised in those booklets? When I listened to the evidence session of something that I wrote down to take back to the local authorities and make sure that as many of them as we can can get that information out to their new tenants, there is still a lot of goodwill in local government to try and make Scottish welfare. It is still very high on the agenda, so it is something that we will take round the housing groups as well and make sure that we can get welfare fund on the agenda for that type of thing as well. I will ask Jackie Cooper and perhaps first to tell me about whether or not you are already being approached, or to what extent you are already being approached by clients who might have applied for a crisis grant or a community care grant and have been turned down. In other words, to what extent are you—is this already on your doorstep and to what extent are you meeting that need? What we try to do is not duplicate a service that is already out there. That is the first thing that I will say about the organisation. There are not enough funds out there to fund everything and duplicate. We work with other organisations. One example is that we work with the Government Law Centre in Glasgow and they do surgeries once a week for us. We get a huge amount of people coming in and they are doing appeals for people. We actually have some customers coming in that I would say are near suicidal, not knowing what to do, not knowing what path to turn. We actually have something to be in at that time. Obviously, the company has a crisis at that time and we work alongside an organisation that already knows what they are doing and make sure that they are getting the help that they need and that they are being advocated on behalf of. I think that there are more and more and more people that I am working with that are not only confused about what they are entitled to and what they are not entitled to, but feel that they are excluded from the natural system. We have a lot of people who are in private landlords. That is for six months and then another one. There are a lot of people who are homeless, but in the sense that they are living in different flats. There are other things that they require when it comes to getting a house. As naive as I may sound, I do not understand if someone is desperate for a washing machine or a sofa, why we are talking about loans. I do not understand why they are not getting the grant. There is something wrong with the system. If we are talking about it as a crisis and there is a single parent sitting there waiting, I do not get what it is that we are trying to do here. I think that we should be re-looking at how the grant system works if we are having to say that if someone is in a crisis and someone is going into a house and they are getting rejected, why they are getting rejected and why we are even considering loans. I am just trying to get a feel for the numbers, in other words, the people that approach you. Have they already been to the local authority? Have they receded a crisis grant if they have been turned down? Have they receded a community grant if they have been turned down? For some people, they have not gone anywhere, so we sign posts, obviously. We work with other organisations, including the councils, the housing associations, and we try to make sure that that does not happen. Others have gone and been rejected, and that is the first of us hearing about it. They have gone and are tempted to put in for welfare reform. That is when we step in and get the appeal. We know that it is wrong. It could just be the way that they did the form. They had no assistance. That is a common thread. For the people who, in my view, come in and end up in such a crisis and end up being rejected and feel pretty desperate and become suicidal, to me that is what we should be looking at. We should be looking at what is wrong with the system when we have to this extent. I am not talking about people who are on drugs, I am not talking about people who are on alcohol. I am talking about single parents, I am talking about families who are quite large families who are really, really struggling, and they cannot see how they are going to get through the next again day. We are getting much, much more. I can provide some stats, I can provide some information to the committee, not just now, based on what we have done and how much money we have saved and how some of those people have moved on. Like the people earlier on, they are now training up to be able to help others who have been in a crisis like themselves. Thank you very much. That would be useful. Daryl Waneil, I think that it is the same from the credit union point of view. Before I answer that, I will add a pen to Kevin's point about the welcome pack. I think that, in addition to saying that there is a local refuge collection, I think that that patch would also say that there are your local credit unions, so that that relationship is established at the point of entry, so that in the future should a crisis situation occur, then it already has potential to have a relationship. In direct response to your question, credit unions, I think that it is important to clarify that the typical credit union member is a typical citizen and not necessarily specifically the group that we are referring to today, so I think that it is important to make that distinction first of all. In terms of the numbers, we are not yet seeing any significant increase of inquiries either through referral or through a member inquiry in relation to a substitute or alternative to welfare fund payments. That is primarily because those stakeholders that work with credit unions understand what credit unions are, and whilst the organisations that are supporting individuals are looking for solutions, they identify that the credit union might not be the right solution for that person at that time, so it may be the case that the movements are not being exposed to that group as opposed to that group not being there. I am not even sure to be honest whether credit unions would gather information on that kind of information, would you? There is not any standardised gathering of that type of information, there will be localised MI management information in relation to the purpose of loans et cetera, but there wouldn't be any Scotland-wide gathering of those numbers. You are not aware that people are being referred on to you by, inappropriately as