 Good morning and welcome to the second meeting of the Welfare Reform Committee for 2016. Can I ask that everyone has their mobile phones and other electronic devices switched to silent and airplane mode? Thank you. We have apologies today from Joan McAlpine, who has had to attend a funeral. Item 1, can we agree to take item 3 in private? Thank you. Item 2 on the agenda is the first evidence session on the welfare funds Scotland regulations of 2016. Can I welcome to the committee our witnesses, Bill Scott, who is the director of policy at Inclusion Scotland, John Shaw, the welfare rights worker at the child poverty action group in Scotland, Jackie Cappell, the senior council tax and benefits manager Dundee City Council, councillor Norman MacDonald, who is the convener of Western Isles. I won't even attempt to offend you with my non-existent Gallic pronunciation. Jules Oldham, who is the national policy and practice coordinator of homeless action Scotland, Morag Johnson, the assistant director of financial services Glasgow City Council, Carly Edgar, the policy manager who cares Scotland and Jamie Stewart, housing development officer of the Scottish Refugee Council. Welcome to the committee. Thank you to those of you who have submitted written evidence. It is quite comprehensive and it covers a range of points. We do appreciate you taking the time to do that. Can I clarify something with the representatives from Dundee and Glasgow? Any views that you express here today, do they represent the administration or are you here in a personal capacity? An officer's capacity, the written evidence that I did put in. We sent to our elected members and they agreed my written evidence, but it is in an officer's capacity that I am here. Any views that I express would be of Glasgow City Council. A number of comments were made about different aspects of the regulations. For example, Jackie, you suggested in your written submission that there should be a degree of flexibility. I think that others have hinted at that as well that there shouldn't be rigidity. Is there a problem in that, if we introduced a significant degree of flexibility, you could end up with a postcode lottery across Scotland? From my opinion and my experience within Dundee City Council, what we would welcome is discretion so that the decision makers have the ability to meet the needs of the individuals who present within Dundee. We welcome the legislation because it gives us stricter guidelines to work around rather than just guidance. Everybody within Scotland is working to that same legislation, but we would like that flexibility to meet individual needs. Within every individual area in Scotland, different people will present to the Scottish Welfare Fund. That is why we would welcome some discretion. How do you ensure, for example, that someone with a specific set of circumstances in Perth would receive the same support as in Dundee? Similarly, how do you then control the budget if you allowed 32 variations, but the financial support was coming from the Scottish Government and the Scottish Government having to control its budget? If Dundee, for argument's sake, or Glasgow, or any other authority decided to exercise a significant degree of flexibility, how is that contained or constrained? We are not asking for total discretion and carte blanche to pay whoever we want or to award to whoever we want to. If there is basic legislation there and guidelines that still give us the discretion to help those in need, that is what we would be looking for. Within the legislation and the guidelines, if there are some restrictions or some examples or areas of particular individuals that you would want to help, that obviously helps all the decision makers. Morag yn en, Carly. It is a difficult balance that has to be recognised between allowing flexibility for decision makers versus ensuring that there is not that potential postcode lottery. I think that, certainly in Glasgow's experience since the inception of the interim scheme, we have found the guidance that was offered. Our view is that the proposed guidance continues to give us that flexibility. What has worked very well for the Scottish welfare fund has been quite an active practitioner's group, which I understand all 32 local authorities across Scotland have worked with Scottish Government officials. Through that group, that is one of the ways that local authorities have tried to ensure that there is as much consistency as possible. I would hope that that will continue in the formal scheme. Sorry, Carly. It was just to add in. I think that, if we are in agreement that the welfare fund is not just looking at potentially financial implications but also about the potential for signposting an individual to additional support once the crisis has potentially been addressed, we have to take account of the fact that a crisis situation is not necessarily a predictable one. It is not necessarily manageable and that there may be circumstances where those assessing the applications need to have a degree of flexibility to account for an individual circumstance. That might be less about financial support and it might be about directing that individual on to the right kinds of support that can help them in the longer term. We know that, for care experience young people, that stable and supportive relationships are one of the key things for helping them to navigate through care and beyond. Under the Children and Young People Act looked after, young people are now entitled to receive aftercare support until 26. If those assessing applications through the welfare