 Cysylltu'r ddefnyddio y gweithio y gweithio y cwmhyslŵr Cymru o 2014. Fy nid oedd yn dweud bod y rhaid i'n ddweud o'r ffonsor yn ei ddweud o'r newid o'r ddweud o gyflwylliaid, o'r cyflwylliaid o'r modau cyflwylliaid. The first item of business today is the committee's second evidence session on the Welfare Fund Scotland Bill. Last week we took evidence from local authorities on the bill. This week we are taking evidence from the third sector. This and the other evidence sessions the committee has planned will be used to inform a evidence session with the Minister for Housing and Welfare, Margaret Burgess. ond y 4 November, ac yn gweithio'r Cymru yng Nghymru yw'r rhwng yng Nghymru. I welcome our first round table panel today. We are joined by Derek Young, policy officer of Age Scotland, or we'll be soon. Mark Ballard, head of policy, Barnardo Scotland. Marion Davies, head of policy and research, One Parent Family Scotland. Scott Robertson, operations manager at quarriers. Lynn Williams, policy officer for the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. Welcome to you all. Some of you have taken part in these round table sessions before, but the idea is that we want to encourage interaction. If you have any points that you want to raise, if you have any questions you want to ask of us, and the committee members will try and contribute with questions or observations which we hope will allow us to gain as much evidence and information on this bill as we possibly can. If he doesn't mind, I wanted to start with a question to Mark Ballard in terms of the Barnardo Scotland submission. In the points that you raise, Mark, the first bullet point in your submission states that placing clear responsibilities on local authorities to promote awareness of and access to the Scottish welfare fund would be one way to be strengthened. I wonder if that responsibility should be put on local authorities, given that it is a Scottish welfare fund that is delivered by the Scottish Government. The local authorities are the agency for delivery now. Clearly, they will have a responsibility to ensure that locally people are aware of where they can go, but surely the primacy in terms of making people aware of the Scottish welfare fund should lie with the Scottish Government? The Barnardo Scotland evidence was born out of talking to our staff who are working with vulnerable young people and families who are benefiting from the existing fund. The feeling talking to staff was that there is a patchy knowledge on the ground of the fund. In some areas, it is easier to access the fund than others. We would highlight in particular issues around timescales for the fund, where some local authorities have done really well at trying to make the turnaround as short as possible so that you can access the fund within a day. At the local authorities, you may have to wait a couple of days or three days. That leaves our staff coping with the situation where they are working with somebody who needs support on Friday and there is no way that that support can come until the Monday or Tuesday. When you are talking about a family with children, that is a very long time to wait. There is something about access arrangements at a local level, there is something about the information at a local level and how it is disseminated through other services that work with vulnerable families like Barnardo's. I would agree with you entirely that our early experiences show that there needs to be a strong national framework, there needs to be strong oversight, but we cannot miss that there is also something about how access arrangements work on the ground and how the information is disseminated about how you access the fund on the ground that also needs to be taken care of. I fully agree that there are responsibilities that lie at a national level for a national framework, but the experience of our services on the ground is that it can be patchy in terms of how easy the fund is to access. I understand that there will be other colleagues of any comments or anything that they want to add or to track from what Mark has said. The point about it being patchy in the area to area is that a national framework is absolutely being essential. The responsibility of local authorities is partly about good practice from area to area to ensure that it is embedded and taken forward. In terms of the areas that have worked within a range of local authorities, but particularly within the youth homelessness for the slum intermediaries, perhaps we are in, but we do see a difference in terms of how the fund is being delivered in those areas. As front-line delivery agencies, we have heard from what is anecdotally, we do not have statistical evidence to this effect, but I think that all of the committee members have experienced people telling them that they mistakenly went to the DWP because crisis loans and community grants were originally associated with the DWP and were not signposted to the local authorities by the DWP. Although the DWP's own officials say that staff are expected to do that signposting, is that your experience or was it an experience that was occurring at the start but has dissipated now? Where people go to access different parts of the system, I think in terms of access as well that there's the three channels, there's online, telephone and paper-based applications, and I think we've found that there are challenges around online and telephone, it can take up to 40 minutes to do a claim. Some of our staff are saying that parents will come in to our office and we'll support them to do the claim over the phone, but for those who are not supported by organisations, it is challenging where in an authority there's not really a face-to-face sort of support. In Glasgow, for example, you can't actually go somewhere and see someone. I think that there's an issue around the paper-based claims and we would like to be more involved in perhaps having access to paper-based applications and dealing with them through our organisation. I think that with online access a lot of our parents don't have internet and it's a bit of a struggle to go to the local library and you've got kids under five trying to submit a 40-minute claim form, so I think there's still our challenges around access. I just wondered what your experience was of the way that the initial application is dealt with. I suppose gatekeeping would be the catch-off phrase and how it moves on through the system and whether there are great variations among local authorities about that. I think that it seems to be an issue from what I'm hearing locally and discussing with colleagues that there's a degree of confusion around how you go through the system and following on from that I would quite like to have your impressions of how that initial contact with the local authority leads on to perhaps other departments in the local authority being involved and indeed external agencies if required. I know that it's fairly new but we have had two years now. Are we starting to see a joined-up approach to the issue? Mark, I think that I may have been directly to you. I think that my and Davis from OPFS makes a really good point about the difference between the young people we work with and other young people is that they have somebody who's working with them. We have, Bernardo's has taken on staff who specifically work in welfare rights advice and are supporting some of the young people and families to cope with the increased pressure that's coming through greater benefit sanctions, more delays to benefit the effects of the recession. Those are the people who are getting support and have somebody to help them and guide them through the gateways that are there. But I think that Linda Fabiani is quite right that it's not always a clear process particularly if you don't have somebody there from a voluntary organisation whether it's a specific organisation like Bernardo's or OPFS or citizens advice to guide you through that process. I would also like to highlight on a more positive note Bernardo's really welcomes many of the elements in the draft guidance particularly about things like decisions being communicated in writing and a clarity of a decision-making process. Those things are really helpful. I think they will help to make the process clearer for everybody because they will act as a good national framework that you can then fit locally appropriate variations within. So there's a lot in the guidance which is helpful already. We'd like to see a bit more of that but I think that the guidance is the place that will help us to deal with some of those kind of gatekeeping issues. Thank you. Do you want to do it? Is it a point? Yes, Mr Sanders, about the other questions that I may give you now. Just picking up on this, I think that a number of submissions talked about the variation across Scotland in the process. One of the criteria in which the criteria has been set for administration has been two days, a two-day deadline for awarding grants. A number of submissions picked up on this. I think quarriers, Mr Robertson, you picked up on it and particularly he said that because the old DWP gave one day, so it's a crisis. People got their grants immediately and you pointed out that if an application is received by a local authority on a Friday, payment at the end of the second working day is not really an effective response. Do you want to expand on that? In your experience, for instance, in North Ayrshire, if an application is processed within one day and within Glasgow, it will be equal to two days. In our concern, for example, there will be a difference between one day or two days, but there will be a Friday, which could be a Thursday evening. If an application is made on Friday, then it is maybe later on on Monday. By definition, a crisis is perhaps four days, that crisis is four or five days, but for the help with that crisis is being affected. Last week, the local authority suggested that they needed the extra time to make further investigations, to check the applicant's circumstances. It was a grant, not just a deduction from their loan. Secondly, they provided a holistic service, which is more important to take longer about it. Do you accept that? It's a crisis? I think that, for instance, in our supported youth housing projects, where a sport worker may well be as likely to be supporting the young person to make that application, it is still two days, for instance. It is very positive about feedback from youth housing managers that were made last week in relation to community care grants, night and day, compared to what used to be. However, in terms of crisis grants, that is a concern, and putting some of the young people off applying for a grant. As I was pointing out, the cases that they have applying for Thursday or Friday, if they are not applying for it, there might be different reasons to either decide that they will not actually need it for Friday. However, that is a concern that two days, when some local authorities are processing it within one day, it is a lack of consistency. I do not know whether others want to come in on that, but another point was also about the local authorities' desire to, and the fact that it is not stipulated in this bill, that a ward should be made in cash, that it should be, and in other words, no element of choice for the applicants. I think that a lot of submissions have talked about the stigma of using either a card system or giving assistance in kind, I think, from Barnardo's and SCVU and many others and one pair of families. Anyone want to come to that? I think that there are probably a few points that I want to make. First, Ken's point around the stigma issue is something that consistently members mentioned to us. I think that we submitted initially that the point of this is that people who are using the fund are people who are probably at crisis point anyway. It takes quite a lot of pride to come and ask for help for many families to not be able to provide for your family. I think that suddenly you are in that position where you have not asked for kindness as help. I think that picking up from submissions that were given to the committee, I think that the element of choice is absolutely critical, not partly for stigma, but also just generally to make sure that we meet people's needs. For example, I want to steal bills from Inclusion Scotland, but at events with Inclusion Scotland and others where we have a lack of choice in what is provided, it does not meet people's needs and it is more cost effective to have worked with a family to work out what that need is. There are examples from the child poverty action group and others where a good provided does not meet someone's needs, so it is going back, trying to reapply, so there is a whole element of time and money wasted in a system that is not responding to what people need. A number of issues to pick up in earlier points are around access to the system and the lack of face-to-face applications would be a concern. The other issue is around equality access generally, so if you are deaf and hard of hearing and have a learned disability, phone access and online access can be difficult, so the face-to-face element is important. The issue of gatekeeping certainly is something that we have picked up consistently across a number of members. Is it down to training? Is it down to understanding what a client actually needs? One example that we were given was the provision of a specialist piece of equipment that prevents someone from moving into care, but it is being told that it is just a white good that you can apply for in terms of community care grants, so it is that kind of understanding of how the system operates and what meets clients needs. I think that there is still a bit of a hangover from the social fund. Certainly from speaking to activists and others, people still feel that there is a bit of stigma of applying for a crisis grant or some kind of like. People are maybe genuinely a bit unwilling to apply for the fund, even if they know that it exists, because there is still a bit of stigma attached to that. Lastly, I think that the element of choice is important. A number of members and colleagues in the third sector have mentioned the element of choice about having something that actually meets your needs. Certainly, the cash versus in-kind argument is a fresh and alive one, but ultimately it is about around, because someone is in crisis, does not mean that they should be treated any less well or with less respect. If they are needing something and they need to buy something, it may make sense to them to have that choice. In some cases, it may be more cost effective to go and buy something that actually meets their needs and has better quality. There are a lot of issues around this, but for us and certainly for other third sector members, it is around choice rather than actually hear what you have, and they are like her lumping on your go. I touched on some of the points that Lynn made. I think that we gave an example of some young parents in North Lanarkshire. The choice of a carpet was a blue, or was it a blue or a green? I would not be a blue, it must be a blue. Therefore, if any friends come round, they know that you have your carpet from the welfare fund, and it is demeaning. Obviously, it is better than having no carpet, but I think that it is a question of choice. Other submissions from local authorities have said that there is a plus to in-kind, because it can create jobs or it can make it easier for the person involved. I think that, certainly from the parents that we have worked with, they would like to have the choice and to have the dignity to be able to make that choice. I am just really supporting what Lynn has said there about that. In our written submission, we also made the point about cash versus in-kind. We can certainly envisage circumstances where giving goods specifically might well address a very direct need in a very immediate way, but, as a general rule, a voucher system carries with it a great risk of stigma, particularly for older people in our view, because very often they tend to be quite protective and private about their finances. They are not forthcoming or willing to discuss them openly with other people, which creates other