 Good morning, and welcome to the eighth meeting of the Social Justice and Social Security Committee. This morning, we will be discussing kinship care with a range of stakeholders. Apologies have been received from Alina Wittam and Emma Roddick, and Evelyn Tweed is attending as Alina's substitute. As deputy convener, I will be convening this morning's meeting. Our first item of business today is a decision to take items 3 and 4 in private. Are we all agreed? We will move on to agenda item 2. I welcome to the meeting our first panel, who are joining us remotely. Hello all. I welcome Kirsty Dool, Permanence Lead for Celces, Laura Cavan, children and young people team Cosla, Vivian Thomson, Social Work Scotland and Linda Richards, Perth and Cymruos Council. A few housekeeping points to mention before we start. I would ask that please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn your microphones on before you start to speak. All witnesses can indicate with an R in the dialogue box in BlueJeans or simply with a show of your hand if you wish to come in a question and everyone should check that they can see the dialogue box on the right hand side of your screen. I would ask everybody to be mindful of time this morning. We do have a lot to get through. Please do not feel that you have to answer every single question and if you have nothing new to add to what is being said by other people, that is okay. You are also welcome to follow up and write on any points that you do not feel have been covered that you might have missed or if you want to supply any further information at all on any point raised after the meeting. I would just reaffirm please short succinct questions and answers. I would also invite all members to direct their questions to particular panellists. I will begin with Jeremy. I believe that you want to come in. Good morning to the panel. Thank you all for coming along this morning. I have a couple of questions to start us off with. Probably this will be aimed at CLCIS as it is part of your submission. I was interested to read from your submission and from other submissions, that there seems to be some confusion among the words formal and informal in regard to kinship care and the categories do not seem to be neatly defined. Can you maybe help me out by saying is that just the way it is always going to be or is the work that we can do to give better definitions and does that actually make a difference in practice? Do you have any one specific question? Yes, I think that it is on a really important point and I think that it is a good question that to start some of these discussions this morning, I think that the use of phrases such as formal and informal to describe kinship care can be a little bit confusing and it is a really good opportunity to discuss that today. I think that they can be used as different categories to describe different families whose needs and circumstances may be similar and yet, based on those categories, it can mean that vital support is much harder to access for some carers than others. For example, informal arrangements can often be those where a court order is in place and so sometimes that can feel a little bit tricky to describe them as informal arrangements. Similarly, some formal arrangements do not involve, for example, an order granted by the children's healing system and are based on the consent of a parent, for example, under a voluntary agreement through section 25 of the Children's Scotland Act 1995. I think that the use of formal and informal is definitely something that we would want to explore and I think that it is certainly something that we would want to think about further because I think that we really need to get into thinking about what does this child need rather than what is the status of the adult who cares for them and what is the legal arrangement around them. It really helps us to step into what does this child need if we strip away some of those definitions. Thank you. That is helpful. I do not have anyone else got anything that they want to add to that question. If not, I will move on, convener, to a question in regard to—again, this may be one for COSLA to start with. Obviously, we had the promise that it was published back in 2017 and then reported on 2018. What progress do you think has been made in regard to the forms that were outlined? What are the major ones that we now need to pick up on and move forward at a quicker pace? I clarify, specifically, that you are referring to kinship care reforms in relation to kinship care when you are talking about the promise or the promise overall. Yes, just in regard to kinship care. There is quite a lot, and it relates to your earlier question about the different definitions of kinship carers. As the previous speaker said, we need to start to think about what the child needs. In fact, we are starting to think about what the child needs rather than the legal status of their carer and the placement. Within the kinship care collaborative, there is a bit of work going on under some of the subgroups around looking at the gaps in terms of any resources and needs or any of the support that is provided to families, regardless of the definition. That is definitely one of the things that we need to focus on going forward, is just removing and looking at the definition and looking at what the child needs. There is good work going on there, but that is something that we need to accelerate. Thank you. I would now like to bring in Marie McNair to be followed by Miles Briggs. Thank you, convener, and good morning panel. I will pose my first question to Laura Cabin from COSLA and anyone else who would like to comment. We are seeing considerable variation in the rates of support for kinship carers across councils. What are the main reasons for this, and are you concerned that the needs of some kinship carers are not being met because of the variations in policy? Thank you for that question. It is our life, uncertainly. There is a range of reasons for that. One of them is the fact that, as well as the co-relawncies that are paid, local authorities have a range of different payments and benefits in place for kinship carers, foster carers. For example, they have different payments for celebrations for birthdays and things like that, or for clothing or for transport. Looking at the co-relawncies in isolation does not give you a clear picture of the overall financial support that is available, as well as the different costs depending on the different areas that you live in. For example, you will know that there are significant variations in the cost of transport, fuel and things like that, at a distance that you have travelled depending on where you live. However, in saying that, there is work on going, and you will move from our submission and from one of those submissions as well. The co-relawncies group reported in 2018, and there has been work going on since then, although it paused a little bit during the initial part of the pandemic, to look at how we make sure that there is a bit more clarity around the co-relawncies, to make sure that families understand and have the resources that they need to support their children. That work has picked up again, and we are looking at not just the co-relawncies but the other support that is around that to make sure that everything is clear. The Scottish Government is looking at the funding that can be provided to support that, but looking at the allowance and isolation is not a clear picture of the financial support. Vivian might want to add a bit more on that, because she has been involved in that work as well. I echo what Laura has already said. The issue of financial support is that there are several reasons why it varies. Scotland is the only one of the four nations that does not have national allowance for foster care, and Scotland has pegged our fostering allowance—our kinship allowance—to our fostering allowance. Historically, there were national recommended rates that came from both COSLA and from a fostering network about what allowance should be paid for young people. That has dissipated over time, and local authorities set their own fostering rates now. The national allowance work was about bringing us in line with the other three nations of the UK and bringing greater equity to foster carers and eligible kinship carers, so that the same rate would be paid regardless of whether you live in the north of Scotland or in one of the cities or in the central belt. That is something that Social Work Scotland is supportive of. As Laura says, there has been a lot of work going on about looking at what reasonable allowance would be and looking at different models that have been used for that. There is a lot of work going on to try and bring that whole discussion to a conclusion, which would mean that there was equity of allowance across the country. Some of that includes what an allowance should cover the details of that, and it is equally applicable to kinship carers, as it is to foster carers. A second question. Across the 32 councils, approaches are different. What has been done to promote best practice? Is there any good approach that you are aware of that you would like to highlight to the committee? Is there any good practice for finance? That is quite a difficult question to respond to. There are different approaches across the country. What there is is a real commitment across local authorities and voluntary groups and others who work with kinship carers and foster carers about making sure that carers receive the support that they need. The GERFEC framework that Kirsty referred to earlier on is universally embedded, and it is about assessing what do young people need as distinct from what we will give to them. There is not one model that would fit everything, but what there is is the real desire that the right support is given at the right time. There are some legal complexities to making sure that that happens. As you will see from the papers that have been submitted, there are lots of variances and differences that people are entitled to depending on legal status. That makes kinship care quite a complicated situation, but there is certainly a commitment among people to make sure that people get the right support. There are some imaginative ways of using other means to help kinship carers access, for example, family support, joining foster carer training, to access charities and manage other approaches in that way. I am not sure whether that is specifically the answer to your question. I think that it relates to the additional support that can be provided to kinship carers other than just within the allowance. No, that has been helpful. I have just one final question, if that is okay. I will just vote out to anyone who can answer. Frequently, our committee hears horror stories about the detrimental impact of universal credit. How is the UC impacting on kinship carers and is there anything that urgently needs to be addressed? I appreciate that the second panel might be able to answer that in more detail. Would anybody from the panel like to come in, or are you directing that to anybody specific, Mene? No, I will just put that out to anyone who can answer on the panel, I think. But if not, I mean that it is certainly something that I can take up on the next panel. I am not seeing anyone wanting to come in, so I think that we will maybe leave that to the second panel. Is that all your questions, Mene? That is me for now, thanks. All right, thank you very much. I will move now to Miles Briggs and to be followed by Jeremy Belfour. Good morning to the panel. Thank you for joining us this morning. I wanted to carry on some of the questions that Meree MacLean opened with, because I wanted to ask specifically why we have not seen progress on this, because I think that there is frustration in the Parliament to be quite frank as well, because the education committee's work on this did put forward so many recommendations that do not seem to have actually taken place. So, specifically looking at the Scottish recommended allowance, is that purely because of a financial situation councils are founding themselves in? I was looking at the cosless submission to the committee, which states that from the start of the work on a national allowance, for example, that it would not be possible to deliver that within current levels of funding, and that the Scottish Government having cut council funding would have to fully fund that for that to be possible. I will maybe bring in Laura in terms of why we have not seen that standard delivered, because it is years now, since that was expected. Thanks. There is a range of reasons for that. If we go back to when the recommendations were first published, then there was a great deal of work done at that point to cost what the recommended allowance would be, what the financial impact of that would be, and I understand that, at that point, the Scottish Government was a way to discuss how it would provide the funding to allow for that. Obviously, with Covid-19, there was a bit of a delay as people rightly turned their attention to the immediate crisis. Over the past few months, discussions have picked up again, and I understand that the frustrations have been involved in that for a while. I might echo some of those frustrations as well, but we are in a place now where we are moving forward with that. I hope that that offers some level of reassurance, as well as that it is a complex area, as I described in my last response to your colleague, because, as well as the core allowances that local authorities are paying, there are a range of other payments that local authorities are making to foster