 S precisegau i gyd yn y thyf, a wnaeth am y flyniadau i gael eu ffynanc iawn i dyn nhw'r cyffredinol a'r S positions i'r Gyffredinol. Felly, i gael'u ardennill y ffordd cyffredinol yw ddwylai, yr ystafell, mae gyda Llywodraeth yn mynd i gael eich gwaith i gael eich gwaith i gael eich gwaith i gael. Be gweithas, Fyllfa, mwy o gwybod i gael eich gael ddwylai rôl i gael i gael ei gael i'r gweithio i ydyntau ei hynny. The first item on today's agenda is to take evidence from two panels of witnesses on post-legislative scrutiny of aspects of the financial memorandum for the Children and Young People Scotland Bill, now the 2014 act. First panel, I welcome to the meeting Sarah Waters and Matthew Sweeney. Matthew Sweeney is attending virtually from COSLA, the Convention for Scottish Local Authorities, and David Robertson chief financial officer of Scottish Borders Council. Good morning to you all and we're going to move straight to two questions. What are the interesting things I found about the vast number of documents that we were provided with for this particular meeting was that on 25 June 2021 COSLA leaders agreed that from this financial year a single standard formula should be used to distribute funding between local authorities. I'm just quite astonished as to why that hasn't happened before now and indeed is that going to happen in this financial year? Yeah, I'm happy to answer that. Thank you Mr Gibson. I think we had got to a place in 2018 where we had a multi-year funding agreement and I think that the history is probably well known that the officer's recommendation at that time was for a needs-based formula for the ELC funding but COSLA leaders at that time took the decision to distribute based on the returns that had been made. At that time I think the advantage, well the situation we were in was that there was discussions on a multi-year funding agreement and that is extremely important because what that did was it gave three years of stability for the expansion of ELC and actually you know David will testify that having that stability is extremely useful when you're planning service expansion on this scale. So that was the decision that leaders took at that time, it was a political decision and what we've sought to do is work through the ELC finance working group, which is a joint working group between local government and Scottish government to actually look at the scale of the funding because we're actually talking about a significant sum of funding, so the expansion funding was just over half a billion pounds, if you look at ELC funding in totality it's almost a billion pounds and actually we want to see that move to needs-based funding distribution because overall what it's doing is it's allowing councils to respond to the needs in their area based on formula but I think that has to be done on a transitional basis because you have set up service structures that can't just be unpicked easily because you've set up a whole service delivery infrastructure within each local area and what we need to do is make sure that there's a smooth transition to the formula which would always be to be honest the view of COSA that we should be distributing based on needs-based formula. So that was certainly on the revenue side, capital for expansion was different because there are a number of local factors that play into the needs of a local area in terms of its capital expansion programme for ELC. Yeah, it just seems very difficult from my perspective just looking at it as a kind of layperson if you like looking in on this as to how the spend can be effectively monitored if everyone effectively has different methods appears of actually assessing how the how this funding is calculated so that's why I was asking that I'm sure colleagues will want to explore that further. I mean one of the things that being in the finance committee from 2011 to 2016 when we deliberated over this it was significant at the time was not only the difficulty in obtaining best estimates but there was a bit of tension as there often is between Scottish Government and COSLA as to how much should be allocated to this and it appears that what seems to be interesting about this is that for example over the three years 2014-15 to 2017 councils received 329 million additional revenue for providing early childcare but they only increased their spending on LLN childcare by £189 million. So a low COSLA said that the view didn't account for the need for council efficiencies etc etc that's quite a huge difference and basically in 2018 a report highlighted inconsistencies in how councils compare local financial return information so and if we go on further in actual fact I may as well say say in the same question is that in the current financial year over a billion pound has been allocated and yet expenditure looks like it's going to be 935 million so it appears that throughout this process the amount of money that's actually been set towards this policy appears to be more than has actually been required is that the case at all or would you dispute that? I think I've probably let David come in on this one but I think that the local government accounts are large and complex and I think ELC sits as a service within a structure of delivery so we have administrative functions we have finance functions HR in the case of ELC there are there is support that happens within councils and actually within council accounts it you know there isn't an ELC there isn't a specific ELC line within some of these these accounts it sits within a much wider range of services and each council has its setup will be slightly different so it may be that social work there are some services that sit within social work some within education but I think I'll let David come in on on the the actual structure of the accounts which might be more helpful yeah because that's clear an issue that we're obviously trying to highlight the fact there seem to be different ways of counting this and you know they come in different budget lines etc etc it makes it very difficult to look at how the policy is being implemented from a financial perspective or not so much about the policy but obviously about how how this is being implemented financially if you know all different councils different councils have different methods of actually counting this I mean how do we know if the money is being spent effectively accurately and consistently across Scotland Mr Robertson so we all follow a standard process to the LFR in return of the local financial term that councils submit each year and that's prescribed in terms of guidance around how we account for costs including the cost costs for the early year services where you tend to get an element of variabilities in terms of the allocation of central support overheads but the majority of direct costs are fully accounted consistently by councils through the LFR and are fully auditable and transparent I suppose what I would say is that the major policy initiative around early years was a very very large and complicated undertaking I think you'll be aware we're now providing services to 111,000 I think it is two three four and five year olds across Scotland and the planning and implementation of that has been a very very complicated process when you start off on these massive initiatives there are estimates that are put into place in terms of the staffing models that you're going to have to implement to deliver these services the capital expenditure that you're going to have to put in place to expand provision and those estimates were used to inform the initial costs around the programme I think it's probably fair to say that at this juncture that the 600 hours the provision that was made available for that initially was adequate to deliver the policy initiative and we've subsequently successfully then gone on to deliver the 1140 hours commitment through a different funding model which has been based around specific grant rather than the GAE mechanism. Okay, I mean thank you very much for that I mean what Spice have said is it's not clear how any concerns around the accuracy of the financial memorandum estimates were reflected the initial allocations for the expansion of ELC or how later allocation methodologies have been developed to reflect variation in models of delivery do you think that's a fair assessment? I think what we can say is that the model of funding for ELC provision has changed over time from one where money was put into the financial settlement to deliver a policy commitment around 600 hours to one which has been based around specific grant and therefore there is direct accounting for that specific grant in terms of the expansion of the policy to 1140 so I think the change in the way that the policy has been funded probably reflects those concerns that you've outlined Mr Gibson. Okay and back to my initial question really which I think I received an answer on is do you feel that this has been overfunded because I mean all the funding that the information we seem to have as every time is an allocation there always seems to be a surplus at the end of the financial year including this financial year although I know that it's ring fenced it says and so can't be used for anything else which seems a bit odd if there's a £1,006 million allocation and a £935 million projected spend that would tell me there's £71 million there can you maybe talk me through those figures? So where we have a specific grant allocated by by government that has to be applied to the purposes that are set out in the grant letter and if we can't spend the money on that purpose then it's carried forward in terms of in terms of our books so that that money is still available and can't deliver the policy intent and can be repaid at the request of ministers if requested. Hi but has there been an under-spender? I mean has there more money been allocated because we don't see anything here by saying oh the cause I looked for x amount we got y and we should have had z ie z being more than y but it looks as if an actual fact from the figures we've got that this year it seems to be anything underfunded and there was clearly underestimates sorry overestimates of the number of children that would actually qualify because which I find bizarre given the fact that you know how many three or four year olds are going to have in the population when they're actually born okay they might move a few might move around a district or they could emigrate you know if parents could emigrate of course okay you know so there's always going to be an element of flexibility in those figures but there seems to be a significant underestimate sorry overestimate the number of children which is meant to over allocation of funds which is meant that there's actually been more money available than has been required is that the case so it's somewhat strangely I would say what we're still quite early days in terms of the implementation of this policy and early days in terms of the the circumstances that we've been facing around things like Covid now the implication of that that the pandemic on early years provision has been significant numbers of children who would be eligible to take up places have not decided to actually the parents have decided not to send them to to nursery during the pandemic and that will have impacted in terms of the cost of that provision what we are seeing the figures we've got suggest that 97 to 98 percent of parents have actually applied for it for three and four years and not only 50 percent of two-year-olds which is an issue of course of 50 percent of eligible two-year-olds but the figures for for older children is extremely high you know I think sorry I think you're right the only point I was making there was was that the pandemic will have influenced parental decisions about the take-up of places now you're absolutely right in terms of the projections around birth rates and the number of eligible children but the number of children who actually come through in terms of nursery settings can be an entirely different position due to a variety of of factors yes excuse me when we were putting together the multi-year funding settlement the population the population projections were used I think it was the 2014 populations projections that were used at that time and again that allowed stability in the system I think what we've done through the finance working group is we've actually taken a look looking at the most up-to-date population information and absolutely we cannot deny the amount of of three and four-year-olds has gone down in Scotland and I think I think it says in the spice briefing it's around about eight and a half thousand less young young people who would three and four-year-olds who would have been eligible but actually what you can't do within a service that has as David said it's very early days in setting up a service on this scale you cannot just shave say four or five percent off your service delivery models so if you take the eight and a half thousand less three and four-year-olds for David that means probably about 150 160 young people across the whole of Scottish borders council area and you can't just say well we've got you know you can't just take little bits off your service you have a service delivery model you have commissioned services you have a setup and actually we're in year four or five of that if you look right back to 600 hours so I don't think it's as simple as saying there's less young people therefore you take funding out there are commitments made across the sector across a range of council settings that can't just be unpicked quickly and I think that's that's part of the move towards moving to formula needs-based funding that actually what you'll be looking at is distributing funding predominantly based on things like population, rurality and deprivation so actually the money will will work its way to the places that need but I suppose what we need to get to is a sustainable quantum of funding for delivery of the service going forward and that's what we've been doing working through the finance working group which actually I think has been a really a really good forum in which to to work through a range of issues complex issues that need addressed if we're going to see sustainable services going forward. Yeah I'm going to let Matthew in a wee minute because he's not spoken so far and I do appreciate obviously if you've got staff that are there for a hundred children and you get 98 you've still got the same number of staff I think we'll appreciate that but in terms of financial working group you know the new formula we base 75 percent in client numbers 20 percent deprivation 5 percent rurality but you talked about figures set in 2014 but the figure we have is that 39 million pound headroom has identified an ALC specific revenue grant the largest as a result of there being fewer children eligible for entitlement now it then projected in 2018 you know rather than 2014. So I think that I think that it's unfortunate this has been called headroom this I think what we had done through the finance working group is said if there was if there was any kind of flexibility within the the funding system or the delivery model that actually there were a couple of very important outcomes that we could focus on together one of the most important being uptake and I think you've mentioned the two-year-olds and the fact that uptake is not as we would want it to be because these are the hard to reach children and sometimes families that require support and I think what we see is ELC is the hook by which to engage with the family so we had hope that we could actually use any perceived headroom because it isn't even across Scotland you know there are some councils who have significant pressures there are others who there may be what has been perceived as headroom but I think what we were saying is that actually jointly we could work together to achieve better outcomes better child health better parental engagement employability so all the things that that surround ELC but unfortunately you know that there was a there was a cut to the to the ELC specific grant in 23 22 23 so it will be difficult to focus on on some of those outcomes but Matthew might want to say more about the outcomes that were developed because that kind of wanders into the policy territory as opposed to the finance okay last year thank you so I just wait to come off mute there happy to pick up on that I think that the one thing I was just keen to pick up on slightly that he was around appointed so David was talking around the impact of the pandemic on uptake and usage so I think quite rightly we're talking about 97 percent of the hundred and 11 thousand children are taking more than 600 hours but it's around 88 percent that are taking more than 11 are taking the full 1140 complement I think there's a question there for all of us about is that an impact of the sort of continued effects of the pandemic is that about new ways of working the fact that you know perhaps there's still more flexibility there's still working from home going on a lot of areas and we're not quite sure what that's going to look like you know six months a year down the line the office is returning more and more all the time so there's a question there I think we're not quite sure about how long some of that is going to continue to go on from the longer term I think absolutely the points that were made that Sarah was talking about around sort of this if there was space within local authority budgets then there are some key areas we think that they need to be worked on but that was also developed on the understanding that that wouldn't look the same in every single local authority and that in some local authorities they might have more space within their budget and others they wouldn't