problems elsewhere in the application process. In relation to some of the other issues, you also mentioned how flexible people find the system to access. There are also issues about the application of the capital rules and whether there is any flexibility applied to those. For example, people who are paid pensions, pension-related benefits such as pension credit and wages, they obviously come in at a certain point of the fortnight or the month. You do not know when a crisis is going to strike, but it may be that it so happens at the point that it does. You have less money coming in than you expected, but bills are going out in two days' time. That is a crisis situation, but you might not qualify under a strict application of the capital rules. We have some evidence that different local authorities apply those rules differently as to whether they apply any flexibility to take account of that type of circumstance or not. The main issue for us is that older people simply are not applying at the rates that other age groups and social demographic groups are, and that is covered in our written submission. We have a number of suggestions as to why that might be happening, whether people might be put off or getting inaccurate advice, but it is worrying from our point of view that, although older people may well qualify and may well have a strong case to make, the median age of awards being made are all in the mid-30s, whether it is crisis or community care grants. I think that we went over in some depth the cash versus goods scenario last week with councils, some of whom had the view that goods could often mean getting stuff procured cheaper, which meant that the money went further so that the funds themselves were manageable over the peace. In some of those cases that common sense should apply, Marion talked about a particular colour of carpet. If folk had the choice within the procured goods of the council of different colours, then maybe that is a scenario that would work. In my mind, it is a complete common sense, or the cooker that was mentioned in one of the submissions as well. Rather than having one choice of cooker, which is not going to fit in a particular area, why can folk not actually choose? Beyond that, I wonder if folk could give their opinion about situations such as in Aberdeen where often money is loaded on to the accord card there rather than the voucher system. In this far, the Aberdeen accord card has helped to reduce stigma because, for example, every kid pays for their school meals using the accord cards whether they are on free meals or whether they are paying for them. I think that there are ways of striking the right balance between all of those things to maximise the amount of awards that can be made. I wonder in terms of folk's opinions whether, if we could reach that balance, that right balance, that common sense approach, that there can be a mixed situation where folk still have choice, but where they may be able to procure more. I was in the context of, as I mentioned before, young people moving on from, young homeless people moving on from support to accommodation. It was hoped that when the welfare fund was set up that the point that the council was made about being able to be able to purchase greater levels of furniture. Our experience in some of the local authorities' areas is that it was like night and day speaking to project managers in terms of young people are what previously used to be the case, is the catch-22 situation that either needed to wait until they got their community care grant, which took many weeks, in which case they were not able to move into their new tenancies and were getting a lot of rent arrears or they moved in straight away into their new tenancy but had no furniture. I also didn't get any, you know, got the housing benefit straight away, didn't get rent arrears but had no furniture. This seems, the current community care grant seems to be in particular in some areas enabling young people to be able to move in straight away with a furniture package, a good furniture package, with some choice to it in some of the areas. The advantages that that outweighs in terms of clearly what is your suggestion, there could and should be more choice and that the choice seems to be greater in some local authorities than what it is, but a very important point I think on one of our local authorities is absolutely when a young person who is in support of the combination is passed for housing or is acknowledged that they're going to be getting housed, that application for the community care grant can be made straight away and then once they're housed they then get the furniture straight away. In other local authorities it's still waiting until the young person signs for a tenancy, so there's still a potential delay there. This is an advantage of the new system that it can be, that applications can be made, young people are in, it might be quarriers or other accommodation, but it's in partnership with the local authority that they've been accepted as being homeless and going to be housed, so applications could and should be made at that point. I have one further question. I have a different topic and that's round about the care leaver situation and obviously Parliament has paid pretty close attention in how to deal with what are often fraught situations where folk don't have the support networks that many of us have and Barnardo's and others have mentioned care leavers in their submission and how often care leavers are sanctioned more than others and have to access the welfare funds more than others. I wonder if we could get general comment about how folks feel care leavers are treated in terms of the Scottish welfare fund and beyond that I would be interested to hear how folk think that this and other funds would be impacted if the UK Government goes ahead with withdrawing housing benefit and other benefits to young folk. In particularly on that point looking at while Barnardo Scotland welcomes the draft bill and ages the committee and the parliament to fully back the bill we are concerned about some of the language particularly in 2 to A of the bill where it talks about qualifying individuals means individuals who have been or without the assistance might otherwise be in prison hospital a residential care establishment or other institution. Now residential care establishment seems to us to be problematic language and not in keeping with the vision for supporting looked after young people and formally looked after young people set out in the Children and Young People Scotland Act where there's now a much greater emphasis on the corporate parenting responsibilities that local authorities and other public bodies hold towards formally looked after young people whether they were in residential care, in foster care, in other community placements such as kinship care with friends or family or indeed looked after at home and we would like to see greater alignment between what's in the welfare funds Scotland bill and what's in the Children and Young People Scotland Act where there's a recognition that all formally looked after young people under the age of 26 should be able to should be deemed qualifying individuals and we think that that integration between the two pieces of legislation would be really helpful in making sure that formally looked after young people didn't slip through the cracks. I know Duncan Dunlop from Who Cares Scotland will also be talking about some of these points in with respect to care leavers but residential care establishment we don't think is particularly contemporary language and we'd like that vision of the responsibilities we owe to all formally looked after young people to be properly reflected in this piece of legislation. That's in the effects on care leavers and young folks without support networks. As I've in previous evidence to the committee I highlighted that schedule five of the Scotland Act while it reserves welfare powers in general to Westminster makes a specific exemption for benefits and support and welfare that is given to young adults by virtue of their status as formerly looked after young people. So we think it's important that that is reflected that even whatever the debate that takes place with regard the extension of further powers over welfare to the Scottish Parliament there is an existing power within the existing legislation that enables support to be given to formally looked after young people by virtue of their status as formerly being looked after and that we would like to see that awareness in this legislation and in the general way that local authorities work and so that approach we think is crucial to recognise that whatever happens in terms of welfare there are existing powers there are existing obligations as corporate parents and we want to see that borne out in all the decisions that local authorities take. Firstly I think section 22 there's there's a number of concerns from across the third sector around the wording in that section and potentially how it might exclude other groups. I know that Bill Scott and others will and others I think Marion have called for amendments to that section around families under exceptional pressure and particularly people with disabilities so I think they need to be careful about the language that's used in that section it doesn't exclude people by dint of just being so so tight so certainly SCVO would support a number of amendments that have been put forward by third sector colleagues on that to look at what that wording says and to make sure that we aren't you know how the funding translates into operation actually becomes so tight that people are not being able to have access to that. To pick up on Kevin Stewart's second point about the impact of announcements made last week this is probably I was going to say in a closing statement so I'm probably preempting myself here but I think that many of us are concerned about the announcements last week we already know and there's significant evidence and SCVO is about to publish some research again which shows the impact of welfare reform in families across Scotland in the UK so our call would be to all parties to civil society and others maybe perhaps a summit immediately as soon as possible to begin to look at the impact of what's been announced on this fund and other policies because what we're going to experience I think will be pretty horrific it's bad enough just now we know what the impact has been so I think that as collectively we have to look at what these announcements actually mean how I think families the impact on the fund which is why we call for review clause in the bill to to make sure that we understand the changing context in which this fund operates but to prepare for what's coming I think you know it's bad now it's going to be a heck of a lot worse so I think that we need to sort of begin to look at what collectively scottish government caused the third sector and others can do around this we have the budget this week the draft budget this week what are we doing around that and are there collective actions we can do around the welfare fund whether we can increase it or whether there's other things we can do in terms of policy that I think to prepare for what we know is coming over the next the next year or so it's right about a quarter of all claims to the community care fund is from lone parents and I think the point I wanted to make was that it's not always for reasons of because there's an emergency I think there's a recognition that the benefits system you know the rates are too low people are living on benefits below the poverty line they have not just emergency costs there's intermittent costs that you have you've had a washing machine for so long or you've had a cooker for so long it burns out you cannot pay for that out of your regular money which you live on every week and the announcements that have been made of course are going to have an incredible detrimental effect on families with children the welfare fund in a sense and this was a point made by the officials has a particular role in a way a sticking plaster to a welfare system that's broken that doesn't provide a safety net and actually leaves people in you know kind of in severe hardship and we can only look ahead to a situation where that's going to get a lot worse and put immense pressures on the welfare fund so I think yes what we have at the moment will probably not suffice to meet the needs to tackle the child poverty that we know is going to be massively increasing and I think it's predicted you know by 2020 to increase rather than reduce which the present government said they would achieve a eradication of by 2020 as the conversations wider I wanted to make some some further points I think a Bernardo Scotland and NSPCC Scotland recently published a report looking at the experience of our family support services across Scotland and across Scotland we're seeing increasing number of families who are really struggling to cope with extreme levels of hardship often linked to benefit sanctions linked to delays in payments linked to the increased cost of living and the increased cost for basic essentials and that's happening now that's the reality now regardless of what might happen after the the next UK election and that's why while I've made I made comments previously about section 2 2 I think along the same lines as as my and davis there's some things that could be improved in section 2 1 at the moment the short term need is described as arising out of an exceptional event or exceptional circumstances many of the families we work with under what I would describe as exceptional pressure that's a long-term pressure it's a pressure that may come from a benefit sanction of three months or six months or even a period of years for a family member so we would like to see that wording extended beyond events or circumstances into exceptional pressures as well and I know CPAC Scotland has also made that point equally in the definition looks at the risk to the wellbeing of an individual as I'm sure Mayan would agree for many families the wellbeing risk is also about the wellbeing of the dependence of that individual so extending that definition to go beyond just the wellbeing of an individual but also to include the wellbeing of dependence I think again would align this bill better with the purposes of the Children and Young People Scotland Act and that will be a helpful link between the very positive vision of welfare of wellbeing and Scotland being the best place in the world for every child to go up and this legislation to help support that at times of exceptional pressure for families thank you convener in the submissions from the organizations before today I think everyone supported the ombudsman as the bodied canal second tier using except for the seo maybe a bit more neutral on it last week we heard some concern from local authority before us about this approach although I think one of the local authorities can't remember which one it did except there might be difficulties in them having a significant off-case load to build up expertise in that aid Scotland made this the point that's why they support the SPSO but I suppose it's just a general question why do the organizations think it should be the ombudsman that conducts secondary views convener Mr Hepburn mentioned our submission so I thought I'd better respond yes I mean the ambition that was stated by the Scottish Government when the Scottish welfare fund was created on an statutory basis was that the funds should be locally administered but there should also be a national consistency and we are very firmly of the view that if there is no ability at a Scotland wide level to have secondary review then there really is no structural dynamic to try and ensure that level of consistency and we accepted the point that the other option which was put in the consultation paper of a tribunal could lead to further delay it could be more expensive it could be more off-putting actually for applicants if it had very formal procedures but that's not the experience of people who contact the ombudsman we hope that the consistency would be promoted by in the same way as for example the information commissioner has developed a body