and kinship carers to support the children that they are looking after. It is not the case that we can just look at the allowances in isolation. We also need to ensure that there is equity. If a council is paying above what the recommended allowance would be, we do not want to see the foster carer, kinship carer losing out in any way. The allowance is being reduced in any area, so we want to make sure that it is fully funded and that anyone paying below is able to pay that allowance, but anyone paying above it is not negatively impacted. Basically, we need a distribution that does not penalise those that are paying over the recommended allowance. That added a bit of complexity to it, as well. It was not very succinct or clear, but I apologise. I am happy to have another batch that I was saying to you over some additional input. That would be very helpful. For the committee, probably, if there is information about what additional payments other councils do provide and what that looks like, it would be helpful to see where clearly there is a postcode lottery then in that case of what support is being provided across the country. I am not sure if anyone else had said that they wanted to come in on that question. I cannot see— No, I do not believe anyone else. Just to move on to the second question, it was also with regard to kinship carers who are in formal kinship carer arrangements and obviously who are not eligible at this moment in time for support. I wanted to ask—and maybe this is a good question to bring in Linda Richards—how that these individuals are supported and what arrangements, for example, you have in place in Perthincan Rusts Council. Good morning. I guess that what I would first of all be wanting to make clear is that informal kinship carer arrangements are for children who are not looked after by the local authority. As such, it is a very difficult balance to strike, because what we do not want to be doing is impinging on their right to their family and under the Children and Scotland Act is to have that minimal intervention focus as well. The informal kinship carer arrangements that we have in Perthincan Rusts is obviously through the kinship carer assistance act. We did a lot of publicity round about local arrangements in terms of if there were kinship carer arrangements that we were aware of. There are many kinship carers out there who are looking after family members and private family arrangements that do not actually want the state to intervene. I think that what we have tried to do is offer that in a kind of voluntary basis, so offer the support. It is an offer rather than a must-do. We used our local partners, third sector partners in Perthincan Rusts, to offer the support that sometimes they do not want from a social work department. We also have to be clear about that. A lot of informal arrangements are made by families who do not want formal social work support. Therefore, directing them through the third sector partnerships is what supports them. Things such as we have a dedicated access to our welfare rights team that will allow them to ensure that their benefits are maximised. We also ensure that any housing requirements that we have a strategic need policy within Perthincan Rusts are kinship carers. Therefore, they get strategic need points that allow them to access larger housing. We also do a lot of training and support through our therapeutic projects, so we can sometimes offer individual consultation regarding emotional well-being and mental health issues for children and young people who live in kinship carers, to the kinship carers themselves. The financial support is different, but the practical and emotional support is what our experience is that the group of kinship carers are looking for. We have also supported a number of them to financially manage to gain the kinship carer order, which allows for them to gain the parental rights and responsibilities of the children that they are looking after. Several informal kinship carers have come forward and saw that financial support, and we have given that to them. I think that what is different about informal kinship care in somebody is that that is dictated by a lot by the kinship carers themselves in seeking what it is that they want and what they are feeling they need in order to look after the child. That is really helpful and informative. I wanted to add a little bit to what Linda Richards had already said. That links to the questions that were asked earlier about definition as well, in that not all informal carers do not receive the allowance. Some eligible kinship carers do receive an allowance, and that is probably the part of the legislative framework in which we operate the kinship carers that causes the most confusion, because we have two carers sitting with section 11 kinship care order, but one will get an allowance and one will not get an allowance. That depends on whether they were at risk of being accommodated, whether they were placed originally with a kinship carer or by any involvement with the local authority. There is a difference in just the support that is provided financially to some of those kinship carers. Some will be getting an allowance and the support that Linda Richards has described. Others will be getting the support that Linda Richards has described that might be receiving their maintenance income from benefits or from other sources. It leads on to my point, which I wanted to make. I know, and I am sure that every MSP has had those cases, that often it will be grandparents who, in many cases, have retired sometimes and who are informally taking on a kinship carer role. I think that to go back to what you were saying, Linda, people are often then worried about engaging with social work and what that might mean and how that might see them judged, sometimes, to be quite honest. I wanted to ask, in terms of looking at a future model, whether or not informal kinship carers should also look to benefit from a recommended allowance and how, given your experience, what that would look like and how that could work for those families who often, I think, are nervous about engaging with local authorities on those issues. I am not sure if anyone wants to comment on that, Linda. I am quite happy to comment on that. First of all, what I would say is that, obviously, the ambitions of the promises about universal family support, that is the key in supporting informal kinship carers, whether, as Vivian has spoken about, we, in Perthinfan Rose, call them wellbeing enhance carers in order to differentiate from those carers, that group of informal kinship carers who have previously had been caring for a looked-after child and then have gained a kinship carer order and therefore still may require some support and will still be entitled to an allowance, as opposed to informal kinship carers where we have had no previous involvement with. If I am honest, I would say that the universal support that is in the community is what the informal kinship carers require and need more than the intervention of local authorities via the social work department. We are looking at building those universal supports through our education colleagues and through our support networks with our third sector partners to raise the profile of kinship carers that possibly require more support than children and young people who are their peers. If there was an allowance that was to be in the future, I would like to see that as a kind of universal support rather than through the council where the social work department would be involved in the monitoring and allocation of that. I believe that Laura wants to come in on that point. Thanks, convener. I was to pick up on the point around families perhaps being reluctant to access support or feeling worried about access and support. That is part of the reason that we are puzzled quite strongly stating that children's services should not be included in the national care service as it was in the consultation. The promises about supporting families and reducing barriers were spent years trying to de-stigmatise the kind of support that is seeking and receiving support from a range of agencies and providing that support through universal services such as schools such as ELC, trying to make that kind of holistic, graphic whole family kind of support. We do not want to risk undoing that by moving that kind of support into a national care service, so just to reiterate that point there. Thanks very much, Laura. I will now bring in Jeremy Balfour to be followed by Fowso Troudry. Thank you again, convener. I wonder if I can come back to this point about a national agreed allowance. Obviously, we are a country of around about five million. We know each other quite well. Going forward, is it more sensible just to pay this centrally in by national government rather than leaving local authorities with the discretion of how much they pay or what actually should be paid? Should that be brought as a Scottish Government, that if you do kingship care, this is what you get, whether you live in Inverness or Dumfries or whoever in the world? Perhaps I can start with Kirsty and Vivienne, and if anyone else wants to jump in, that would be helpful. As we have talked about a little bit today, we know that often children living with kingship carers are disproportionately living in some of the poorest households in Scotland. The provision of financial support to kingship carers is crucial. Equally crucial to that is the implementation of such a national minimum allowance for kingship carers. We feel that it is required quite urgently. One of the risks of becoming a kingship carer is that it can cause financial difficulties, as has been described earlier, due to the additional costs of raising a child, especially if there are extra supports needed. For example, as a result of children's complex life experiences, there might be a need for therapeutic and really trauma-informed supports. We also know that, often, grandparents, as we have been talking about before, are the most frequent kingship carers who may be living within limited means already. We also know from a recent survey that 44 per cent of kingship carers feel that they have to give up their employment when they become a kingship carer. Obviously, there is a real need for a financial aspect of becoming a kingship carer to really be addressed. That is a really interesting question. There is universal support across local authorities, support groups and so on. The introduction of a national allowance across Scotland would be not just desirable, but something that we very much want to see happening within Scotland. In the other three nations, it is an allowance that relates to fostering. It would only be if you were approved or assessed as a foster carer that that allowance would come. Scotland's situation is slightly different in that there was a parity of allowances that were brought in by the Scottish Government a number of years ago—I am forgetting what the particular date is—at the time of the decision to make eligible kingship carers. Kingship carers have looked after children entitled to the same allowance as their foster carer counterparts were brought in. There was also a commitment by the Scottish Government to look at the position that welfare benefits would take in providing a much more equitable approach to support to kingship carers. That is something that we would certainly hope could be explored further, particularly now that the Scottish Government has got the Social Security Scotland aspect of their provision there. Regardless of the introduction of a national allowance for foster carers that will equally be applied to eligible kingship carers, there will remain inequity. That is because of the legal context that we spoke about earlier, that some carers are eligible for an allowance the same as the foster carers and some are not. We really want to look at what the promise is talking about in terms of equity of support, family support and being able to have your needs met regardless of what part of the country you are living in. That feels particularly important. My final question is, what further support would make the biggest impact in supporting kingship carers across Scotland? If there was one thing that you could do tomorrow, what would it be and perhaps you could just go round the panel and start with Linda? For me, the one thing that we would make the biggest difference is suitable housing. Across, certainly in our local authority, naturally, there are files that we have all spoken about. The majority of kingship arrangements involve grandparents. There are also a number of families where there are four or five children being placed with grandparents or with aunts and uncles who also have children of their own. Accessing suitable housing becomes a huge issue. There are not many five or six-bedroom local authority homes that are available for kingship carers. We have done very imaginative things and knocked together two flats to make one house or a family group of eight children moving in to live with their grandparents, but that is not always possible and comes with a risk for a financial risk as well. Housing for me is a huge issue. I agree with what Linda has just said about housing. That is absolutely crucial. For me, one of my big things is that I would like to see our clear assessment and decision-making processes in local authorities and their partners for children who have a plan to or are already living with kingship carers. Obviously, Linda has the experience of Perth and Ross, which I think is exemplary, but we also know that there is huge variation across Scotland in the