but absolutely if there was that space we'd be looking at things around uptake we'd be looking some of the stuff around Covid recovery what's been the impact of children young people you know speech and language we're seeing quite a lot coming through from recent public health statistics is a way that can be used to support that and then finally how do we continue our support for the sustainability of the our private and private sector partners as well okay thank you for that just one more question for me and I'm going to open up to colleagues around the table what's interesting is looking at partner provision you know because a lot of partner providers obviously have raised concerns about the roll-out of this because they feel in some areas for example they've been squeezed by local authorities but what we see for example is in Aberdeenshire the you know the the amount of spending on on the partner providers increasing from 20% in 2018-19 away up to 36% in 2021 whereas in Murray which would I thought wouldn't be that different in terms of rurality etc and in just neighbours obviously Aberdeenshire it's went from 55% of the same time period down to 43% so I'm just wondering if you can talk a wee bit about the relationship it's here with partner providers because I mean I can see also there's a differential between Orkney paying only £5 and Westlothian £6 an hour for partner providers I wonder if you can talk about the relationship about that and the impact on that sector and also child minding which is declined by more than a quarter since this policy came in yeah so I think the relationship with partner providers is absolutely critical to deliver this I mean you're talking in in most areas over a over 25% of delivery is through the the pvi sector so clearly it's it's absolutely critical that those local relationships are strong but they will not look the same in every area even as you've cited two neighbouring authorities the the pattern of commuting the the settlement structure all these things can be significantly different for two neighbouring areas you know take areas like Scottish borders and Eastlothian you know the settlement structure commuting etc is different in all of those areas I think the important thing about the ELC delivery is that there's a there's a legal duty to consult every two years on a local delivery plan that local delivery plan is the opportunity for all partners to to feed into what the plans are for the next two years which will then affect the commissioning so it's looking at what the situation is in each local area and what is required for that service going forward so I think that is actually really helpful within that structure because it keeps the the kind of relationship reasonably fresh and it makes it means that you have to consider what's the most appropriate provision for the next two year period and I think that's a really a really positive part of the the structure but I might pass to Matthew or David to I think Matthew wants to come in it's just it's just it's very dramatic some of the shifts in the space of two years I mean you know from 20 to 36 percent as I mentioned of the 55 down to 43 about that and also Matthew if you could touch on childminding absolutely so I think the first thing to say is globally across scotland the the number of partner providers delivering funding provision is actually higher than was initially envisioned during the sort of the initial planning of the expansion so I think we were looking originally that would be somewhere in the region I think about sort of 25 percent and we're now in the region of I think around 31 percent in the most recent figures so it there's not a squeeze in in a sort of a Scotland level and I think then it goes back to what Sarah was saying around that this is a parent led model that what we are trying to create here is based on what parents are asking for and that comes through the consultation process and that follows on then on to the sort of the funding falls the child model which says that any setting who's able to provide a price that's in line with the local delivery plan and that is willing to enter a contract with the local authority is able to provide in the funded entitlement provided that they meet this the quality standards that are set out within the national standard which was agreed jointly by the Scottish Government and caused that so I think that this is why we put people in the room sorry can you still hear me yes sorry just to say that some of that is going to be driven by parental demand and kind of what they are they will be looking for fundamentally yes so thank you chair get it guys that I mean the partner the partner providers in are absolutely crucial to the delivery of the policy across Scotland and my own authorities is no different to that we could not deliver the commitment to 1,140 years without the private and the voluntary sector delivering a very very significant element of a childcare provision in my own authority that's only 20% but that just reflects local local circumstances and the existence of of of these businesses and the what we tried to do very carefully during the pandemic is to ensure that businesses have survived and so that they're still able to deliver the services that the parents need in a post pandemic environment and we sought to expand the services that we've received for example from child binders in the borders so we now have nine additional registered child binders comparing pre and post post pandemic operating in the region and supporting the delivery of that of that policy and we've supported those providers during Covid as if their contracts were being fully fulfilled even if even if children were not actually able to attend nursery in order to ensure their sustainability recognising the importance of of of that provision to the to the overall policy intent but this was doing my last question but it was just because I haven't really had a good answer I think to the why is there such a variation in the hourly rate between the local authorities across local authorities I just think we don't have a standard formula and and these these rates are the subject of negotiation with local providers in my own authority the rate for two-year-olds will be 5.65 in 21 22 5.31 for three four and five-year-olds that will increase to 6.55 and 6.21 respectively backdated to august 2021 to ensure the sustainability of our providers going forward and and that's a negotiation with individual local providers and our early years teams but that negotiation goes on across across scotland is not done on a single consistent basis so you want to go in and see it and I think it is the subject of much discussion and I think it is it is set on a on a kind of transparent basis so each local authority has you know that the Scottish government through actually through the auspices of the finance working group information is collected every single year on these rates but I think it's unfortunate when they're presented as as kind of league tables it's what we're doing is creating structures that are appropriate locally and there will be variation there is always going to be somebody at the top of this and at the bottom of this but actually the focus for the council is on is on fair work across a range of sectors but provision does cost different amounts in different settings it you know it is not uniform and I think that it is such a complex policy and then you throw parental choice into that as well and I think it gets even more complex so I think there is a there's a lot of as I say quite rightly a lot of attention on this but I think councils are very open and transparent about the rates that they are setting each year okay we can one further but I want to let colleagues in first one will be Daniel to fall by less so I'd like to follow straight on in terms of that question about rates and then also what impact that has had on partner providers so while there is variation and if you look at the rates offered by different councils you'll see a one number come up rather a lot which is £5.31 which given the specificity if I can say that this time in the morning of that number and the number of times you see it that was the number that was arrived at by cosla was it not or could you or could you correct me where did that number come from and more most and more importantly how was that number derived so I think I'll bring matthew in at this point because he was involved in the in the work and the the creation of the 531 that everything sticks in everybody's mind actually it was slide before my time zero but yes so that had come from the Scottish Government had undertaken a national exercise for examining the water some of the costs that exist across Scotland for the costs of provision example that was undertaken by on the behalf in around 2016 which is where some of the sort of the origins of 531 had come from and that had fed in I think then as part of the the process it was something that was discussed although I'm not quite sure universally in the template exercise that we discussed earlier in terms of what went on I think more broadly on some of the points we'd want to make around rates is around the fact that we can't look at rates in and of themselves so in the document that Sarah mentioned which is collected annually it doesn't just go through what are the rates paid by its local authority but they also go through some of the in kind benefits that exist and so there'll be stuff that will exist perhaps that's around discounted or free lets whether that'll be about training and development whether that'll be about quality improvement there are a number of areas of local authorities which provide which are not financial but those are going to look different across different local authorities so we need to be really clear that we're not always creating apples with apples when we're looking at separate rates on sort of just that measure I think what we would say is and what we've been quite clear about the past is we have found some of the the rate setting process is quite challenging and some of that is to do is about getting the reliable robust and consistent information from partner providers locally and that's been something that local authorities have reported as being some of an issue about how they follow the guidance that was agreed between the Scottish Government and COSLA in 2018 on rate setting which sets out a number of models for this approach and it also sets out some of the principles that need to be taken into account that some of that is really reliant on getting good quality information across from your providers and that's why last year COSLA had agreed to support the the sort of a national cost collection exercise essentially an updated version of what had happened in 2016 again to kind of make sure that we are getting that good high quality information from providers across the country to make sure that we're kind of making decisions on on rate setting based on the best quality information now that's not saying that that national data point replaces your understanding of your local ELC market and also of your sort of your relationship with providers that's trying to make sure that we're injecting as much sort of good quality information we can to those processes to hopefully sort of make us into a much more space where this is starting to look a little bit closer and just now where I think you know I think there are some there are some some wide variations so I mean I think there's a flip side to the coin that you just set out which I totally understand that there's variability that different geographies have different factors there'll be different models but there's also an awful lot of consistent things if I was to come up with a high level cost stack for running an early learning setting you every setting will have staff costs those staff costs are set out in statute in terms of the minimum staff requirement I would then have a degree a requirement for overlap I'd have buildings costs in terms of rent I'd have utilities bills I'd have insurance what I'm guessing at is that you could have a relatively consistent approach for assessing those things but I just wonder does that exist has COSLA looked at that come up with a model costing rating because what what I am told by people in the independent sector that what what you're describing is is is not quite as straightforward what they're being asked to do is is is provide individual accounts which as private businesses I can understand the the reluctance and I just what I'm questioning is the degree of transparency behind how that 531 number and indeed the other ones have been arrived at so a few things I think the first one I would say is that there was a very clear process out in the 2019 guidance on setting of sustainable rates which was developed by Scotland Excel on behalf of the Scottish Government and agreed by the Scottish Government and COSLA which sets out those things but that also is quite clear that it asks transparency from local authorities but also equally it asks for that transparency of private providers in terms of their costs which is as you note an area of tension quite a lot and that's partly what I'm talking about when we had agreed to take part in this national cost collection exercise was commissioned by a third party to ensure that local authorities were not given any information on individual businesses but there was an amalgamation of some of those businesses at the level of detail and the level of consistency in terms of the data so that we were getting reliable information back. So you're saying that every local authority has published how they've arrived at their hourly rate, is that correct? Would you be able to point us to where those calculations have been published? I'm not able, I wouldn't be able to say that that's been held in one central place, absolutely the expectation is and what has been agreed through the guidance that COSLA agreed was that there would be transparency between but all parties on how those rates were come at which means absolutely the local authority should be transparent about how their rates were calculated but equally it requires providers to be transparent about their costs as well so that process can be robust. Okay, well I'll be asking the same questions at the NDNA who we've got next so we'll see what they say. Can I ask what impact this has had on the sector because there are the one fact that we've got in front of us this morning which is that we've seen a decline of 25 per cent in childminders since the implementation of this policy and if I look at my own area and Edinburgh is an area which has had quite a relatively higher reliance on the PVI sector what I see is setting after setting sell up to big national chains and while I don't have numbers I can certainly tell you anecdotally but it would appear to have had a quite a chilling effect on genuinely independent family-run providers and the rates seem to have driven those people out and increased reliance on big national chains. Is that something that your data bears out? I don't think that the data does bear that out. The decisions over whether to continue to trade as private providers are issues for individual businesses and I don't think that we have any evidence to suggest that the rate that we're paying is driving any businesses under. Our objective here is to sustain provision, to expand provision and to ensure we have an appropriate balance between public and private provision that meets the needs of parents and we have no interest or desire to see private nurseries going under because we're not paying them a sustainable rate. Can I just push back a little bit there? There clearly is evidence that childminders are removing themselves from the sector so could you just explain why that has happened and does causal hold that data, does it know how many PVI providers there are as of today in Scotland as compared to when we embarked on this journey? All I would say is in terms of my own area we've seen an increase in the number of childminders, a small number but it's a small area so we've not seen that trend locally. The decision to enter into childminding is a personal matter for individuals depending on the employment opportunities that are out there, personal circumstances, you know what people decide to do so we're not certainly not seeing a decrease in childminding locally we're seeing an increase and we want to see that sustained. That's the boardest but I mean nationally there is a decline in childminders. I mean Matthew or Sarah, is there any comment that you have on that? I think what I would say in the first instance is that I think the key respect for it who do hold the data and sort of the registered numbers of settings as they exist across the country are not seeing a change and I think there's been sort of a very consistent trend in terms of private nurseries. I think there's been some fallback in sort of primarily sort of spurred on by the pandemic around sort of the sort of third sector and voluntary provision. However, I'm aware from some of the context around earlier Scotland for example they think some of that is around abilities to retain committees during the pandemic etc and I think as you note there has been this reduction in childminding. I think for us that wouldn't necessarily be seeing that in some areas that there has been you know a steady state and actually I think if you look compared to the wider childcare sector those places that aren't funded if you look at sort of out of school care for example they have seen reductions in what they're doing so that wouldn't imply to me from that information that councils are not paying a rate at a sustainable level. I think what what does this come back to and it sort of