fund were aware of that, they would then be able to signpost that person on to the relationships that currently exist or potentially could exist in the future. Norman. I certainly think that from our point of view we welcome the flexibility and the discussion that is within the regulations. I think that there are additional flexibilities there. I recall that we were asking for a year and a half ago when I said the committee last which is to do with single people. I think that in terms of post-core lottery, in our geography, our geography is such that most of our population is centered around the main population centre and there will inevitably be differences and it's exactly that flexibility and discretion is given to local authority that allows us to meet the needs of the individuals wherever they are within the western islands. There will no doubt be variations across Scotland too. I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing because with that flexibility goes the accountability and I think that's what Morag was speaking of in terms of the professionals who are involved along with third sector colleagues who are also employed by their organisations to work on behalf of the people in their community who's interests they represent. I think that there is sufficient there to make sure that there is the consistency again that Morag spoke of although there is a significant amount of flexibility. I think that it would be really difficult to deliver if it was a rigid structure and the principles I think are right as far as our community is concerned. I think that it's important to remember as well that it's not a huge amount of money but the difference that it makes is massive and certainly in relation to the community care grant element that really works towards tenancy sustainment. The most recent work that we did around tenancy sustainments from 2011 if a tenancy fails you're looking at £15,000 to £25,000 cost overall so to actually have the outlay to ensure somebody's got a bed, carpets, cooker. The very basics we're talking about but if somebody's got those to start a tenancy then actually there's the chance of them succeeding and having a successful tenancy is far greater for a really small amount in relation to the possible failure at the end of that. Carly, you mentioned crisis situations and I think Bill, Inclusion Scotland in their written evidence had indicated your concern about the limit and the number of crisis grants that could be paid. I think that you didn't want it restricted to three. Is there a danger that if you lift a restriction the crisis grant could in fact become a de facto weekly payment? I think we're coming back to discretion and what we're pointing out in our written evidence was that some people are more likely to be in crisis situations more often than others so disabled women are more likely to be sexually abused, more likely to suffer domestic violence and more likely to suffer financial abuse than other women. If they only got two payments for the crisis grants but then they actually chose to leave their abusive partner and they needed that to get by for a week, we don't think that you should be putting an arbitrary limit on that we think that you should be using your discretion to say actually we want to give you that fresh start so a community care grant might also be payable. We recognise that some people are in more crisis situations than others and therefore we want that flexibility built in. We don't think that using that discretion that you're going to make multiple payments without thinking about it I know you're not but we would like to see a situation where if you thought that person really really needs that payment to get by and it's the fourth payment why shouldn't we pay it rather than being completely inflexible and saying care what's happened to you, we're not going to intervene to support you in this situation. In some ways we do want that flexibility and discretion built in but within a national framework of the legislation, regulations and guidance that guides people to come to, we hope, decisions that respect the applicants, humanity, upholds their dignity and respect etc. So as I say, not arguing that you can have unlimited numbers of payments but just not an arbitrary limit, that doesn't work for us very well. How would you stop unlimited payments then if you don't set a number? You're saying you don't want an arbitrary target but there would be nothing, supposing a family was in a complete crisis and destitute then local decision makers could do not then decide that for 10, 15, 20 weeks such a payment would be justified? I think the situation that you're describing is one a destitution and I would hope that as a society we would respond to that better than crisis payments alone but I think that that is the same crisis continuing and it's a different situation from a number of different crises that the individual could face and what you're doing is trying to judge okay, are we going to refuse a payment simply because this is the fourth crisis that's occurred in that family rather than exercising your discretion to say actually this is a different situation we do think that you need to help at this time and we're going to intervene and provide it rather than I think is the situation that you've described as one where there's an on-going crisis that's just not being resolved and that's the sort of situation where I would hope that there would have already been a referral from the team making those decisions to say actually this family's in an on-going crisis social work needs to