it were, by… It is not, I would experience. Do you ever refer people the other way around? Do you ever say to people that you approach you for loan? You should go to the local authority to do that. I think that the fourth object of credit unions is defined by legislation, the promotion of the wise use of money for members, so it is intrinsically built within what credit unions are to signpost members either, I am saying signpost, to educate members either internally or where that capacity does not exist to refer them to organisations, money-advised organisations who are placed to support credit unions. I think that what will determine a credit union's appetite to lend is simply the member's capacity to repay. I think that it is an interesting point of Nicola reference in terms of the experience down south of the likelihood of repayment, so both Coesla and the Western Isles Council both referenced the low rates of repayment. I think that it is worthwhile saying that using the example that I used earlier, £100 lent by a credit union over three months should that loan be written off. It requires 43 other loans simply to offset that one loan. Again, that is the very narrow margins in which credit unions operate. Even if credit unions were to make use of the legal maximum limit that they could lend, it would be 3 per cent per month or 42.6 per cent APR. It would still require 14 other loans to offset that £100 loan that is written off. Again, that is some of the pressures on credit unions. One potential solution would be a loan guarantee fund. However, credit unions would be nervous about the purpose of a loan guarantee fund. It would insulate the lending credit union from a direct financial shock. However, what we would be more nervous about is the unquantifiable damage to reputation from a position of avoidance bragging for one of a better phrase. The shift of risk from credit union resources to whoever underwrites the loan guarantee fund would minimise the financial risk but would not go any way to minimise the reputational risk. I will come back to that in a second. I want to ask that very question. The amount of loan defaulting in the current system is among those who qualify for crisis grants. What we are talking about are people who do not qualify for them, who, in Western Health Description, are people who are on a low income. They have some means, but they do not have any vulnerability or they do not meet any criteria that would allow them to qualify. They are not necessarily at a high risk. They are in difficulty, but they are not necessarily automatic loan defaulters. Loan repayment is ultimately determined by a member's capacity and inclination to repay. The DWP undertook a study in 2012, which was a precursor to the credit union expansion programme, where the DWP identified that there were a million new potential members for credit unions across the UK in the lower income groups. The same report went on to say that of that million new members, around 50 per cent have current difficulties maintaining existing credit agreements. If we are looking at a potential target market or space of a million new members and one in two are currently experiencing difficulty maintaining credit commitments, again, we would suggest that it may be irresponsible for credit unions or any lender to extend more credit and further endate a member and further exasperate the cycle of debt. I think that it goes back to the start, which is about what is the reason for insufficient income and let's address that. Credit unions, as much as we want to help everybody all of the time, is simply impossible. Credit unions are not a panacea for the financial ills of society. The more deep-rooted questions need to be answered or looked at before we look at credit unions as a potential stick in plaster. No, I totally agree. Just a couple of other issues, though, about the potential of credit unions and grants until savings and other organisations that you are owned to help. I am conscious that, geographically, you do not actually cover the whole of Scotland. Are there issues there? For example, there are other steps that the Government could take. A loan guarantee fund would be a step in the right direction, possibly if it was supported by other expansionary measures. In other words, if credit unions could be helped in expanding to the whole population as an alternative to banks—I am sure that many, many people in Scotland would love to move from their bank to a credit union if credit unions could offer similar services—would there be a range or a package of measures that would allow credit unions to expand both directions, to expand to the general population but to be able to expand to cover a particularly vulnerable section of the community simultaneously? There is already an initiative under way from the DWP that injects £38 million into the UK credit union sector under the remit of modernisation and expansion. One of the outputs from that was to encourage credit unions who are so minded to sophisticated and expand their products and services, and some credit unions are engaged in that exercise. Whether they will be an alternative to banks is a longer-term process. Just now, every credit union is a savings and loans co-operative, and every credit union, as you know, is an independent autonomous organisation. There is no way in which we can mobilise credit unions as a collective in one direction that is really to the individual credit union to determine which direction they want to move in. The key part of your question was that the only way that credit unions can become more involved in this space is at the same time that credit unions are providing high-value long-term loans. I have laboured that point because if credit unions grow their business model, or grow their business through short-term low-value loans, then what they are unintentionally doing is fostering an unsustainable business model that leads to grant dependency and weakens financial resilience with their organisation and inhibits what credit unions can be. Is it really important that any activity that credit unions undertake has a balance and a spread of membership? We had a very interesting presentation from an American credit union just three weeks ago. We were particularly talking about competing commercially with car loans as a model for expansion of business, but the geographical limit applies to credit