reflects some of what David was saying there I think is around parental demand and some of the things that parents are looking for and I think that's an interesting question about what could be done to sort of make sure that parents understand it as an option and I think that's something that we're sort of continuing to work collectively on and similarly I'm aware that the Scottish Child Mining Association they've got some questions not as much about the rate itself being a driver of childminding but around the sort of the administrative burden and some of the work that goes on around there and through the Scottish Government's commitment for childminding group we've been looking at some options about how we could look to potentially reduce that admin burden however noting that we also need to look at the on-going reform of the new sort of education inspectorate body for example as well so I don't think it's it's easy to draw, express and poke conclusions that rates are leading to these changes alone I think there's a complex number of factors many of which we're working on. Okay, I'd just like to just make the distinction between settings and providers because I'm sure that the number of settings hasn't fallen but I think the number of providers would be interesting to know if there's data on that. I'm very mindful of other colleagues waiting so I'll hand over at this point. Thank you very much Daniel. List to be followed by Douglas. Thank you and good morning. Could I just quote to you from the Audit Scotland updated report on all this in 2020 when summary 5 it says that there's been a lot of work being undertaken to capture important baseline information however challenges to the evaluation process remain. Could you just explain what data is being used by the local authorities particularly when it comes to assessing the uptake of youngsters what data is actually being used to assess the reasons why certainly when it comes to two-year-olds quite a number of children are not taking up the offer of the place. I don't think that there's sort of a single set standard of data that local authorities will be using when they're trying to engage those to uptake on the two-year-old offer. I would say that I think that with any targeted offer there's always going to be a question about how we drive uptake and I think that those questions are in Stegmana but where I took part in a session a few weeks ago with the Children and Young People Committee and I think the view across not just local authorities but also some of the people you're going to speak to on the next panel that there is a question around some of the sort of Stegmana aspects and what that means about any type of targeted offer and how we approach that but I think what I would say is that the big challenge that we have around data is that we don't have a clear understanding from HMRC and DWP data in terms of who are those people who are most likely to be eligible for the two-year-old offer and that's something that we've been speaking to colleagues about for some time and we were really pleased to see that earlier this year the UK Government working with the Scottish Government had launched a consultation to create what I think is called the data gateway to ensure that councils once this is fully in place will have access to the same information which is for example available to councils in England and Wales as I understand it in terms of the sort of benefit statement that social security status of parents which will help us hopefully to identify more of those people who will be eligible for the two-year-old offer and hopefully drive uptake which is something that we're really keen to see. Thank you for that answer but Mr Sweeney I think it is important that we do have and that's what Audit Scotland was obviously requesting that we have good quality data I mean you earlier on this morning you suggested that one possible reason for changes in the uptake might be the pandemic possibly true you've just suggested that it could be to do with stigma I'm not sure that that would follow through with the logic for three to five-year-olds but nonetheless that's possible is it not the case however that there could be quite a lot of data that would suggest that one of the reasons for weaker uptake is the pressure on staffing which is something else that Audit Scotland flagged up in 2020 and there's obviously a lot of anecdotal evidence just now that staffing is particularly difficult if you know of some reasons is it not important that we try to understand what all the reasons are of why there's such pressure absolutely I think we're really keen to understand all reasons and I think that through the Scottish Government's workforce strategy for ELC we're looking to sort of consider that in the round but what I think I would say is the primary driver we see of uptake is around how councils and their partners work to engage families who are eligible for an offer for two-year-olds that isn't open to everyone it's only open to the specific people who meet specific statuses and how they do that some councils I think have taken some really good approaches and they've seen it increase that whether that be work with family nurse partnerships community engagement they've managed to increase that slightly but we think the real challenge that councils have is they just don't often know who these families are and where they are and that's why it's so crucial that we manage to get this flow of data from HMRC and DWP sorry who have information on which families might be eligible through to councils who can then go out and engage them in the two-year-old offer. How far down the road are you in terms of finding out the necessary data here because from our perspective and certainly from the Parliament's perspective it's absolutely essential when we are trying to scrutinise a very important piece of legislation which has cross-party support it's essential that the data that underpins that scrutiny is well crafted and very clear and it strikes me that there isn't any clarity over the way in which this data is being either collected or assessed are you offering the opinion to this committee that a lot more has to be done to get accurate data are you talking in terms of two-year-olds or more broadly generally but particularly on two-year-olds where obviously there's more of a problem but this is a general point because you know that this legislation covers different age groups and I think our difficulty as a committee is that and it was obviously Audit Scotland's problem in 2020 isn't there isn't sufficient good quality data to assess exactly what is going on here and why there may be a downturn in particular age groups or why in some cases parents are not up taking up the offer to which they're entitled? No thank you for that clarification I think so I think it's a two-year-old I think as I mentioned there was a consultation on Australia this year by the UK Government about the creation of a new data gateway I believe that closed for consultation and around march time I'm not sure off my head and they're working through the process now I think that will require a secondary legislation in the UK parliament so some of that will be dependent on on how quickly that can move so I think that that's a timescale that we're working to I think more generally in terms of data and evaluation there is a lot of work that's on going through the Scottish study of early learning in childcare which is looking I think around a number of areas which you're looking at there around the data and the basis of some of them so there's a number of different work that's going on in terms of what data is collected there's I think I believe there's a longitudinal study that is part of this and so this work is being led by the Scottish Government to really make sure that we've got the strongest data and evidence base possible in that sort of longer term to look at the benefits in the widest area and we're continuing to support in the interim the sort of the improvement service who collect data from directly from local authorities around uptake around workforce and around capacity and that information is continuing to be collected and shared right but in an earlier answer you made it clear that you thought each local authority should be able to provide a lot of data as to exactly where their information is being drawn from and how well they're achieving their particular policy is it causals understanding that that data will come from 32 different local authorities and be collected first of all then properly analysed or are you saying that that's the job of COSLA and some other institutions to collect that data because I think that that's the key point so I think perhaps I was understanding your previous misunderstand your previous questions I think in my previous answer I was trying to talk around the data to support the setting of sustainable rates and making sure that there's transparency around that I think I've misunderstood your conversation I thought it was a national level evaluation of the policy as a whole and as such that information would obviously be collected through the improvement service as opposed to data that's used locally to support the setting of a local sustainable rate. Sorry Mr Sweeney it is about national data but that national data can only be forthcoming if we're able to assess what each of the 32 local authorities is doing because they're the ones that are delivering it alongside people in the independent sector and therefore for us to analyse what is a national policy it's essential that that data is both clear and available and with respect convener I think it would be very helpful if you could provide the committee with a little bit more information if you can't do it this morning then at another time where we can really see with considerable clarity where the data is about the policy delivery so that we can analyse it better. Anyway thank you for your assistance so far. Mr Robertson can I just ask one question about the borders policy where you said again in an earlier answer that borders council has been taking time to ensure that they survive namely that you've been engaged in policies to ensure that providers are able to survive and therefore deliver the policy. Could you just expand a little bit more on what action you have been taking to ensure that they survive? Of course so the my authority and I'm sure a number of other authorities took the decision during the pandemic that there were a number of key providers of council services in the private and third sector that we had to absolutely ensure it survived the impact of the pandemic. One of those providers was at early years settings care provision or care homes at 21 of them who were located in the private sector were another sector that supported our transport providers. We had to ensure that at the end of the pandemic our local transport providers were able to continue to deliver essential local services. These are private businesses and they had to survive so we supported them in terms of the government's pandemic payments in terms of those businesses but we also supported them in terms of their cash flow and we ensured that in terms of their contracts that we were essentially taking the view that we were continuing to pay them in line with their contract during the pandemic so that they would actually survive the impacts of Covid-19 and be available to support local service delivery at the end of the pandemic which we're obviously coming out of now and I think that policy in terms of the continuation of local suppliers has proved its worth over the period. Thank you that's helpful. Just my final question would be, was there any discussion about the availability of staffing for these institutions? Did you have discussions about just how available staff were to deliver within these centres? Absolutely. There have been discussions on going with local providers in terms of the availability of staffing and the wider labour market at the moment is very very challenging for early years providers and for a range of other providers. So they were flagging up problems? Certainly across the economy at the moment people are flagging up issues around staffing recruitment and retention in early year settings are no different from that. That's one of the reasons that we're very keen to ensure that we pay a sustainable rate to providers so that they continue to offer good terms and conditions to their workforce and in terms of the rate that we're now going to be providing our early years providers that'll increase 16 per cent for two-year-olds and 17 per cent for three, four and five-year-olds by a date to August 2021 to ensure that they can continue to offer good terms and conditions to their workforce. Thank you very much. It's quite interesting that of the 15 local authorities that didn't provide robust data that includes some of the larger ones such as for example Dundee, Glasgow, North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire and Aberdeen over to you Douglas. I'm actually following on that line of questioning on the robustness of the data, because I was surprised to read that in June 2019 the first financial template went out and it says that significant data quality issues were identified and then a revised template then went out but only 17 returns were deemed considerably sufficiently accurate and robust to include in the analysis. The first question that I have is that can we have confidence then on the data from that 17 that we've got figures here, because when we look at some of the sort of variances between certain authorities, Aberdeenshire for example for 2021, they've only got 54 per cent of their specific revenue grant being spent on ELC while Argyll and Bute spending the whole 100 per cent, so there seems to be huge differences between local authorities. Is the data that we have from those 17 robust enough and how can we ensure that we have data from all local authorities going forward? I think in 2019 we did realise that there were shortcomings in terms of the data collection. As David quite rightly said, there are a number of returns done by local authorities from the local finance return, the POB, I can't remember what it stands for, David, you'll correct me, but we realised that actually the ELC offer required almost a bespoke look and a data set that was actually bespoke to it, so in 2020 when we went back out with the bespoke data collection exercise, we hit the middle of the pandemic and that is why the data came in. We got 17 robust returns which has actually now informed the next round of returns and actually we're almost at 100 per cent for the financial returns that are coming in, but we do need to look at those in the context of the wider local government finance and how the ELC service interacts with other service areas. For example, the management of facilities might be that that is accounted for slightly differently in some local authorities, but I think what we're doing each year through the finance working group and I think we are working well with Scottish Government analysts and our policy colleagues to actually say what is it that we need to do and in fact we've even had discussions about what is it that we potentially need to change within the LFR that would actually make it more useful in the medium to longer term to actually look at the data longitudinally because we've got some really really big policy questions to answer in this. It's a significant sum of money and actually over the kind of five-ten-year period we do need to to see the alignment between uptake, between policy outcomes and finances but it's not just you know it's not something that can be changed overnight so I think incrementally it's unfortunate in the middle of this incremental change we saw a pandemic which saw resource shift to doing slightly different things to support some providers it wasn't just the how are we rolling out the ELC offer it was how can we actually open these centres for for critical workers how can we make them safe how can we support our partner providers so the money was having to be used in flexible ways but I think through the finance working group we're now on a more even keel if you like to get those to returns in so that it provides us with the consistency of information from year to year in the medium and longer term and David you obviously went through the process so yes I mean I think you can have confidence in the data that that's provided it's obviously fully auditable in terms of the councils accounts so that the source information is there it's subject to challenge by by by several servants when they're looking at the data returns that are coming in from councils and it's also subject to a quality assurance process which is undertaken by COSLA prior to prior to data being being submitted to to the Scottish Government in many instances so I think I think you can have confidence in the reliability of the data the key thing is if there are inconsistencies in terms of the returns that councils are providing that those are challenged queried and understood in as we move forward but I guess we don't have the full picture you know as the convener pointed out there's big local authorities like Glasgow like Aberdeen that you know we're not seeing their data through so I guess there's there is huge gaps in the data that we we have for the 2021 return they have we we have I think we are waiting for one council who has committed and it's not one of the ones you've mentioned we're waiting for them to return then we will have 100 of returns for the the last round of data returns and as David said it they are challenged by by all colleagues within the the finance working group and in fact they and our Scottish Government colleagues want to understand