 Good morning and welcome to the third meeting in 2023 of the Economy and Fair Work Committee. Our first item of business is a decision to take item 3 in private. Are members content to do so? Our next item of business is an evidence session on the disability employment gap. The committee have agreed to take some initial work looking into how to identify and address the barriers that limit the ability of disabled people to get and keep employment. We launched a call for views that will remain open until the 16th of February. At our next meeting in a fortnight's time, the committee will hear from the minister for just transition, employment and fair work. We will plan to return to this work later in the year. I welcome this morning Emma Congrieve, deputy director at Fraser Valentine Institute, alongside Ashley Ryan, director of Enableworks, Enable Scotland. If members could keep their questions and answers as concise as possible, we will get through as much as possible this morning. In general, we have seen participation rates in the labour market for disabled people improve in the last 10 years. How has that been achieved and what do you think the outlook is for the disabled population in terms of employment? I think that there has been a real focus on specialist support for disabled people across Scotland in putting in place a plan not only for participants but also to up-skill employers, which is that ultimate key. Without that confidence in employers, you will have seen it from Covid, disabled people were the first people to be furloughed and often the last people to be brought back to the workplace. That real focus on disability support, seen in local authorities such as Edinburgh and Dundee, has meant that we are seeing greater participation because it is grassroots third sector organisations that can reach participants that are not engaged in job centre or who are reticent to engaged in job centre. However, it is about providing that key support and the key support is around aftercare as well. It is not just about the support that you put in before someone gets a job, it is about funding that has come through in the last few years around supporting someone after they get a job, which allows them to continue that work for a period of about six months. I think that I will work with Fraser Vallander to produce a report. Recently, when there has been an increase in the amount of people who are in employment, are there some who are further away from the labour market? The report particularly focuses on those with learning disabilities and the Government does have a target. Do you have any insights into where a greater focus needs to be? I will ask Emma to come in. The employment rate for people who have learning disabilities has not improved much in Scotland in the past number of years. In fact, they are the most marginalised group of all those groups, and that is because there has been a focus on things such as 16-hour jobs and 35-hour jobs. There is a massive postcode lottery as well, so we do not actually know the right numbers around people who have learning disabilities looking to access work, because the data is just not there at the moment. We are relying on people being known to social work to be able to gather that data, and it is around that key aspect of support's employment. Support's employment, while the support's employment review confirmed that it was in many areas, is very inconsistent support, so it tends to be provided by third sector organisations on a small local authority. What it is is the most successful way of supporting someone with a learning disability into work, and it is a massive postcode lottery. If you are someone with a learning disability all the way up in Betty Hill, which is all the way in the north east of Scotland, you are not accessing support, because there is no one there to provide that support, and that is a massive challenge, because while we are focusing on disability and, in some cases, disability rates have improved, that learning disability rate has remained very static. That is despite organisations such as Enable Work supporting more than 5,500 people each year. We are getting more than 1,000 people into work, but those challenges remain, and they start before people go into work. They start in school. We are seeing consistent young people coming through school, 20 per cent of them not achieving qualifications past level 2. That should not be happening today. We should not see 20 per cent of school leavers with a learning disability leaving school with no qualifications at all, and nothing to show for it. What we are seeing is that there is a real lack of aspiration for that client group in school, so if you are a parent of a child with a learning disability at a very negative time when your child is diagnosed, and therefore what happens is that you go through life being told what your child will not do and less about what your child will do, so therefore your aspirations are significantly lower. We are still seeing young people with learning disabilities leaving and going into supported college courses with no vocational focus. At the end of that three years, they fall off a precipice where what happens next. If you leave school and you do not have a positive destination, you are five times more likely to be unemployed by the age of 25. That creates a reliance on the welfare state, creates a reliance on benefits, and many of these young people have aspirations to do something more, but we are just not getting that support right for them, even at that very early stage, because employment starts way before a young person leaves school. It starts as a young as primary. You describe the barriers. Often when we think about disability employment gap, when we think that the solution is the same for everybody or that employers need to all do the same things in order to support more people into work, are there different barriers for people who are living with different disabilities? Absolutely. We are seeing significant increases in mental health concerns around our client group, so we have to support them to think about their primary barrier and sometimes their lack of confidence, their lack of aspiration, their lack of ability or belief in themselves is a massive barrier for them, and we have to work heavily to overcome some of that key problems. We are working with young people much earlier to say, get them out of the house, get them out and get them engaging in their community. They are very disengaged or perhaps not engaging at all. Covid has put them back in their homes for a very long time. The statistics around learning disability in Covid have made young people and adults very afraid to be outside and be unwell and statistics around people dying who had learning disabilities. There is a lot of work to be done at the beginning in order to prepare them for when they come to work, that they are confident that they are able to access the employment support. The report, part of the initial question that I asked, was about the outlook for continued progress. We recognise that there has been progress in disabled people getting into employment, but what does the picture look like for continued progress? Does the Government have a target to increase it to 50 per cent of the population to be in employment? Do you think that they are on track to meet that target? The target that the Scottish Government has is about having the disability employment gap, so that is the difference between the number of disabled people who are working and the number of non-disabled people who are working. They have made some progress towards that. I think that there are two things to consider here. On one side, you need to look at what is happening to the disabled population and that is growing. To be clear on the definitions, a disabled person has a bit of a tick box exercise. You say that you have an impairment or an illness or a condition that is expected to last more than 12 months and that that limits your day-to-day life, either a little or a lot. That is the disability definition that we are talking about in these statistics. That is the equality definition that we tend to use. We have seen an increase in the size of the disabled population, particularly through Covid. The drivers of that have come back to issues with the data, but they seem to be around mental health, particularly evidence from across the UK. They have seen an increase in mental health conditions in leading to people falling under that disabled definition. On the other side, there are other disabilities that may be long Covid, but it is very difficult to know that conclusively. The size of the disabled population has increased, which has an impact on the disability employment gap. One thing to say is that the people who are becoming newly disabled may be people who are more likely to be employed because it has not been as long-term. It is not a lifelong condition that they are. It is something that is acquired. That seems to be what the evidence is pointing to. There is a reasonable chance that they were employed anyway. They may be leading to that improvement in the disability employment gap, particularly over the past few years. We have to look at both sides of those figures in order to understand what is going on. If that is the case, the improvement has been because the disabled population has increased and those people are more likely to be employed, then the question is what is happening to everyone else? Has there been improvement in employment rates for people who have been disabled before the pandemic? There are some distinctions that need to be made when looking at whether there has been an improvement or not. The report also made another number of recommendations around data. You have described the difficulties that are with the number of adults who have identified disability within the employability gap. You have also talked about an audit of current employability support schemes. Has there been any Government response to the report or have you had any discussions with Government about recommendations around data and audit? The report that you are referring to was from a programme of work that we did through 2020 and 2021, particularly on learning disabilities. We are now returning to that project, partnering up with Enable in order to do some of the dissemination of that. That is where our link comes in through that work that we did prior. It was funded by a charitable day constitution and was separate from Enable. That report found some really troubling issues with the data. It was very difficult to understand what was happening in the employability landscape. At the time, no-one left behind started to become more prominent. That seemed to be the answer to any question that we had. No-one left behind will sort this out. However, we still struggle to understand what no-one left behind will do for disabled people. How will it be different from what came before? What are those pathways? There are new documents that have come out since. There is now a shared measurement framework, which is working towards that being, helping to shine light on what is happening. A lot of that is still in development, so we are still not clear on what data is going to be gathered. We are now doing a second round project, recognising that there are still many unanswered questions where we are going to try to do that audit that we described. We also do a lot of work with data in terms of those who gathered the data, including the Scottish Government and the ONS, to be frank. They are quite poor on their disability data, particularly disaggregated to Scotland. We