unions, too. Clearly, they offer a vital service, but it does not cover the whole country, does it? We are in Greenock, and we are in Glasgow. We have three areas in Glasgow that we are opening up at the moment. We are just moving into Midlothian, and we are moving into Clackmannanshire. The idea is that, over the next five years, we have to widen the scope in Scotland where the difficulty lies, which is different. We do not charge our customers, obviously. We work alongside housing associations and councils to get them to buy in our service, which is what we then deliver. However, the councils and housing associations have been most restricted in what money they have to be able to buy into the service, so that has taken a lot longer for grant central servants to develop. That is where our stumbling block has been. We would like to get out to as many people as possible in Scotland. That is what grant central servants are about. As long as people need the service, we need to get out there and provide it. I would like to do some work in remote areas, because that is something that really needs some research into and how we do a different model. The other thing that we have added in to grant central servants recently is what we call the home guard account, so that we can directly pay for people before they get the money. When their money comes in, it gets directly into their account. We can pay for things such as rent ar rears, but we are working with the whole package with the person. It is a bit like a janjure account. What we are trying to do is expand and offer the service. Let the councils and housing associations see the value, especially if universal credit comes in, because we can stop the money going straight into their hands. Especially for the people I work with. Believe me, there will be a lot of debt in the councils and housing associations. We are trying to expand. We do do, and it is through grant. We are supported by the LotRai Workham to the Scottish Government to see if we can get additional help, but the councils and housing associations need some help. They are working with us and are keen on us being out in their communities. We are getting the funding package together. We try to keep it as low as possible. We have changed our model so that it makes it easier, because it is getting the service out. That is what I am more interested in. I moved on a bit, but I will drag it back, because I do not want to ask a question. When Jackie was talking about people who apply and are in need and sometimes they get rejected, it brought me back to a comment that was made on the previous panel, where one of the panellists appeared to have established that she would qualify for support under the fund in one local authority area, but it had been told that she did not qualify in another local authority area. Now, hopefully, the fund that we have in place just now is national and the one that will replace it will be national. How is it possible for someone to qualify in one local government area and not another? I was in the original session and heard the girl who made that comment. I suspect that it was more to do with the flow of information. We have standard guidance so that the funds should not be different across the 32 local authorities in Scotland. If someone qualifies under a qualifying condition in one council, the same qualifying conditions will be being used by another council. I suspect that it is not that the customer did not qualify. It is just that the information perhaps has not been passed from one council to another, or that the second council was perhaps not aware of what the customer circumstances were. Although it is a discretionary fund, the qualifying conditions are standard and are applied standard across the country. Is that something that should work better and will work better in the future, or is it something that we should be looking at as the bill passes? It is something that is improving all the time. Again, that is why we continue to meet with the local authorities both cos and the Scottish Government meeting the local authorities on a bi-monthly basis. We get round the table and look at practical issues, and that is the type of things that customers are moving across boundaries. Our customers are needing assistance from one authority because they are moving to another authority and they are looking for assistance with removal costs. That is all the type of stuff that we are improving and that we are actually sharing the practice with as we go along. My understanding of the particular scenario that was raised was that, in fact, it was not a question of whether the person would qualify per se, as far as the welfare fund is concerned. It was a question of whether the second local authority was the relevant local authority to receive the application because there were issues of where domestic abuse policy meets and overrides housing policy considerations. I think that that is where that issue lies. I hope that there are ways to resolve that. I am sure that the person concerned is going to go away and see with help what can be done. I just wanted to raise briefly a point. As far as the loans versus grants issue is concerned, I think that it seems to me from what has been said today and from the evidence that we have received thus far that it is really only the Western Isles Council that has put forward a submission seeking the extension of the bill to include loans. I do not get the sense that there is any clamouring for that for all the reasons that have been stated today and other occasions from anybody else. Looking at the problems specifically that the Western Isles Council has to deal with, and Jackie mentioned the remoteness and so on, we have discussed the coverage of credit unions generally and Jackie's Grand Central Savings organisation. Yes, it may be that over time there will be possibilities of extending coverage of both kinds of opportunities across other parts of Scotland where they are currently not very prevalent or not in existence at all. At the moment, a number of people—and it is not clear from the submission from the Western Isles Council how many people are affected, but certainly a number of people are affected who do not qualify for the fund but, nonetheless, have problems obtaining affordable finance. Therefore, as the submission makes clear, it is specifically funding white goods. I note from Nicolaas's