why there are these differences and is it the catering is it the facilities management is it the you know the the way that overheads and support costs are apportioned they do they're getting a much better sense of that because you know there is huge differences and it's as well you know catering it mentions our report I think it was some had said it was six percent of the the grant others said it was zero so you know I can't quite understand that from the the papers I don't understand how it could be zero because children do get fed so I think that you know in settings it's part of the it's part of the deal so I would have to take that specific example away to look at and say that you mentioned earlier that you know there was a cut to the specific grant going forward I guess from a government point of view is that not justified because local authorities haven't spent the grant that they've been given up to now I think that what we had hoped for through the finance working group and actually I think our civil servant colleagues within Scottish Government had had also hoped that we could actually get one year of steady state business as usual under our belt before any decisions were taken about funding because actually we hadn't had that so we you know when the pandemic hit we weren't at rollout the the the legislations delayed all we wanted was one year to see how things how things could pan out in terms of normal service delivery we didn't get that and I think it's unfortunate that we didn't get that but again we'll continue to work through the finance working group to make sure that we are collecting as much business as usual information as we can because what we absolutely want in local government is sustainable funding to make sure that this service can be delivered for the next 10 15 20 years we don't want to see it fail we've put far too much work and effort in but what we don't want is have to rob our core services to prop up increasing costs within the sector be that for workforce for food for facilities because we're seeing pressures in other areas of local government funding okay so i guess some of the and maybe david's probably got a view on this some of the underspends that has been has been because of covid people not having taken up the full allocation etc over the last couple of years but that could well change going forward i think last that's correct yes i mean the massively complicated policy to implement in terms of logistics these things take time to recruit staff to expand buildings to change catering provision in schools and other settings so yeah i mean i think we've probably seen a bit of a lag partly driven by complexity partly driven by the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of the application of specific grant but i think as sarah says that the key thing moving forward is that we have sustainability in terms of the of the finance and at the end of the day any underspend which there has been in terms of specific grant is is fully accounted for by by by local councils and is is is still available to support the policy okay last question i had convener was around um i think sarah you mentioned there's a what a two-year review so will there be opportunities for local authorities to bid back in for capital funding for example for for new facilities that they want to build to you know build on the service i think the capital i mean the capital funding for this particular policy is is finished you know that the capital um the capital settlement for for this policy finished in 2021 i think we now probably need to look at any any requirements through the local delivery plan process in in part of the the wider learning estate because there isn't there isn't going to be additional specific capital grant for ELC unless we look across the piece in local government and say actually we need to make a case for that through through processes capital funding for local government is extremely tight and it's and it's it's through the the capital spending review we see that there's going to be basically a flatlining so i think any additional capacity that that local government identifies as being required um will have to be a subject of discussion with Scottish government just on capital specifically just just to reassure the committee i mean councils are absolutely committed to this policy and we've actually spent more than our specific capital grant on expanding early years provision so just just for the committee's interest the capital grant that we received was 7.7 million that will be fully deployed in terms of new nursery provision and refurbishing existing nursery provision we've actually spent 9.5 million just just in in our authority so the council has contributed capital money to enhance the specific grant in order to deliver the capital facilities required to deliver the provision so it's a it's a shared a very much a shared commitment around the provision of early years services so any extra money that local authorities spend capital wise i guess they have to take it from council resources essentially essentially borrowing or general capital grant yes so that'll have an impact going forward for the maintenance of these buildings and everything else absolutely that there are policy priorities which will be required to be addressed going forward but the council's settlement my own authority has enhanced the level of grant that we received in order to ensure a high quality provision is available for two three four and five year olds okay thank you thank you okay thank you uh john to be followed by michelle thanks so much convener i mean to maybe take a step back what one of the reasons we're doing this is to see if we can improve our system for financial memorandum when we're looking at a bill and this was a particular challenge at the time because the costs were quite large and what tends to happen is that often coslaw the local authorities if they're going to be implementing something you know suggests it's going to cost a lot more and the government suggests it's going to cost a lot less and we are going to left in the middle somewhere not sure and as a as a former councillor i should say when the smoking ban came in i thought there would be considerable costs because i thought the councils would have to go around all the pubs and restaurants in fact it turned out to be quite self-policing so that was kind of good and just specifically i mean on the number of kids even in this age group we i think originally thought it was going to be 225 000 then the projections 206 000 then the projections 184 000 that's a quite a dramatic fall of some 40 000 children can we do it better at financial memorandum stage or do we just have to accept it's always a rough guess it's always going to be an estimate before before you implement a policy in terms of what what it's actually going to cost you but but we should absolutely be trying to ensure that we have the best possible data to inform that the policy and therefore the financial consequences of that policy before it before it's implemented and on this one do you think we could have done it better or someone could have done it better i think the reality is we've probably done the best that we could possibly have done in terms of the implementation of the policy and and the proof is in the pudding that the policy has been implemented we've implemented that in quite a short time scale given given the given the scale of what was being required given the backdrop in terms of of the Covid pandemic and the wider economy given the wider pressures that are on on local authorities to deliver a range of of different different policy priorities so um yeah i think i think we've done a i think we've done a reasonable job under the circumstances of implementing the policy against a pretty difficult backdrop okay say again oh sorry yeah and i think that the recognition um during the the passage of this particular bill i think the recognition of the the additional requirements that the two-year-old offer would would bring with it and and then the addition of the kinship care you know the children who are subject to kinship care so i think that i think it was extremely helpful that there was recognition that these things don't just come for free you know unique to actually cost them so i think as you saw the bill patty i think actually in terms of the the costings of the original offer as david said you have to go with the best information you have it's what we do every year when we come to distribute the funding we use the best possible data so i think i think that was that was useful i think in some other areas we perhaps need a level of of a sort of different level of discussion about what the additional burdens will be i mean we would always say that you know new burden should be funded and i think sometimes because of the sometimes the speed at which bills are being developed and and the and perhaps late engagement we don't always get to go through that that process but i think in this particular instance i think when you see what the if you took the the kind of cost per hour back in in 2014 and the cost per hour it has come down slightly for the expansion if you do a kind of a kind of quid pro quo between the two policy areas and i think that's because of the scale you know when you were doing the the further expansion you were getting the economies of scale you were you were you know councils had started a journey of provision so they were able to build on that so i think that that's i think all things considered i think it would seem reasonable i think the issues for local government lay out with the bill and in the other areas of settlement there were be where there were pressures and i think that but in this particular bill i think that the costings were reasonable at that time using the data okay thanks but one of the the points that scotland made was about how family well being would be measured and that's an outcome now this committee and the questioning so far has been largely focused on the costs and a lot of the inputs and all that kind of thing and maybe some of the outputs but we're also meant to be looking at you know the bigger outcomes have you any thoughts about you know is that being measured family well being can it be measured probably yourself miss waters i think it should be measured and actually the scotland government at the moment is doing a review of its national performance framework and cosla is a co-signatory to that i think that i think when you go through the the resource spending review that's just been published there is very scant mention or in fact no mention of the national performance framework and i think that is a concern that actually we're we're not necessarily focusing on on measuring the the important things family well being is absolutely one area that cosla is is keen to focus on and i think that's it's very very difficult but i think areas for example inverclyde have actually started to do some great outreach work in terms of their ELC offer which mathieu might be able to talk a little bit more about but actually it's it's looking at that child in that family and what has happened to their circumstances as a result of the engagement with that policy area mr swede did you want to come in just very briefly because i think seara's answer was very comprehensive there i think the first thing i would say is i think absolutely right and as i mentioned in the earlier data get there an earlier answer the data we're primarily collecting just now is is sort of output data that's coming from the improvement service from all 32 local authorities through their delivery assurance reports which we've been coming out quarterly so far so that's been sort of capturing some of the that the purely outputs i think the challenge and the work that's going on i think through the scottish study of early learning and childcare which is the government initiative to look at this sort of in the round is how do you measure some of those perhaps less tangible benefits particularly that one about family wellbeing and i think there's still sort of open questions about how we do some of that and i think it's it's an issue to kind of how do we think about some of that but to to pick up i think on the specific point that seara's there's a lot of really good work we know there about councils sort of taking efforts to how do the integrate ELC with wider services to support families it includes financial inclusion that includes social work support you know general family learning connection etc there's the cld there's a lot of services and councils not i think fife in the rainbow room but also some of the work in sorry inverclyde in the rainbow room but then also fife in some of their nurture centres there's some some really good examples of practice out there and i think how we capture some of that nationally is a challenge which needs to be picked up i think through that work that's going on through the scottish government in and their study of early living in childcare and how that captures outcomes okay thanks so much moving on specific more to a specific area namely the child minding side i mean we got the impression from we'll still take here from the child minding association but from their written submission that they feel the councils have a conflict of interest and that the councils are biased towards their own provision of services and the child minders kind of get the bits around the edges is that is that a fair claim i'll start the answer i know i don't think that is a fair claim i think that councils recognised that we absolutely have to have a mixed economy in this space because you know that councils are you know the provider of last resort across a range of services but it you know we absolutely need the agility and the responsiveness of other sectors to come into this space i think it will be a fluid space i think that parental choice introduces an element of complexity that perhaps we don't see in other policy areas also commuting cross-border you know people working in one area and traveling to another for work this is these are all things that add complexity so i think that councils i think would be foolish to to suggest that they wanted to do all the provision themselves it just wouldn't actually be physically possible for councils to do that and but we need to have this mixed economy i mean it's sometimes thought that council you know when we can't we're not comparing like with like on the cost because private or third sector or child minder has to produce say their capital cost much largely themselves whereas the council can kind of hide the the capital cost and only compares like with like and we get that with care homes and all sorts of things again is that a bit unfair i think it is unfair because i think that councils will do provide a level of support to the whole sector in an area so they will be doing as matthew said that it's sort of quality assurance support training support and development so that there will in every council area there will be a a locus for early learning and childcare so there are a lot of of hidden support costs i think that that councils that provide to the sector that i think if we took it away it would be felt it would be it would be noticeable so i think there are different cost bases for i think very good justifiable reason sorry matthew mr sorry i actually it was before seara i'd answered i think she answered very very essentially there i think absolutely a key one i think in this is in terms of what is parental interest and parental demand and fundamentally that drives a lot of where provision is set up okay well maybe i can ask mr sweeney then my final question which you know is child minding on the whole just a more expensive thing to do because i'm assuming there's fewer adults or more adults per child or fewer child children per adult is that how it works i'm afraid you might have a lot i wouldn't be wholly confident in telling you about the ratios for each different provision off the top of my head just now but we can find out the information and share it with you okay i'll try that too i mean is is child minding inherently more expensive i'm not seeing why it should be in terms of the the provision that's been made available i don't believe the adult child ratio is much the same i think the adult child ratios would be consistent yes in terms of the the supervisory and care ratios that we have in place so i don't believe that the child minding would be a more inherently expensive type of provision than other other settings okay i'll leave it at that convener so i was discussing their own child minding experiences here briefly um michelle yeah i mean in fairness a lot of the things i might have covered have already been asked i just want to finish up with one final question across the whole gamut of areas we've discussed knowing what we know now with the benefit of hindsight what would you do differently next time to implement this national policy whether it's in collecting the data we've covered a lot of the issues around data collection pandemic yeah fair enough nobody knew that was coming but we've touched on to other things as well because it's not just about implementation of the policy it is about outcomes and we also have to look at financial effectiveness so what would you do differently next time seron yeah not have a pandemic so it's probably the first informed but actually i think in terms of if you if you're kind of getting at you know the way that we worked through this i actually think it's possibly one of the best examples of the way that we have worked constructively with our scottish government colleagues and private sector and third sector colleagues to for the the kind of greater good and the greater goal