intervene, housing needs to intervene, we need to have a solution to their problems that actually lifts them out of the crisis rather than allowing it to continue for 12 weeks, you know, six months, whatever, otherwise you'll never resolve it and it's not about crisis payments and it's about a much higher level of intervention than you're getting from a crisis payment. You know, if in a local situation a decision is made to have repeated payments made, should the funding of that come from Scottish Government or should it come from the council's resources if they decide to use that flexibility, because I can't remember who it was. One of the written submissions suggested that using payments in that way could actually help to obviate more significant expenditure from social work and other agencies. I don't know if it was at CPAG. I think it was part of the point that we were making about the need to pick up on Bill's point about onward referrals. We thought that a better way of preventing repeated crisis grant applications is actually for local authorities to record who they're referring people to and then we can start to see what's underlying those crises or, as Bill says, that one underlying crisis because no one wants to see a situation where somebody has not claimed a social security benefit they've been entitled to because they're simply not aware of their entitlement and they're repeatedly applying for crisis grants. I think our evidence made clear it's far from inevitable that everybody with mental health problems who's refused a crisis grant will end up as a psychiatric hospital admission, but it's starting to move towards that early intervention approach of using the Scottish welfare fund to reduce pressure on the rest of the system. I think that that is a difficult question in terms of whether local authorities should be able to come back to the Scottish Government and request. Yeah, but come back to the question then, if local authorities decide to use that discretion extensively, who should fund it given that such payments may obviate further expenditure for councils? Should the councils fund that out of their resources or should the Scottish Government fund it? I'm not sure we've really come to a position on who should be funding that. I think that we look at it from the point of view of the African needing that assistance and reducing it to a competition between the different budgets is a difficult one. Norman and then Bill. I think that the amount of funds that are available through the Scottish welfare fund are not going to deal with multiple awards to people across the country. I think that it's for a very specific need. I think that for the amount of money that's there, the number of people that have benefited from it and haven't needed, haven't required multiple assistances, shows that it works at that level. I think that we are talking about a completely different level if we're going back to the same clients. The very first thing that our team do when they engage with individuals is that there is an automatic referral to citizens by Scotland or whoever to make sure that they are getting all the assistance that they are entitled to. Very often that tends to bring in more money than they get through the crisis grant or the community grant. There is a significant amount of work that goes on. It's not just about money, it could be about goods, it could be about other kinds of assistance as well, and it's about making sure that that package is right. The better the package is, the better the chances are that you're not going to have multiple referrals to the same individuals again and again. I think that our officers are quite mindful of that when they're dealing with multiple referrals. It's not an easy route for anybody to be on to be using this kind of resource to deal with much more deep-seated issues for those individuals who are concerned and their families as well. Bill? I think that one of the things is that we need to see what the actual level we need is. In some ways, if we discourage people from applying because they've reached an arbitrary limit, we're not seeing what the real need is. Even if you are going to refuse on various grounds any further payments, I wouldn't discourage the person from coming forward because, at the end of the day, the Scottish Government and the local authorities need to know what the actual level we need is in their area. That's arguing that if we find out that there are significantly more applications turned down because they've reached a limit or it's the same crisis rather than a new crisis that's arisen, we can go back to the Scottish Government and say that the amount that we are being funded to provide this service isn't adequate because we're having to turn down people in real need, but it cannot be that the Scottish welfare fund acts as a replacement for other social security benefits. That isn't its intent and we get that. It is cash limited and budget limited to that extent. I also think that you need to get a real picture of how much unmet need there is so that you can make sure that adequate funds are set aside to meet that crisis need. That means actively encouraging people to come forward and make applications rather than saying that if they've reached a limit, they can't get another one. We would argue that we need to encourage applications to identify unmet need. I know that John Yure wants to come in, but I'll take Moraggyn and then Jules and then we'll bring in. This is an area where we've probably had some examples over the last 18 months because of the increasing impact of