are not seeing the progress on data that we would like to, but we understand that the Scottish Government recognises that they have a lot to do there and are trying to make progress. Those are difficult issues. Last week, we had the cabinet secretary around the budget. There has been a £53 million cut to employability services. The cabinet secretary outlined that it was money that was not committed, that it was a lack of opportunity that was being lost. It was necessary and a very struggling and difficult financial situation that the Government made. However, do you have any comment on the employability landscape for people with disabilities, and what kind of funding is required to deliver in that area? We have seen a slight decrease in the disability employment gap, but as I alluded to, some of that could be related to people now who have higher numbers of people classes economically inactive and higher people in Scotland claiming benefits related to their health. While that looks like a decrease, it could be being massed by some of the things that Emma discussed. On the funding landscape, although youth unemployment has improved, there is still that key cohort of disabled young people and young people with complex barriers who are not able to access the support that they require, and similarly for adults. The disability employment gap is actually higher now among 35 to 49-year-olds. If we are seeing uptakes in older workers coming back into the workplace and that gap is actually higher, then that is creating the disproportionate opportunities for disabled people to access the world of work later in life. Challenges remain in terms of funding because we have to put that focus on, that cohort of people who are not able to access support. If we are seeing the employment rate increasing and we do not have the rates that did not go to the 21 per cent that we thought it would for youth unemployment in Covid, there is still that key cohort of people who are not progressing. If the employment rate for learning disability is still 4 per cent, we have to see a real key focus on those groups because it is not improving for that group. The state statistics have remained very static for that group leaving school and then continue to be static for those people as they progress. Where we have seen really key successes is where local authorities have put real significant sustained provision in place. One of our provision is in All-in-Ezimbra, a partnership of four other charities. We are one of four and it has been funded for the next six years and that is the City of Edinburgh Council recognising that, while it does not have all the funding answers right now, it recognises that it is a challenge that has to be supported and that it has to be funded. What that allows us to do as a partnership is retain staff, it allows us to qualify those staff, so they are all qualified in support of employment, they understand the client group and they are there to be a sustained presence for that client group. That is what is absolutely key and means that we are achieving the highest rates of jobs in that client group than ever before and it is because the local authority recognises the challenges but recognises funding and recognises that that needs to be funded and that they are committed to funding that for the next six years, which is highly unusual. On the cutting funding at the end of last year, we had a bit of a look into this because it was quite a worrying development so late in the financial year, given the scale of the challenge that we have for disabled people and employment. We can understand the rationale given that the money had not been allocated and it was a very tight year, tight settlement, so we understand those physical pressures and why it happened at that point in time. What is less clear is why that money had not been allocated by that point. What were the reasons there? Is it capacity in the system to get that money actually into the right place at the right time? If that money was in the budget, why did we get to that point? The certainty is such a key point for people providing these services, knowing that the money is going to be there and being able to plan. These disabled people often have very complex challenges and need a lot of support over a long period of time. It is not something that can be done in a few months necessarily, so we need that certainty that that money will be there. The question that people will be asking is will we get to next October and then the same thing happens again. It is understandable what happened and it is concerning that we got to that point with such an issue like that. Do you know if anybody, the £53 million, if it was anticipated that it would come in, was there planning or expectations under way linked to that? It is very unclear. That is part of the reason why I say that quite a lot of this is not publicly accessible information. Obviously, it is 32 local authorities, there are lots that have to go on here in terms of getting the money to the right places. It is very hard to understand why that money has not been allocated by that point, and I do not think that we have the answer to that yet. Thank you for coming in. I am really interested in what you have both touched on data, and I was just thinking as you were speaking that it must be really difficult to know the true picture, because there will be some people who maybe do not even realise that they have got a disability if we are talking about mental health. People just struggle on, do not they? I suppose that you can correct me if I am wrong, but you would presumably have to have some kind of diagnosis, you would have to be flagged up somewhere to appear on the figures that you are talking about. It is a good question. For the definition of being a disabled person that we are talking about, because the Equality Act has a very clear definition, as I described earlier, to get that number in terms of the number of disabled people in the population. Notwithstanding what you said about those that might not realise it, but actually there is a lot of data. That question is consistently asked across a lot of different surveys, so the ONS asks it in their surveys, the census asks it, we have got something called the core questions in Scotland, so that same question is asked across three of the big surveys that the Scottish Government administers. There is a lot of data on that particular question, which is really good, and that is really important. The question is about whether you have a condition that lasts longer than 12 months. Mental health issues, you may feel that that hurdle in identifying that. I do not think that you necessarily need a medical diagnosis because you have that kind of question around the extent to which it limits your life. Is that in the right way in order to capture, but of course it will miss people. The key issue on the data is that it has been disaggregated into the type of disability. That data is very inconsistently asked across surveys, sometimes it is asked in outdated language, which will not mean anything to people. I noted the Scottish Health Survey, hopefully it is changing it now, but it talked about mental incapacity for people with a learning disability, which is a very outdated term. There is no source of reliable data for Scotland on disaggregated disability. To separate people out of physical disabilities from mental health, from learning disabilities, that is really concerning because, as convener mentioned, it is different support required for different people. How do you know that you will get the right support in place if you do not know who the people are? In terms of planning, it is very worrying. You are absolutely right. There is such a variety of disabilities. We have just talked about mental health there, but there are physical disabilities and there are all sorts. From your experience, maybe Ashley could answer this. Are we doing better for particular types of disability? Are there obvious glaring gaps where we should be improving? In terms of learning disability statistics, they are pretty static. The support can be varied. It is a bit of a postcode lottery, but we have also seen real challenges supporting or getting the right support for someone who has a visual impairment or someone who has hearing loss, because a lot of the traditional employability providers no longer do that. It is very challenging to be able to fund an interpreter to come in and support with BSL. Someone who speaks BSL is incredibly challenging. If that is not built into a budget, it can be—if you are talking £75 an hour to try and get an interpreter, it is not fair if someone cannot access that support, but if the funding is not there to provide it, it becomes a bit of a double-edged sword and people are struggling to get support in those key groups, where they could absolutely go into the world of work and do something really great. In terms of learning disability, it is very much a postcode lottery, so those are real challenges. While we have seen some uptakes in someone who perhaps has a physical disability, where it is easier to understand the adaptations that are required for someone, we can see real successes, where we are struggling to see successes perhaps as more learning disability in the field of visual impairment, hearing loss, and also for people who have autism as well. We are seeing challenges, because it is not as obvious for employers how to support those people. You can bring in equipment, you can widen access, but if someone has autism, how are you supporting them? It is a bit of a more complex minefield for employers. They are less likely to take that chance and they require specialist support perhaps in order to do that. None of those adaptations tend to cost any money, but employers can often be in that mindset that it might cost them money and they might not be at work. With the right support, employers will be able to see that they have been able to represent the communities in which they serve, and its entirety is really important. Post Covid, we are saying that employees want to work for organisations that represent them, that represent their communities, and that is really important. That challenge for employers is not thinking about adaptations as things they can pay for, but about a lower desk. We are thinking about the specialist support, which often does not cost any money. Have you got examples that you could share with us, even if it is in writing, if you want a good practice and not a good practice? I suppose that we want to hear the good practice, don't we? Who is doing things well, particularly for the disabilities that you described that you cannot see? It is quite obvious that if you have physical disability, maybe there is stuff that an employer can buy that would help. If it is not physical, it is maybe a bit more challenging. Yes, absolutely. We can share lots of examples. We can send them in writing some really great examples, as we work with about 1,000 employers each year, some small, some medium, some large. One of our biggest successes around, for example, Diagio, who are a worldwide organisation, but their commitment to EDNI goes beyond a tick box to get disability confidence status. It goes into, at every level, everyone is entirely bought into supporting the communities in which they serve, because they have a skills gap. They recognise they have an ageing workforce. They want to bring young people into their business. They want to bring new ideas and creativity. We have had great successes out in the factories out in Shield Hall, where we have a young man, Liam. I can share a video