in terms of the policy i think for me it would be perhaps not viewing it as the ultimate focus being on on the provision of the childcare i actually think we need to look at it across the piece so how does it relate to things like employability and and other and transport and the and the other areas that sit within the the the gift of councils so i think we've perhaps created too many restrictions around the ELC part of it to the detriment perhaps of the services that that ultimately can improve the experience for the child and the family importantly and you also mentioned the NPF earlier as well would you see that if you were reflecting on it again that you yourselves would be reflecting on how it could flow us through at the start rather than with hindsight yeah and i think you know the measuring outcomes is you know we'd be doing it if it was easy so and we're not and i think sometimes we get a little bit obsessed with trying to find the national data set that will tell us the the answer to the the holy grail that is has an outcome improved but actually at local level councils know whether or not outcomes are improving and they show it through their local outcome improvement plans through their you know through surveys that they do i think if we get obsessed by trying to measure it nationally we'll miss some of the really valuable local information that we have available that should then flow through to the local delivery plans to inform the next phase of development of that policy and how about you David from a council perspective i suppose there's two things firstly we touched on it in terms of the the questioning earlier on but the underlying data which is informing the policy and we need to make sure that's absolutely and robust from the off and therefore we can measure the baseline and we can measure the level of improvement that we've delivered so i think a greater focus early on in terms of underlying data and the outcomes that we're trying to achieve would be really helpful and i suppose i would just echo Sarah's comment about linkages the linkages between specific policies in terms of early years and wider family support social work community support all these these wraparand services around families that are really really important sometimes we tend to pigeonhole the the finance on on specific issues and we're looking across the piece i think it's really really important if we're going to improve outcomes for families and children which ultimately is the aim of the policy intent. Matthew any last comments no nothing further for me i think my colleagues have answered that far better than i could okay thank you very much for that and i want to thank our witnesses i think early learning and childcare is obviously a key policy for the scotish comment and i was pleased that your comments about the working together actually with the scotish comment in terms of delivering that and is less pointed out is a policy with all party support so what further i do i shall call a brief end to this session until 1055 to lower witnesses to leave so once again thank you very much for your participation. I welcome to the meeting our second panel of witnesses jonathan broadberry director of policy and external communications at the national day nurses association who will be attending virtually. Graham McAllister chief executive of the scotish child minded association attending in person and jane brumton chief executive of early years scotland attending in person. We'll have straight to questions and i'd like to begin i think probably my first question will be to mr mcallister i have to say a very an excellent submission very detailed but a number of things jump straight out at you and the first thing i think is and i quote the devastating effect on the child minding workforce in scotland of the early learning and childcare expansion which is declined by 26 percent at e1450 child miles to put it into a more human context now i'm just wondering if you can talk talk me through that just a wee bit but also we heard from david robertson of scotish borders at the number of child medicine scotish borders has increased so clearly there must be some areas where there are there are no issues and there must be areas where there is a really really difficult problem so i wonder if you can perhaps tell us what some of those issues are and where those those kind of issues are. Okay within borders i didn't hear the early evidence session but if the increase is beyond being very recent i mean when you look at the data that's produced by the care inspector on an annual basis there's been a year on year decline of the last five years in scotland and every local authority area all 32 local authorities have had a decline the decline's actually been more pronounced in remote and rural areas we're actually active at the moment just now we've launched a pilot the scottish rural child minding partnership in conjunction with highlands and islands enterprise south of scotland enterprise skills development scotland and the scottish government and that is to recruit 100 new child minders in these areas because the numbers have declined so much but what we found is the reasons have been the sort of multi factorial i mean i think when we speak to cosla scottish government quite often colleagues will point to the age profile yes we have an aging workforce we know that but when you look at the evidence what is really really compelling is we conducted a large-scale survey two years ago almost 1500 child minders responded and the main reason that child minders had been leaving or are planning to leaving a workforce in the next five years has been a significant increase in bureaucracy and paperwork the duplicative quality assurance that we've had at a national and local level which has quite simply become unsustainable and that's been closely followed by an inability to keep up with pace the rapid scale of local authority nurse expansion in terms of bringing 12 000 new staff into the sector what had been planned or anticipated was at hope that 12 000 new staff would come in unfortunately one of the unintended consequences of ELC expansion was that national rapid recruitment drive took staff from other providers from private nurseries from child minders from the wider social care sector so you had a destabilising effect on the workforce but for child mining it's also been one of the biggest challenges has been provider neutrality now i did come in at the end of the earlier session and we're talking briefly about that one of the biggest challenges during ELC expansion is that local authorities have had a conflict of interest they have been responsible for overseeing local expansion plans but they're also the right service priority on their own right now to be clear some local authorities manage that conflict really well have been really inclusive those local authorities who understand child mining as a different form of childcare have worked to involve child minders but too few haven't too too many local authorities over the last five years have been prioritising their own provision now it's not just me saying that today we are commissioned by the Scottish Government annually to undertake an independent audit of ELC and local authorities progress in involving child minders in ELC delivery we've done that for the last five years the most recent findings from our audit in 2021 were quite damning in the sense that only four percent of the child mining workforce are currently involved in delivering a funded hours to eligible twos and only 17 percent to three and four year olds but when you break down those numbers are even worse we did a parallel survey of child minders who are actually involved in ELC to find how meaningfully are you involved and 75 percent of child minders who are currently involved in drawing a funded ELC are doing so on the basis of blended placements and to get to the point many child minders find it very difficult to get involved in ELC they simply learn offered the opportunity for parents to take all of their hours for eligible twos of three to fours the only way to get in with through blended placements but for too many child minders are simply giving fragments when we published an audit last year those one very damning example i'll not name the local authority but i'm happy to share the details later where if you want a blended placement you have to take over 900 hours of local authority nursery you only get half a day a week with the child minder that's not provider neutral it's not flexible the funding's not followed the child and it's certainly not sustainable for child minders so i think from our point of view much the focus when we talk about cost is on sustainable rates and of course sustainable rates are important some child minders say to us the rates aren't enough some are happier but it's the number of hours we're getting even if the sustainable rates were higher if local authorities are not offering child minders enough hours to make their businesses sustainable then you have a problem and we've been reporting this for five years unfortunately okay now i know you said that some 75% actually of placements are blended and i mean the bureaucracy thing really does to jump out at them because you said the level of paperwork and bureaucracy associated with current child mind who practice is a main reason child mind has left the workforce in in some 70% of cases which does seem to me what i mean does seem to be a tome obviously you must be having to wade through if that is indeed the case so you can maybe comment on that but while i'm speaking asking questions on this one of the things you've talked about is inconsistent local implementation which is obviously i think interesting but you have said that some local authorities who understood the unique benefits of child mind had been supportive including child minders but were in the minority so can you talk to me obviously about this bureaucracy but also can you highlight some of the local authorities that are actually doing well and that perhaps other local authorities could could copy in terms of methodology yes of course in terms of the bureaucracy i think the first thing to explain is that child minding businesses are fundamentally different to nursery or other larger providers in the sense that the vast majority of child minders are sole workers so during the day the entire folk is on practice delivery so anything else to do is done unpaid in the evenings or weekends so that is studying and doing a continued professional learning doing the quality assurance communicating with parents their business paperwork finance everything and what we found is that the level of work has been increasing and increasing but what we've had under ELC expansion has been what i would describe as a layering effect and within my submission i think i itemise about 10 or 12 and different frameworks and standards each one comes in with different outcomes reporting now i should make it clear as a professional membership organisation we're absolutely committed to quality assurance but it has to be proportionate it's got to be joined up and it's got blight touch currently it's none of the three under ELC what we're supposed to have had was a single or shared inspection for all ELC services an independent expert group recommended that in 2015 that our recommendation was accepted by the scottish government still hasn't happened you know 2019 it was abandoned by the care inspector and education scotland we don't know how it was allowed to happen but it was mutual with the scottish government allowed but the reality what we have is that for child minders who are involved in the ELC delivery you have the care inspector of the quality framework with inspection and self-evaluation education scotland has how good is the ELC which is a learning framework we don't currently get inspected by education scotland but at a local level you've got another layer of duplication where a number of local authorities simply don't recognise the role of the care inspectorate see themselves as the garden tours of quality under the ELC expansion and are some local authorities in scotland as i speak are planning to go out and conduct twice yearly inspection twice years twice yearly self-evaluation and doing a pick and mix taking bits from the care inspectorate from the education scotland it's a mess we were never meant to have that we're meant to have one system of quality assurance we have duplicative quality assurance and it's the single biggest issue as i said when will it mean there's a lot of data to show a declining trend in the workforce but what nobody knew in scotland was what's going to happen in the future so when we conducted a large scale survey back in 2020 for the first time we thought let's go out and capture data on future intentions so we actually said to child minders where do you see yourself in five years time on top of that decline we've experienced 25% do not believe they'll still be child minding in five years time another 26% are undecided and the main reason is a level of duplication that the quality assurance paperwork has become completely unsustainable for some child minders are spending the equivalent of a day a week in the evenings or weekends simply doing the paperwork to keep up with ELC at this time in terms of the inconsistency i mean i think yes i mean i'm very much a support of local democracy but where you do have a national policy that's dependent on local implementation you get inconsistencies we currently have contracts with i think it's 10 local authorities to deliver contracts to support them with the ELC expansion so for example Aberdeen glasgo borders things are going really really well these are local authorities who actually recognise that child minding is a fundamentally different type of child care it's something that parents want to recognise the value of that and they work with us to actually see how can we include child minders meaningfully but again when you go back to the data with my audit 29% of child minders in scotland have been approved to deliver funding of ours both for eligible 2s and 3 and 4s but those acts involved in delivery are much much lower for eligible 2s you've got 4% for 3 and 4s it's 17% and when you ask a speaker to parents when you speak to child minders to say what are the barriers what's not happening the simple fact is that in too many areas local authorities are not promoting child minding equitably as an option to parents for receipt of their funding ELC parents are having to ask for it child minders are having to ask for it the cause line is that well it's down to parental choice but if you're not acting presenting all forms of child care equitably equitably to support informed choice i would disagree with that position okay thank you now miss brunton it i wonder if you've got any comments you want to make on what's been said previously but also i was going to ask you specifically about the hours our relates paid to partnership providers because i asked about that as some colleagues in the previous session because obviously what we found was there's a huge variance from five pounds in orcnate at six pound forty in west loading and daniel talked about the five pound thirty one standard that seems to have emerged and so i'm just wondering if you could you can comment on your view of this because what we heard from causa was oh there's all different kind of settings and you know things are not always comparable geographically and all the rest of it so i'm just wondering if you can perhaps give your view on this they said the process is challenging i accept it is but do you believe for example that there should be a standard rate across scotland yes 100 percent we've very much argued for that in our earlier scotland manifesto last year and i think i agree with graven's comments that it's it has been extremely challenging and yes you do have that local government ability to make those local decisions but then the pvi sector childminders are are caught in the middle somewhat so i i know from the papers that originally there was talk of a national advisory rate and that's something that we think would have helped matters because as you can see in the figures and in the papers the rate does very hugely and we understand that there are you know necessity for rural uplift and different figures like that but when there is no evidence given around a prescribed national benchmark rate then you can see what naturally happens so we've got members that have settings across a range of local authorities and they've to try and work with such you know varying rates so that is really really difficult and i think also when graven talked about the challenging issues for staffing that is a huge result of these varying rates because the pvi sector is consistently required to sort of open their books so to speak and have regularly been asked to demonstrate how they come to their cost basis but that's not the same level of scrutiny for local authorities there's not the same level of data collection so you don't have that consistent picture as well so it's very disheartening for the sector to constantly have to do this and then not seeing not necessarily seeing any change there are some local authorities as graven has said that members are saying do work really well with the pvi sector and there's a lot of engagement and that's where things work well but a lot of the time there is not that level of engagement and participation and discussion with the pvi sector around the needs which do we appreciate differently locally but as we try to attract and retain high quality staff in ELC that's very difficult when they're hemorrhaging out of the pvi sector to the local authority sector because the pvi sector and you know childminders