approach, assessment and decision-making processes for children in kingship carers. That is particularly stark, even when children in kingship carers are looked after under the legislation and should, by that definition, have regular looked-after children's views in the same way as other looked-after children do, for example those who are living in foster care or with prospective adopters. The reason why those processes in scrutiny are so important is that it is part of ensuring that children are living with the most suitable carers, which is obviously what we want, who will meet their needs for the rest of their childhood and, hopefully, beyond. Those carers and children will continue to receive the appropriate and tailored support that they need for those children to thrive. Sometimes, in those assessment and decision-making processes, there is not always the same legal advice offered to kingship carers or discussion about various options. Sometimes there is an assumption that a kingship carer order is the best option without really exploring other legal routes that might be more beneficial for some specific children and their kingship carers. I would advocate for clearer assessment and decision-making processes to ensure that children and their kingship carers get what they need, both at the point of decision-making and beyond. I certainly thank the convener. I would not disagree with anything that previous panel members have said. If there is one thing as full as I would like to see happen tomorrow, I would like to enhance and accelerate the culture change around how people feel about receiving support or accessing support, relating to what members in Llyndr have spoken to and what they are talking about in terms of reluctance to seek support. That is in line with the promise of making sure that we provide that support early to avoid any kind of struggle or crisis situations and help children to drive regardless of their family situation. If I can add also that we would like to see the full funding of the Scottish Recommended Allowance while allowing for that important local variation, as I mentioned earlier, there are different costs associated with living in different parts of Scotland in different situations, so I will take two options if that is okay. Thank you. Similarly, I would not disagree with anything that my colleagues have already said. If the question is the one thing that I would like to see would be really good quality family support that is available to everybody and available to every kingship carer, that is a core component of what we are trying to achieve through the promise and what we hear from kingship carers across the country is that money is important, but equally important is the other support that is around the support to be able to access suitable housing, to be able to adjust the housing that they are in just now, to have access to support to understand how they care for a child who has been perhaps traumatised or had difficult experiences, to be able to have somebody they can go to to say, how do I get extra support at school because my young person is struggling, they are having difficulties, I do not understand what that is about, just all these different aspects of family support and if that was universally available, it would make such a difference to every kingship carer, regardless of whether they are looking after a looked after child, an informal carer who is receiving an allowance or an informal carer who has never had any contact with social work at all, so that would be my wish if I had a magic wand for tomorrow. Just prior to moving on to Faisal, I believe that Evelyn Tweet has a question on one of the points raised within this theme. Evelyn, I will bring you in now, thanks. Okay, thanks convener and good morning panel. Yes, it was to go back to a point that Linda Richards had made about housing. I thought that that was a really powerful point that you made Linda when you said that there just aren't enough large houses within your area for kingship carers. I see that myself locally in Stirling and I wonder if the committee needs to look at the point of a huge Scottish Government house building programme, but at local level local authorities need to consider kingship carers and their needs and this particular need for quite large housing. I would direct that to Linda Richards. I speak to my colleagues across the country and this is an issue that is obviously in Stirling, but also perth and canoes across the country. We have a really strong partnership in perth and canoes without housing colleagues who go up above and beyond to try and find houses that are suitable for kingship carers. There just aren't enough sometimes, but they are totally aware of the need to look at all different kinds of options and will help with extensions. We had a partner, a housing association, who allowed us to reconvert the top floor of their house to make four bedrooms out of three. We have lots of examples of people working hard to try and make sure that that happens, but we just need to make sure that it is a priority to build more larger homes in the right area. I will now bring in Fausal Trouwdry to be followed by Miles Briggs. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, panel. I think that my colleagues have already asked, and I want to go back to that topic again. For the panel, anyone can answer that question, I guess. What barriers exist to informal kingship carers gaining the benefits to which they are entitled? And what are the problems that you see with the current system of entitlements? Would you like to direct that to a member of the panel, Fausal? Linda or Vivian? I think that Linda will be the one. I can see that she is taking her hand. Yeah. Are you thinking about financial entitlements or the entitlements to support our both? For both, I would say, I mean mostly financial. Yeah. I mean the financial, I mean I think sometimes our experience has been that sometimes informal kingship carers don't know that they are entitled to welfare benefits and support towards the granting of the kingship or a kingship carer order. So part of the barrier is about, you know, just making raising awareness round about their entitlements and supporting them to approach the relevant organisations. We have, as I said before, a partnership with our local welfare rights team who have been excellent in getting alongside our kingship carers who have then done benefit income maximisation assessments that allow them to ensure that they are receiving all the benefits that they can, that they are entitled to. On several occasions, that has increased kingship carers' financial position quite considerably. That is one thing that we have tried to do and tried to promote within the informal kingship carer group. The barrier is, I suppose, in terms of thinking about kingship carers' orders for those who have not been involved with a kind of formal process of removing the child from their parents as you would do if they were a looked after child. I think part of the barrier in seeking support to gain kingship carers' orders is the emotional impact that that has on a kingship carer. If we are talking about a grandparent removing the parental rights and responsibilities from their own child in order to look after their grandchild, that is a huge emotional journey for them. They need support in order to be able to consider whether that is the right thing to do. Our kingship carer team will work through that with them in terms of supporting them and thinking about what is the need and what is the hope to gain. Our kingship carer team will look at specific things, so we will pay one-off payments to allow for essential equipment such as beds, bedding, clothing and those kinds of things that allow the kingship carer to be freed up from that financial burden that allows them to then look after the child themselves. Partially, it is about raising awareness. We have tried to do that through some of our universal partners in ensuring that, if kingship carers come forward, for example, very often the people who know about informal kingship carer arrangements are our education colleagues, and we have done a lot of raising awareness. Sometimes we will have referrals into our kingship carer team from guidance teachers or other third sector partners that just allow for that support to be considered by them. Thank you, Linda Fousal. Do you have any further questions? No, thank you very much. Thank you. Apologies for sticking on the same theme. I will bring Pam Duncan-Glancy in prior to Miles. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning, panel. Thank you for your submissions and for your answer so far. Some of what I was going to speak about, in particular the variation of allowances across the country, which I find quite staggering. For one age group from age 0 to 4, that can be anything from £77 to £200. The conversation that we have had around the need for a national allowance there has been really helpful in that. I just wanted to ask, and possibly Laura, if it is all right, it said in your submission that local authorities are able to choose how they cover the cost of the 16 items as part of the allowance. Does that mean that in some cases it is not a cash payment, or is it always a cash payment for the allowance? I do not know that I have an answer to that one. Actually, that might be one that Vivian, who is a bit closer to the delivery side of things, would be able to answer. What we meant by that in the submission were a lot of the figures that you are referring to there. There might be an additional payment, for example, in relation to transport that is not covered in the code allowance. It might be a separate payment, or some of the things might be paid for separately, closing or something like that, a separate payment for clothing. I assume that it is cash payments for that, but I might defer to Vivian on that. What I was meaning in that is that not all 16 might be within that allowance that you are seeing, that you refer to the figures there. There might be a separate payment made for one of those specific elements. I can answer that. The allowance is a cash allowance, which is given to foster carers or any eligible kinship carers. It goes through the back payment into kinship carers or foster carers bank accounts. The national allowance, part of the work of that group, identified what the national allowance ought to cover. There are 16 items that were listed within that. Across the country there are variations in what people would call additional payments to foster carers and to kinship carers of looked after. It covers things like—the best way to describe it would be to say if somebody has to travel for a meeting related to the work of looking after that child, they might get an allowance for covering that. Most local authorities will provide what we would call set-up costs, so at the point where somebody first becomes a kinship carer, they would be provided with bed, bedding, clothing or other immediate costs to ensure that, at that point, they can look after that young person. There are lots of other little bits and pieces that are provided in support, and they might be provided in cash or in kind—it might be a natural bed that is provided or it might be the money that is provided to the carer to go and purchase the bed of their choice. That is something that is normally done in discussion. One of the opportunities that we have—we still need to explore a little bit further—is how much some of the self-directed support legislation might be able to assist. I think that there are particular opportunities with kinship carers in relation to that. When there is an assess need, they have much more choice over how that need is then met in relation to the young people. That is a subject for a completely new session. That is really helpful and really clear. What would the impact of—have the discussions around the national allowance taken into consideration the rate that is required for those 60 items? How is it being established? Are we looking at the increases in cost of living as well as part of that? How do you see that rate and the payment going forward? Someone mentioned Social Security Scotland earlier. Do you think that there is a role for them in that going forward? I will have a first stab at that, but others might want to come in behind me. The Fraser Valander Institute was involved in the initial costings of the 16 items and what that might look like. There is a report that was provided to the Scottish Government and to the Alliances Working Group that went through all that. When we introduce the national allowance for foster carers and eligible kinship carers, it will be important that there is some kind of cost of living uplift involved in that. We are really serious about making sure that the allowance covers everything that is needed for youngsters who are in care or youngsters who are in eligible kinship carers. Then it needs to continue to be—there is no point in introducing it—and then two years later it is actually not sufficient to do what the whole intent of all of this work has been. There has always been a commitment that was stated right back at the beginning of the Alliances Work. As I said earlier, there was a role for benefits. If there was a way of providing a benefit to all kinship carers, that would take away from the inequity that currently exists but will still exist even with the introduction of a national allowance because there are many informal kinship carers who will not be able to access that particular allowance. I am not sure whether that answers your question, but I hope that it helps. It absolutely