sanctions. When that increase in sanctions has been applied by the DWP, practitioners quickly realised that the Scottish welfare fund was going to be a source of requests for individuals affected. The way that local authorities have tried to deal with that crisis is that it is an occurring crisis for an individual, but the Scottish welfare fund was not set up to deal with that long term. That is where it is important that local authorities have to try to put in place some other kind of mechanism to try to deal with the source of the issue rather than just simply dealing with the results of the issue. In our local authority, we have tried to encourage people who present us through the Scottish welfare fund because of a sanction. We will provide support to them as far as we can financially, but we will offer support to them to whether they want to challenge the sanction with the DWP and offer them additional welfare rights support. That is where local authorities should be in those types of circumstances. To highlight that, for the vast majority, it is not easy to ask for help. Yes, there will be the minority that will be seen time and time again, but even with that minority you have a point to see if we can get to the real heart of an issue, which is possibly something that is really difficult to ask for help—in particular, financial help—of some variety to say that I am not coping. I think that we need to take that into consideration. My question is about the cap and the possible removal of it. Is it related to the council reps who are here? Whether they anticipate if the cap was removed, do you see a significantly case load coming towards them? Are you aware of people who get to their three grants who would come back to you if the cap was removed? Yes, there is a small minority of individuals who will come back time and time again because they find themselves in crisis. It could be, as someone has already mentioned, that it is actually the same crisis. It is not a different crisis, because it is a consequence of something else that has happened in their life, whether it be with tax credits or whatever, but it is the same crisis. Like Glasgow City Council, we will always try and offer further support. In answer to your question, there will be a small minority that will continue to come back. Personally, I do not see the majority of the individuals that we have come into us will be ones that will continually come back three or four times. Morag? I think that our view is that it is helpful to have a cap in setting that expectation and setting the policy intention of the fund. However, I think that the ability, again, in exceptional circumstances for local authorities to exceed that cap is something that we could work with. I think that to remove the cap completely could potentially send out a message that the fund is there for something broader than it should be. I think that certainly in our consultation response we did say that we are happy to support the cap, but we would like the ability in exceptional circumstances if the decision maker felt that that was appropriate. Morag? Morag made the point that I was going to make about the exceptional circumstances. Given that discretion to local authorities, knowing fine well that ultimately they are the ones who are going to have to have a large part in dealing with whatever the issue is that causes people to come back again and again, they will have a huge amount of responsibility either through assistance of this kind or through social work services or through education or whatever other service. Very often exercising that discretion will be about making a decision as to what happens if we do not award the grant, what could the implications be for the individual first and foremost but also in terms of the service being provided to others in the community. That is an important part to weigh up in terms of exercising that discretion. We can be confident that our officers who are working with that will bear that in mind as they are working through that process, but it is important to have that discretion otherwise it will become quite difficult to persuade people to come forward in a way that we can help them through the crisis whatever issues they are facing. Jamie Halcro. Just on the point of exceptionality, in our written evidence we have suggested that the act already allows for that it specifies that there should be a crisis grant that is only for a short term need according to exception of circumstances. We have argued that the guidance on what a short term need and exception of circumstances should be properly placed in guidance rather than an arbitrary limit in regulations that suggests the point around policy intention, but that should be properly left in guidance rather than in regulation. Particular examples of when and what amounts to exception of circumstances and what amounts to a short term need is that that would be the best place for it. My point was much the same as just being stated there. We are fully supportive of the intention not to encourage over-reliance on crisis grants that is not going to solve any issues that individuals face. However, we are concerned that strict limitation would mean that genuine need is not appropriately addressed. In relation to relying on exceptional circumstances, we would be concerned that to do that without further clarification about what exceptional circumstances might include will mean that we are solely relying on the professional judgment of those who are assessing the applications, which I think is appropriate but only if adequate training and