can never compete with the wages and obviously the aspiration for a real living wage has been problematic because that's not very aspirational and a lot of the sector are saying well I could leave the sector and earn £10.50 an hour in a role where I don't have the same level of bureaucracy and issues around paperwork and all the scrutiny involved in that and like Graham in earlier Scotland we absolutely adhere to high you know ensuring we have high quality settings but that is also causing problems as well so where you have the varying rate and then you have the varying payments to staff and you don't have that ability to attract more staff in so we've got members saying that they've lost up to 80% of their staffing to local authority settings or other career paths and that is because that is just seen as a more attractive offer so it's very difficult huge challenging staffing issues but how do you address that when we don't see any evidence of for example some local authorities as you read in the papers gave a national uplift others didn't some authorities give recognition towards additional support needs payments or additional payments for eligible tools so the picture varies so widely across scotland so that is so challenging for the sector I mean you mentioned the rule up with but obviously if what needs the one that's paying the lowest then it can be very significant I mean one thing that struck me looking at the actual figures of the 17 local authorities which we'll get robust data from is that two neighbouring authorities Aberdeenshire and Murray and in Aberdeenshire you know the private vision increased from 20 to 36 percent over just you know from 2018-19 to 2021 and yet over the same period the neighbouring authority in Murray is to decline from 55 to 43 percent which again seems quite significant you know if it I'm not comparing you know like you know Murray to Glasgow or you know Edinburgh to Aberdeenshire that to my mind it's quite similar in many respects I'm just wondering why is there a specific reason why some areas appear to be growing significantly in other areas seem to be taking the opposite path is it because of these issues that you've mentioned are there other factors at play I'm sure there are a range of factors but from the updates from our members nationally it's very much that there are certain authorities that engage and work really well as I said earlier and they feel they have that support and feel that partnership working works well but there are other members saying that you know it's just inherently difficult and too problematic and you're trying to sort of get a seat at the table and have your voice heard and that can then result in settings sadly closing or choosing not to to continue with that partnership approach because they find that quite problematic and as Graham said there are authorities that do that well so I would say that was that's the main things that members have stated okay and Jonathan wants to come in Jonathan thank you very much yeah so I just wanted to pick up on a couple of points as well so you've highlighted obviously that you've got robust data from 17 of the local authorities and one of the real challenges that we've got is that 17 out of 32 and you know really getting a clear picture of what's happening is is really quite problematic and our members tell us that's obviously it's problematic at national level but also even on a local level wading through papers to try and find out how decisions were made and what's being considered in setting those rates is not something that they necessarily have the time or the expertise to do so it's not clear and transparent kind of what's being considered in that or what you know how that's even done and as as Jane said we've gathered data and then it's published subsequently by the Scottish Government as well that said that I think it was nine local authorities didn't increase their rate from from last year to this year so they're effectively imposing a real terms cut on providers who've seen real living wage costs go up you know other wages across the business go up and inflationary costs so there is a real problem there that even where where those relationships might exist and there might be a there might be a practical day-to-day working relationship between the local authority and partner providers there's not a recognition of actually it's it's the rates need to keep pace with actual delivery costs for those providers whether they are nurseries childminders or you know whatever form that they take okay now i'm going to ask a final question from me before opening it to colleagues around the table and it's just if you get each answer quite briefly I mean so when asked Jane if they believe if you believe that there should be a standard rate across the country she said yes so i'm just wondering obviously local what we heard from causla earlier on was that they believe in local contracts and local decision making flexibility etc etc and I think we understand obviously that there's a number of former councils for example including myself who are members of this committee but do you feel though that that because of that it means that the sector is is is in a more vulnerable position or do you think that's the the local flexibility is right and if you don't feel that local flexibility is right what role do you feel the Scottish government should play if any and i'll start with yourself jonathan and then it'll then gene and then green the question of yeah national rates and national rates setting it is it is a tricky one because there are you know really big differences between different local authorities and it it would mean you know more work from the Scottish government in terms of setting that rate so i would say ultimately the method doesn't matter whether local authorities make that decision locally or whether the Scottish government say these are the boundaries in which you should set those rates and this is the you know the areas of flexibility you have what matters is the consideration of where families are where settings are what children are entitled to because we talk about funding following the child if you've got a national rate that says you know nursery in Perth should get £5.50 an hour and a nursery in Edinburgh should get £6.80 an hour because of these factors here it's not it's not just considering the setting it should also consider the child in terms of does that child have additional needs does you know is there morality involved that sort of thing so i think the question of who should set the rates is not the pertinent one it's how do we make sure that funding follows the child and that the parents have the choice of taking up places with childminders blended places nurseries council nurseries wherever that we're facilitating that okay jane i would agree as jonathan's saying i think that the key issue there here is there is no level of consistency of application so as jonathan alluded to earlier it's very difficult for our members to find out how the rate is being set locally so that that is a difficulty i think if we have that aspiration of a national advisory rate like an agreed benchmark and then there could be that consideration for local agreements and rural uplifts but i think the key issue is the lack of transparency in the application around the process and also the lack of involvement in the pvi sector within that and then finally i think the fact that there there will continue to be this gap between even a national rate and what's paid to local authority is an ongoing issue so it really should be a case of all staff that work within elc should be paid equitably there should be parity so i think there's a number of factors it's not quite a straight answer no no i think it's an excellent answer to be honest i agree thanks kenneth i think we'd also be supportive in principle of a national rate but the key is to be advisory and also that would be sufficiently flexible to take into account the differentials that jonathan mentioned from our point of view i mean i'd obviously mentioned earlier that provider neutrality is not working you know after five years i think there is now a case where the scottish government should actually be establishing and recommending a national minimum mix for providers in each area to stop providers actually being squeezed out as has happened over the last five years clearly that needs to take into account the rural differences but if i go off here some parallel i mean i used to work in health and health quite different in the sense that you'll have a national clinical guideline and it's very much expected that that is implemented locally by nhs boards if they want to depart from that they've got to evidence or reasons childcare feels quite different it feels as a local authorities almost have too much flexibility around implementation and i think you're going to struggle to get consistent implementation without more of a steer from the centre thank you very much so the first colleague to ask questions will be listed before by daniel thank you very much and thank you very much for your evidence both overly and written and i think it's quick concerning about some of the comments that you've given us which i'm happy to say tie in exactly with some of the anecdotal evidence i'm receiving in mid scotland in five in my constituency region i'm interested in what you say both miss brumpton and mr mccallister that there are some local authorities who understand the problems that you've cited and are working better with your sector would you be able to give us the reasons as to why you think these local authorities are better able to understand the issues that you're raising and perhaps the converse of that is what is it about the other local authorities that are not engaging so well who don't feel able to give you some benefit of being able to sort the policy yes that's fine okay thanks liz i mean i think from our point of view the difference is quite simple it's a local authority so it understands what childbeining is and that all forms of childcare are not the same in the sense that childmining is a unique form of childcare is delivered in a family setting it's very nurturing small numbers low adults child ratios a childminer generally can provide childcare for no more than six children at any one time so it's no more than one child under a year no more than three under school age and no more than six in total but what you've also got is almost unparalleled continuity of care it's really common for children to be with childminders from birth through to 12 or even 16 in the case of additional sport needs but also because you've got children of different ages playing and learning together there's now evidence to sort a range of benefits and development so for parents who understand childmining it's informed choice it's something they want some child back sorry some parents like the best of both they want their child to experience part of nursery part of childmining but you know particularly for two year olds one year olds a lot of parents would be uncomfortable with the thought of a young child being in the nursery for 10 hours a day and and again it's the local authorities aren't to recognise that childmining offers additionality it's also really high quality for my childcare in the sense that what's not commonly known by a lot of people is that when you look at the inspection ratings that come through from the care inspection on an annual basis childminers consistently achieve higher quality ratings across all quality criteria than the care of children services and that's local authority nurseries and private nurseries I'm very interested in that point you've just raised because I would have thought that that guidance from the inspectorate flags up to the other local authorities that perhaps not doing so well that that is a key point is it the case in your opinion that some local authorities are not taking on board that advice from the inspectorate no I think part of the problem if I can offer a bit of externality I mean I've been in post for three years I came in in April 19 as chief executive new to childcare new to childmining and that was almost like mid implementation when we're really ramping up towards 1140 and without being critical when we work really closely with colleagues in the scottish government we're part funded by them but it was such an ambitious policy to double the status entitlement the main focus is what make the numbers happen how do we get to 1140 and local authorities were under tremendous pressure as well in terms of how do we reach 1140 you could either go with the nursery where you've got 100 children or you've got to recruit 17 childminders to get to the hundred children so for a lot of local authorities hit that target to make the numbers happen it was all about nurseries local authority private nurseries childminders simply got squeezed out because it came in numbers game during expansion so is it a case though that the understanding level which is so critical to make the policy work effectively collaboratively and obviously gain good inspection results is it the case that some local authorities feel unable to promote that partnership in the same way or is there a little bit of ignorance factor there or what is it that is stopping all local authorities appreciating what obviously the good local authorities are delivering very satisfactory what is it that's stopping other local authorities I mean I think what comes what came through in our audit returns from some local authorities is that when they're obviously looking at their business they aren't even thinking about the sustainability of their own nursery services first of all so there's a prioritisation of their own provision and then basing other decisions beyond that and I think that that's where the problems come in for something and is that a staffing issue or is that a resource issue in terms of the capital provision I think for a resource issue just in terms of ensuring that their own nurseries are sustainable which we fully understand but with ELC I mean it was meant to be about choice for parents you know if you take out 1457 child building businesses that's not increasing choice it's decreased choice you know around the country we've now in most local authority areas you know got people crying out for child managers which simply are not enough and this is not what ELC was supposed to have delivered thank you Ms Brumpton did you want to come in yes absolutely thanks Liz in terms of authorities that are doing this well there might be some aspirational comments in here as well in terms of what could happen but I would say the key thing is active engagement with the sector to ensure that they're setting appropriate rates for the settings in their area adhering to the agreed COSLA principles that were worked on valuing the input from the sector in their area and really realising the added impact that the PVI sector locally can bring access to professional learning that can be very patchy as to whether that's part of your funded partnership support access to local authority support for additional support needs that's increasing as we know exponentially nationally ensuring I suppose they don't open settings in areas where they've not consulted with the PVI sector to see if there's availability to pick up that need there and really supporting and sharing access to capital costs as well so I think that's the sort of key areas so in theory you're saying it should all work well and that COSLA has got you know certain statements commitments that everybody should be abiding by if it's not working well are there some local authorities that are not adhering to these basic principles is that the problem from what our members are telling us yes and it's very difficult for some members to to speak to the right person or to get their voice heard in terms of having that ability to jointly discuss what the needs are locally and discuss their cost basis it's very much some members are saying they feel as if it's done to them and they don't necessarily have a voice in that so in other words there's a problem with engagement with the local authority whereas in other local authority areas they're much better at engaging with correct from what members are telling us and you're able to evidence that yes we could do that after today but it's very much anecdotal membership we have a national steering group so it's very much what members are telling us from the national authorities that would be very helpful community because I think it's um you know we want to know what's working well and if there is examples of evidence where it's not working well and that helps us in our general scrutiny thank you thank you very much Daniel to be followed by Douglas I just really want to to start following on by what you're saying that that you're the transparency of the process of arriving at the rate and you're saying that there's a lack of transparency I mean that that's sort of directly contrast with what we were just hearing from COSLA who were saying that that every local authority is transparent and and publishes or should be publishing how they've arrived at their rate is that your experience or you know what what what is the experience that that your your members have of how that rate has arrived at and the level of explanation that's provided I would say it's mixed messages I wouldn't say it was consistently all good or all bad but there there's very much as I say is from what members are telling us some authorities do engage well with the process and are open and transparent and others are saying that they find it difficult to to actively engage and don't feel that they have a voice at the table for that so I would say it was a very mixed picture