of decisions that he has made and she has made to encourage authorities to whom the freedom of information legislation applies to act in accordance with the body of decisions that have been built up we can see that there is a similar possibility to try and develop that consistency and I know that the local authorities made a point about this was an added complication factor for them to be able to manage the funds appropriately but it doesn't seem to be and seem to us to be the sort of problem which is one that local authorities could not cope with because they have to apply and manage the implementation of national legislation which is nationally applied with a local budget in many different areas and this might be no different from many other areas that local authorities have that responsibility. Matt Yes, I fully support what Eric Young has just said. I think that the most important thing for us is how we can ensure that the learning from reviews by SPSO is actually used to improve the practice of local authorities and not just, as Derek Young described, the local authority in which the review was particularly relevant but across the board and that we see as the great virtue of having that overall review structure that enhances learning enhances the dissemination of best practice models being taken up across the board. Unless other witnesses have something to add. In the case of recognising the experience of our third sector colleagues on this, I think that what we agree across the board and support colleagues in is that there needs to be that independent second tier something that's independent that, as Derek Young will say, is learning from that. I think that the point that we made was around things like accessibility, timescales for appeals as well. Social care reviews, for example, can take a heck of a long time so that the process is as quick as it can be. I understand that SPSO colleagues recognise that that's an issue. Accessibility, the learning point and the evaluation and making sure that we're learning from bad practice and good practice is important, but we would certainly support members' views on that. If this is the best option we have, then we need to make sure that that actually works effectively as possible, but from the applicant's perspective, it's accessible and easy to get to as possible too. It's important that claimants are represented by a welfare rights officer that they can give further evidence to support their case and they're given the option of a face-to-face hearing just to add to what other colleagues have said, which we support. I want to come back to this later, but I want to bring Hannah Bell in. Thank you, convener. Good morning to everyone. I wanted to pick up a point, made a while back, but I'll start with a new point, which I don't think we've touched on yet, which is the issue of the basic ethos of the welfare fund, which is, as drafted, a grant making fund. I note many comments in your submissions about that. It seems that you welcome that, but I have concerns about some of the language used, which some might have interpreted as being to do with being able to claw back funds in terms of fraudulent claims, but it would be interesting to hear, firstly, on the basic point, grants versus loans, and secondly, on why you have concerns about the language currently in the draft bill. Across the board, I think that certainly looking at colleagues' submissions on their own is that the approach that the Scottish Government has taken in terms of grants is far favourable, favourable in terms of having a loan-based approach. For many of the reasons that Maryam suggested around people, you know that these are people who are at absolute crisis. To think ahead about that, you know that I'm going to pay this loan back because it's a big, big issue. I think that, certainly, across the sector, there will be a view that the grants are far preferable. How you then make that award happen, whether it's a voucher versus grant, I think that the cash versus kind argument that we've already rehearsed already. I think that, certainly, I have concerns around the language that we picked up on child poverty action group response around withdrawal funds or reclaiming of funds, and, certainly, looking at the evidence from last week, my concern would be, are we starting from a position that people are going to fraudulently claim from the system or not? We need to make sure that we're not unintentionally given a message that says, actually, what we're going to do for the system from the very beginning. I think that, to have that in the bill, that you're going to be able to reclaim the funds assumes a position of fraud, and we know that fraud, in terms of the benefit system, is already a tiny proportion of that. I think that it's unintentional messages around what we're saying here. This is a fund that's the absolute basic of safety nets. People come here when the absolute crisis needs some real support. The idea of dignity and respect, and, certainly, we've called in our submission that, in some way, the bill reflects that ethos. We talk a lot in Scotland about creating a different approach to welfare. We need to make sure that the language that we use in the bill reflects that. What we're doing is a slightly different approach. It's far more caring. We recognise that people need support and that we shouldn't be stigmatised for that. In terms of the language that you're using, and how that filters through to both regulation and operations, it's incredibly important. We would call for, I don't know how you do it, but, certainly, up-front principles around the bill that say, actually, that this is a rights-based approach. When people come to this fund, they can't afford to meet the most basic rights such as food and shelter, then how their treated is absolutely critical and dignity and respect must be at the heart of that, I think. The key point is that, if there is going to be a section in 5-2-F that talks about circumstances where monies have to be repaid, that needs to be balanced by something on the face of the bill that defines the fund as a grant-making fund, not a repayable loan-making fund, to balance out and clarify exactly what that reference to monies being repaid means. More widely, I know that this committee in the Parliament has always been supported of the role of credit unions, and credit unions are the kind of positive model if we're looking for repairable loans to support families. However, as Lynn Williams says, this is a crisis fund for exceptional circumstances, and I think that it's important to maintain that distinction. We've supported the grant model rather than loans and in discussions with Scottish Government officials and, I think, in the evidence that the last session when representatives were asked about what the evidence base was for fraud, there wasn't really any clear evidence base. That kind of came through to me in the evidence, making anecdotal cases, which you might always get, but there is no evidence of widespread fraud or reselling of goods on a massive scale. On meeting the officials, they agreed that that was the case. As Lynn Williams said, in terms of the feel of the fund itself and the fact that it's important that it's a rights-based approach, we are dealing with those who have been on the lowest level of benefits. Unless there's some evidence of widespread fraud, I think that the rights-based approach is the correct one and should be on the face of the bill as well. I just wanted to make a very short point, which reflects some of the points that others have made. We didn't specifically address the grants versus loans questions in our written submission, but it reflects the culture and the level of expectation that you set around the operation of the scheme, which is a point that Lynn Williams made. In our experience, we've found that older people have what we've described as a propensity for thrift. They will quite often use goods much longer than other people would consider to be their useful life. The point where they identify need and something is unusable is a considerable point to have reached, and therefore, at that level and at that stage, a grant system makes much more sense in terms of being able to reflect the fact that you're getting maximum use out of goods anyway, and that this is a more direct replacement, like-for-like situation, which the fund can support. To come back to an important issue that was raised a wee while earlier, I was trying to catch your eye, but I didn't succeed, on terms of access and awareness. In terms of access, Marion mentioned that it would be useful to have forms issued in the way that the partly is happening already as far as social work departments are concerned. I just wonder if we could explore that further. Can we clarify whether it is the case that no local authority issues any forms? Why don't they? If that would help the process, why is that not already happening when there is precedent in other parts of the relevant local authority? That would be an important point to address, because access is key at the end of the day. Does anybody have any information on that? Because it's online, people can download it. Marion rightly said that he should make that assumption. We have picked up that I suspect that people have good copies of forms. Some organisations will have that, but there is an assumption that, for example, local charities will just download that, and they will have batch forms and print that. I don't know whether you can say anything about that. We made the response that the impact on the third sector is that they are expected to take on those costs and pull those things down. Most frankly, we will probably do that. The assumption that everything is online and that everyone has access is one that has to be challenged. I know that some organisations have said that they have been timed out or that they have been thrown online. If you haven't gone back and repeat the whole thing again, as with online, it does not always work. Access generally has to be looked at. I know that the Scottish Government is aware of that, but there are wider equality issues around that as well that have to be looked at in terms of phone access as well. I thank you for your experiences. The system is working well in the sense that there are support workers who are used to supporting young people to make applications. However, if you didn't have that in built, this is young people who are in supported accommodation, so there are good working relationships built up with the relevant department within the local authorities. However, in terms of publicity and people's access to forms and how they would find that, that would be difficult. I do not actually know if I am asking the right people to be honest. It was just a couple of things that have been said to just struck a chord with me, and then Lynne again, when she talked about assumptions. There seems to be quite a lot of assumptions made in the operation of this kind of fund. One of the ones that perhaps bothers me is almost an assumption that people who will utilise this fund or try to utilise this fund may, in some degree, already be in the system. I can see from Derek Young's submission about the elderly that there is a view, for example, that they are not only much more reluctant to perhaps approach this kind of fund, but some of the language may well be off-putting. It is perhaps just to get it in record that the committee can look at. Is the language such that we all use, that there is a bit of an assumption that folk are already in the system, what can we do to make sure that those who hit hard times perhaps for the first time in their life and have never been involved with any agencies or anything, know that there may well be something that they can tap into that could help for this one-off crisis? It is our experience that quite often older people will not be in ready contact with other forms of professionals who are in the habit of giving advice about the availability of the funds and the criteria to be applied in the guidance and the regulations, for example. If, once you attain your state pension age, the way that state pension is administered is through the pension service, that money could be paid directly into your bank account, it might still be accessed through the post office, but neither of those routes are ones that come with ready knowledge or advice about accessing the funds. Similarly, you might have no reason at all to contact the local authority social work department, so it might be a group of people in a professional area that is entirely unfamiliar to you. The people who you do come across, who are health and social care professionals, for example, might have no knowledge or poor knowledge and might have inaccurate advice to give. Obviously, we are an information and advice provider ourselves at Age Scotland. We try to cover some of that gap, but we cannot reach everyone. The point that you made about language is important. Although I know that colleagues have made specific recommendations for changes in the language of the bill or the language of the regulations, that would certainly help in terms of an example that you mentioned about families suffering under exceptional pressure. That applies, as a criteria, to an older person living alone, but they may believe that they are not a family, and they may have a different level of social expectation as to what exceptional pressure constitutes. It is really important that, in the information and advice that is published about the availability of the funds that supports the legislation once the legislation is in place, that it is much more accessible and inclusive and approachable, if you like, in the way that it does not dissuade people. As I mentioned previously in my evidence, for older people, the dissuasive effect seems to be a significant one because of the low levels of applications that are being made by older people, even although, once they apply, the rates of success that they have are reasonably high. It is very relevant when you look at the percentage of children that are in poverty. A high percentage has one parent who is working, who maybe has not been in the system in any way whatsoever. If we look at food banks and people who are using food banks, often it is that people are actually in work. There is a whole pool of people who are being pulled into the system, so to speak, who were not involved before because of welfare reform and the things that are impacting on families and the cups. We are pulling in people who have not been in the situation that they are in before. I agree with everything that David McIung and I have said, but the final point that I was going to add is that there is often a discussion of the role of the third sector in this. When we say third sector, that can mean an organisation like Bonados, which has staff with specialist knowledge of this and internal systems, it can also mean community groups, church groups, sports clubs, a whole wide variety of organisations who may have a relationship with some of the people that Young talked about, but they are not seen as organisations that need this kind of information. When we think about the role of the third sector in supporting awareness and supporting access, we need to think about the depth of the third sector, not simply focus on the organisations like Bonados, which already have that knowledge, because the third sector is much broader, and it is some of those organisations like the sports club, which may be the point of contact that somebody needs. David McIung, I am picking out some of the themes here. It is clear that it is essential, given that the UK Government has devolved crisis in the community of your grants, it is essential that the Scottish Government put in place a scheme and put it in un statute to provide those resources where needed. I think that I was surprised to pick out some of the comments there that we have not taken advantage of this moment to perhaps address some of the feelings that we see in the overall welfare system and to adopt some of the principles that we have been talking about in recent years about a rights-based approach. One of the things that most surprised me, because there are a few