adequate guidance is given to that individual to understand the types of situations of those key groups who are likely to apply for crisis grants in the first place. We know that care leavers are likely to leave care far too early and without the appropriate preparation to manage with independent living. Understanding the reality of what that looks like for many young people who are trying to navigate their way through paying bills and managing their own house would help to give some certain context to the individual making the application decision. Neil Hamilton If there are reporting mechanisms for the welfare fund and how many people across Scotland have been awarded grants and how many have been refused to him, do you know that figure? Morag? It is something that we record within our own council in terms of the number of applications and the numbers that we award and the numbers that we decline. Is it nationally reported? Yes. Is it nationally reported? Yes. It is part of the submission. I did not find that in the submission. I have not looked hard enough. We could ask either the Scottish Government if the figures are available. In terms of how it operates, is there a case management system? For example, if I phoned in and was awarded grant, is that allocated to a particular council official to follow that through, do the referral, follow the referral, all of that type of thing, or is it a case of they would send the money and kind of send the referral and that's it? Morag? If you are speaking from a crisis grant perspective, very often it can be just simply that the money is paid and there may not be any onward referral. It would really be for the decision makers in terms of understanding the individual circumstances to determine if that particular crisis required an onward referral. Certainly within our own council we do not have the details of all the onward referrals. We do not keep that as a matter, of course. It was a refugee council's submission. They said that the average award was 108 for men and 216 for women who are people waiting on benefit delays. Would that be the average across the board? Do we know the figure? Morag? From a crisis grant perspective our average award is round about £100 mark. My understanding is that Glasgow is probably on the high side. Those figures, certainly the £200 mark for a crisis grant, seem a little high again. I understand that information that is gathered centrally, so it should be available to the committee. We will get that. Do the councils work to a monthly budget or a weekly budget or annual budget? Once the budget is gone, is that it? Do you work? Is there an instruction that goes out to staff to say that we are only two weeks into this month and the money is almost gone and there is no more this month? How does that practically operate? Budget on a monthly basis. Now that we are two years into the scheme we do have trends in months that we know are busier than others. The manager of the service will look at the demand throughout that month. We work on a priority basis. Currently we are just working on high priority cases, but the budget is profiled over a 12-month basis, but there will be months that we will overspend and months that we underspend. Our experience is very similar. We profile the budget and monitor it very closely so that we have prevented a situation in which we have had to refuse all applications simply because we have run out of money. We try to very carefully manage it. The way we manage that is by deciding what priority level we are advising decision makers to consider. Generally we would start off with a high, only high priority applications would be considered. If we felt that there was capacity, we would have in the past moved to considering medium priority applications. That is how we try and manage our money through the year, but we always certainly ensure that we spend every penny of allocation that we get, but we also avoid getting to a situation towards the end of the year that we have run out of money. I was just going to agree that we would profile our budget over the year as well, but we also know that there are peaks. A lot of our awards are in relation to fuel poverty. That is the main driver for them, and we have the highest levels of fuel poverty in the country. We know that in the winter months we are likely to have a higher demand. We would profile our funding based on that. Again, I think that that is evident in the figures over the last three years. Certainly we saw a peak in the figures when it came to the bidding tax and the aftermath of that. There was a peak in the figures then, but it seems to have settled down to the pattern that we had just before that. I think that Jamie Greene and then I will come back to Neil. I think that the figures that we gave in the variation and the figures that are across the board go to the individual circumstances of those people who are applying. That reflects the multidimensional nature of the need of all the groups that are applying. That reinforces the point that arbitrary limits are not necessarily best placed within regulation. That guidance is better shaped to take into account those multidimensional needs, the different reasons why people might want to make a claim and be awarded certain amounts of money. For example, the typical refugee claim, which is upon receiving status, the asylum support drops away, and a claim for benefits is put in place. It takes quite some time to get that benefit into payment, mainly because of a lack of a national insurance number. That may account for some of the higher levels