submission on behalf of COSLA that there is an interesting scheme pilot project by the Scottish Government's resilience fund in Inverclyde called the smarter buy scheme, whereby it will allow customers unable to access a social welfare fund to apply for new white goods at a lower percentage APR with credit union buy-in. That sounds like a very interesting scheme. First of all, Nicolaas could tell us a wee bit more about it, and secondly, if Dermot and Jackie could care to comment on what they see as the opportunity for such similar schemes in other parts of Scotland, particularly in remote parts of Scotland, to deal with a particular problem that is identified by Western Isles Council. The smarter buy idea is one that came from the north of England. It was a consortium there who put that idea together. The way in which it works is that interested parties, housing associations and local councils, will put in some funding. That allows the issue to be in the area, and customers can access it. It is not just customers who have accessed the Scottish welfare fund. In Inverclyde, it is the registered social landlord who is leading it up, because they recognise that they had an issue with tenancy sustainment. It is part of their tenancy sustainment process. If you like the welfare fund, you can piggyback it. I think that that is a really good idea and that is something that we would be able to be involved in. However, in terms of how the actual setup of it works, Jackie, do you know a bit more in terms of what you guys are involved? Certainly, we are working with this initiative. We think that it is a good initiative as well. We are working alongside the housing association and the council, and we are part of the financial inclusion group there. We will be working with them on this, and I think that it is an excellent initiative. To me, it could be something that can go forward and it could be expanded on. We treat this as a pilot at the moment, but I think that there will be a bigger take-up on this. As the people said earlier, who were here earlier, it is much better to be given the washing machine, rather than to give them the money for the washing machine, because you will not answer 100 per cent. Sometimes I could give you some stories if that money would go into the washing machine. Do you know what I mean? I advocate this project in Grand Central Savings as part of it. Can I answer about the rural area issue? I am a true believer that there are different solutions for different areas. I understand why the Highland Council and I looked at the paper. I believe that it is all right for us who are working in the city centres, coming up with a view of the people that we are working with. I think that there has to be different solutions for different areas. When I am doing research work around the rural areas, I am working with De Fries and Galloway at the moment to do some work with them, that is the sort of areas that we would be looking at. I truly believe that that might be a case that one day I would be coming back going. Grand Central Savings believes in the rural areas, but there is a need for a loan scheme. I would not dismiss what has been proposed here. I am very much aware that we are talking from, well, I am talking from the city centre approach at the moment, about different solutions for different areas as I am a true believer. There are very few patches of Scotland that do not have a credit union option. I think that the challenge is not whether a member has access to membership, but what that membership brings in terms of the products and services that are on offer. I was also at that meeting in the Parliament from the US representative who is here. I suppose that the advantage that they have on the Scottish movement is that they have got a 30-year march ahead of us in terms of their experience, but it is certainly great to have that reference point and have that aspiration. The credit unions have for about three years been involved in white goods schemes, primarily under the co-op group. However, there are some significant challenges with the continuation of that arrangement. The arrangement between borrower, lender and supplier is deemed to constitute a debt or credit or supplier arrangement, and, unfortunately, that type of arrangement means that it is regulated by the Consumer Credit Act, and credit unions are currently exempt from the Consumer Credit Act and so exempt from the regulation, or a burden of regulation that comes along with that. An increase in number of credit unions are opting out of white goods schemes as a result of the increased regulation attached to compliance with the Consumer Credit Act. In actual fact, the recent UK Government consultation on the maximum interest rate stated that, should the rate increase, which it did from 2% to 3%, so to the exemption rate of the Consumer Credit Act would lift in line with that, so that credit unions would remain exempt from the Consumer Credit Act in respect of the burden that would place upon credit unions. There is a significant challenge for credit unions to remain or opt into such a white goods scheme because of the regulation around that. Everyone, for your evidence, I think that just before we close, Ken, could you just for the clarity tell us what that meeting was because I think that some people thought it might have been something that had been said at this committee before, but could you clarify exactly what it was? Very far. It was a meeting that was hosted by John Wilson MSP and had a visitor from Ventura capital credit union in California, including both the credit union societies and the national organisations. Is there a connection of international credit unions? It was on 16 October, and it had represented us from both Parliament and from the credit union movement attended. It's just in case anyone who wants to follow the discussion knows where the reference is, but it's not anything that this committee has looked at specifically, but thanks very much for clarifying that. Thanks to all of you for giving us information, as I said, it's been interesting to explore that area. It wasn't something that we looked at initially in the bill, but it did become relevant because of evidence that we received, so the information that you've given us is helpful in our consideration. Thank you for coming along this morning. I'll suspend the meeting before we go into private session.