does. Just finally on that, if you will, living, the legal mechanism that is used to determine who is eligible and who is not, could you tell us a bit more about what that mechanism is and what would need to change? There are two different legal mechanisms there. There are children who, for want of a better word, are in care. They have been moved from their parents, perhaps by children's hearing, and placed with a kinship carer. That is something that local authorities have a duty to do. They should always look at family before they look at any kind of stranger care for obvious reasons, or it may be that a family member himself has said, look, I am struggling, can you please look after my young person? For a while, those children are looked after. It is no different to a young person who might be in foster care or a young person who might be in residential or other types of care. All the looked after regulations and legislation that govern children in care apply to those children. The informal group is a kinship carer order, and that is outlined in the Children and Young Person Act 2014. It covers that those who are eligible for an allowance have eligible carers and eligible children. If they meet certain criteria for eligibility, they will get the allowance, and if they do not, they will not. The eligibility criteria is about a young person who is formally looked after. The young people that Linda Richards was talking about earlier, where they have already been looked after with a kinship carer, and a decision has been made that that needs to be the permanent place that the child lives, and steps have been taken to support the kinship carer to achieve a section 11 order that allows them to be permanently cared with that carer. It takes them out of the care system and gives the kinship carer parental rights, lets them get on with that but still allows local authorities to support them if that is needed. The previous looked after was at risk of accommodation coming into care at the time that they were placed, or the other eligibility criteria is on right out of my head, and I should note that it was previously looked after, or something else. They might not have been actually in care, but the local authority was involved in making that placement. If those criteria are met, they are considered to be eligible carers and eligible young people, and can therefore access the allowance and the other support that goes with that. We will now move on to our final theme, and I will bring in Miles Briggs. Thank you. I wanted to carry on a kind of overlaps, a lot of the conversation that we have had today with regards to further support for kinship families, and specifically looking at referral pathways, signposting, whatever we want to call it, and how we can improve that. We have already touched upon when young people in education, and I just wondered if there is a better model that we should be looking towards so that all those professionals, especially teachers, are aware of the needs of kinship carers, but also young carers. I think that there is also an overlap there as well in the classroom setting. Just to look specifically at some of the information that you have provided, the CELSIS survey highlighted the route of some of that, with regard to many children in kinship care having experienced trauma, and the number of children in kinship care who are less likely to receive mental health support than children in foster care. I just wondered what your view is on that. Specifically, my question is how do we improve that model, and in the classroom setting, I think, is where. Although we are not the Education Committee, there is an opportunity to take on board some of that work. It is a long question, I know, but I will maybe start with yourself, Vivian, as I think you touched upon this. Yes, the whole issue of mental health support is a massive topic that is being given a lot of attention. Education in children and young persons committees looked at it and so have other committees. It is something that is highlighted in the promise. Anything that can be done to raise awareness but also to ensure that the right children are able to access support is going to be very much welcomed. It is something that has a lot of attention being paid to. Just now, there are a number of groups looking at mental health support for young people, not only those who are looked after in kinship but all young people. On that side of things, if we can sort that for the general population, it will sort it for young people in kinship care. If you were talking to people who only worked in fostering and did not work in kinship care, they would talk about the challenges that there are in getting access to the right mental health support for young people in foster care. There is a national shortage of access to camp services and there is a lot of attention being paid to what you could call crisis services and early intervention services across the country. There has been money put into that. There are plans to expand it and I do think that that is where we need to put attention on generally so that young people, carers and parents of the general population know that they can access the right help at the right time, regardless of whether they are in foster care, kinship care or living with their parents or struggling with the stress of exams. The school aspect of that is, in my view, incredibly important. It is the one place where every child, regardless of their living circumstances, regardless of the legal context that they might be living within, they are all attending school or registered at some, perhaps from a few home school people, they are all accessing education. The councillors in schools, the early intervention support that has been provided there, the text chat services that are beginning to develop an awareness of that is something that, if we pay attention to, it would make quite a substantial difference to young people, including young people who are living in kinship care arrangements, looked after, eligible or not eligible. Thank you. I am not sure who else wants to come in, but one issue that I wanted to touch upon was whether or not teachers should be able to be informed of that. For example, registers having YC beside someone's name to suggest that they are a young carer or KC for kinship care to flag to teachers, especially in a secondary school setting when people are moving around different teachers at different classes, to understand and sometimes cut them some slack. I think that that is one of the questions that is always put to me when I am speaking to young carers. I just wanted to also include that as part of the question and potential model for anyone else who wants to come in. Thank you. Thank you. Which member of the panel would like to come in on that? I am quite happy to— Oh, Linda. Thank you. I think that we are all acutely aware of the impact of that on our children, young people, emotional, health and mental wellbeing needs to have certainly become more to the fore. I would suggest that, within the majority of our schools, the young carers are in the line of recent legislation and policy guidance has absolutely put their needs to the centre. I think that teachers, more than ever, have been acutely aware of their needs and worked with their counterparts in the third sector and the local authorities to really cut them slack. As Vivian has said, the demand on calm services has increased. The additional funding that local authorities have been given in order to promote the emotional wellbeing of children and young people to counselling in schools and projects has really been very supportive. We are looking at having third sector partners in schools that are promoting emotional wellbeing for all children and young people, but teachers and guidance staff in secondary schools in particular are acutely aware of the children that they are educating and who have those exceptional needs that are above and beyond. My experience is that they do wrap around the support, more particularly around the children and young people, and try their best to ensure that their emotional wellbeing is met. However, the universal provision in schools has been very much on those third sector partners' delivery and talking with children and young people in a very general way about good emotional health. That is something that is to be commended and welcomed as we go forward to having children and young people talking about how they are thinking and feeling and how they are coping with situations is the way forward. I want to pick up on your point about schools knowing who are young people and who are looked after by kinship carers. I agree with Linda that what people have to be careful about is asking children and young people whether they want that to be not what some young people do not necessarily like the idea of teachers knowing their home circumstances and the time that they are in CRC. We have to be very careful about making sure that we take into account the views of young people and what they decide should be going about their circumstances. Before we conclude, I want to pick up on a point that we have not fully covered. The whole family wellbeing fund was included in the programme for government 2021-22. While it is not solely focused on kinship care, it is aimed at tackling issues faced by families before they need crisis intervention. I am just looking to ask the panel how you believe the whole family wellbeing fund might be used to offer improved support to kinship families. I said earlier that family support was an incredibly important part of the support that is available to kinship carers. That was where the link that I would make to the whole family funding that has been coming. If we get family support right from early years and early intervention right through a child's life, and we get the support to those who are looking after those children, then far fewer young people will need to be looked after in kinship care, foster care or any other type of care setting. The fund is incredibly important. My one comment would be that if it is too targeted, it might mitigate the effect of being able to meet everybody's needs right the way across. There are some very specific supports that are needed for kinship carers. They need help to look after children who have gone through trauma. They need to be able to access the right person to direct them in the right place for issues that might not be around for other families who are not looking after a child in kinship care. However, if we get the family support aspect of things right, it could transform the opportunities and the support that is available to kinship carers. From that point of view, that funding is incredibly important. It is going to target one of the key parts of the promise. Thank you very much, Vivian. Certainly, COSLA has been working really close with the Scottish Government on the purpose of the investment to provide that up-stream. It is essential for crisis support for children, young people and families, and that is welcomed in terms of our work to keep the promise. There is a family support delivery group that is a collective of the Scottish Government, local government, health sector, professional associations and academics, and they have developed a route map for family support. That will feed into the advice future years of the whole family wellbeing fund. The committee might be interested in looking into the work of that group and linking in with that and looking at how we can influence that. Thank you very much. That brings us to the end. I do not leave anyone else who wants to come in on that. Can I just say thank you very much to all of the panel for giving your evidence this morning? Your answers and comments have been extremely helpful. I just want to remind you that, if there is anything that you feel you may have missed, you are more than welcome to follow up on any points in writing. Thanks once again. We will suspend the meeting briefly just for the change of panels, and we will have a short five-minute comfort break. Hello everyone, and welcome back. We will now continue taking evidence on kinship care. The format of this session will be the same as the previous panel. I welcome to the meeting our second panel, who is also joining us remotely. First, can I just confirm that it is Michelleine? Is that how I've pronounced? Yes, Michelleine. Perfect, thank you. Michelleine, chair of the Scottish Kinship Care Alliance, Jill Westwood, Peebles and District Citizens Advice Bureau manager, and Alison Gillis, child poverty action group in Scotland. Hopefully, you've all had the opportunity to tune in to the previous session, and we'll have an idea of the issues that have already been highlighted this morning. Once again, I just want to go over a few housekeeping points. Please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn on your microphones before you start to speak. Witnesses can indicate with an R in the dialogue box in blue jeans, or simply with a show of your hand if you wish to come in in a question, and everyone should check that they can see the dialogue box on the right hand of your screen at the moment. I would urge you all to be mindful of time. We're not too bad for time, I'll keep an eye on that as we go through, but we have a lot to get through. Please don't feel that you have to answer every single question. If you have nothing new to add to what's being said by others, it really is okay. Obviously, you're also welcome to follow up and write in on any points that you don't feel have been covered, or if you want to supply any further information on any point raised after the