with the committee of his experience. Coming into work, he is a young man who is autistic, who has came in and thrived in an environment where it was that shop factory mentality. What we have done with them is built in a series of training at every level, because you have to have buy-in at every level. Liam has a mentor who works with him. He has thrived in that environment. He has completed his modern apprenticeship. All of those things he did not think he would do. That was a real journey with Diagio, but seeing that change in everyone's perspective around disability has been exciting. That partnership has so much opportunity, because it is such a growth sector in Scotland in terms of food and drink and whisky. Unsurprisingly, they love going to the distilleries and having a visit, but that has been an exceptional example. They are a great organisation to work with. I think that these descriptive examples are things that have worked well and are really important to share. It is something that we do. We try to look at the case studies of what has worked well. What we struggle with is being able to look comprehensively across the piece to look at what did not work well. You get the good news stories and you can learn from them. What we lack in Scotland across a range of areas, but it is potentially becoming more of an issue now that no one left behind is leading to more dispersed funding and schemes, is that comprehensive evaluation of what is happening in those areas, so that we hear about the challenges and the things that are not working and the people who are being left behind, which will undoubtedly happen in some areas as things develop over the next few years. We need to learn from that as well. I encourage you to look for evidence on that more comprehensive evaluation piece, which is harder to do but critical for evidence. It is, but you are absolutely right. We should not just be looking at the good stuff that we should be looking at what has not worked, so that you can learn from that. Can I just follow up on that point? Is the challenge the fact that there is such a cocktail of different funding pots that all have their own criteria and evaluation? Is that what you are getting at? We should try to streamline that and bring the funds together. No, not necessarily. There are pros and cons with different funding models. We have no particular view on whether the way that we are going down is the right way or the wrong way. Even when the pots are essentialised and we see that with First At Scotland and some of the other schemes, the evaluation that is in place is okay, but it does not get to the root of exactly what is not working in those schemes. The rates of success for disabled people are a lot lower in First At Scotland than they are for the rest of the population that enter the scheme. Why is that? What would have happened in the absence of the scheme? That full picture of what difference do those support schemes make is really important. To be honest, it does not matter whether it is essentialised or decentralised, we still have problems in Scotland with that proper evaluation. It can be done at dispersed level. There is no reason why it could not be. I will come back to the point about the recent cut in the budget. I am confused over the impact, because one of the issues that organisations have been raising with me has been delays in allocating funding. I am not sure—I do not know if that is something that you picked up from your work—whether that delay was caused as a result of the £53 million not being forthcoming or there was general delays in the whole system because there seemed to be a lot of organisations in a precarious position at the moment waiting for funding that would normally have been allocated, but it did not happen. Is that something that you picked up from your work? I think that that might be a bit of an elder comment on that one. Absolutely. The challenges remain for us where we are asked to procure services with six months to go last year, so we were getting local authorities coming out saying, can you do three months of work? No, you cannot do three months of work, because A, it is not ethical to recruit staff on three-month contracts, we are losing very qualified staff from employability by the bucket load at the moment, because organisations cannot sustain their funding or have no ability to retain that funding. We are getting to a point now where employability fund was ending, there was a significant delay in what came next, six months, nine months. Those young people dropped off a precipice where they had no training agreements, they had no support and as a result, not through anything, it was just significant delays, so we are still waiting at the moment on finding out what is happening next year. If it gets through it again next year, so many local authorities put out funding last year in October and November, you cannot do anything in that space of time. Under the principles of supported employment, you are not able to operate a good model because you cannot do something in 10 weeks by the time that you are getting to know someone. If I bring in a bid in October, they tell me in December by the time I recruit someone, it could be February, what are you doing in six weeks? That is unsustainable and it is not ethical for us to bring in staff, so we operate. Where are those delays coming from? You touched on an issue that is really a major one for me with an organisation at the moment, where they have had funding application in for months. Where are the delays coming from? Why is it different this year than it was two or three years ago? What has actually happened that has caused these delays? In terms of perhaps the funding going out to local authorities and their ability to administer that quickly can be challenging for smaller local authorities because they do not have the big backing of huge departments thinking of very small local authorities. They find that really challenging, but also they did not have confirmation of their funding. It was what we were told, whether that is based on the local authority advising us. Some of the local authorities that did hedge their bets and put out their funding then had their funding cut and had to go back to providers that they had already given money to and said that they were really sorry that their money had been cut. Local authorities are quite rightly resistant to putting out funding because if they tell you that you have 100,000 and they have to come back and you are only getting 50, that has a wide range of issues. It did appear on what they have told us to be that there were significant delays in getting their grant letters administered and getting that information to them. It still remains a challenge just now. In general, in terms of funding, it seems a bit of a lottery. You have groups that have effectively employed people full-time just chasing funding constantly. What do we need to do around streaming in that process but making that more of a regular source of funding rather than constantly running around trying to get it? I mean, we surely need to do something around streaming in that process. I mean, I think that if you are a small local, a small organisation working in one or two local authorities, you have the challenges around you do not have a bid team and you do not have, so you are being overrun by private providers who are doing employability for profit, who have big bid teams. We do not have that luxury. That would be great, but we do not. If you are also a national organisation, I have to then put resource into providing 32 different bids, 32 localised bids that have to be localised quite rightly so because you want to provide that service. That also creates challenges because it takes people away from delivering front-line services. In terms of things like with EF going and then that new service, that yearly funding is a massive challenge because I am now at the point in January where I do not know what I am doing next year. You are considering whether staff are going to be here next year. While we have been really lucky and not had any redundancies in more than 10 years, that is not the same for colleagues across the sector. It is incredibly challenging. I am on the board of TSEF, the exec board of TSEF, and we are hearing from members that they are incredibly concerned at the moment about the funding landscape. I try to understand that the £53 million was intended as additional funding, so nobody's funding was actually cut. However, the disruption of not knowing whether that was coming or not may have actually delayed some of the contracts. We are trying to get a sense of what actually happened with that and its impact. I think that the honest answer is that we do not know. It is just not clear what happened in the lead-up to that. You are right, it was additional money, so it was not a cut to employability funding that year, but clearly that money was expected somewhere. That is why I try to understand whether people are holding back commissioning because they thought that they were going to have a larger amount, so they might have held back. I think that it ties into what she was saying just about this general uncertainty about when funding letters are coming out. The £53 million was on top of that in a way, that kind of uncertainty. It just kind of created that fervor. They can just take big numbers away at short notice. I think that the real issue to try and understand, which would be really helpful, is how what happened over the course of the full year in terms of the funding agreements and the funding letters and where are the issues in the system that got us to that place with that being able to happen because clearly that money had not been allocated. The issues that it is leading to with particularly third sector providers being able to have certainty. It comes through local authorities to them, so there is a double level of uncertainty there. It should be a lot easier than that. It is unclear why it is not working. I wanted to ask about partnership working. Obviously, it is quite a complex landscape, and we can understand that. I very much appreciate what you have said. To try and understand some of the key partnerships, what is successful but where are there challenges in terms of partnership? Where are we going to try and move this agenda on? Do we need to try and work on? Just as a follow-on from what Emma said, we did not necessarily see the same amount of money coming out into the third sector, as you would have seen when it was centralised. That is something to bear in mind that things like the employability fund that went wholly to the third sector or to further education did not seem to, when they had moved out, come out. That is where the challenges came from in the third sector, where the money did not flow through. It was perhaps filling gaps and making sure that the employability provision that local authority levels kept and it did not necessarily flow out past that in some areas. In terms of partnerships, we lead the largest third sector partnership in Scotland at the moment in Dundee. I know that some of the committee are going to go visit that on Monday. That was a commitment to strengthen and start to invest in the third sector and have that as a partnership because we recognise that together we are significantly stronger. We want to offer a clear landscape for clients, so what happens is that, with those clients, they come into our service, a one-stop shop, and depending on their needs, the partner that they work with is determined. It is not that we are fighting over the same clients, because it becomes very