mistakes, this is not a radical bill, this bill essentially just replaces the old system with a very slightly altered, similar system. What really surprised me was this clause that allows services to be outsourced or privatised. I thought that this was a very strange approach, given that we want I think local authorities to adopt a holistic approach. I think that Bernardus Mark Ballard was one of the several organisations that picked up on it, but I think that you commented on this idea that whether or not outsourcing such a provision would be designable or not? I think that the point that we would make is that there need to be very clear guidelines on suitability, they need to be set out in regulations, third sector providers may be able to support but they have to demonstrate very clearly that they understand the vulnerabilities of the people involved. I think that there is a challenge across the system that Scott Robertson and I both referred to the fact that the regulations talk about working days. If you are making an application on a Friday and two working days away is next Tuesday, that is a very long time to wait. I know that Bernardus, I imagine that other organisations have started to shift more and more of their services so that they offer support seven days a week rather than just in the working week and that I think is perhaps part of the role in terms of finding ways to support people even when it is not a working day and that I think is part of the role that the third sector can help to deliver, but, as I said, there have to be clear guidelines on suitability, they have to be set out in the regulations but there may be areas where third sector organisations can support the effective delivery of some of this. Maryam, whether you agree that something needs to be slightly clearer or is meant by outsourcing? Certainly, in our submission we did note that and it would open up the door to contracting out to private companies as a possibility and based on the evidence within contracting out to the private sector within the welfare system, everything shows that it has not been that successful. We feel that there is a conflict of interest, it has led to poor outcomes, the work programme, very poor outcomes, we know the situation with ATOS and all that was involved in that. We felt that, as with the other areas of delivery, it may result in a lack of democratic accountability, so we were not in favour of that clause. In fact, I think that in our submission we recommended that it be withdrawn. One of the comments that you made in the SCDO submission highlighted that the high number of decisions appealed, in other words, that was a successful challenge when we heard evidence on the fact that you made the comparison between the successful level of appeals and compare that to the successful, it is a higher level of successful appeals than there is against benefit sanctions. Now, when we heard evidence on this in this committee about benefit sanctions, we used that as evidence that the benefit sanction system was not working, we used it as forcefully. What conclusions can we draw from your evidence here? Maybe you are comparing Borge's lemons, I do not know, but I think that what struck me in looking at the stats for last year was that although there is a low number of people appealing decisions in the fund, the number of appeals that are successful or decisions that are changed are relatively high. It comes back to some of the discussion that we have had around discretion around how decisions are made, perhaps people are not getting what they want or what they need, or that people are being gate-kept out of the system. The point that we wanted to make around that was that 50 per cent plus turnaround of decisions seemed relatively high to me. What has happened in the decision-making process? Is discretionary enough? Is it flexible enough? Does it recognise people's needs? Although the levels of actual reviews are still relatively low compared to the fact that you are talking three figures as opposed to the previous fund. For us, it was to say that people are challenging this and they are challenging the decisions that are made that are overturned are relatively high. It was more just to say that there is something that we need to keep an eye on. What is going on in the decision-making process? Are the decisions the right ones? Are people being gate-kept out of the system? Or do we need to think about what decisions are staff making in the front line in the first place? Why are so many reviews overturned? It is an interesting line of discussion. One of the things that we heard last week in evidence from the lady from Aberdeenshire was that, often, during the time between the original decision and the appeal, much more information is forthcoming to ensure that the folks get what is required. Is not necessarily a difficulty about the wrong decision being made but a decision being made based on the information at that time? Is there any way that the system could be improved so that the folks at the front line are getting all the information that they possibly can at the initial stage, rather than waiting for appeal? That is the same information that we had when we were looking at the ATOS system. The amount of times that we were told that the reason why decisions were overturned later on was because information that had not been available at the outset is now available. When you are looking at the work capability assessment, you are looking at the sanctions and then you are looking at the Scottish welfare fund, clearly getting information at the outset is vital. How do we improve that, I think, is the question? In terms of ATOS, we have had the numerous Harrington reviews and trying to get information right, and it is very complicated and probably best not to go there because it will probably lead to me going around for a long while. However, that should be, in some regards, much simpler. I cannot remember the exact words of the lady from Aberdeenshire last week, but I think that maybe we should go back to Kinsaws and say what kind of information is it that is lacking at that point where a decision is taken to refuse, and then, when it comes in, it comes to the appeal and the award is granted. It would maybe be an idea for us to go back and explore exactly what kind of information it is that has been lacking in those cases, which might resolve problems quite quickly. There is a factor. A couple of the reasons why TIP may tend to crop up us. Firstly, in the case of a crisis grant, you may not have all the information readily available at short notice to be able to make an application, but, since the nature of the need to be exceptional and short term is that you need to get the application in, that tends to be the priority, and so it is understandable that further information to support that application may become available later. The other factor, especially in relation to older people, which we have found, is that there is sometimes a tendency for older people to treat a local authority as a single entity that shares information perfectly within it. If they have contact with one individual from the local authority, but then it is a separate department, and it is a separate officer who deals with an application, they may believe that that information has been shared with the local authority and therefore them already. It comes as a surprise when that information is not able to be relied upon for the basis of making a decision. It is only at the stage where a decision comes down and you then go for a review process that, because there is further information and support, either sought or available, that that tendency can be explored and counteracted. A point that might be one of the things that needs to be asked at the initial stages is whether you are in contact with anybody else in the local authority at this moment about any particular issue, and that way you could iron out the difficulties that Mr Young has described it. I think that the questions that are asked at that stage are really important. You are asking people at the front line to have a particular skill set with my ex-careers advisor hat on here is that knowing what questions to ask and how to ask him is really important. The second point that I want to make is that the intention of the funds to be holistic and to be better linked at local level. I think that the links between the third sector and all the guys that Mark Ballard has described and local authority staff in some areas is better than others. I have seen examples where there has been joint training and there have been joint sessions, so people know what information has to be shared to make the system work perfectly well. I would like to see that happening across the board, where I am certainly in range, for example, last year when I attended a session on behalf of SCVO talking about welfare reform generally, but what happened was that the third sector and the council were talking about what is working well, what information is working well, how do we need to tweak the system, so was that information sharing to make the fund work much more effectively at first line? There are opportunities around things like joint training, information sharing, and certainly the Government has brought third sector organisations in to practitioner networks to talk about how they need more effective decisions as well, so there is good practice out there around that. The discussions last week with the local authorities and subsequently myself and Jamie Hepburn who sit on the finance committee as well, also get involved in this discussion at our other committee, was around the efficiency of the system and the amount of cost in terms of administration. Have you given any consideration to whether you believe that the administration costs are a problem in relation to the delivery of the service? The point being made that you have a £33 million fund, but the administration costs at the present time are around £5 million. Some people thought that that was excessive and efficient. Has anyone taken a view on that? The local authorities were saying that they were looking for additional funding to cover administration costs? I think that I would be slightly concerned. It is a lot of money, less than £1.5 of the fund. That is a lot of money. I think that the question is how that money is used. If there are examples where we know already of any efficiencies in the systems, people have not to reapply again for something that actually, in the first place, if they had said that they had been given what they wanted, they would have saved a dual process. There are lessons to be learned from the first, well, year and a half roughly of the fund now that there is a risk that it becomes overly bureaucratic. We have seen some examples of that in case studies have been given. I think that it is about how we use that administration money more effectively, making sure that we are not creating poor services that cost more than a long run and make it far more difficult for applicants to get through the system and put them off the system in the first place. Information sharing, instead of young, has been outlined. I guess that the last point might be around the assumption. We put that in a response that the third sector will pick up additional costs in terms of responding to that scheme. I think that we mentioned that the fund, the social fund, has been managed down prior to that, so suddenly people are starting to get, as my colleagues have outlined, getting more involved in seeing people through the application process, advocacy, online staff. You have not to train a new system, but it has done an existing budget, so again there is a hidden cost to the third sector and all of that as well. I think that going back to the point of administration is that we need to make sure that we are learning lessons as early as we possibly can about how the fund is operating and iron out those nuances that suddenly create a public body that suddenly becomes more difficult to apply for it more costly. You are repeating applications, which seems to me to be pretty daft. We heard earlier around the involvement of the SPSO as the second tier of appeal. Again, concerns were raised about the cost of the SPSO becoming involved in order to create that national standard. In your experience, as anyone's experience around the table, is the SPSO more efficient, more bureaucratic? Would they be adding to this level of bureaucracy or in terms of the timescales involved? Would they extend the length of time that people would be appealing if it was done through the SPSO as opposed to it being done locally by the local authorities themselves? Mark, do you have a view on that? In terms of that point, as I indicated earlier, one of the virtues that we saw of the SPSO was the opportunity for learning from individual local authorities to be disseminated more widely. One of the things that I was struck by in advance of this meeting when I was looking at the pattern of the proportion of budget that had been spent in 2013-14 was that there were 10 local authorities that had spent less than 75 per cent of their budget. There wasn't any clear pattern. There wasn't any clear link between the local authorities that appeared to have an issue spending that budget. I have not looked at the finance on how the £5 million that you referred to convener breaks down, but I wonder if there is again significant variation between local authorities in spending. The challenge remains how we can make sure that we have a national framework, learning which is disseminated effectively so that local authorities can identify best practice so that they can bring down those costs and see if there is a variation in costs, how some local authorities are doing it more effectively and efficiently than others, because this is still a new fund. It's still a new way of doing things, and so hopefully this will be a learning phase where we can identify if there are ways that individual local authorities can learn from others as to how to effectively constrain the kind of costs that you talked about. That's where I think the SPSO potentially has a benefit as part of that learning structure, supporting local authorities to deliver within their own local constraints, their own local contexts, but adapt best practice where possible. Brings me neatly to my last question before we come to any final comments. It was your reference to this being a new fund. SCVO have commented on that fact and suggested that there's a possibility that we could be going too hastily to legislation. Lynn, do you want to expand on that a bit and talk about the idea of a review because you're the only organisation that raised that? Although it has been brought to me not in the written submissions that we've had, but other organisations have raised questions about the efficacy of putting this into legislation, so do you want to give us your views on that? Absolutely. When we did the submission, which was a couple of months ago now, I don't say that a review has changed, but given the announcements last week around more changes, we initially called for a delay. I think that we felt that this is the first major piece of welfare, one of the welfare funds that the Scottish Government has operated on. Initially, when you look at the evaluation, when you look at the statistics, there are significant gaps there. We don't know how well the fund, for example around the recording of vulnerabilities, and other colleagues picked that up, is that there are gaps in how the fund is operating, who it's reaching, and is it working well enough. It wasn't immediately clear to me what the rationale for the legislation was. We've got an agreement in place that the fund operates. However, in terms of the delay, if there's a concern that we need to protect those applicants and make sure that the fund stays in place and is working effectively in the legislation, isn't it required to do that, then we would support that. It's just a sign that maybe we're rushing into things and saying, do we, is the context in which the fund is operating going to change? Is it working well enough before we jump into legislation and put it in a final and a more permanent fitting? Having spoken to