meeting. I would also invite members to direct their question to particular panellists. Again, I will invite members to ask questions in turn. We will begin again with Jeremy Balfour to be followed by Marie McNeill. Good morning, panel, and thank you for giving up time to come and answer our questions. As the devs community has said, I hope that you have got to watch the first session, so you know roughly where we are going in the next few minutes. Can I start with that general question that I asked previously? It may be Jill, and then Alison, and then you can maybe start. That is in regard to definitions, and is it a problem financially having different definitions? If so, is it easy to have just one definition or what would you see as a solution? The three definitions or two definitions make it very complicated for kinship carers to navigate not only the financial entitlements through kinship carer lines, but also the impact that those have on their access to other UK state benefits. If there could be a streamlining of the system or even just more simple terminology, that would be a huge benefit to kinship carers. Formally looked after or not looked after is great for social workers and for professionals, but it does not translate into people who are dealing with children experiencing trauma and trying to help children. If there is some way of streamlining that, the other phrase, the other terminology that is used is looked after or not looked after. Kinship carers, in my experience, have said to me that that does not actually mean anything to them. The children are all looked after because they are being looked after by them, if that makes sense. If the terminology could be streamlined, it would make sense to kinship carers to have a bit more in a more straightforward form. Hi, thanks. I agree. There is an issue with the use of definitions, ormal, informal. There are also other phrases that are used. Jill just mentioned looked after or not looked after and the distinction there. Sometimes the term approved kinship carer is also used. I am coming at this from a welfare rights point of view. In terms of entitlements to social security benefits, quite a lot of that terminology is not helpful when you are trying to ascertain what benefits you might be entitled to, or if you are an adviser trying to advise somebody. From a benefits point of view, what you need to know is whether the child is looked after child or not. That is the crucial bit of information, quite often, in terms of welfare benefits. If you use the terminology formal and informal, it does not necessarily equate to looked after or not looked after, as you have already gathered. There are wider issues about the terminology that other people have spoken about. From my point of view, thinking about the social security aspect of it, formal and informal is not particularly helpful, causes confusion and causes people to get the wrong information, the wrong advice. Sometimes causes people to get the wrong benefit entitlement or not get the benefit entitlement that they ought to have. To finish the point, inevitably, there will be pieces of terminology used, for example, in relation to the benefits system. What I would like is for people to have greater clarity about the terms that they are using. Perhaps a streamlining or a greater clarity would be very welcome. Alison, what if I could come back to you and pursue that slightly further in regard to your role in getting people the appropriate benefits that we are entitled to? Yes. From your experience, depending on what definition you fall under, are the passport benefits that you get if you fall under one definition or another definition? Is that the same across the United Kingdom or is it different? That may go beyond—it does stop me—but is it the same in Scotland compared to England and Wales? Obviously, the new agency here in Scotland is just up and running, so it is still really new. From your early experience of the new agency, are they following that time in regard to definitions or do they see it all as one? Okay. That is quite a big, wide-ranging question. That is why I was making whatever face I was making. I know about the UK system and the differences that exist in relation to kinship carers in the Scottish context. I will try not to be too long winded, but if we are thinking about the main UK benefit that people are now going to be thinking about, the means-tested benefit would be universal credit, but we are still thinking about child tax credit, because it is still around. In relation to that, the issue of whether a child or young person is looked after or not is crucial in terms of what entitlement a kinship carer might have. A lot flows from that, particularly in relation to universal credit. By and large, if you are caring for a looked-after child away from home—in a kinship carer situation, for example—you would not get the child element of universal credit. That applies the same rules to those kinship carers and those children, as would apply to a child in a foster care situation, if that makes sense. The assumption is that the local authority is supporting the kinship carer and that child. That would be the same across the UK. Those rules would apply across the UK. Where the difference comes in is some of the legal differences in terms of the kinship carer situation or placement. By and large, what I have just said would apply across the board. That creates issues, difficulties and confusion, and the DWP will always get it right, as I have said in my written briefing. To go to the other bit of your question about Social Security Scotland, the benefits that Social Security Scotland is administering are not those big means-tested benefits such as universal credit. However, I would say that the Scottish child payment, for example, is a Scottish benefit. It has no equivalent in the rest of the UK. I would say that, in relation to that particular benefit, which is significant but quite small, the Scottish Government or Social Security Scotland tried quite hard to ensure that kinship carers of both looked after and non-looked after children who are on a low income can access the Scottish child payment. That shows a different approach, but the Scottish child payment is a very different thing from the support that somebody gets from universal credit, if that makes sense. I could obviously say more about it, but I probably don't. That's probably enough. That has been really helpful. If there is anything else that you want to put down, as the Deputy Minister said, please do write it. In particular, if there are any definitions around passported benefits that people may or may not get, depending on the definition, perhaps you can reflect that in any written statement later. Thank you very much. That has been very helpful. I believe that Gill and then Micheline wanted to come in on those points, so I will bring Gill in first. I was going back to the definitions question and I would echo what Alison said from an advice giving on welfare benefits perspective. If the kinship carer is not confident of the information that they are giving you about looked after or not looked after status, we cannot proceed to advise them, because we would potentially be giving them completely the wrong information, which is a time delay, which means that it takes longer for the kinship carer to start to receive benefits and sometimes kinship carer lines. The crucial timing needs to be considered as well, I would say, when we are thinking about definitions and clarity. Micheline, if you have something to add, that would be great. I agree with Gill and Alison that it is a minefield. It has always been a minefield, but the biggest minefield came when universal credit was rolled out in Scotland, because universal credit is different from the old income support which all of the grandmothers, especially the single grandmothers, were on for many, many, many years. They are taking off that and then they have to wait a month for benefits when they become a new kinship carer, because of the law of the benefit change when you go from a change of circumstance. We could all of that. It has never been addressed as the simple case, and it is simple to us, but it is obviously not a DWP. Kinship carers are not foster carers, and as Gill pointed out, a lot of the kinship carers speak to child benefit when they get these kids and say, are you not the parent? They say no. They assume that you are a foster carer, so they assume along with that that it is the local authorities who should be providing benefits. I do not know whether the committee is aware, but when you get benefits for kinship carers, if you get the allowance, which is a big bonus contention, then if you are on benefits, that benefit is taken off the allowance, the child's allowance, and they do not get the full benefit. If you are working, you get the full benefit, but if you are on benefits before you get that allowance, the allowance and the child benefit are deducted from the weekly maintenance allowance to the child's benefits tax credit. The child's benefits are removed if you are on benefits, if you are on the benefits system here in Scotland. It is quite a discriminatory thing, but there is a lot that is in the first panel. 44 per cent gave up their jobs. If you are giving up your job to look after a kinship carer and then you are having to go to the benefits system, then you are facing a minefield. That is where there has to be what we keep saying over and over again, legislation, not guidance. I just wanted to emphasise the point that Michelin has just made, because it is really significant. I think that the committee will be aware that local authorities deduct so-called child-related benefits from the kinship carer allowance, from the starting point figure. The idea of that is parity with the fostering allowance, so any benefits that a foster carer would not get for the child might mainly impact on kinship carers who have not looked after children. It impacts on kinship carers, that is the point. Michelin just said something really important about that, which is that the benefits that are deducted are things such as child tax credit and universal credit. If the kinship carer gets that, kinship carer will only get that if they are on a low income. If you are a more affluent kinship carer, you will not get those benefits, but they will not be deducted from the kinship carer allowance. The upshot of that is if you are a more affluent kinship carer, you will benefit more by the kinship carer allowance. Michelin, you made that point, and I probably did not need to reiterate it, but I felt a good. That is me. Thank you very much all. I will now turn to Mary McNear to be followed by Miles Briggs. Thank you, convener, and good morning panel. I have a question to Alison Briggs. Your briefing is really helpful. Can you further expand on the issues that kinship carers have when they are trying to access UC and other reserved benefits so they can get it on the transcript? Thank you very much. There are some pretty significant issues. I have listed them in my briefing, and we have also got a fuller report that I have sent, which gives some more detail of financial impact. One of the significant points is the issue that I mentioned already about if you are a kinship carer of a looked-after child. Generally speaking, you will not be eligible for the child element in your UC. That is the starting point, and that is a very absolute rule. Unfortunately, it is a rule that is not always applied properly. I have explored this to quite an extent with the DWP, but not to an extent that has resulted in it being sorted out. It is to do with the questions that they ask people, not eliciting the correct information in all situations. What quite often seems to happen is that a kinship carer of a looked-after child is paid to the child element in error. At some point, further down the line, the DWP realises that it is an error, and the money that is recouped from the kinship carer all over payments of universal credit are legally recoverable, regardless of whose fault it is. That causes a significant problem. Associated with that is what the local authority is doing in the meantime. If they are deducting the child element from the kinship carer allowance, as they might very well be, because that might be their normal policy, then the kinship carer has not benefited at all by having it, and then they will have been overpaid the universal credit and it will be recovered from them. There are two main problems. It seems to have been that we thought that it might be just a bedding-in problem that would in time disappear, but it is definitely still an issue that comes up. We see it in our advice line service, so it is definitely still coming up for kinship carers. There is confusion, on the part of the agency that is administering the benefit. The other issue that I raise in my written briefing is to do with the two-child limit and the interaction with the benefit cap. This is an issue for kinship carers of non-looked-after children who would get the child element in their universal credit. There are special rules that say that people are exempt from the two-child limit. One of those groups is certain kinship carers, so that is great. However, if you are in a bigger family, say maybe four children, you are really quite likely to get caught by the benefit cap and there is no specific exemption in the benefit cap rules for kinship carers. I am hoping that this is making some kind of sense, but you might have the advantage of special rules in the two-child limit, but you might find that in any event, your universal credit is significantly restricted