competitive. That works really well because it works to local authority. They only have to work with us as a lead partner, but they are able to work with 10 partners as a result. We have a really significant—in Dundee, we work across the full authority. We work with everyone who has barriers. We work with young parents, lone family, lone parent workers. We work with disabled clients. We have support services for mental health, but that has created a really clear landscape for the local authority to engage with us as a partnership and for the client to engage with us because they know that they are coming in and getting the right service for them and not come to us because we are desperate for a start or we need to make sure—that has been a massive success—that we are looking to replicate that work in other areas. We are starting to see real progress because local authorities recognise the benefits of that and are able to, for them, engage only with a lead partner. That is a prime model that you see in fair start, but it is not a prime sub-prime. It is very much a partnership. It has a steering group. You will get to see some of the benefits if you go and visit that on Monday. I think that other colleagues might go into the place-based geographies and impact. I was very struck by what you said about aspirations of young people. In terms of partnership, developing the young workforce is obviously a key player in the employability sector generally. Is there anything more that can be done particularly about that the young people in school? Have you talked about that early preparation that it is what you can do as opposed to what you cannot do? Is that partnership strong enough or is there something that needs to be done more on young people with disabilities in schools? What can you do with developing the young workforce? We are part of that partnership. We deliver in 70 schools through the young person's guarantee and through DYW, but that is a postcode lottery. We deliver that in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Inverness and Down in Ayrshire. If you are not in those areas, there is a recognition that that specialist support is not there. In rural areas, there are significant challenges for those young people. We are seeing reports of young people not getting a work placement so they get no work experience unless their mum or dad organises it. We see examples of a young person sitting under the stairs for a full year and they did nothing. There are some real challenges, but what that is a recognition is with developing young workforce, bringing us in, that they do that specialist work. It is more than careers advice and guidance because our staff work with 25 young people on a one-to-one basis under the principles of sports employment. If you are a careers advisor with 1000 young people in a big school like St Andrews in Glasgow, you cannot provide that significant support, so our staff are with those clients for four years. We are working with those families. We get them to travel independent travel trains so they can get to their job and we work with them alongside the teachers. It is a real partnership model with teachers because we recognise to allow them to focus on the education and we can focus on that work and that aspiration, but it probably does not go early enough. We are working with those young people at age 14 because whether it is funded as education or funding as employment or funding as social care is a challenge and in other countries that is not a challenge, they fund it as one. We do not go young enough, so the aspirations for young children and primary school in their families is a real challenge for us as well because by the time we get them at 16, sometimes too late, because you have parents who are very nervous about putting their young person out into the world. That is a very helpful insight. Can I switch to U.M. and look at the employment economics of that? Obviously, there is a moral responsibility to ensure that everybody can take part in the workforce, but there is also an economic benefit to employers. A tight labour market retention of staff is key. Is there any data about the retention rates of people with disabilities in the workplace that obviously helps that argument, but there is also that diversity that customers want to buy from companies that look like them and recognise that wider perspective? Are we seeing shifts in understanding by employers to understand the benefits of employing people with disabilities? Is there something about the economic imperative in an aging workforce where more older people are going to be in the workforce and people develop disabilities as they get older? Is that where it needs to be particularly in a Scottish context? Is there anything that we can learn internationally as to how different countries view that from a quite clear economic employment perspective? That is a very interesting question. I am not aware of studies that have quantified the economic sort of analysis. Clearly, there is a lot of descriptive and anecdotal evidence about that when you speak to employers that are involved in some of the programmes as partners. Breaking barriers is a scheme that works with Scottish power within Strathclyde Business School. Training is a work placement and you hear very strong views on the benefits that are brought to the employer and to the colleagues that they work with in the organisation. It is quite difficult to beyond that point where you have got those partner organisations to get data from employers in terms of people who are disabled. Not all people will tell their employer that they are disabled because of fear of stigma. The extent to which employers know, people declare this to their employer. In terms of getting that wide study in terms of retention, it is quite difficult. We do not want to just cherry pick those who are leading the pack in this. We want to be able to look across the piece. Something that the census might be able to help us with when that data comes out to understand what people are doing and where that has been and what some of that work history is. In terms of whether internationally there is better example, our work on this looking internationally has very much been for people with learning disabilities. Again, it is quite difficult to know who the different societies of you is differently. Again, it can be quite anecdotal that there has been a study in one place that shows something good or someone has visited somewhere and it has been really inspirational. It is fair to say that these are challenges across the world. The developed world, I guess, is our comparisons that we look to. One place where there has been some interesting work and the Government is very active in this is in New Zealand and that might be a place to look in terms of some of their employability support and how they do it. It is challenging in terms of getting that data and robust evidence across countries. Clearly, there are economic benefits. You talked about an ageing workforce. We have had the recent and post-pandemic people leaving the labour force in their 50s and 60s. They might potentially be partly due to ill health. There are a couple of things that are relevant here. One of them relates to the NHS and the extent to which some of the issues around surgeries are as simple as kit replacements and things that may be leading to people living for a longer amount of time with pain that means that they cannot work. Again, we have evidence here that there is more correlation. We have high-weighting lists and older people declaring themselves inactive. We think that that is due to ill health. That is one thing to consider. Correlation is not necessarily here. The second is a bit of a counter to that in some of the conditions, some of the acquired conditions, the carthritis and the musculoskeletal conditions. Employment rates are a bit higher for those conditions out of all the range of disabilities. This is evidence from the UK that we do not have the Scottish data. It is relevant to the disability employment gap, but there are probably less problematic conditions in terms of employment if you look across the whole population of disabled people. It is things such as visual impairment, sphere autism and learning disabilities, where the real challenges are. There are opportunities for people to be in work, particularly in some of the industries such as hospitality. It could be our big employers for people with learning disabilities and autism. Clearly, there are benefits there, because there is a shortage of the labour force. It should be a win-win, but it requires support in order to get to that place. Ash, is there anything that you want to add to that? Yes. We have really tried to work closely with some of the growth sectors in Scotland around food and drink. We have worked closely with hospitality providers, the breaking barriers partnership now includes EY, so we are looking at thinking about finance. We have had great successes in the tech industry for people who have autism, who are able to go in and do cyber security. What we are trying to do is open people's minds about those jobs, because there was an assumption that they would go into low-level, low-paying, entry-level jobs. What we are saying evidence is that, with the right support, they are going into key growth sectors in Scotland filling those skills gaps, but it is just about understanding for employers how they find that talent. It is about inclusive recruitment practices, because evidence suggests anecdotally that the retention is better if you have a workforce that represents your community, if it represents yourself, but there are key barriers around recruitment and timed application forms—something that we should not see any more. If you are dyslexic, you will fail out of that. We are seeing a maths test to go into a stock room. There are things that are key barriers that we can remove really easily if we can provide employers with the right support. What we are showing is that there is a growing number of people looking to enter the workforce in key sectors, where we have those gaps, and we just have to create the right pathways in which for them to do that. Just before I bring in Maggie Chapman, Skills Development Scotland, where I anticipated to be on the panel today, for understandable reasons, they are not here this morning. I do not know if you want to say a wee bit about national bodies and national partnerships who are important to delivery in this area. You have spoken about local authorities and the postcode lottery and local delivery. Who are the national players who are important in this? We work closely with Skills Development Scotland and how they support young people through the modern apprenticeships programmes. Obviously, losing employability funds is a key issue for lots of providers in support of that national picture. We work with DWP, but there are challenges around that. There are a lot of programs in DWP, such as Jets and all those new programmes that are job centre programmes, which means that perhaps those clients are not filtering out into something like Fair Start Scotland or some of the local providers. However, we try and work as nationally as possible, as well as with the national employability providers—big examples such as Bernard Doe's ourselves, Street League and all those, because we try and create as easy, most cohesive picture for clients as possible. Thank you for joining us this morning. For what you have said and for the information that you have given us so far, I have two broad areas of questioning. They touched on things that Colin and Fiona picked