colleagues, we were speaking to them before we came in, and certainly we wonder whether there's potentially a risk to the fund. Would the fund stay in place? Would local authorities want to change how the fund operates? Would legislation protect the fund for applicants? There are a number of questions around being clear about what the rationale for the legislation is and what we're trying to achieve here. The second point that we made around if the bill is going ahead as it is, the second thing that we want to highlight is the potential of a review clause within the bill. The number of reasons for that, I think, are quite clear, is that we need to make sure that we're getting that right. Is the fund working? Is it achieving the purpose that was set out to achieve? Is the context in which the fund is operating going to change over the next couple of years, but in the middle of potentially further devolution of powers to Scotland? Would that change the context in which the fund is operating? Would we have to look at what it's doing and why it's doing what it's doing? Having done some work with the Standards Committee, looking at how legislation operates in the Scottish Parliament, as we don't do that enough, is to review how legislation is working. For me, a standard review clause is whether it's one year, two years for us to revisit and make sure that the fund is doing what it's intending to do, that people are being supported, just make sure that the scrutiny is there. In terms of a delay in the bill, I think that we would be a bit more ambivalent about that. If it's delayed, then fine, but what's more important is that if the legislation goes through, we're regularly reviewing and making sure that it's working in the ground for people that's intending to help. One of the points that we made in our submission, although we didn't reflect SAVO's call for a specific review as such or delay, was that the form of the bill is such that a great deal of the detail of the scheme is left to regulations. One of the things that we've also noted is that the changes to the regulations are subject to the negative resolution procedure, which obviously limits the availability or slightly hinders the availability of proper parliamentary scrutiny if those regulations are being subsequently changed. There's a clear role for this committee if the regulations are changed to be able to try and address some of the points that Lynn Williams has made about reflecting on further practice and trying to incorporate that in the regulations. There's still a need for scrutiny and that committee has a role there. The second point, and this was alluded to in the point that Lynn Williams has just made, is about not just the legislation being right, but about the long-term financial viability of the fund as well. In the first year of operation, 23 million are thereabouts was put in by the DWP and 10 million by the Scottish Government. We have seen that the funding that's going to local authorities and the equivalent system in England Wales, the DWP, is considering withdrawing that. That has developed since the point where we put in our written submission, because there was a judicial review in England, which has now been settled. However, I think that it would aid public understanding if there was an agreement or some sort of formal understanding between the DWP and the Scottish Government about the continued contribution that the DWP will make to the funds that are available to the fund in Scotland. Or, if the Scottish Government is assuming that it is going to fund the scheme to the level that it is at now, whether the DWP's funding comes or not. Again, I can't see any reason why the Scottish Government would not want to make that public just so that there is an understanding. At a level of confidence that, despite going through this process of putting the legislation on the statute book and getting it right, there will continue to be a fund at a level that at least addresses the current level of need that we can see. Although it strikes me if the Scottish Government was to say that it was going to maintain this fund, regardless that that would be a signal for the DWP to move their funding. Those are things that we have to deal with in politics, but that's the reality of it. I thank everyone for their contributions. If you have any additional information or any observations that you want to make after you leave today, please feel free to write back to us. Obviously, the more information we have, the better we can scrutinise this legislation, but I certainly found your contributions this morning really helpful and informative. Thanks very much and I'll suspend the meeting for a period of time until we get our next panel ready. The second round table this morning, which was joined by John Shaw, who is a welfare rights worker with Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, Beth Reed, the policy officer of Citizens Advice Scotland, Jules Oldham, National Policy and Practice Coordinator Homeless Action Scotland, Bill Scott, director of policy at Inclusion Scotland, Paul Matswanchini, director of operations east at Sacro and Duncan Dunlop, chief executive of Hukier Scotland. I know that you were all sitting in the public gallery watching the first session and some of you have been in these positions before, where we've had these round table discussions. I genuinely hope that you'll be able to make contributions as and when you see fit, ask questions, raise observations, give us information and we'll see where the discussion takes us. In order to kick off, I hope that John Shaw doesn't mind me coming down first. Over the two sessions we've had so far, the issue of grants versus loans has been a major issue. You made a contribution in the written submission on that and I just wondered, John, if you could give us CPAC's views on the merits or demerits or otherwise or how this dynamic should operate? We've always been firmly in favour of a grant system and the issue with loans is simply that the repayment then causes further financial pressure on an ongoing basis to those on the lowest incomes. I think there is a clarity issue which came up in the previous session this morning. The clause that's in the bill could be aimed at recovering funds which have been fraudulently claimed or it could be the possibility of local authorities moving to a loans based system in the future. In the local authority evidence sessions, one of the authorities very wisely I think highlighted the possibility of making arrangements with local credit unions and to me that's one of the examples where a holistic Scottish welfare fund service could provide a crisis grant and signpost the applicants to a credit union which could provide a sustainable form of credit and that for us is a much better way of operating the Scottish welfare fund than moving towards a loans based system. Do we just hate to put anybody off who's in crisis for that kind of fear of actually needing to pay something back and it might be a minority of people but I think there will be quite a few people who have now felt that they can actually go for the grant now that it's a grant system whereas in the loans of the past they had that fear of does it just mean that actually my crisis is two three months down the line? Because we talked about the costs of administrating the fund as is and I asked last week about and I can't even remember if it was during the public session but administering a loans fund, councils previously have done so in other spheres, the costs of administration there are immense. Do you think that if there was a move to a loans rather than a grant system that we would see even more money being swallowed up by administration rather than going to the folks you're actually in need? What happened, what the DWP had with the crisis loan system was the ability to make deductions at source from benefit entitlement as a way of recovering it and that's the situation that local authorities simply are not in at the moment so there would need to be an administrative mechanism to to be set up and that would add to the the costs of the scheme to recover that money from people. It's about £160,000 per local authority across 32 authorities, that isn't a lot of money, that might be paced for half a dozen staff when you consider that they then have to have cover for holidays, sickness etc but you still need to maintain the service five days a week. There's not a lot of leeway there for the smaller authorities in particular because I'm guessing that a lot more money is spent in Glasgow and Edinburgh and the other big authorities so I don't see the administrative costs as being particularly high and probably they're lower than the actual old DWP costs. Yeah it was just a quick point on this convener because we discussed last week you know the idea of loans being in addition to grants etc and we also there was a couple of local authorities particularly keen on this clawback thing and I think we should make it very plain that these things are separate the idea of looking at some kind of loan system separate completely from the bill we're talking about now is fine. What we're talking about in the bill is about amounts to be repaid and I'm struck by Citizens Advice's submission we made quite clearly if it this is specifically dealing with fraud then let's perhaps look at how that is said and it doesn't muddy the waters in terms of moving to loans which should be a separate discussion. It says quite clearly in the regulations that it's a grant making scheme and also in the explanatory memorandum it doesn't say it on the face of the bill and I think that needs to be explicit on the face of the bill that this is a grant making scheme that we're talking about and just in support of the points that were made earlier I can't remember off the top of my head but I don't think the recovery rate of loans under the old system was particularly high so I think you've also got to think about that and actually whether it's worthwhile trying to recover loans and what the value of that is. On that point as well there is evidence that under the loan scheme before people were actually taking out payday loans to repay the money to the DWP which put them in an even worse debt which would make them more reliant on benefits in the future and again it just rolls out what is a one-off crisis sometimes into being a long-term obligation to pay back money that you've not got and it just doesn't work. The possibility of this tying in to support now if you're actually owing the person that's giving you support you're far less likely to turn up to to those appointments to actually access that support so the kind of the gain of that isn't isn't great when you think that somebody could actually be losing out on a whole support package. The same question I suppose I asked the last group and I think most of the witnesses were here for that and it's a related again to the issue of secondary reviews and I note again of the organisations who expressed an opinion in relation to whether or not the ombudsman should be the body that conducts secondary reviews I think all were in favour and again that contrasted with little with what we were hearing from local authorities last week so I wonder if people could comment on why they think the ombudsman is the appropriate body. I think the arguments were set up quite clearly in the last session from our point of view having a source of review which is independent of local authorities both to ensure that it is independent but also that it seemed to be independent and we would be concerned about some clients who may just be put off from making that review process if they thought that was appropriate because they felt it was going back to local authority again and they didn't feel confident in that process. The points about monitoring I think are really important to have that national consistency and also to have some sort of reporting mechanism on that. One thing that we've been thinking quite a lot about is what that actually looks like and at the moment there isn't any provision in the bill to make the secondary review statutory process and I understand that's to do with how the ombudsman is governed and so on but I think we do need to look at how we make sure that the process for secondary review is clearly defined with rules and timescales and that kind of thing whether that's through this bill or through that through further legislation relating to the ombudsman's own legislation itself I do think that needs to be addressed somehow. I'd like to just add a couple of things to that. It's a small point on the independence in the local authority session. One of the welfare fund managers you had giving evidence said that she would be in the room with the panel to assist them and I'm not suggesting that actually causing it to be less independent but in terms of somebody's perception of independence that somebody from the decision making team is there but there is no access for the applicant to that panel. That's a real issue and I think in terms of quality improvements that was a big question mark for us because one of the reasons the independent review service was so respected in the sector was that they looked at the decisions they were making they identified themes and they issued directions which bound everybody and the issue with a binding decision on one local authority is about how the other 31 local authorities become aware of the terms of that decision to ensure the national consistency of the fund so I think that is the unanswered question really about the review mechanism in terms of how we ensure the quality improvement of the scheme. We asked disabled people who had experience of making applications what scheme they would prefer and it wasn't overwhelmingly for the ombudsman it was just marginally a majority in favour of that and the second one was independent tribunal but nobody but nobody said it should be the local authority not one single disabled person that we asked said it should be the local authority because they said that it would not be perceived to be fair even if the decision was the correct one it wouldn't be perceived to be fair because they were reviewing their own decisions and it just was felt to be unfair so that's asking the people who've actually gone through the process what they would like and they came down marginally in favour of the ombudsman but tribunal service unfortunately I think would be very expensive and slower and I think I think best right you know we need to see some clear guidance on timescales for making the reviews et cetera so that people have you know expectations that can be met and left living in crisis for months. From your point of view it might be also Paolo in terms of the independence importance on the appeals process. We have this because we're an independent advocacy provision service for care experience young people and we have this in parallel conversation quite a lot going on with local authorities because they a lot of them believe that children's rights services they provide within their own local authorities are able to provide advocacy services which are independent from their authority but the perception and it comes down to the individuals and the management frameworks within which that's governed so it's down to individuals it's not a foolproof by any manner of means but the young people who are accessing that service are far more or less likely to use that or want to use that service because it's not independent in terms of looking at the children's rights basis and so therefore when you look at an ombudsman situation they're less likely to even bother asking it to be reviewed because they believe that it's part of the same system and therefore the same management and hierarchy the same establishment that's rejected the first claim so why would they go through it again and in terms of people who are obviously in a great deal of vulnerability emotionally at that time it'd be great if they could actually think that this is actually being viewed independently. I would echo a lot of the comments that have already been made the appearance or perception of independence and transparency is really important sacro works with people who could broadly speaking