that we're hearing from members I'd just like to bring Jonathan before I do I think he plucked a number of six pounds eighty for providers in Edinburgh I think his members would be delighted if they were offered six pounds eighty in Edinburgh I think that the rate they're offered is considerably less than that but yeah be interesting hear your views about the level of transparency that's provided by local authorities yeah so I did hear the earlier session and the talk about transparency and there's there's a very different us was a different take between publishing things and I'm reminded of the Douglas Adam quote about how easy planning decisions were to find you know this can be quite a mission to try and try and understand how a local authority might have just reached a decision even what that is you know where we go through a process annually now of asking local authorities what their rate is going to be for for the coming august and even at this time of year some come back and say they haven't done that yet they haven't decided on that and for businesses looking at you know signing up parents now what kind of demand they're going to have come come august it's really difficult to plan especially if local authorities are talking about setting rates over multiple years but they can only give you know give one rate and and say that they'll they'll come to it later and on so on engagement I think there is a piece of work there about understanding not only how you know how different it is for working with child mothers but actually how different it is for private and voluntary providers who have very different structures depending on the size of their nursery the number of nurseries they might have within the business or whether they're set up with the committee and run voluntarily and the other point that I do want to make is on the you know cosler referred earlier to the difficulty of getting information on providers and there in some cases what we see is an all or nothing approach where it's a local authority will want to see completely open book approach and want to know all the details of businesses even outside the funded ELC offer but the flip side is that they will not you know make data available in terms of how they fund their you know their own provision and what what is being paid at that level and I come back to this point of funding following the child and at a previous session with the children and young people's committee we were talking about how to make sure staff are paid equitably across the sector and it was made quite clear that you know partner providers are funded to pay the real living wage and that's it whereas there are higher costs in the public sector higher wage expectancy and we know that people doing the same job can be paid up to 10,000 pounds more in a public setting compared to what they're funded to pay in a partner provider so that is a really big discrepancy and there isn't that transparency or easy explanation of how that's happened so I mean one of the actually I'm going to come on to that that the impact of that in a second but before I do connect can I just sort of follow on from those points because the essentially the contention from from COSLA this morning was that essentially there's difficulty in getting data from the the PVI sector you know that's that's the the blockage in terms of them you know doing as thorough a job is it is that you know what would be your response to that it is difficult you know so we're talking here about the difficulties that you know the committee in the Scottish Government have of getting data out of 32 local authorities you're then talking about local authorities who can be working with hundreds of private businesses each business you know set up and run very differently whether again whether they're a nursery child mind or a voluntary setting we acknowledge that it is difficult but at the same time for those providers to just hand over all of their data a that's not going to help a local authority in you know in having all of that information to wade through and and b a lot of that doesn't relate to the to the funded provision and we can't have a we can't have a double-edged sword where providers are told well you have to pay real living wage to your staff who deliver ELC funded places and outside of that we don't care what you do you know and resolving that within your own setting and how parents pay for that is your problem but then say we want all of your data so we do acknowledge that it's difficult but there are other ways than just saying it's all or nothing either you give us everything or we can't get the data out of you it's impossible. Jane I noted you want to come in but can I just ask a sort of nuance when I look at the early learning and childcare providers local authority funding and support overview which was published in August last year set that from the government that there are four broad ways in terms of arriving these costs one is surveys both of cost and prices essentially a working group that's agreed cost for particular headings and cost modeling when you actually then look at how different local authorities approach this rather than doing a balance across those things it looks like local authorities are picking one of them and all of them are surveying and I see so that that's one observation the other thing is when I do look at the surveys some of the survey data is quite old some of the local authorities look like they're using data from 2016 which you know there's been a lot of things happen between now and 2016 so is that am I sort of gleaning the right things from that and which of those approaches do you find better or worse and would you like to sort of see a balancing of those different approaches? I think you've picked that up correctly and identified the key issues I think for the sector what we've been saying a lot recently is it's that sense of apathy survey fatigue whereby as Jonathan mentioned they're asked to continually open their books and they have done that over over the years you know in the exercise in the 2016 as you mentioned but also last year for the financial health check and then now recently we've had the cost collection exercise and that is difficult and I acknowledge what Jonathan's saying about that we're not I'm not saying we have a magic bullet in some way but if you can imagine for the sector to consistently have to do that and then not feel that they see action or they see positive change as a result of that and then there is there is not really that scrutiny around whether a local authority will transparently and openly discuss and engage with that and then make changes from it it could be that they take the information and may or may not act on that so I think the key issue is that the sector is feeling a sense of here we go again and we're asked to do this and that's a lot of work when they have you know staffing challenges all the Covid challenges we've been through ongoing recruitment challenges and they've to do their day job and this is a big exercise to undertake and I think the key also as we've mentioned earlier is maybe that breakdown in the relationships between the local authority and the PVI sector so there could be that reticence to engage if they don't feel that they're being actively engaged with and that they're what they provide as as Jonathan said they then don't see a comparison and it's we never know what the local authority cost breakdown looks like so that starts to begin to work then. So just final question and I'm afraid I've been doing research while sitting in committee because I was slightly surprised by what cause they were saying in terms of the number of providers and looking at the care inspectorate so they produced a report in March 2022 showing the state of the sector. Now two things to note that that's actually reliant on data that's about two years old most of the data was collected in 2019 but in broad terms it seems to be stating that while capacity overall across all providers in the sector has increased the number of services i.e. the number of providers has declined now given that we know what is going on local authority that would seem to be painting a kind of chilling picture for those providers that are outside local authorities. I mean what impacts do you feel it's had and I would just note that in this report it's saying that childminders have fallen by seven percent and given that Yomer up-to-date figures are showing 25 percent is that reflected in PVI sector as well that sort of level of change. Very much so in terms of our membership we also support the voluntary sector and that's where I think the majority of the impact has been for our members. We've lost quite a lot of members that have had to close and there are ongoing issues around the necessity to have a committee to run those settings so they've had the ongoing challenges as with the PVI sector in general but they also have challenges around access to committees to run their settings and often the model and the way that they run can be quite challenging for them to be sustainable during these past few years especially when for example rates and rents etc are differing so much so we are seeing a decline in that particular area of our membership. Jonathan, do you have anything to add in terms of the impact of the PVI sector? Is it forcing consolidation to larger chains? Is that a fair analysis? I think that you can see that that would be a sort of logical conclusion of funding challenges so three quarters of our members tell us that the funding that they receive doesn't cover the costs for delivering that care. We talked to our members last autumn so before the real cost of living started to shoot up even at that point 21% believed that they were going to be operating at a loss and 55% believed they were only going to break even. Admittedly that's taken the pandemic in but things haven't magically you know somehow got better overnight. Jane has talked about the staffing challenges and all those other things that are a burden on businesses. That is a drag on their productivity if you want to talk about it in purely economic terms. Importantly we're talking about children's provision and what's best for children but if you've got high turnover of staff, you've got training, retraining, you've got important leaders leaving your setting that is a drag. If you've got rates that aren't covering your costs, if you've got children dropping in and out, changing their hours because parents are working more flexibly, that takes management to meet that need. We've got a picture where funding isn't keeping in place with what providers need. That is going to put financial stress and financial strain on businesses so you ask the question about consolidation. Either you face going out of business or selling your nursery and either that's going to be to another provider locally or to somebody who wants to get into the sector and at the moment I think it's more likely to be to another provider. Graham, I apologise for having a preponderance to go to your colleagues with my questions. Not at all Daniel, thank you. Just to pick up on your point I mean yes that the Cairnspectr official ELC annual statistics about two years behind and there was a publication. I think the figure you quoted of seven percent was in the last recorded year. But in terms of where we are just now, when we did our ELC audit 2019 just before the pandemic, when we looked at the previous five-year period of 2014 to 19, our workforce had declined by 14.5%. At that time we recommended to the Scottish Government that there was a real urgent need to go out and do a childmender recruitment campaign. That recommendation wasn't accepted. We did our audit in 21. We look at the five-year period 2016 to 2021. The decline is 26%. This decline is accelerating year on year. For childminders it's uncertain to know what is the tolerance threshold before we'll see some action in the sense we need to see a 30, 40, 50% decline. We really do need some urgent action on this. Thank you. I'll leave it there. Thank you. Douglas, to follow by John. Yes, thanks, convener. I'm just thinking back to the desire to have a national rate. But does there not need to be regional variations? If I compare Edinburgh with Elgin, for example, isn't it the case that property and the building costs are going to be more expensive in Edinburgh? Maybe even staff costs might be higher in Edinburgh as well. So if there was a national rate how would we be able to square that off? That's the key word as advisory in the sense that it's more, you know, it's for consistency the Scottish Government would try to engineer that but it has to take into account regional variations because you say remote and rural areas. That's why again going back to the point I made about providing neutrality not working. I think you would need a minimum provider mix but again you've got to take into account real estate because that could be really difficult to deliver so I think it's advisory followed by that variation. Okay so maybe even also maybe a minimum rate and then maybe it might be more expensive in other areas. Something that occurred to me as well that obviously when we look at local authorities they don't really have any building cost they don't have any capital cost or anything so I guess there's not a level playing field there either so that's probably why they can they can pay their staff more, you know, a higher more generous pension as well I'd imagine. So I guess it's even harder for private providers to compete local authorities when they've got all that for for free but that'd be correct. Very much so and it's an ongoing challenge and I think the gap is going to continue to widen and as Jonathan mentioned earlier about, you know, some examples of job adverse demonstrate up to 10 grand difference then you're going to have that ongoing hemorrhaging of staff potentially moving into the local authority sector that then affects the quality within the settings because they have to recruit and bring new staff in. There are also members are telling us they're losing a lot of their leadership team so that's very detrimental to the sector and then as Graeme mentioned earlier you've got the level of bureaucracy that's happening that's not the same it's not equitable in ELC as it is in schools so schools have had this break in their inspection regime we've had ongoing inspections throughout this time and we're not saying that you know that we shouldn't be inspected it's important that children access a high quality service but there's this continual need to deal with now we've got the Care Inspectorate new framework now we've got Education Scotland's framework as Graeme mentioned coming back in so again the sector is going to be subject to that rigorous inspection regime which we agree with but there needs to be recognition of what the sector is going through at the moment and the challenges that when you are trying to run a business and you're also trying to ensure that you have high quality setting there are a number of factors and challenges that are just against the pvi sector which the local authority sector does not experience so what would you like to change you know if you were if it was up to you what would you like to see being done differently whether that's around paperwork whether it's around staffing costs what would you change we've we've advocated for one single inspection body for ELC that would reduce the bureaucracy because the aspiration at the moment is to consult on a single shared framework but that still will inevitably result in two inspection bodies potentially coming in so I think that would help with regard to the ongoing level of bureaucracy I think more active engagement with the pvi sector at very early stages as opposed to you know later in discussions when decisions have been made we really want things to be to be simpler overall and I would say that if we could have some kind of aspiration towards parity between the sector it doesn't seem right that in Scotland children are you know subject to it's depending on the setting they go to as opposed to you know the local authority staffing structures and the pay scales etc so can we have some discussion around national salaries an equitable pay scale so that it doesn't really matter what sector you're working in from an ELC point of view there's parity across the sector but I think really just ensuring that the sector is not given a rate that just enables them to be sustainable they need to thrive they need to have a rate that helps them to reinvest in their business and I think more active and effective communication with the pvi sector overall would help yeah I just wanted to comment on a point so on the table on page four of the spice briefing you've got a breakdown of the local authority spend with part the providers and we know nationally that 31% of the 1140 hours delivery is taking place with part the providers and I can only count three local authorities there who spend more than 31% of their budget with partner providers so I know we're talking in averages but it's quite clear James alluded to it it's quite clear that disproportionate amounts of funding compared to delivery is happening so more is being spent although more delivery is happening in local authorities proportionately a lot more budget is being spent on local authority delivery than on on partner providers and we've talked about local authorities being a provider of last resort if we see people leave in the sector because funding is not allowing them to as as Jones said be sustainable or to thrive then more will fall back on local authorities and it's quite clear that that's going to cost more it will cost more of a budgetary headache for local authorities so I just wanted to