up on, too. Emma, you mentioned the strategies and plans that we have. You said in response earlier that no one left behind was seen as an answer to all questions and all challenges. Given the October 21 report that you had, there were key recommendations in there about ensuring that reforms around strategies, plans, social security benefit design, the national care service, and all those things, how they work together, have you seen the progress that you would expect to see in that kind of linking, overarching working together at that level? I am not sure that we expected to see progress. I think that there are still big concerns there. It is not a new story, the difficulty in joining up across Government, and we see it in a range of areas. Again, it is difficult because what we know publicly might be very different from what is going on behind the scenes. That is one of the problems. There is nothing that appears to be joining up things such as the national care service, social security and employability for disabled people, and taking the disabled person at the centre of that, and working out how all those systems support them. It feels very much like it is a silo approach. From some limited conversations that we have had with officials, it is something that they recognise but do not feel that we are not able to give a firm that we are. We are definitely doing this. I would have questions about the extent to which those things are being joined up in practice. Are there particular areas of weakness that you see in your 2021 report? You talked specifically about unpaid carers and the relationship between them and the people who draw on unpaid care to function. Never mind gaining employability, but just to live. Are there other areas of particular weakness or, if not weakness, areas that we should be mindful of ensuring that we focus on joining up? I think that carers are a really important part of this, because they are not counted in part of the disability employment gap. Clearly, the person that they are caring for is disabled, so it is having that impact on their ability to work as much as they would ideally like to. It comes down to the social security element of that, with care of support, but the national care service is a huge part of that as well, in terms of the right support being there for the person. I think that the problem is that it is very difficult for anyone to have that overview of all of those moving parts. We find it very difficult. It is very easy for us to say that they should be joined up, but it is very difficult to understand what is happening. In any report, you will see that it is talked about in terms of those different factors, but it is what is actually happening in practice. One thing I would say about some of the reports from the Government, the most recent one being the fair work action plan, which did incorporate the disability employment gap actions towards that. When we had a previous disability employment plan a few years ago now, when you look at the actions, which make a lot of sense. I was part of the short-life working group that helped with some of that, and many other people, including SDS, were on that. What we did not see from the previous plan was an assessment of which of those actions had been taken forward. We had whether they had been taken forward, but what had been the impact of them, what had been resulted in that taking forward. It did not necessarily have to be the number of people in employment, but just a kind of analysis of what happened and what we think the outcomes of that action were. Hence, we get into the next plan that is out now with another list of actions, but very little understanding of the impact that those actions will have. It ties back to that evaluation point again, the evidence to say that we are going to do that because we think that that will have a really big impact. We are going to do that because it is a gap and we need a particular group of people, but we expect all of those people to benefit from that, so you can measure the impact. That would help with some of the being able to assess the extent to which things are joined up, because you would be reporting back on that. If the action links to social security, what happened in social security and the impact of that social security action is having back on the employability or employment targets. I think that more scrutiny over reporting would be helpful when those actions are made to be able to return to them and figure out what happened and what they think the impact was of them. Otherwise, it is just impossible to know what is going on and why the disability employment gap has improved and which actions that the Government has put forward have led to that, if any. That is quite a hard place to be. It makes follow-up strategies. What are they based on? It is not that solid. It comes back to data and collecting data in the first place. It is not just data. When we say data to people often, we say, we are doing a measurement framework. It is information, robust information that can include quantitative data but can also include other forms of information. It is that transparency and clarity of what is happening and the best estimates of what the impact of those things may be. I was going to say that we are doing the wrong thing. I do not mean that uncharitably, but Colin Smyth's point about the single-year funding. We have been talking about multiyear funding for decades now and I am still talking about it. That is really helpful and it gives us something to dig into. You spoke earlier about what I see as fitting into the social model of disability as somebody's employment chances start long before they leave school. One of the challenges is educating society as a whole. People understanding what they are entitled to, what support is out there, employers understanding how they can upskill what they should be doing legally—never mind what they should be doing ethically or morally. I am curious for you to unpick that a little bit more. How are we not getting the support for either people who need employment support or people who are providing employment to know what they can and should be doing? How are we not getting that right? We did a piece of research for the Scottish Government that will probably be published soon around parental aspirations and aspirations in children that may be worth a review in terms of our teachers are not always equipped with the skills that they require in order to support children who have learning disabilities to come into their classroom. It is not a mandatory module in teachers' education, but they will all know that many classrooms have children and young people who have additional support needs in their classroom—diagnosed or undiagnosed, which is also challenging. We are not getting that part right really early because our teachers are not equipped with the knowledge to support that child and young person. It should become something that is mandatory for all teachers. Particularly, as Emma suggested, children are not coming into the classroom and that assumption to mainstream, presumption to going into a mainstream class, they are not always going into an SCN school or a language and communication base. If they are in a mainstream school, that support could be really vital and key. We continue to not think about transition until much later, so the transition bill could be a really key opportunity to really think about that much earlier. Transition for a young person with disability tends to happen in the last year of school because you have an awful lot of other things to worry about before that. If we can start to talk about it much earlier, we can prepare that young person and their family much earlier, but we tend to think of transition as either they stayed on six-year or seven-year. We need to do that earlier. In terms of employers, we do not ask them to report on those things, so it is anecdotal the evidence that they can talk about the diversity of that, but they tend to think that becoming a disability-confident employer means that they have done that job done. Let us move on. There is a key focus on EDNI, the Shinkwing Commission. There was a key recommendations that came out of that. It is also worth a look at, because it focused on business and focused on how businesses can support more people into their business. That spoke their language in terms of how they understand the benefits of things such as the purple pound from economic and entirely selfish, not moral, testament, but it also got them to think about how they can make these adaptations and attract more talent into their business. We are not upskilling employers enough, so employers are afraid of making the wrong decision or saying the wrong thing for absolutely the right reason or if they have had a bad experience. Their understanding of disability is incredibly poor in some areas. We get real successes with small to medium organisations who are doing it because they know someone or they are bringing in, but we are not putting enough emphasis on these large employers who have the ability to create real lasting change in Scotland because they are influencers and they are able to make that change. Some of the work that Sandy Beggby has done around the young person's guarantee and the aspirations around DYW were really key, but the reality of some of that is that it became a bit of a tick the box. Some organisations are coming into a school, an ASN school and they just come in once a quarter and there is no real aspiration for those young people to go into their world and no aspiration to go into work. That is the bit that we have probably not got right because we brought it in and the ideas are fantastic, but the reality of it on the ground is not necessarily because we do not have the evaluation. On the ground, the reality is not matching the expectations. Is that a capacity thing? Is that an understanding thing? Do you have a sense of where, if those businesses are going into schools but not actually galvanising any continuity or any relationship? I mean, some of it is tick the box to be involved in those sorts of programmes because they get their logo on the website and it looks great and they look like they are supporting, but actually the reality is that they perhaps do not have capacity. It is no different from doing a recruitment event anywhere else if you have a gap but you are not able to access people where they are or you are not able to access disabled potential employees, then they just are not seeing it in the same way because they do not recognise it. So there is a huge focus in EDNI but it tends to be in other elements of EDNI, so around race, gender, disability tends to come at the end of that and actually there is a huge workforce out there that want to work that are just not able to access it. So is there a role maybe for some kind of disabled positive employees that there are different schemes, accreditation, that kind of thing? Is there a role for formalising that in a more coherent and more standardised way across different business sectors to support employees and understand what they should be doing and what they could be doing very easily? Yeah, so we had some real successes through SUS, the Scottish Union for Sported Employment and their Inclusive Workplace Awards because actually it was much more cohesive around evidencing how you are an inclusive business rather than have you looked at your policy and some of the disability confidence can become a bit tick the box whereas what the Inclusive Workplace Award was asking the employer to put some real emphasis and some work and some resource into this and there was some real success. There has also been some success through the PSP, the app to PSP which should also be worth looking at because what that is is encouraging employers to really think about diversity in their business and it not be tick the box, they have to invest in it, they have to put resource into it so they are much more bought in so we see greater success in those sorts of programmes than in something like disability confident which becomes something that gets put on the website and whereas having that real focus on it and it does have to be a top-down approach you have to have to buy in at every level and that's where we see real success. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Colin Beattie to be followed by Gordon MacDonald. Thank you, convener. I'd like to explore a little bit more around an area that's been discussed a little bit already which is in connection with the adaptations and so on that employers might have to make in order to accommodate disabled staff. Can you give me some more concrete examples of how working practices have changed or have been changed successfully in businesses in order to accommodate disabled people? Ashley, why don't we start with you? We've had lots of success so everyone talks about access to work as being the hidden hero of sometimes no one really knows how to access it. There are some real challenges around access to work taking months and months to come back to someone and getting that support in place so some of those physical adaptations, software support but we can put things in place so thinking of a young man that we've worked with things like we got him a personal evacuation plan because he was a young man who required music, he was very distracted in an office environment, a very excellent administrator working on the computer but very distracted by the environment so what he did is he had music playing, the challenge was he liked to sing so that became a challenge for everyone in the office so the adaptation as he became more confident in his role as he had one headphone in and now he has the radio playing in the background so that adaptation cost that employer nothing but it was something that had real meaning for that young person to continue in the world of work. We also think about mentors in the workplace so you often get an informal mentor if you come into work what we do is try and formalise that a little so that that employee has an understanding of who their mentor is. We look at making sure that training is accessible so if you're going in and you're doing health and safety training do you require a scribe to make sure that you can go through that training? All of these things are often provided by an organisation like Enable Works at no extra charge or they're funded through provision so that the employer actually doesn't cost them any money but what we do is they have real impact on people looking tend to the world of work so things like a personal evacuation plan if someone requires that support but it's just about providing confidence to employer and what we also do for employers is come in at times of challenge so we often find sometimes that an employer will come to us when it's too late and someone's perhaps lost their job because of behaviours or other things and what we do is come back in at any point throughout that point because we recognise that there could be challenges and we come in and support both the employer and the employee but all of those things don't cost money they're not adaptations that cost a lot of money they're basic adaptations that often happen informally if you don't have a disability you often get someone to show you around the office what we do is do those things in advance so that young man I'm talking about with music we took him to the very his workplace in advance he got to see it he got to see if there was lights if there was an issue because he was bet he got sensory overload in some cases so what we did is planned with the employer how we would look at his induction and it's just about providing confidence for employers and it's not always physical adaptations now you mentioned about enable going in and providing support you must be a bit limited in the resources you've got to be able to do that and if you really start to achieve the targets that you'd like to in terms of disability employment how would you cope I mean we we have the resource we have a dedicated ed and I team now that are funded to do that work and they work really closely with employers because we also recognise that employers are all at different parts of their journey so some of them are well versed and they're ready to go and start employing people and some people are right at the very beginning where they don't have the policies or the procedures in place to support someone and that work is done as part of our supported employment commitment so you work with a limited amount of people so where it's challenging for us in programs such as fair start Scotland is the model is set up where you're working with 65 clients that's not supported employment supported employment is working with 20 clients 25 clients so that work is built into our employment coordinators day they work with those employers we can provide job coaching we've hired job coaches that just do job coaching and they go around employers and they work with people you know intensively to deliver that support because we recognise that it might be intensive at the beginning but it drops off because those the natural supports in the workplace start to take over the paid support because none of the jobs we achieve are in supported workplaces they're all in the open labour market and that's really key as well because it's about changing that mindset for people. Do you think there's a role for the Scottish Government in helping support this? Some of the public sector organisations can be quite challenging to look at adaptations because see when you're a big big machine it's very difficult to make changes quickly and we recognise that and I think sometimes it's about public sector organisations leading the way because it's about how do we make our processes as accessible as possible to encourage others to do that because I think we have to make sure that and that can be quite challenging in big organisations. Now you've highlighted here examples of adaptations that have been made fairly low-key you know the sort of thing that doesn't cost a lot of money and is really just training really to understand the needs of that person what about more complex successes that you've had? So we've had lots of success in areas where we have someone who has autism and they perhaps have more complex requirements where we would work really intensively with the employer so what we do is we carve what we do job carving so that is making sure that the job is appropriate for that person and that can sometimes mean that there's elements of the job that are not going to fit within that person's skillset so what we do is we work with the employer to carve the job that they'll be most successful in and that's part of that principle of supported employment so for example for that young man that we're just talking about he really struggled with finance so part of his role originally was to look at paying people for elements of finance but he really really struggled with it what we agreed with the employer is we took that element away and we gave him something else that he was particularly good at so it's working with an employer to carve that out we've also had real successes where we've worked with a young man who is deaf and he's now in hospitality as a sous chef and he's now moved into being a pastry chef in one of the most luxury hotels in Scotland but he couldn't get a job despite being probably one of the most qualified young men that I'd ever ever met because no one would take a chance on him and what we did is put adaptations in place in terms of lights we also put adaptations in place of communication we supported the employer to think about learning some basic BSL for that young man but also he just became and create his talent it was more about that specialist support and coming in and saying this is what this young man has to offer so he wasn't getting through the first stage in lots of employers so what we did is come and did some of that work with him to say this is this young man this is his talent and actually he's been incredibly successful and is now working in a five-star hotel in Scotland but he couldn't get an interview much less a job through a basic practice without any support. Emma, can I ask if you want to make a comment here? Yeah, no I don't think I've got much more to add and actually he's obviously working much more on the day to day of this but yeah I think so just two points I think in terms of understanding that funding models need to be inclusive of this type of expectation that the support is required so if you look at economic analysis of employability schemes you do get this kind of particularly where they're paid by results schemes you do get this concept of creaming where these sort of easy easy to get into employment people are put into employment and the right funding model isn't always there for those with more complex needs or it's not it's not tailored enough to them so I think that tells us that you know some of the work that it enabled to and others do it's more expensive but it does get you those results in in a much more sustained way in terms of what we understand from the evidence so I think that the funding packages need to be right and and understand that that element and secondly you just you did talk about the public sector and so public sector as employers and that is a feature of the most recent fair work action plan where they have put down some commitments to to how they feel the public sector needs to respond and obviously the Scottish Government is the obviously they wrote the report so that's a good place to look in terms of how their practices are changing so it is very difficult you know if a big organisations and to sometimes get the machine to make the changes and I think that the Scottish Government as an employer probably struggles as much as anyone else so it feels like with with what's in the fair work action plan actually that's a really great place to look over the next few years for the Scottish to see how the Scottish Government is faring with its own policies and can actually dig into that and scrutinise it in a way you wouldn't be able to do with private sector. Okay, thank you. Gordon MacDonald will be followed by Jamie Harwood Johnson. Okay, thank you very much, convener. If we have to improve the situation for disabled people we need to understand what has actually worked and build upon that and looking at the labour market data it says that under the InQuality Act disabled employment levels nine years ago was it 40% now it's at 50% that's a substantial 25% increase in employment levels and the disability employment rate gap has dropped from 38.7 to 31.2 which is a 19% closure of that gap so what has actually worked that we can look at is a good example I know you touched Ashley about the partnership working at Dundee but what what parts of the fairer Scotland action plan is actually delivering for disabled people that we can build upon? It's probably just again that focus so it's about allowing local authorities to to commit at a local level about what they require and recognising because while we've seen improvements in the disability employment gap we're not seeing improvements in the areas we've talked around around learning