because of the benefit cap. That is an issue in itself. Again, it is also an issue if the kinship carer is an eligible kinship carer who is being supported by the local authority, is the local authority aware enough of what is going on with the person's universal credit in order to try to work out what they should be deducting from their kinship carer allowance? It causes a real complexity, a real difficulty for kinship carers, a real complexity for local authorities trying to actually work out what to do. There is more to say than this, of course, but the final thing that I would say is that I highlight in my written briefing that if somebody is on universal credit and there is a straightforward situation of no other income coming in and they are getting a kinship carer allowance, the local authority knows what to deduct because the person is on the maximum amount of universal credit and the amounts are standard. However, as soon as somebody has an income from earnings, for example, that is no longer the case or probably no longer the case. It really creates quite a difficult problem for local authorities in terms of trying to do what they ought to be doing, what they have agreed to do. I will probably wind up on that, but just to say that one of the issues that I feel quite strongly about is that local authorities really need updated guidance, because the guidance that exists from 2016, which obviously covered lots of things but included the kinship carer allowance issue. Obviously, it has not been updated to include anything meaningful about universal credit, and all the issues that I am raising are difficult. There is no doubt about it, and local authorities are having to try and work out what to do. I think that some are doing it really well and others are probably struggling and not even being aware of some of the issues that are there. The final point that I will make about this is that the upshot of what I am saying is that inadvertently, kinship carers might end up being supported far more poorly as a result of those interactions than the local authority thinks they are. I am really hoping that it is quite difficult, but I am hoping that that makes some kind of sense. Thank you. You touched on the benefit cap. Can you address the potential financial detriment that you can have when all they are doing is just stepping into care for the family? Well, in the report that I have recently done that is on our website, and I think that we sent round the link to it. I do not actually have it right in front of me, but I think that the upshot of somebody who had two children already and then took on the care of two children in a kinship carer situation and because of the circumstances, not looked after but maybe with a kinship carer order, because of the circumstances are exempt from the two-child limit. That would mean in universal credit at terms that they would get the child element for those two children. I am just doing a very quick look at figures here. On a monthly basis, they would be around £470. They would get those child elements, so that is great. However, then they would be capped and they would completely lose that and more. In the report, which is a realistic example of that kind of situation, they would essentially lose all that and a little bit extra, so they really would not get any support in the universal credit for those two children that they have taken on the care of. That would be the upshot of it. If they are being supported by the local authority financially, if the local authority is not on the ball in this regard and is aware of the issue and the kinship carers are on universal credit, they might very well just assume that the kinship carers are getting the child element and make that deduction. Does that make it a bit more real in terms of the financial side of things? No, that was very helpful. I will just get one final question, if we would not mind indulging in it. UC approach means that kinship carers have looked after children who want to work, can be denied financial support to UC for childcare, and surely there is a detriment to taking on employment. Can you quantify the financial loss in relation to childcare? I probably struggle to give you figures. I can say that, again in the report that we circulated, there is an example in that report that shows the loss of universal credit for somebody who has childcare costs. To be clear, if you do not get the child element in your universal credit because the child has looked after a child, there are three other things to think about. If the child has a disability, you also do not get the additional bit of child element that you would get. That is another issue. If you are working, you would not get the work allowance, so that is the disregard on your earnings unless there is some other reason for you to get it. One of the reasons why people get that is because they have a dependent child. You might very well not get a work allowance at all, so your universal credit starts being tapered away immediately. If you have childcare costs, that is the other bit of it, you will not get any help with them because the child is not your dependent, as far as universal credit is concerned. In terms of quantifying it, what people get in their universal credit, in the maximum amount of universal credit or childcare, if they are eligible, is 85 per cent of their childcare costs up to a cap. It is capped at a particular level, but you can imagine, probably from that, that is the figure that is included in the maximum universal credit, and then there is another calculation to be done about what your income is. You can imagine that, given the expensive childcare, that can be really quite a significant amount of loss. Combined with the other thing that I mentioned, the work allowance, and again, there are figures in the report that I circulated, but I can also submit those if that would be helpful. Would that be a helpful thing to have, or is what I have said enough, because I can easily submit them in writing? Absolutely. That would be helpful. Thanks, Alison. I do not have any further questions on this theme. Can I reiterate that any further information that you have got, Alison, would be very helpful. I will now bring in Miles Briggs to be followed by Fausal Choudhury. We touched upon the promise in the first panel, and I just wondered where you felt, and I think that many MSPs are feeling frustration at it not being delivered, where you felt, in your own professional experience, the problems were in delivering that. I think that, from most of the submissions that we have had, it is where local authorities are being tasked, but not being given the resources to do just that. I will maybe start with Michelin and see who else wants to come in on the question around the promise. I attended the promise, I gave evidence at the promise, and I gave the evidence at the promise to all the people who were at the promise left crying, because kinship care is real life. In these legislated, you have got 32 local authorities working on guidance. Guidance is no good to locality kinship care. I wish that I could have butted in a few times in the first panel, to be honest, but what I will say is that I am here for the voice of kinship, I work with grass roots kinship every day, day in, day out, 24, 7. What we need and what we want is them to keep the promise. They made the promise, so they need to keep the promise. We fought in 2014 to get parity, and it took us a lot of years. Sadly, a lot of the stalwarts in kinship care, Jesse Harby, a lot of the most impoverished groups, Glasgow North, Postal Park, Meany Hill, they stood up 20 plus years ago and tried to be counted. We are talking 20 years, we are not talking six years or four years or two years, we are talking 20 plus a recognition. We are like the dirty secret care. That is how we feel, that is how kinship carers feel, but discriminated against continually. When you have a kinship carer coming to you and their kids died and they are told that they are voluntary kinship carers, a voluntary kinship carer in 2022 to Scotland, the place where all those kids are going to grow up in the best place in the world where that does not cut it, because it has no voluntary and kinship care. We all love those kids, but we cannot keep them on love. We cannot send them into a safe, nice, warm, clean bed and feed them and clothe them on love. That does not work in the new world, that does not work. There has to be a universal. The status in that state is in post-cord lottery. We have dealt with that for 20 years. We have just regarded what we have said for 20 years. There is nothing different in any day of the event. We all do respect to everyone who did them. There is no difference in any of them for 20 years ago. We are still 20 years doing the line. We have lost absolutely amazing kinship carers who want to see the legacy that they started. They do not want to see that. We are continuing the fight as the Scottish Alliance are fighting for justice for kinship, but there are two local authorities who are not doing the same thing. As you have heard, the disparity in the money for £77 to £200, I mean how? We are in Weston Bartonshire, I mean Weston Bartonshire. Weston Bartonshire ends in Cadras Begins, so it is at Gail and Butte. If you live at the end of Cadras Road, which is still in Weston Bartonshire, and then go two doors along, which is Cadras Road, that carer is getting nearly double what you get. Weston Bartonshire is one of the best pain. I will give it that. I will also give Weston Bartonshire as the brief. I do not have any brief in my group, or that I deal with, and I deal with a lot of kinship carers daily between my group and Weston Bartonshire and the Scottish Kinship Carers Alliance. They get the payment, they do not go through this, go to these vanes voluntary, they get a chap at the door, we do not get counselling, we do not get training, we do not get anything, we get kids and there is human emotion involved in taking every single one of these kids and they need to take that into account because it is not just about money, it is about getting it right for every single kinship child and every single family and the orders have to be the same, but it is not being kept in the promise just now, it is, we are still fighting, we are still fighting. Thank you for that very powerful testimony, Michelle. Do any of the others want to come in on that point, on that question? I believe that Gill wanted to come in, I will bring Gill in. Thank you. I think that Michelle almost said everything I was going to say, but what I wanted to add was, again, from my own experience, I should actually say that I am here as the manager of people's and district's CAV, but prior to that I managed the kinship care service for Citizens Advice Scotland and I was a case worker. It is just to add that foster carers know that there are going to be foster carers, kinship carers get, as Michelleine said, the knock on the door and it is very often, they do not get very long to decide whether or not they are able physically or financially to take on the care of a kinship care child, but I do not know a single kinship carer who has refused and that is the start of their problems really because that is when they start trying to understand the ins and outs of all the financial stuff. If you heard what Alison explained earlier, try explaining that to a kinship carer who has got, as I said earlier, three traumatised children and they have not slept for a week. I think that the information that needs to be given to kinship carers about the promise and about all their entitlements and the rights and responsibilities should be written down, it should be clear and it should be delivered the same to everybody so that everybody gets the same information. I also think that it would be really useful if local authorities and particularly the DWP had a bit more awareness of kinship care because that is one of the major problems that we come up against is suggesting to the DWP that someone is entitled to money and having a DWP saying no, actually they are not and an on-going discussion about it. So I think that if some of the struggles could be taken out of kinship carers' lives, that would help them a huge amount. That was kind of, I echo Michelin's comments. Thank you for that. Just before we go on, can I just bring Alison in on that final point? Hi, I'll be very brief. I don't actually know a huge amount about the promise, it's not really so much my area, although obviously I'm aware of it, but I did note that earlier somebody mentioned the kinship care collaborative as part of that, part of the promise. I guess the point that I want to make is that I'm really interested in the kinship care collaborative, but I've not been able to really get to grips with exactly what the kinship care collaborative is doing or looking at and whether, for example, our area of expertise, the money side of things might be useful as an input to the process that they're going through, so that's it, that's my point. It's a very useful question stroke point, to be honest, and I think that there's something that we can maybe take away and pursue as well. Specifically, I think that where the committee would want to focus attention is what does a potential model look like, though, to try to change this and get that right? The fact that local authorities and Michelin you've outlined this all have different things going on. It often will come down to who is one of the key people within that council driving services to change and also to respond, so I just wondered in terms of what you would like to see that model look like, especially