start with that and then on your suggestion of what policy proposals could help we've really advocated for a system that we call the child care passport it could be called whatever but what what we think that would mean is funding truly following a child so the the funding rate is almost passed to a parent not in a cash term but in an account that they can use with a registered provider and they can blend their places they can take it to a local authority setting a nursery a child blender whomever they want and it says you know here is your budget based on where you live what your child's needs are and what you're entitled to you know if you start to incorporate the eligible two-year-olds as well and then the parent has the choice that says actually I want to take it here to this nursery and that childminder or whatever works for them and that is a way of really ensuring that funding follows the child it's a way of really enforcing or reinforcing parental choice and as James alluded to it would reduce the amount of burden that providers face in terms of administering the funding and the same for local authorities as well rather than then saying here is a rate that Edinburgh should be due nationally and you've got range and things like that actually you know work out what those entitlements are for the child and set up a system that follows the child rather than trying to shoehorn the child into existing budget structures and administrative structures thank you Kenneth Douglas I mean in response to your question around what's required I mean I think my response would be that multi factorial I would agree with Jane you know absolutely we need a single shared inspection but that's only part of the equation that's just the national level we need to remove the duplication with the local quality assurance because there's duplication happening at that level but also going back to my earlier point about the layering on of all the frameworks and standards coming through we need to rationalise outcomes reporting so it's simple you need to maintain the quality assurance but have it sort of simplified and more clear cut but also I'll go back to the point of you're probably all familiar with the diagram or the illustration of equality against equity where you have sort of three different heights of children standing trying to go for a fence you give them all the same box not everybody can see over the fence equity is quite different and I think with child mining the vast majority of businesses are sole workers it's not high income profession people come into vocation to make a difference a lot of child mines can't pay themselves a living wage it was never credible to expect a child miner to be able to compete equitably in the market against the local authority against private nursery child miners need some form of affirmative action to enable them to compete need some additionality and that's a point we've made we advocated for and secured the action plan on child mining but that's stalled you know we've not really seen meaningful additionality coming through and I think my final point is just going back to sort of this prior neutrality from our point of view prior neutrality is not working after five years and we need to replace it with something else if the Scottish Government is wedded to it it needs to be enforced because the reality is when you have Scottish Government standing off you have cosless standing off you have a vacuum and that enables these problems to continue that we've had for the last five years we keep reporting them in our audit and then nothing's changing you know we get a policy but rebuttal response and the response to the Scottish Government is we're doing ABCDE we don't disagree with that they're doing ABCDE but if ABCDE are not directed at the big problems then that problem continues you're just going with the low hanging fruit you're actually avoiding dealing with a big issue and it may be because it's a challenge when you have a national policy it depends on local implementation it's a big issue you know we can't solve this here in that room here today but the reality is our workforce is declining and it can't be sustained okay thank you thank you thank you thank you very much john um i mean i realise it's nine years ago since the legislation was put in place now while mr mcallus is right told us he's only been at post for two years and i'm not sure how long the rest of you or the others of you have been but is it your understanding that your organisation or at least the sector was well consulted on when the legislation went through um because one of the things we're trying to do in the committee is look at how the finances were worked out at the time and could we do that better so i'm just wondering if if you folk were involved mr mcastle i think it'd be fair to say am i um organisational understanding before or took a post three years ago is that yes the the scottish government was consultative the extent which our views were taken into account might be quite different in the sense that would have been my next question yes um i think it's again child mining has felt historically as though it's fighting a losing struggle in the sense that you know when you look at the latest improvement service report you simply need to look at the number of children who are receiving funded ELC 70 percent are receiving at local authority nurses 28 percent in pvi only two percent child planning yes i saw in your paper you said two you didn't think two percent was a good enough not at all not at all have you got figured what it should be i think it should be far higher but what i'm meaning is that when you look at the fact that 1140 had to be delivered as a policy so you can see where the big numbers have been with local authority nurses private nurses child miners always sort of been struggling i think to have its voice heard within that much wider arena okay um ms brampton was your sector can i've consulted did you feel it 2013 um so it was before my time coming into the sector i was in schools at that time but um so i wouldn't like to comment on that but i think one of the key issues is in terms of thinking about this going forward slightly unrelated but the difficulties that we've alluded to today with local authorities making the decisions about the you know the rates and the fact that they're also setting the rates for themselves and they're in competition some way would it not be aspirational to consider looking at this in a totally different way and having a separate independent body that makes these decisions but i just thought i was mentioning that and you wouldn't be sure if that would point was raised in 2013 i wouldn't be sure but i know that members have been actively speaking about that recently that the tension between the role of the local authority in being the guarantor of quality but also being in competition in some ways has to be an ongoing tension that's very difficult to address so that's come up recently from members but i wouldn't be able to comment on before my time and mr broadbread i'm assuming you weren't around in 2013 i was but not an ndna i'll be honest but i do know that again there was lots of consultation activity that happened i would say that certain elements were outside of that so things like the agreement between cosler and scotish government in terms of the the funding prior to implementation that included the capital expenditure that was that was more of a kind of this is the decision that's been reached in the in the agreement between cosler and scotish government rather than there being a consultative approach i would say that other than our members were consistently raising funding issues as a concern for the implementation of the policy i mean historically the funding rates at that time were were really very low and we do recognise that the rates have increased by i think 26 percent from from the those those sort of pre-policy days also the 600 hours days but that was that was chronically low and so i would say yes consultation did happen and i know that our organisation and our members were involved in that but then when again when we've put forward our own evidence as Graham has suggested it wasn't always taken on board and the other thing that i do want to highlight from the time is there was a big focus on this being a big infrastructure project and a lot of money and effort being put into expanding those local authority nurseries which we raised concerns about at the time precisely because and i think it came up briefly in the previous panel new infrastructure you know although it's funded from capital budgets becomes a revenue issue in future years similarly you know that's that's the situation that we see now where and some of those were built or expanded on near to existing high quality provision and that wasn't always done in consultation that always wasn't always engaged with people would just see buildings how it start to appear so elements of consultation yes but there was things that just happened that that as jones said was done to the sector rather than consultatively game of these hand up to come back i'll come back i'll come back to you just in a second i just wanted to pursue that the capital which you mentioned mr broadbreak did you did you or your sector get a share of the capital funding that was available there some of it was available via via local some local authorities but nowhere near the same levels and i think i'm working off the top of my head and from memory i think we're talking of grants of up to 10 000 pounds where they were available but again there was a lot a lot of hoops to jump through which is to an extent understandable but where people were seeing millions of pounds being spent on other projects this felt like you know actually there was capacity within private and voluntary settings to expand and meet that need but again you know there was money available for that but nowhere near on the same scale and not in every area i would i would say again i'm working from memory there okay thanks mr mccarston thanks john and it's just picking up on jonathan's point i mean we would absolutely agree that it's very much been the experience of child mining that some local authorities went down the route of their own capital bill projects without looking to existing capacity i submitted a really detailed briefing paper in advance of this meeting lots of data in it but if there's only one statistic you take away from today please let it be this in our last audit in 21 and in our previous audits we asked how many local authorities had actually undertaken impact assessments of their own expansion plans on child mining only four of 32 have even done that okay i might come back to that in a minute while you're there then i was interested in this point and i raised it with the previous panel about the cost of different models and i'm assuming there's not a lot of difference but i might stand to be corrected between the private voluntary independent sector and the council if it's actually providing a nursery but for child mining i mean you've already said i think that the ratios are different that right so you you have lower ratios ie fewer kids per adult in a child mining setting compared to a nursery setting but you wouldn't have the same building you wouldn't have a manager or an office work or something like that so how do you see the actual costs panning out i think that the costs are different and we're needing to capture more information about that to inform our understanding in the sense that the cost collection exercise that cosla and improvement service undertook for ELC settings back in may they're only now doing that for child mining you know we've gotten to realise that yes you actually need to look at child mining differently to understand the costs meaningfully the last exercise that is for child mining was back about 2015 2016 and we've been able to support cosla so far on contributing to development of this latest cost exercise but from my point of view it's still not going to be meaningful in the sense that it's not capturing understanding about the hidden costs of delivering child mining as i mentioned you know there's so much work needs to be done unpaid in the evenings at weekends that's not costed we need to understand that similarly it's not just about the sustainable rates it's about the number of hours we need to understand how sustainable that is and again cosla doesn't want to get into that space so you know from our part of view we're really keen to capture up-to-date data i am to answer your question simply i don't believe child mining is more expensive you know anecdotal feedback from parents is defined at a very cost effective and need low cost for my childcare i think not enough is understood about it but equally there are additional pressures in the sense that when you look within a national stand for lc there's requirement for all providers to pay staff the real living wage and many child miners rely on unpaid assistance who might be a family member who will with drop-off pickup if they were then to start applying cost to those assistants again it might impact on our business so we need to capture more data and i think the more data we have then we could have an informed discussion with cosla and improvement service in terms of are the rates sustainable for child mining do the need to alter so i mean something like say a five percent admin charge or management charge to connect for the all that extra work in the evenings would that be the kind of thing you'd be looking for i think it'd be useful to include something cos again i mean if you look at a nursery model you know you will have managers practitioners you'll have administrators finance staff the child miner does everything on itself and you know that most of that is unpaid in the evenings at weekends it's not costed into the form of childcare and again what came through in the scottish government's financial health check last year was that the majority of child miners were actually holding their costs because child miners were affected so adversely by the pandemic you had a sustained periods where parents were required to work from home in furlough so you had a standard reduction in demand for childcare you know after the pandemic there's two most vulnerable forms of childcare or child mining in school age childcare and for that reason child miners don't want to put their costs up so if anything they're holding their costs and they're absorbing it you know it's fuel costs everything's going up just now it's even child miners involved so heavily in driving children around dropping off picking up so again it's different from the nursery model and that's what we've been trying to say to cause them improvements errors is you know please don't just keep as you've done historically applying a nursery model to child mining we need to understand child mining each form childcare is different mrs brunton i mean from your angle the costs in the different parts of the sector are they similar or how would you say that no i agree with what graham's i'm saying in terms of that and i think that that's a key issue that it's a sort of blanket approach applied to things without that recognition and again although i'm laboring the point but i go back to the fact that the local authorities are not demonstrating their cost basis so that's very difficult for the pvi sector to hear decisions made about their costs when there's not that active engagement so i think that's a an ongoing tension and i just i noted in the papers that in terms of going forward when agreeing financial mandates i think the key thing there it was talking about to put in place from the outset to monitor expenditure to ensure that the new policy initiatives are being appropriately funded and to really look at a consistent formula as opposed to basing allocations on cost estimates from the bodies themselves so i think it is that back to consistency of approach rather than the pvi sector constantly feeling they're having to justify costs and for the sector the last two years our costs have increased exponentially and as i mentioned earlier some authorities are not looking at an annual uplift or haven't given that so there there's that tension between what the local authorities are allocating and then what's then allocated to the pvi sector so i think there is then the sector is looking at the under threes and they're thinking how can they recoup costs through the non-funded hours that obviously they recognize the tension with that for parents and the difficulties that parents are experiencing at the moment so i think it's really important with the programme for government expansion we're hurting to hear and we're working with Scottish Government around what does that look like when we extend this programme we need to learn from what's happened over these years and not just replicate that going forward so i think it's so important to ensure that and in the earlier panel there was a discussion around family engagement and family well-being that's critical going forward as well not necessarily the same model will be relevant for the under for the twos and for the ones so yeah okay thanks much okay thank you very much that has concluded questions from the committee so i want to thank you for your evidence today we will continue our evidence taking on post legislative scrutiny of aspects of the financial memorandum next week when we hear from the Scottish Government at our final meeting that concludes the public part of today's meeting so the next item our agenda should be discussed in private consideration of our work programme so i'll now move into private session i'll just have a four five minute break to enable our witnesses and the official report to leave