be described as being in the justice sector we haven't made a specific submission to committee on the welfare reform proposal but most of the individuals that we work with will be affected by the proposal in some way shape or form. I think in terms of the SPSO part of secondary tribunals I think the SPSO acknowledges that there would be some challenges for it both in terms of the low number of referrals that might be coming in as well as those at the higher end and developing the expertise but certainly from the feedback we get from our service users and the people we provide services to. The idea of having an independent body or independent person looking at the decision that's originally been made would be a valuable one. Anyone else about Alex? I'm going to play the devil's advocate and go back to a comment that was actually made by the convener on the last panel and that is that when we look at these appeals procedures invariably what we find is that they're very successful and the reason why they're very successful is that they do all the things that probably weren't done properly in the initial application so the quality of the application may be upgraded, the evidence that's required may be provided and I just wonder if we're not taking a sledgehammer to crack a knot by going from the initial rejection to a high level appeals process without having something in between which gives the opportunity for that correction and review to take place which seems to be what quite often the appeals procedure is actually delivering. That's the first tier review that's carried out by the local authority itself and I would agree that that is the best and most efficient way to carry out a first tier review is for somebody else to look at the decision and say was discretion properly applied and have we got all the evidence that we actually need to have come to a determination on that because I think as you said earlier evidence a lot of the ATOS decisions, they're not decisions at the end of the day it's the DWP that makes the decision but the recommendation to the DWP from ATOS 40% of their recommendations in the assessments were found by the DWP to be based on inadequate information which means that they shouldn't have been made in the first place you know if there's a need for extra information it should be gathered before a decision is made as far as you're able and if not at the first tier review stage would be the best place to gather that additional information if that's all that's really needed. It's where there's a perceived felony injustice about the decision that somebody's probably going to take it to a second tier review. Slightly from that would anybody be willing to speculate as to how efficient the process proposed would be and how many or what proportion of cases might emerge at the top of this process because that makes a big difference in this you know if it's 10% that makes it to the top then that might be acceptable well if it's 50% that get through to the top then it becomes an administrative and a financial burden. I think at the moment the number of cases going through the review process is actually fairly low so you know if that continues then it may not be a huge number but I think the point that was made in the last session about the questions that are asked right at the beginning is really crucial and I think it also links into some concerns that we've had about a few cases where there might be gatekeeping going on and this may be particularly I don't have evidence to back this but I think particularly where applications are made over the phone and where somebody speaks to a decision maker I think that is it has a lot of benefits to be able to speak directly to a decision maker during that application process but I think there may be times when the right questions aren't asked at that stage or where things are said to applicants which kind of discourage them oh we're only taking high priority applications at the moment oh we had a case like yours the other day but they didn't they didn't you know go the full way and then people don't disclose the full information and and you know that may not be then taken forward as an application and then somebody we've had cases where people think they've made an application and and realised they haven't it's only when they get to a review stage that they find out that actually wasn't taken forward as an application so I think you know the things things like that that we need to make sure that we're not all correct information is gathered as early on as possible within the limits of the timescales to make sure that you know any crisis that somebody's facing is met as quickly as it needs to be on that point because I jotted these things down thank you Beth but I can't remember who said what but in this written evidence submission from various people there's two things that I mentioned one is the suggestion of somehow having a definition of application and the other one was should in fact there be a legislative duty to accept and record all applications which might take away from that pre-application discouragement and I just wonder if we could explore that a wee bit further please Colleagues of any comments I've got. I'm sure the second point was us and we do still have no we are still seeing cases coming up and one of the things we'll see is because we provide secondary advice we'll be given case studies by advisors of them arguing the decision maker into accepting an application in order to reject it and then you wonder about what happens with an unsupported applicant whether they're put off and and I think at times the discussion with local authorities seemed almost to be missing the point a wee bit because one of the comments was that once an application is recorded on our north gate system it's passed straight to the decision maker but the point about gatekeeping is that you're not getting to the point of having an application registered so you don't have the right to request a review so I do think that that's still a live issue and it is something which is getting better but we're seeing it in different ways as well now there's a very recent case study to our advice though where somebody was awarded a crisis grant because they were in that so common situation of challenging an ESA decision no benefit in payment but told that they could not be awarded a repeat application for a crisis grant until they had a qualifying benefit in payment and you can read the guidance end to end and you will not see that information so it was awarding it but gatekeeping a future application if you like so putting somebody off and coming back if the crisis wasn't resolved on that point convener I wonder if anyone has any examples of local authorities where there are specific problems in this particular area because I think what would be interesting for us convener is we've heard from the local authorities that they have a combination of staffing now doing this work in some cases it's revenue and benefits officers in some cases it's welfare rights officers in some cases it's a combination of those and some others now it would be really interesting to see if the best practice is coming from areas where there are specific team makeup if you like because some of these folks will have been more used to applications than others and I wonder if maybe you know if there is any examples that folk have got of where it is working particularly well where it is not and if we could find out what combination of folks they've moved in because there may actually be a best practice already out there. Ken, do you want to bring in some questions? To continue the issue that we've raised in the previous session which is about this idea of offering cash versus inclined benefits and a number of organisations on the table commenting on this I think Housing Action Scotland 1. We don't seem to be using this bill as an opportunity to end this form of stigmatising. Do you have a worry about that, perhaps Jules? It just doesn't seem to answer all the questions if you're giving somebody a voucher and we're kind of treating people like they're unable to make their choices with a voucher. There was some work done by I think Phil Brown and Salford University recently on individual budget systems. Now people at the real end of kind of complex needs they were offered I think it was £2,000, £3,000 each to help help themselves out of whatever point they were at and the average spend was about £400 per person. People are really savvy with money and I don't think that's what a voucher kind of enables people to do. With a voucher you're kind of almost forced to make best of that voucher to try and spend every penny of it at that given time as well. You don't get money back for the voucher to kind of go well I can't carry everything today so I'll come back in tomorrow or maybe I'm not sure that this actually comes to the total amount of spends so I'll come back tomorrow or you know avoid that embarrassment so we just seem to be kind of moving away from the trust element and giving somebody a whole host of problems which as we can see from the figures not everybody's actually then choosing to use the vouchers probably as a result of that yes stigmatisation but also just it doesn't work for them or they've not got the money to get to the place that the voucher needs to be spent and I could go on about this for hours if you want me to. Some of the local authorities were saying that as evidence to support their decisions not to use vouchers rather than cash they're saying that people if you offer bus tickets they don't get used which is evidence that I wasn't quite sure that meant that they declined the offer of the award if they didn't want it in the first place if they had offered goods and kind they sometimes sold them on there are a number of repeat users was evidence that actually you know they weren't using the money effectively I haven't seen I was a bit taken by that evidence because I'm not sure that's evidence that we shouldn't be trying to develop trust you know maybe we should be helping offering more help to those particular individuals it didn't strike me but what perhaps what struck me is that if we're baiting the entire system on those few individuals then perhaps we're getting things the wrong way around when we're basing things on such a small minority can we look at that minority and say okay you're likely to have an addiction where you to be in that minority what are you going to do with that voucher your or your the goods okay you're going to sell it on it's not that the voucher is not going to stop you getting a hit you might just get less of a and need to go shoplifting as well or your child was maybe managing to get some of the money and the hit being taken but this case actually maybe the child doesn't benefit you know it's kind of it's not that you're taking that minority out of the equation and solving everything it's just that the you're almost making a black market of vouchers which seems to to really go against so many people that would benefit from from cash that they could use so wisely so yeah it doesn't really weigh up yes i was just going to echo what joe's was saying there many of the individuals that we work with are coming out of custody and the idea of applying for a loan anecdotally the feedback we have is that they would not they would not apply it's likely to dissuade them from applying that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have the needs that could be met but that they would not generally speaking apply for a loan i think the issue around how money is spent is and the concern that it might be miss spent a grant might be miss spent is a reasonable point to make certainly some of the individuals have addiction problems haven't budgeted properly i need assistance with that that kind of activity learning to manage the money properly and that's part of the work that our staff do with them so i think in somebody i think cash or goods might be preferable to certainly loans i think you know if there's going to be good provision it has to be about choice and coming back to the local authority session there was a sort of suggestion that one authority was offering visits to someone's home from energy advisers to people who needed support with fuel costs and and that's quite invasive and if that's a condition of accepting your energy voucher that's that's not to say that somebody's not got no money to put in the electricity meter it's it just didn't seem to be making the point and it's i think again with supermarket vouchers is there's some real concern there in terms of as jules said you know whether you can actually get to the supermarket to spend it um if it's restricted in terms of the goods that people can buy to you know that stereotypical idea that people are just going to go and buy some booze and bags with it then that's going to cost local authorities and it's going to have an administrative cost for them and we also have been getting kind of worrying examples of people who are on the phone taking applications saying our authority does food and clothing vouchers what you are asking for is not that and it it's potentially an issue about whether this person was clear that you could also apply for a community care grant and a crisis grant in the same call but the idea that you know your need does not fit within these boxes and it's led by what we've got a book of vouchers for sitting in our office as to what the the fund can help with which is really concerning I think when we asked disabled people about this they were actually quite divided on it there were a number of them could actually understand that bulk purchasing might make the fund go go further and and therefore more people would be helped etc um but there were also there was a there was a huge concern around stigma uh stigmatisation especially a voucher scheme one woman and this is this is a real story one woman was given a voucher sent along to a department store in a small you know town in the highlands where she went up to the cash desk and handed across the voucher and said I'm here to make you know to get something with this and the woman taking the voucher used the tanoi to say could a supervisor or manager please come to this till we've got one of those welfare payments in again right to the whole store across the tanoi you know and you you can understand how that woman felt had mental health problems already now everybody knows her business everybody knows um what she was there for etc so you know um although there was a division the opinion most people actually didn't like the idea vouchers particularly because of the stigma store cards might be slightly better but I understand all the problems going back to being the highlands or rural parts of scotland how do you get to the place where you can actually use the card I mean I actually think you know if you can use it in a city etc um and it's not a huge distance between the stores and you can get more for it great but um again the lacking choice for disabled people was was a really big issue um again we had examples of people being told you can get this bed because that's the beds we've bulk purchased but you can't get a bed that meets your needs because you you've got a back that needs a special mattress etc and and that's just a wasting money if you're supplying something that doesn't meet the person's needs because they're going to have to get something else in the future probably through the social work department getting an adapted bed etc whereas if it could be done you know with that grant when they first move into the house then then it's done because you can wait months for an adaptation unfortunately same way a cooker where somebody of short stature um you know could not use the cookers that had been purchased because he needed a low level one so it there has to be built in the optionary choice um if if goods are going to be provided and say yeah we understand you're going to use bulk purchasing but it must meet the needs of the individual that's making the application saying there really that um it really has to be appropriate to the needs of of um the individual and i think you know that that operates at two different stages really there's