for informal kinship care as well, or I think that's something. How best do you think that would be developed legislation you've touched upon, Michelin, but whether or not a national rate is something that has also been highlighted today, and where that change should have been really put in place already? Is this a question to me, sorry? And just to, sorry, I whitted on a bit there, but it was around what would, what do you think we should suggest to help change this, really, because I think that's the key point we want to do. Yeah, ideally we need legislation. Guidance is exactly what I've said. It's guidance, it's what that local authority can afford to do, it's what they want to do, it's what the resources they've got. We're not blaming local authorities, we're not blaming any one thing, but what kinship carers want to see and have wanted to see for 20 plus years is kinship. I'm in the collaborative just picking up on Alison there. We are in the collaborative, we've just come in, we were asked to come in and we're about to withdraw, but we might withdraw because what we've found is that we've been in what the kinship carers have since Mentor came in and then we've seen out Mentor, we've seen out other agencies. It's a documented fact that we are not happy who is running the kinship service, who are adoption and foster, mainly because when we were looking for support in 2014 they refused to support us, citing total differences, well that's fine and that was up to them, but then if you're going to cite total differences don't put a tender in for our service because as you said we're totally different from the same entity. So there's a lot anger in kinship care about the KCAS, the service, but we were happy when it was called to be honest because it dealt with the benefits, they were brought in to do with the benefits which you have heard yourself the day in the evidence is very very very much a minefield for kinship care. The modelling they need to get right but see the modelling, the modelling needs to be based on grassroots foot soldiers of kinship care, the carers. No data, not statistics, not analysis, everyday life in kinship care should be front and centre for the modelling for any. Without us this is certainly not about us Miles, this is about data analysis, we've had all that data and analysis, we want action, we don't want words, we're out of words now, we've done my words, we're taking back to the streets and we've not had today that's in 2014. We've engaged for all these years and engaged with Scottish Government like the minty word groups, they've wrote reports on it and we feel let down because see at the end of the day we look after these kids and we love these kids and we want to keep them in the best place, proven place as care in their families, keep that broken, they broken trees of thriving and remember another thing, if you support young mothers to get their kids back their families are where their kids should be which is what the promise is saying they should be supporting families to keep their children, then we're a second chance Miles because we can hand these kids back and say there you go, you're back, you've done what you need today to prove that you're stable, I doesn't always have that much in absolute, we know that but where it can happen, adoption and fostering is a choice, you choose to be a foster carer, you choose to be a doctor, you're counsellor, you're waged, you do whatever, we don't get that choice, nobody comes to us, if you get a chapel in the door, you don't get told I'll be back in a week, you're thinking about this, no, you have to think then and you think about all those brief carers who are termed as voluntarily kinship carers and now that is as you can hear by my voice, that's my biggest pain, my biggest pain because I hate going to meet up with a kinship carer, that was evidence, I submitted helping a kinship carer whose daughter died, why should she go to MPs and beg for help, why should you have to go to do that because she's a kinship carer, she's took these kids on who you love and lost her own kid in the process so doesn't it get to grieve the normal human emotion that every no mother or parent wants to bury their child and then take their children and then be penalised for it by saying it with a voluntary hangmate because they weren't got them, that's ridiculous and we need this changed and we need it changed the now, we don't need any more data or analysis or statistics, these changes need to come about and come about soon because they've got a volcano kinship carers now and that will erupt because we are tired of being the undervalued underdogs in care because we date a lot of caring and we date to the best of ability and we provide love stability and we do everything we can to break this cycle, we want to break the cycle, we don't want these kids to be in the next generation of kinship carers, we want it to stop but today that being supported and we're not seeing this we're still not seeing this and that is a fact and I made that quite clear to the Scottish Government, quite clear to the kinship collaborative and quite clear to everybody, I mean people will look at me and say oh she's all, I'm no angry, I'm fed up, I've watched kinship carers lose their lives, dedicated carers, as I said earlier, they won't see justice, they won't see this part that we are still fighting and that's 20 years on and tight, it's enough now, it's enough, it's enough, we want to see action and we thought with the promise that that's exactly what that would be but he's went back to saying it's taking years, it's taking years and it's years we don't have, we don't have all these years, we want change and we want it now. Thank you for that and you know I hope this committee's hearing what you've got to say on that because I think all of us in the Parliament are disappointed at the real lack of progress which has been made on this and it has to change and I don't know if anyone else from the panel want to come in as well on that. Yeah, I believe Jo Winton to come in, thank you. Hi, yes, just to throw in my top and 12, I just wanted to pick up on something that Michelin said. First of all, to say that I was slightly dismayed would be an understatement that the kinship care service went to an agency which didn't actually provide information on benefits or the legal status of kinship carers. I think that's on the one hand that's dismayed me on the other is that the service went to an agency which is entitled with the one thing that kinship carers in my experience fear most and that is that the children will be involved in adoption or being fostered away from them. That notwithstanding I would say that any citizens advice bureau will be very very happy to advise any kinship carer who turns up much like kinship carers ourselves themselves with or without the funding we will continue to provide the service. That was pretty much all of us going to say. Thank you. Thank you. I'll now bring in Voisel Choudhury to be followed by Jeremy Balfour. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I really share the pain Michelin has given. I just wanted to ask one question to yourself. What could we do with the social security power that we have in Scotland to help kinship carers, as is called Michelin? My second question and the main one was for the panel, is what barriers exist to kinship carers gaining the benefits to which they are entitled? What problems exist with the current system of entitlements? Obviously, the first question was from Michelin. What can we do if we can? Regarding social security benefits, we know that we are going to be devolved to Scotland to be in charge of our own benefits system. We were involved in the talks about that way back 2017-18. I don't know for a moment. Am I on mute? Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. It's a minefield for us, because we get the same, and as absolutely as Jill says, we relied on the benefits expertise. We are no benefits experts. We are experts in daily life in kinship care. We do enough for all. We are not waged. I voluntarily do this day, and I am a kinship carer at a disabled grandson, a 14, and a granddaughter, a 7. When my granddaughter came into the process because she was only young, it had just changed to universal credit, so it had everything changed. Luckily for me, locally, but because my grandson was disabled and had not been rolled out fully, I had not come into that that all got shifted and moved and penalised more. It needs to be a devolved benefit, or there has to be talks around the benefits system and how it affects them. As I pointed out, if you work, you get the full allowance, full entitlement, because, as they said, it is based on foster carers, but foster carers are paid to do exactly that, look after these children. That is their job. They will get a pension. We are not paid to look after these children. We are given an allowance, some yes, the lucky ones, to cover looking after these children only because they are looked after pre-2014. It was a link carers allowance, and you got that if you were extremely lucky. It was £50. That was to cover keeping these kids. We had to fight for parity, which we did, but the social security needs to have an act or something. They need to have a serious chat around social security and the benefits, because people like Alison and Jill are always going to be inundated with kidship carers who do not understand the benefits system. They do not understand what they are entitled to, and they do not understand where to go because it is a benefit. Benefits are complicated. As I said, they are informal and formal. The council will look after you, and they will send you back to the council and say that it is your responsibility for that child, but whether it is an informal agreement. Some of the informal are the residency orders. They used to be residency, and when money came in to play, it was changed to a kinship care order. Previous to kinship care was a residency order, the new residency of that child, which meant that you were responsible for that child and social work. The local authorities did not have to take any responsibility for that child. Now, it is a kinship care order because there is a financial element in some of them where they were either previously like children or at risk of becoming like children. It is a big minefield, and it is complicated. Our job every day is to keep kinship carers happy and give them the best advice as we can. As I have just said, and we absolutely admit a million percent being no benefits advisers, there are no DWP. When we go on a phone call to DWP, I will be honest with you that the root tastes and they are arrogant because they go by English, UK, other UKs. As I have said, the other Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales all have a national allowance, the other national, they have legislation. We have guidance and that is a lot of it in itself because you are either in a good care or so. I am sorry to have to interrupt you, but we are just running quite low on time now, so I would just have to ask for short succinct answers. I believe that Faisal did actually ask another question before I move on to that. Sorry, Alison had wanted to come in on this as well. Can I just bring Alison in? I think that there were two things. It was about social security Scotland and whether there could be a role for social security Scotland in the provision of a national allowance. Trying to be succinct about that is quite difficult, but I have a couple of main points. Number one, the main means-tested port that kinship carers might have to access would be in the past child tax credit or for some carers still child tax credit, universal credit or if you are an older kinship carer, maybe pension credit. None of those benefits are being devolved to Scotland, there is no plan to devolve them to Scotland. Of course, Scotland can create new benefits. It has done that with the Scottish child payment. Whether there is any appetite to do that in relation to kinship carer allowances, I have no idea. If there was, it would obviously beg a number of questions like, where does that leave the role for local authorities? Do they not have a role anymore? In financial support, some people might think that that was a good thing. I welcome that, I do not know. It would also have implications for the UK benefits system because, of course, some kinship carers, particularly kinship carers of non-looked after children, are able to access benefits like support for the child through universal credit etc. Now, you have to think through then, can that person still access that support and how does that interact with some new Scottish benefit that is serving the same purpose. There is a lot of complexity to be thought through there. It is perfectly possible to think it through, but it is really important that people are really well informed about all those issues before embarking on that kind of area of discussion or plan. The other question, which I could just say something about, I have already said about the barriers. I have said quite a bit about universal credit, but I will not say all of that again. The main barriers, in a big sense, are the complexity, the confusion and lack of access. Of course, people can access advice, but there is the KCAS helpline local authorities cabs, as Gillas said. There are local authority welfare rights services, and some local authorities have really well developed systems of welfare rights services that link in with their kinship care teams. Of course, that is not across the board, and people really need to be able to access that in a sort of what