disability so we are seeing improvements in people who have perhaps a physical disability where like we said already the adaptations are are more obvious we are still seeing this consistent people who you know that group of cohort people learning disability rates are they are the most marginalised so the improvement isn't there in the same way and I think it's because we've got better understanding adaptations from a physical perspective and not perhaps where it's not as obvious and where it's working for us is around that commitment to thinking about those groups who are the most marginalised and around allowing us to put the key focus in putting support in it tends to be because it follows the principles of supported employment because it allows us to put aftercare support in and it's funded so where we find greater success is where commissioners have recognised that aftercare is a key part of the provision so it's about looking at that whole life and thinking about where we've got joined up with housing we've got joined up with health and like someone asked earlier how do we do that and that the learning disability autism and neurodiversity bill again is a key point where we could look at really enshrining that and that bill to say how do we look at someone from a whole life perspective because often there's things around the levels of people with a learned disability living in poverty are quite staggering the reports coming out that 20 percent of people are living in absolute poverty and those rates are getting worse so where we've seen it working is where people have committed to providing that support for that cohort who are often being missed by the traditional programmes so where they're not accessing fair start our all-in models deliver three jobs for the cost of one job on a traditional supported employment model but that's because we've had six years to get that provision right because there was a commitment to putting that in at local authority level on a large scale so in Edinburgh we work with 800 people each year the outcomes are really really great we're getting 45 percent job outcomes but our sustainment rate is at 80 percent at 12 months so it's because they have recognised the need to fund aftercare and we have that provision and it's because it remains loyal to the principles of supported employment that's why that's why it works and in terms of employers obviously there are vacancies across the whole sector whether it's public private or third sector you talked earlier about a thousand people a year you're getting into employment is it equal across the board or is there certain sectors that it's easier to get placements for disabled people we find it most challenging at work with the public sector at times they're just big machines so your your ability to go and work with an HR department her perhaps not based where you are it can be challenging and getting a big cog to move it is challenging and we recognise those challenges and it often relies on having a really excellent people manager you know you're in a big organisation a public sector you're often not being interviewed by your line manager your eventual line manager so that's become challenging in itself we've seen some great strides in some of the NHS boards where they're looking at adaptations and they're really putting a focus on it but we tend to get the greatest success obviously in the third sector because their values are are already enshrined they understand and then in the private sector working with those small to medium businesses who are able to we're able to engage with on a really personal level because we are never going to sit as an organisation and put 10 people into Tesco into 10 jobs because we operate on a right job right person so that means that you have to build a personal relationship with each business so our employment coordinators have personal level relationships and that's why public sector can sometimes be a bit challenging for us Emma is that anything you would like to add so just to go back to your first question I think the fact that we need to ask that question and it's and we're not able to give you know those full answers as to what why have those statistics improved and as I said right in the beginning some of it is due to changes that aren't about getting people into work it's just about the characteristics of the disabled people population that have changed and we don't know those kind of breakdowns for which disabilities have had those successes we know learning disabilities well we don't actually know what the employment rate for people of learning disabilities is we don't it's just data doesn't exist but for all the data we have says it's incredibly low so we're not but we're not really able to even understand that or track that properly over time so the fact that we still don't know the answer to that question and some very basic kind of understanding of the disaggregated data it's just not there I think it's really worrying that we're at that place still now okay thanks so much and thank you jamey have quijonson before by michelle thompson good morning um thanks very much there's some really interesting stuff come out today and some of the areas that I was going to speak about or ask you about what have already been covered but that I represent the highlands and islands obviously large area remote rural populations you've talked about postcode lotteries but you've also talked about aftercare and how important that is and I can only imagine that somebody living say in a you know very rural community having to travel in there will be other barriers to that and I was just wondering whether that is the case what are some of the particular barriers those within remote rural communities face and how we can address those highlands and islands is a perfect example of a really challenging landscape for people looking for work so we deliver a our all-in model in highlands and we committed to delivering it in the area so we've got a staff member right all the way up in wick we've got staff in Gauls Bay right over in the sky we're probably one of the few providers that work across the local authority that do that because everything tends to be Inverness centric and people are expected to travel to Inverness or be provided a remote service where the challenges arise particularly around the funding in that area is that we're going to lose the grassroots organizations that work in areas like Betty Hill and wick and because they are much smaller they're relying on funding to come through and the funding model is changing and looking at becoming back to that hourly rate or pay by visit type rate which is going to be incredibly challenging in those areas the public transport system is so poor and the travelling expectation is not there so what we've had to do is build a really cohesive remote offering with a bit of remote and a bit of in person because being a girl from Glasgow who built a bit in highlands not knowing how difficult it is to get to Ola pool was really was a rely opener and and those challenges persist we've got 200 schools in the highlands we aren't able to access those schools because the funding model just isn't there for us to provide that support so you're having to work rely on third sector organisations to provide support because it's the right thing to do rather than necessarily be funded to deliver that support so we're seeing huge challenges we've got the other challenges around the mix of barriers that someone would have so you know our clients perhaps in wick tend to represent with multiple barriers they have a learning disability they tend to have addiction issues there are significant mental health concerns so we have to ensure that we have staff that are able to work and support those barriers and that can be challenging because there's also a bit of a recruitment crisis in some of those rural areas because the nine to five Monday to Friday doesn't work necessarily so if we weren't to work with disabled parents or parents of disabled children we're having to think really flexibly about providing support at night providing support to the weekends and trying to access some of those jobs because there's a there's again massive skills gaps that were filled with European workers and they're not able to fill the jobs but we can't get people there and get them up skilled because the the funding model's just not right in in those rural areas so we're seeing significant challenges and then in the islands you know things like Shetland that tends to be one provider or the local authority that delivers that work and again you're what they have the benefit of because employment rate is often really low and those the unemployment rate sorry is often really low is you can go in and have those personal relationships with employers but what we're seeing is mass excess of young people leaving these areas to come down into the central belt because they're not getting the ability to access those jobs yeah just just give that to what you're talking about and imagine all of those kind of parts of that have to be done have to be right otherwise the whole system kind of essentially breaks down can I just come back to the funding and then then perhaps come to Emma as well you know even since from before I was an MSP you know we were talking about kind of multi-year funding and that kind of allowing organisations like yourselves to be able to make decisions which have a consistency over a number of years has there been any improvement of that is it still the same is it getting worse you know what is the impact of that kind of not quite hand to mouth but you know short short term kind of funding so perfect example in the highlands our esf funding is due to end on the 31st of march and we still have no we've had bids in since october that are sitting we haven't had a result from them yet we also have to recognise that local authorities are under significant pressures and challenges as well to get the money out the door so it's not we just don't know what's going to happen so the concern is we're going to lose staff we've not been able to recruit staff in the last six months because we're sitting with only six months and the right thing to do is let people know that and that's been really challenging but we're at the point where we're now the end of january with the promise of additional funding not quite there yet so do we fund it ourselves and hope that that comes out or do we just stop that provision altogether so that's going to be again a drop-off esf funding ending is going to be incredibly challenging I think in the next 12 months because shared prosperity fund money just isn't going to fill the gap yeah okay can I just ask for very quick sign I'm kind of conscious of time um and perhaps it's a uh you know kind of more the kind of general question but you obviously there are many many people out there that you're working with at the moment in terms of the actual need for support can you estimate how much that is compared to actually what you're able to deliver in the rural areas we could fill the demand probably five times over in some of the big cities we tend to have waiting lists in most of our provision at early stages so some of that really early stage one engagement we have double the waiting lists we don't have the we just don't have the capacity or the funding to deliver that work because we have to really loyally stick to the principles of supported employment because we know what works for people so that is challenging we are often are some of the only providers that take on more complex cases I think one sds worker said you