um i mean we have come across one or two stories where people are being offered vouchers but the only way they can receive the vouchers let alone go and spend it is either by email or by post now if you don't have an email address that's very difficult and if you're in crisis you can't wait two or three days for the post to arrive um so you know there's that stage and then you know we've also got stories about people who've been supplied with with completely inappropriate goods for their needs and and actually just as bill says you know that's that's a value for many issue if you're going to have to then re go back to that place pick up the furniture go and deliver something else you know that's that's just wasting wasting time and resources just to say that it's not that we're we're against the kind of furniture package side of things as well it really is it's the actual vouchers but the furniture package side of things i mean actually going back six or seven years scott robertson from quarriers it was here earlier him and i sat and i looked at their drum chapel model that was allowing furniture packages to go to for young people moving into their to their tenancies and we said wouldn't that be wonderful if everybody had that as an option but it's the option and the choice and for the backup plan not to fall into to kind of vouchers but i just want to make it clear that homeless action scotland's not saying no to furniture packages we're saying no to to vouchers well just picking up because that was kind of the point i was going to try to get to the bottom of leaving to one side the issue of vouchers and the stigma and all the other very good points that have been raised in connection with vouchers going back to furniture and anything else that a council local authority can do not necessarily as a purchase in terms of an economy of scale going to bill's point about meeting the individual needs but rather the local authority is a perhaps more powerful purchaser in the sense that they may be able to secure a better deal and therefore going back to the point that that allows more money to stay in the fund to to help more people is that really then at jules point the last point that she made there is that what you would all kind of agree on that furniture packaging if it meets people's needs of course is a reasonable proposition but vouchers might be for some people a step too far is that am I picking this up correctly yeah i think it's about where someone's choice and where it better meets needs and i think it's important to recognise there are good practice examples out there i'm i think i was talking to the head of Scottish welfare fund at North Lanarkshire but don't quote me if that's not correct and he was talking about how they do have standard goods but where somebody expresses a need for adapted goods they will go through their own occupational therapy department and the budget from the welfare fund will be used to pay for something sourced through occupational therapy which meets that person's needs so that is an example of good practice but the key thing is that that authority has decided to to go beyond you know what would really be on the face of this bill because what's on the bill at the moment is you choose whether it's cash or kind and there's nothing to suggest that it has to meet needs on the face of the bill so you know to make the good practice the consistent practice across scotland i think that's what's needed that before an authority can award anything in kind whether it be store card vouchers or items they have to consciously consider whether that's what the person needs just to reinforce some of what's already been said which was about the point about came up in the last session about local authorities even within the one local authority having dialogue and working together and the example that john just mentioned which may have been North Lanarkshire is one of where discretion can be used wisely but certainly from from some experience i've had in related issues the theory might be there but the practice is often very very different and the length of time it can take for separate departments to actually get together and come to a decision let alone separate providers such as perhaps the health service and the local authority working together can take even longer and in the context of the kind of grants we're talking about that's very problematic so it is about good practice modelling and local authorities learning as well how that should be better done yes it's just to expand because i think the difficulty is that i'm not sure the the correct principles are there for at the heart of the bill here that's worries me i heard jimmy wales the fund of wikipedia on the radio yesterday he was saying that his assumption was that we should we should make our assumptions based on the fact that most people are good and decent you know of every 1000 people 990 are actually good and that should be the founding principle here and yet i think as john charges points out there's all sorts of judgmental decisions being made here in in meeting people's needs and i think i think Duncan i think you gave an example that at the moment i think you gave an example that one of the young people had left care their social media activities were scrutinised is that right and actually their their application was declined because of that is that right yeah no we spoke to a number of young people who's always do this and i'm more than happy to get in front of this committee they're very keen to do that that's a side issue i was i was listening to that conversation around vouchers and goods and all the rest and what happens here and i think there's an issue about care experience young people because i was looking at the the evidence in terms of the vulnerabilities of people who've made applications to this fund in the last financial year and it said one percent are actually care leavers but it also said that 26 percent were homeless nine percent were offenders 54 percent had mental health problems and 14 percent had addictions but then i know that um if you look at your homeless population 20 to 30 percent of them are care leavers if you look at your young your young offenders in polmon any one time up to 80 percent of that population are care leavers and we know that one half the young people are leaving care at 16 will have a significant mental health problem so the fact we've only been able to identify that one percent of those above were actually care leavers means we did not identify the care leavers and the care experienced people which is a significant issue because they are different although they may well have a lot of those issues that they're trying to contend with those behaviour traits to degree are a consequence in large of being part of the care system and it's good it was mentioned earlier and Kevin was talking about the care experienced people in terms of in this parliament has looked to do quite a lot with through the education culture committee and the children young people's act that's been passed is that this type of initiative and scrutinising looking where how is this impacting care experienced people and to make sure firstly that it is and this bill marries up with the guidance that's currently being written in parts 9 10 and 11 which is around corporate parenting duties which is on continuing care and after care which means young people can now stay in care up to 21 and get significant support to 26 there's no point in having a parallel system for those young people who may will have severe needs when they're leaving care and have a bunch of issues in terms of what care represented and meant to them and at the same time with the support that will come in through the great moves in legislation achieved at the beginning of this year through continuing care and after care and having a welfare reform Scottish welfare fund that doesn't marry up with that and what was hearing in this in terms of is care experienced people there's two requirements we need to recognise in basic terms they need or lack a stable loving constructive relationship that can help them guide their way through life so if you to give them a grant whether it's a crisis grant or a community grant to set up a flat how has this been related to the care identity in terms of have they had one of these already and why did that flat breakdown why did that you know accommodation breakdown and what support has been given to them because the people who are administering this local authorities are the corporate parent and that's come in so what is that corporate parent doing when they get the phone call for the crisis grant isn't to reject the application says Mark Ballard said from Bernardo's we should this should be a red flag to us in terms of saying right okay let's look at giving you the support because you're not going to be able to go to your mum's house to get your dinner tonight or be able to get your wash and done or maybe sleep there red flag let's get the support but then who in the other side of this someone mentioned the local authorities communicating with each other where are we making sure that you're getting some support that you have this relationship that's going to hold you otherwise you're in extremely vulnerable position and it was the case with a young lad who talked about the fact that he went through this process in general low self-esteem and then he found out that when they rang him back after doing a bit of an investigation they'd been on his facebook page which hadn't been updated and I had said no that he was rejected on the kind of historical information that hadn't been updated in his facebook page and that's what was seen as grounds for um rejecting his application so our general appeal is that we need to again see this not just as one percent and an issue but the significant headache for us because of corporate parents we know that this population there only 1.5% of our whole population are significantly overrepresented in all of these issues and in using this fund but it's a real demonstration of what we're getting wrong in Scotland that we can't even identify them and they feel so stigmatised that they won't say they're care experienced when they're on the phone call to the advisor because they believe that it's going to be as it's always felt to them going to be not beneficial for their application so I don't know if that answers your question. Can we go on off on one? May I move on to another topic just I have to see that everybody's spoken very forcefully with that point and I'm thankful for that. Second point was about about outsourcing which again the number of a number of you commented on I think just John you just start with whether or not this idea of privatising these services should be desirable. Clearly against it we think the welfare fund should be a matter for government provision not private sector and if there is the decision taken to take that forward as a clause in the bill then it really has to have some kind of safeguarding. It's almost like another area where you can't quite tell what the bill is getting at because it feels like it could be aimed potentially at the smaller local authorities establishing a joint welfare fund. I mean that's explicitly permitted but I think there's a world of difference between Clacks and Falkirk going in together as two smaller local authorities and having private sector contractors delivering the welfare fund and profiting from it and in the local authority session something else I noticed was this kind of idea that one of the people giving evidence was talking about the third sector and specifically mentioning citizens advice and as a former citizens advice advisor there's a real issue there because you know if you're advocating for somebody and supporting them to make an application you lose your ability to do that on any level if you're also involved in deciding that application and that is a real issue you know in terms of just the idea that coming back to what Lynn said in the first session the third sector might be expected to pick things up so I think there's a number of issues with it and we think just generally it should be a matter for government to deliver this because it is such a vital service. Just on the point about citizens advice I think we would be very very very nervous about anything like that. In terms of the kind of wider points what it seems to say in the bill is talking about administering the welfare fund and it's not clear whether that's about administering the delivery of goods and that kind of thing or it's actually administering the kind of the application process and that kind of thing which I think you know needs to be much clearer. I think one of our other concerns about outsourcing is accountability and transparency and how you make sure that it works for the applicants and that it's all too often you get this situation where people just bounce between well you know that that's not our local authority saying that's not our responsibility it's the contractors and the contractor saying well we've not had the email from them you know and all those kind of things so you need to have a very very clear system of transparency if that is something that you're going to consider. Can I just come back tiny point on that as well the bill has drafted if it was outsourced it doesn't appear that there's any ability to review decisions if a fund was outsourced to a third party rather than a local authority so you know lots of issues. What John said I'm an ex welfare worker as well and it would have destroyed our credibility in the local community if we were making decisions on whether people got social fund loans or grants because you know nobody would have come to us thereafter with problems in other areas because they would have seen us as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. You can't be a determined advocate on somebody's behalf and then switch off and become this objective discretionary decision maker it just wouldn't work and I'm also worried about you know the idea that the third sector might be able to bid for contracts but the private sector wouldn't since when's that's european law you know you know as soon as you open the door to the third sector bidding to do this for a local authority you're opening the door for the private sector as well and all the disabled people's experience of the private sector in terms of ethos, capital etc delivery of the PIP assessments is an absolute disaster area and it's partially because of the public sector's inability to draw up contracts that actually are meaningful because you know the estimate was that each assessment would take 40 minutes and that 75% of them would be to you know this is the PIP assessments would take place face to face in practice 95% of face to face and they take an average of two hours now that's bad drafting on the public sector's point of view and it's poor provision on the private sector because they end up with a mess trying to sort that out so you know as I say our experience has been been an absolute disaster area and we don't want to see it privatised in any way shape or form. We would also be thinking that on the terms of signposting where you to have say three local authorities that chose to opt out and take it another route then what do you do as signposting to somebody oh well actually everybody else is doing it through their local authority but oh let me just check no not yours that really makes it quite difficult to just do nice clear signposting it also doesn't send out the best of messages to somebody saying oh because what your local authority didn't have the wherewithal to actually go ahead and do it but the other however many have done it so on a message front on an on consistency not brilliant but actually signposting and getting somebody the advice quickly I think that I'll add an extra layer of difficulty within that. Observation I think we would make is that giving local authorities the power to jointly administer the funds may actually be a useful but a flexibility as long as the proper arrangements were made to scope out need scope out where that need is greatest and target those resources accordingly might be very might work actually quite