we would say is a no-wrong door way that you do not get shot off. You have phoned the wrong number, you have contacted the wrong agency, you are speaking to the wrong person in this advice agency, not having to tell their story again and again. That kind of service, where it exists, if it could exist, is really helpful at the point that kinship cares need it, because it is an area of complexity. We might be able to do something to simplify it, but currently there is really no denying that it is an area of complexity, and that creates barriers. Before I move on, I want to say that I am really sorry. I do not like to cut people off, it is just that we want everyone to get through their questions and we want to hear all the answers. If I could just take Jeremy Balfour now to be followed by Pam Duncan-Glancy. Thank you. This is a complex question, but maybe a yes, no answer, full-open writing would be helpful. We have talked a lot about having a national agreed allowance and how it is different across local authorities here in Scotland compared to other parts of the United Kingdom. From your perspective, baby, Alison and Jill, would it be easier if this was administrated across the whole of Scotland, so there was one amount of money that everybody got wherever you lived in Scotland? If you have one level, the first question would be what is the level set at? Is it a raise to the bottom, or is it picking the best practice and going for that? That would be my first question, so that is a point that other people have made already. The other question that that begs is who administers it? Is it still within the local authorities, but the same rate of allowance across the board? Or is it administered centrally? I do not know whether you had that in mind in your question. I probably do not have a strong opinion about that that I could helpfully share at the moment. My answer is not very helpful, it depends, but the first thing is what level are you setting it at, obviously, because the rates at the moment are so disparate. There is such a big gap. I thank the panel for the testimony, especially for you, Michelle. The way that you spoke of your experience, I have to say that I am not surprised you are fed up with the way that you have described what you have all had to be through. The time has taken to get action, so I thank you so much for sharing that with us. I hope, as Miles has said, that the committee and the Government are listening very carefully to what you have had to say this morning. I have a couple of questions, so I will try to run them all together in the interests of time, if that is okay. My first question relates to the national allowance, followed slightly on from Jeremy's point. Earlier, we heard Michelle say that you can have a different amount two doors down, which I do not see how that is tolerable, and I cannot see another way to address it. I agree with Alison that a race to the top has to be the first principle on that, absolutely. If Alison could say whether or not you believe that that was paid nationally, what would we need to do to make sure that everybody who needs to get money gets it, and specifically in terms of looked after or not looked after children? What is the mechanism that we would have to use to make sure that the discretionary approach that might be applied to make sure that some people get money in a way that others do not? How could we do that nationally? If you could possibly comment on how involved you and kinship carers have been in the national conversation around the national allowance, my fear is that you have not, and I hope that you will be. I am keen to hear a bit about that. My final question is who put kinship care to the specific agency this time? Who did that? Do you know why I have another one? I was really concerned, Alison, at your point, about affluent kinship carers ending up getting more money than people who are worse off. Is that guidance that needs to be fixed or how do we sort that? In terms of the first question, I think that, as I said already, if you are talking—I do not know if there is any plan—there might be a plan for a national minimum allowance, but whether there is a plan for a national allowance paid nationally, I have no idea, but I suppose that, if there were, in order to make it work, the first thing you would have to do is—there would have to be a decision about who is going to be eligible. I know that that is really stating the obvious, but the parameters would have to be drawn. Obviously, I would hope that they would be drawn very widely, but that would have to happen. It would have to be either the same kinship carers who are eligible for support at the moment, or a wider group of kinship carers. There would have to be a decision made about eligibility. I would say that, ideally, that would be enshrined in law, because, in my view, rights are always better than being able to point to your rights and to pursue those rights, and to challenge is always better than something that is at the discretion of somebody else to pay or not to pay. That would be my short point in relation to the first question, if that is helpful at all. I believe that Gill had wanted to come in on that as well. I will bring Gill in now, thank you. I just wanted to pick up on a couple of points about national alliances and it catatising to barriers. The first one was, what would be helpful is not to have three different payment mechanisms that all impact differently on UK benefits and access to other financial support. If that was included in national alliances policy, that would probably be quite a helpful thing for kinship carers. The other thing that I wanted to mention was, generally speaking, the money follows the child, not the kinship carer. The local authority who places the child is the one who pays the kinship carer allowance. That works out, if I can give you an example from a good number of years ago when kinship carer allowance was first brought in. Most local authorities were paying kinship carer allowance, but one local authority decided not to until they absolutely had to. A child was moved from their home in the islands to their granny in the area that did not pay kinship carer allowance. The end result was that children from that child's home area who were placed within their home area were getting kinship carer allowance and the granny in the other local authority area that did not pay was not. She was getting absolutely nothing at the time. The money comes from where the child comes from. If the child comes from a local authority that pays more than the local authority in which the granny lives, I am using grannies, that is a very disrespectful term, but generally it is grandparents for kinship carers. The amount of money can vary, as Michelleine pointed out, from one end of the street to the other. Those are perhaps things that would need to be looked at as well. That was all that I wanted to add. Thank you. That is a question that you want to follow up in writing, but I wanted to ask, specifically beyond what we have been talking about in terms of payments, a new model around information and access to services for kinship carers. Whether or not there is a best practice model, I think that we were all impressed with what we heard about Perth and Kinross Council this morning, given the urban and rural nature of that council area. I just wondered in terms of the whole package, and you might want to write to us. Peer support for kinship carers, for example, but access also to local third sector information organisations. I know certainly my own area of West Lothian. There are a lot of good third sector organisations that are linking in not waiting for a referral pathway to be put in place to them, but just helping people when they need it. I wondered whether there are any examples of that, that additional support for when people become kinship carers and where a model can be developed around that. I might start with Jill and see if anyone else wants to come in. Hi. In my experience, when I was a case worker with the kinship carers service at Cass, I covered 10 different local authority areas, and there certainly were some who were very proactive and quick to offer as much help as they possibly could, not only in financial terms, but also in terms of housing and support with social isolation. That is not really what I mean, but integrating kinship carers into foster care groups and some local authorities were less proactive. I am not terribly keen on the phrase postcode lottery, but it is fairly accurate that it really depends on where you live. If that could be aligned, it would be really good. I do not know how you do that, but certainly some of the communities and local authorities were quicker on the uptake than others, and it did vary across Scotland. I am not going to name and shame anyone, but it did vary across Scotland. Thank you. Do anyone else want to come in on that? I think that Michelle Eam wants to come in on that one. Just really following on, we were just pointed out, but for your kinship point of view, kinship groups, which we are the umbrella for in every group and every local authority, put in a lot of work. They are not funded by every local authority, and this is where more disparity goes as well, which will not be well known. Glasgow groups get funding from the local authority, but it is up to that local authority. Again, it is guiding what resources they have. However, those groups take a lot of strain from the social work department, off of the departments to leave them and free them up for other things, because those carers can come to the groups and be signposted to help. They also come to the group for peer support, which is crucial, because they need somebody to talk to. They do not want to talk to you, or do you respect them in the world, as Gail pointed out and I pointed out so many times. They do not want to talk to foster carers or adopters, because we fear that that is where our kids are going to end up, or we have had to fight to get our kids from foster care. So why on anybody's day would they want to be in touch with organisations that you fear? Nobody is going to do that. You are documented about what I have said. It is no naivety that we do not need foster carers or adopters. It is just that they should not be near our service. It should be for kinship carers. It is about kinship carers. Those groups are run by kinship carers for kinship carers. They get to come in and tell how bad their day has been, how rubbish their life is and funding needs to go to appropriate places. Not to people who are going to draw graphs. You cannot draw a graph and take that to a granny's house that has just lost their child and say, but here, hold on, I have a graph in my bag or show you it. That is what they are going to do. That is no help. What we need is what I have said, and I am not going to stop saying that. We need discrimination against us to stop. We need to start being valued for what we are. We need to stop undervaluying us, but we need to put the right people in place to do the right jobs, and we need to have the right services who are designated to be that service, i.e. cab, welfare rights and all those places. We need to signpost people. We should be able to signpost carers to organisations without fear that that organisation will be against them or biased or any other thing. We need to be able to be happy, even if it is communities working for you or all those other ones that give local financial advice to kinship carers. We have to be able to say, yes, you can go there, because they have got kinship carers interests at heart. That is what we want. We want a model based on us. Our kinship carers are unique. We are on no wage, but they are a totally different entity to everybody. I am sorry that I asked you to wrap up. I know that you were in the middle of that, but if you could wrap up quickly, thank you. I am just saying that the funding that they are talking about and the models should be based around kinship and what kinship carers want. No data people are analysis people what kinship carers want, but they say they want. I understand that Alison wants to come in this point. Alison, can I ask you to be very brief and if you have any further points, you can put them in right in, thank you. It was to say that we did not go to Pam's point about the more affluent kinship carers. I was going to come in on that at the very end. Sorry, we are just finishing off on Miles's question. Is that everything, Miles? Apologies. Yes, apologies. We did not follow up on a couple of points from my colleague Pam's questions regarding the involvement in the national allowance discussions and also which agency got the contract. If you could follow up and write on those points, that would be great. Apologies, but we have ran quite short on time this morning. This has been a really interesting and informative session. I want to say thank you to all of our witnesses this morning. I know that this is an extremely emotive and important issue, so please, please be assured that your responses and testimonies this morning will definitely help to inform our work on this matter going forward. This concludes the public part of this morning's meeting. In next week's meeting, we will be taking evidence from a range of organisations that support women and girls who have experienced violence and to consider where the focus for prevention of violence should be. We will now move into the private session to consider our remaining agenda items. Members joining us online should leave this meeting and join via the link in your calendar. Once again, thank you to all of the panellists this morning.