take all the resources that no one else takes was one of the comments which is unfortunate so we in rural areas the demand is high and the provision is not there and in some of the central areas again because of the work that we do we could fill the caseloads two three times over okay thank you thank you um michelle thompson thank you so much for coming along today this has been an absolutely fascinating session I just wanted to pick up on one area that was mentioned at the start of it but it would be useful to understand a bit more of the context and in particular the complexity and that is around long Covid we know it's extremely complex and there's a multitude of presenting symptoms that are being categorised and there's a lot of work going on in that front but it certainly has moved quite a number of people into the category of disabled I just wanted to get a bit more of a sense of your opinion of complexity and are very struck by what's being said thus far about data and data collection and disaggregation but I just like you to flesh that out for me a bit more yeah so I mean something like long Covid from what I understand it in terms of the labour market data just comes under the other category so in terms of what those conditions actually are um I don't think there's a detail there um and the labour force survey because it's so frequent and there's not as much of a lag on it because it's it's quarterly means we can actually look across the period of of Covid some of the other big surveys are still um you know things like the um like even like the family resources survey which is DWP the Scottish household survey Scottish health survey they're still they're like you know they've still got 2019 data so we don't we don't have that understanding really of what's happened um and it's still an emerging picture I think it's so it's really difficult to know um you know if they're showing up as um yeah for a period you'd you'd think that people were previously in employment may have been on on sick leave and then they'll become a point maybe where they decide okay I'm not going to be able to to go back and that's when they'll start showing up in the probably in the inactive um statistics in terms of the labour force survey so something we're keeping an eye on um but as yet um you know I I it's difficult to know what's happened and and the extent to which it will be permanent um and therefore the extent to which maybe funding um and provision needs to shift to to those people because it's it's still quite a new issue so yeah it's a really difficult one I think the what what else came out of the pandemic though um quite conclusively was an increase in people um not be not being employed because of mental health conditions so I think that's probably you know the numbers there are much bigger than the numbers in this other category so if we're to focus on the impacts of the pandemic I think those um the mental health impacts are probably the most concerning um but again it it's it's for a slightly different um reason than the you know pandemic it brought a new kind of reasons a new trauma and a new kind of triggers for for for mental health disorders so it's yeah there'll be to understand there's more provision there and and that mental health sphere I believe for employability support but the numbers are big and the numbers of people that are inactive because of mental health conditions are large okay um I suppose a closing question uh well there's a couple one I'd like to know your kind of top two asks both of you for us as a committee on two scenarios a lot of what we've talked about today is recognising the very real challenges we have at the moment in terms of data the economic climate that feeds into not getting the multi-year funding that people would like to to see so recognising that constraint what would be your top two asks or things you'd like to put in the record and correspondingly if money was no object and control was no object what would be your top two asks um I could probably answer the first one more than the second one um because we yeah but in terms of what I think we could um what this committee could kind of find it's like it's I think um painting that a clearer picture of what's happening in terms of the funding stream so where it's coming from how it's how decisions are being made where there are delays and and not necessarily you know obviously it's a problem if there are delays in different parts of the funding system from Scottish Government to local government out to to providers but actually understanding why that has been the case and what is being done to to rectify that so I think with a big change in a system in terms of shifting to the no one left behind model there's going to be issues along the way and the important thing is actually understanding what's been learned and what's what's being improved and and being able to say confidently that the Scottish Government know that they got issues that they need to improve on like this this kind of delays in funding packages and uncertainty is something that from from all we've looked at can't continue so it needs to be progress made there but it's understandable perhaps why it's happened up until this point I think that's how I'd commit it and then secondly would be on data um we actually have I've got a report which I can send to the committee which the which the ONS did on disabled people's employment um that's it's a 2021 publication um but it doesn't disaggregate to Scotland and the publicly available information um that you get through um to be technical it's called the end user license it is available to people like us to to look at some of the the detailed data the data we want on disabled people's not there in that in that data and it should be um in order so that we can actually get that picture on Scotland so actually ONS is someone to think about as well as um some of the Scottish Government statisticians in terms of that data picture ONS have got a lot of work to do there too um I suppose in terms of thinking about what's next it would be around we recognise those specialist groups in terms of learning discipline they're not progressing and really putting a focus on some of those groups that have perhaps stayed quite static for a number of years in terms of funding and provision and also thinking about if what's next for fair start Scotland we recognise that it has been a bit of a postcode lottery that the the model is not set up to perhaps deliver support employment in the way that it that it should so perhaps thinking about that is almost a separate thing to think about if fair start Scotland 2 is going to be successful and and create the the rates that it needs to for disabled people we have to think about that in a slightly different way because it's not the same as supporting someone who can move into work quickly it is a slightly it's a different model um the data is as a concern um but the the funding in terms of providing that continuity of support for clients and making it as least a complex landscape as possible you know we our clients often tell us they have such a complex life they have so many people paid to be in it that we actually just have to really start to funnel that down so that they can make it as clear and as as easy for them to access this support as possible and it is if the money was no object we would need to start as that would absolutely be music to my ears but in terms of it's not going to happen but making sure we don't have that postcode lottery because actually for us it starts earlier it doesn't start early enough it needs to start as transition needs to start as early as possible we need to build aspirations for our our children and young people in the same way that because we've seen many children and young people this ability not being asked what they want to be when they grow up we were all asked so we have to create that aspiration as early as possible so it's thinking about employment almost in a preventative measure the way sometimes we think about criminal justice about if we put that work in as early as possible they no longer require our services later on because they are able and confident and going into the workplace you know prepared and ready and there so it would be about that transition piece and again that stuff about the postcode lottery of services in general let's really start to make it as easy for clients to access and the work with employers we have so much potential we have so many skills gaps so many key sectors with a workforce dying to get in there we just have to start making it easier for them to do that okay thank you very much thank you they were really helpful final answers we do have the minister in in two weeks and I'm sure these are issues that people want to raise with them just a final question around the fairer Scotland for disabled people action plan I don't know Emma there has been a couple of progress reports would it be helpful I think we're lacking maybe the most recent one how important are progress reports there is the you know the 20 38 commitment around halving the gap but there's also I think a further commitment 2023 to have 50 percent of disabled people in employment that goes up you know how important is it that we get progress reports and what are the kind of key indicators the government should be giving us I know that there were some you know the recent report kind of focused on particular areas around social security Scotland and around public bodies but do you seem quite narrow for the scale of the challenge that we're trying to address yeah I mean do these government strategies are always difficult to do for officials because yeah have to please a lot of people and and sometimes the more valuable work is actually you know behind the scenes and and not in what comes in these published documents unfortunately and the progress reports are very much about this is what we've done we said we do this we've done it it doesn't really go and when we came to the short life working group I thought I was on for disability employment it was a question a lot of us were asking so what has been the impact of these things that you've done what do we know about what's worked and what hasn't worked what so and that then helps you take into the next plan this is what we're going to do and this is what we think the impact will be so that's that's the slight issue we've got with the the approach these these document strategies and then progress reports and measurement frameworks they just their processes they're not really telling you about the evidence in terms of what has been achieved they're not outcome focused and and it's not easy to do it's much easier to do a list of things a list of actions and then saying we've done that action and so that would be the critical thing in terms of actually understanding progress is shifting it's not even shifting because the Scottish Government has this outcome focus but it's actually joining up the outcome focus into these these types of reporting they do and these plans so you understand actually what's what's changed over time okay thank you and thank you both for your insights and contributions this morning as I said we will have the minister here in a couple of weeks we'll be putting some of these questions to him and as Ashley highlighted we're doing a visit on Monday to Dundee to the enable project and we're also going to go to a national autism society Scotland project in the next couple of weeks and this is a short piece of work which might lead on to more in depth work further in the year so thank you very much I'm now moving to private session