well I think it touches on the point that mrs Ewing made about the greater purchasing power that local authorities might have if they combine that together notwithstanding some of the earlier contributions that were made around goods via vouchers and how people might respond to that but I think the bigger issue is around local authorities administrating administratively managing it is that it chimes with a lot of the work that they already do in terms of the policy imperatives of the bill providing a safety net and helping individuals remain in their communities local authorities already appear to be doing a lot of that work anyway so there is a nice synergy there and possibly some of that might be lost or interrupted if it were a private or third party agency that was providing the service. Yes I don't want to. I had a question it was picking up on a point made in the first session I think it was the representative made Scotland about the overall resources for the welfare fund and looking at the submission from Inclusion Scotland the point is made and I quote unless the Scottish Government acquired new revenue sources and or powers over benefit conditions it is difficult to envisage how this increasing column resources to meet short term need can ever be quotations fully addressed that was in response to a question I think from the the committee in terms of people's concerns submissions and I just wonder if Bill could expand on that because that you know all the points we've been discussing are very important points in terms of detail but also an equally important point is the context within which this all sits which is a resource issue as well something we we would definitely support SCVO in terms of looking for a review of how the welfare funds operating in the context of the background changes benefit sanction regime and the welfare reform committee will be very familiar with this has got a lot more punitive in the last 18 months than it was before the number of sanctions has increased dramatically the length of the sanctions has increased dramatically and people can now be sanctioned for up to three years now that means you know that there are going to be people in the system who are in constant need and and this fund isn't established for people who are in constant need it will make three payments a year maximum and there are people who are living on far far less than what the government defines above the line now expected to live in it for at least three months a year three years you know increasingly we'll see that occurring and a lot of the people that are being sanctioned are young people leaving care etc disabled people etc those least able to negotiate the rest of the system and and more likely to be reliant on a local authority for help etc so that's why we say we don't think the need can be met and it's another reason why we would like to see every application recorded because we need to measure the unmet need we need to find out what the fund isn't able to resource as well as what the fund has been able to resource because you know some local authorities are spending up to and and just over what they're getting as their budget other authorities aren't and and I'd like to know why because because we know that the need exists so you know we would we'd like to find out more about who isn't having the needs met and why you know because of repeat applications etc to find out you know how we respond as a society in scotland to to that increase in the level we need following on from that to a degree you know one one area of massive concern for us is the issue of families under exceptional pressure which was more than half of the community care grant budget I know the figures are not directly comparable but the fact that you know only 20% of community care grant applicants are are under that heading and that tends to be the people who are from anecdotal personal experience most reluctant to deal with the local authority terrified that any sort of suggestion they're struggling to pay the bills is going to mean that there'll be social work involvement I don't see that as a correct perception at all it's just the way that people see the system and it feeds into the kind of what's on the face of the bill in terms of defining the parameters of the scheme so an example from the guidance is that um there's no specific ability to work community care grants for travel costs and we've got case studies of people who have travel costs to go and visit relatives in hospital who are told that these are not eligible because they don't fit within maintaining a settled way of life as it's seen by that decision maker so I think there's there's an important point there in terms of making sure that the needs are met by the groups that the guidance quite clearly intends to meet the needs of and if we're um on the face of the bill at the moment it's families facing exceptional pressure is taking a back seat and the statistics appear to be showing that families with children are applying less than they were for community care grants under the old system. According to me that it's an issue that I don't think we've addressed in either a session which has relevance to a point and that is the issue of the DWP hardship payments or whatever the current terminology is and I just wonder what's the experience of of you guys in the front line is that happening is it happening the way it should just their signposting what's the current state of play because it's a relevant issue as we look at the needs of people who are in extremis? I was lucky enough to hear David Webster speak last week and again he may be familiar to the committee and again on his you know looking at the figures and freedom of information requests for the DWP he thinks that only about 25% of those who are currently sanctioned are receiving the hardship payment which means 75% aren't so they are living on on very very little or if anything at all so you know that there is definitely an issue there and you know people say people aren't starving to death in this country but you know one disabled person has started it and ex-servicemen has died because you know he couldn't keep his insulin cold enough etc because he couldn't afford energy for his fridge these things are happening and you know the hardship payments are quite you know strictly defined who will receive them and not everybody will qualify for a hardship payment and one of the questions we asked bureau advisors was about hardship payments and whether people are aware of them when they come to bureau I can't remember what the statistics are from top of my head but certainly the majority felt that people were not aware of hardship payments and weren't being aware of that process and the appeals process when they were at the job centre I think it's worth remembering that unless you are categorised as a vulnerable person you can't get a hardship payment for the first 14 weeks of 14 days of a sanction anyway so you're always going to have that two-week gap the Oakley report is due to improve communications around hardship and we hope that that will work we will be monitoring that but you know you know 71 pounds is not a lot to live on a week anyway when you cut that by 40% that's you're going to be struggling and if you've got you know any other pressures we're beginning to see people who are who are getting into debt because of of benefits and that's you know that's one of the biggest areas of debt that we're seeing increasing at the moment so I think you know that that is a real live issue I think the other issue that I would probably flag up is is mandatory reconsiderations particularly around employment support allowance so people who have decided to challenge their employment support allowance decision and can't get a payment during that period if they are able to declare themselves fit for work then they may be able to claim job seekers but otherwise they're often struggling to get money we've seen quite a few applications to the Scottish welfare fund as a result of that and you know people are are in some cases waiting weeks or even months to get a mandatory reconsideration decision made does anyone have anything they want to add that might not have been covered so far or something they want to add to which was maybe mentioned earlier or even in the earlier panel that they want to come in ken do you want to I think that's a very few questions Bill Scott you mentioned earlier that 40% of attas decisions are overturned and in the previous session we heard from the SCVO that 60% of the tier 1 reviews are 59% are overturned and 54% of the tier 2 what what can we conclude or what should we what does that say about the system at the moment slightly I have to say concerns me it's difficult to say because the numbers are so low that are going to first tier and setting tier but it does indicate at least the local authorities are prepared to reconsider and and do so relatively quickly and in most cases there are some lengthy waits for a review but in most cases they've been carried out relatively quickly and you know it's a difficult one because obviously you want to get right first time but it is a new system and one of the advantages of the independent review service was again the directions that were given improved the quality of decision making over time which is is really importantly a discretionary fund you know to somebody having an oversight and seeing you know where things are maybe going wrong and saying well you can sort that out by doing this for now on collecting a species information etc can be really really helpful getting the decisions right in the first place and of course the person who's in crisis wants the decision made as quickly as possible and it to be the right one but you know if if they're not receiving a payment they're going to want to see you know it reviewed quickly and a new decision arrived at so you know I'm quite hopeful that you know the local authorities there is a lot of good world there's some bad practice but there is a lot of good practice as well and you know I've heard local authorities where they are taking a very holistic approach with applications and actually you know not sharing information you know without the applicants permission but sharing information with the applicants permission so that other local authority services can come into play and help that person over the longer term rather than just in the crisis period at the round. Absolutely agree with but I think it's about the balance between the need to make a decision and the requirement for evidence and I got the impression from reading the transcript from last week that a lot of the local authority reps seem to be thinking you need evidence in every single case even if it's the first time you've applied for a crisis grant the idea that you know if you've applied three times this month because you've lost your wallet they might want to see a pink slip from the police and that seems fairly reasonable but why would you in every case insist on evidence and I think there is a potential issue with the bill as well where it talks about two days after all the evidence required has been received to decide a crisis grant so that's not even apply on Friday decision on Tuesday apply on Friday get evidence three weeks time decision the following Tuesday so there's a real balance to be struck in terms of crisis grants and I think potentially what's happening is local authorities are saying we have to have this kind of evidence to be able to award this grant to you and that's not available at the time the decision is taken and then the person is aware of this because that's why the decision's been refused and they're getting it so you could reduce that amount by perhaps thinking more about what evidence is actually required and why it's why somebody can't get it immediately and hopefully make decisions both more quickly and more appropriately in terms of what you're asking people to get I think it would be a bit daft of us to compare the atos situation and the situation of of these current grants from the Scottish welfare fund mainly because atos and the DWP decision makers have got a fairly long time normally to gather up additional information or pre-information and it's rightly been pointed out folks need a decision in these cases very very quickly again if we look at the evidence last week from the local authorities we heard some hard point of views about evidence gathering and some softer point of views and what was required and again I think you know we should go back to the local authorities and find out where best practice actually lies because it did seem to me last week that two local authorities seemed to take a harder line than others who gave evidence here and that's maybe just my perception of what was said but you know again I think one of the things which we probably need to look at is what is the mix of the folks who are actually carrying out the initial stage of all of this because I think we'll probably find that there is a right mix in terms of the folks who are involved in their previous backgrounds to getting us almost right every time. I think the secret to success in this may lie within practice and local authorities and we do have the interim legislation that's been in place and it appears that there is mixed practice and mixed experience and I think best practice is probably out there if we look hard enough for it. One thing that a lot of public bodies do when they're operating a gatekeeping system is put some of the least experienced and least knowledgeable staff on the telephone and that's the wrong way to approach things. Anybody that runs an advice service would say that giving advice over the telephone is actually much much harder because you do need to ask the right questions and get the right information right from the outset to be able to determine where you're going to go with it so that you know this is things people can learn from one another because I think if they put experienced staff in that gatekeeper role you're much more likely to get good decision-making at the back of them rather than the other way around where people's been put off before they can actually get to the to actually make an application and again as a disabled people's organisation we would like to see all applicants get a decision in writing or an appropriate form of communication for them in line with their needs to understand what the basis of the decision was and one final contribution from you Duncan. The point that I'd make was to reiterate that the area of what research was done on behalf of this and looking at this fund it didn't talk to one care leaver and just to reiterate this point that they've gone unnoticed really in terms of unrecognised within the use of this fund and how they access it and I would like that to be reviewed and more than happy to what was the civil service etc on that but it also leads we've done we've given a quality of evidence to education culture committee and recently the equal opportunities committee using care experience young people themselves who actually live this we can articulate a lot of the issues but we don't to degree it's not necessarily our own lived experience I'm very happy to offer that to this committee too or individuals within it that want to come out and speak to people who've been using the fund etc too in terms of how we could get that to work that was just an offer we wanted to make I'm sure there's other groups too there's disability etc that we're planning to do that in the 28th of October that's going great okay so again consensus breaks out all around even between the conservators and the SNP this morning so we've had a very successful session I think I've certainly been well informed by the contributions from you also thanks very much for coming along and as I said to the other panel if having taken part this morning you go away and think I wish I'd said that or I've got more information please send it to us because the more information we have the better we can scrutinise and inform the process of the bill okay but thanks very much to everyone I'll suspend for a couple of minutes to allow the panel to to leave and we'll move into private session for our final item