for that particular group. The current system being that we are allowed to make a claim for 14 days worth of money, that often is not enough working with Glasgow City Council. We work around that by having a review of that award. If the benefits are not in place, we review them. It is not the best use of the review system for one thing. What guidance would be able to do is take account of the situations of the clients of a number of the third sector agencies around the table and allow for those different circumstances that happen to all of our clients? Two final things. I reflect on what you said earlier. You start off with high priority, and if there is cash in the system that goes down, I wonder whether that is opening the system to real inconsistency. Somebody could apply at a time when the instruction is going out to go on the high, and somebody might apply when there is a bit of slack in the system. They talk to each other and say, how did I not get it at that point? I think that there might be a danger of that. The final point is in terms of unintended consequences. I spoke to an organisation recently who was involved in the furniture recycling project for a long number of years, providing high-quality furniture to people who previously were homeless or setting up homes for the first time. When the welfare fund came on, that was out to tender for new furniture. They did not win the tender, but another organisation did. Because the furniture provided through the welfare fund is new, that organisation's good work is now all gone because the welfare fund gives people access to new furniture, not to the recycling project. It is not the biggest issue, but for that organisation it is, because they have been a very credible organisation in the community. They are feeling a bit out of the loop, having been involved in providing a really good service for a long number of years. I am just wondering if that is happening elsewhere. Does anybody have any evidence? No. Provide new furniture. We do not use reused furniture for any community care grant applications that we receive. I have another number of members who wish to come in. Kevin had indicated first, but Kevin, do you want to follow up on a specific point? Absolutely. I thank you very much, and it is quite a quick point in the refugee council submission. One of the issues that you raised is the impact of the new immigration bill and how that will then have an impact on some of the families that you support with support not being given at crucial times. Will the result that children could be left in destitution, is that something? I know that the refugee council and Glasgow City are working very closely on that, but could you give us a bit of insight into that and whether you are preparing for that eventuality? We have responded to all the UK Government's consultations and we have done a lot of work into opposing the new immigration bill in a number of different ways as a number of different impacts on our clients to do with housing and also to do with the support that asylum seekers receive. What it does in very short terms is it increases the possibility that it breaks the automatic link between a refusal of someone's asylum claim and the immediate transfer on to a very basic support level. We have done a lot of work into it. We are still working with a number of different partners to try to stop the most egregious parts of that bill coming through in terms of the work that we are doing. We have a destitution project that is on going and we are still working on destitution whenever we possibly can. We try to alleviate destitution and work on those things. What we are saying within our submission is that destitution is a real problem. Destitution of asylum seekers is a real problem. It is difficult to quantify any great detail, but we have had hundreds of clients come through our door since our destitution project started. What is in the snow? There is nothing within the immigration acts that prevents the Scottish welfare fund from paying to a destitute asylum seeker. It is currently within one of the exceptions. It is similar to the fund that the Northern Irish Government is using for destitute asylum seekers. It is important to point out that not all destitute asylum seekers will fall within the definition of someone with short-term need arising from exceptional circumstances, but some will. Some will, perhaps if their claim is going back into the system and that there is a short-term administrative problem. That does account for a fair few people. That would certainly be a beneficial use of the fund to try to do some work towards alleviating destitution among asylum seekers. During the course of the journey through the changes, including the implementation of the interim scheme, it seems that there has been fairly good communication between those at the front line who are dealing with it and the Government and civil servants to get this absolutely right. We know that this is a sticking plaster in terms of some of the absolutely awful changes that have taken place in the social security system. The key thing for me in dealing with this new piece of legislation regarding the regulations is that I want to be absolutely certain that the common-sense approach that is applied thus far, the listening approach that has taken place from Government before, has happened again. I want to hear from those folks around the table where are the flaws, if there are any in that. Does that still allow you the flexibility to use your knowledge at the front line to allow grants to be made in exceptional circumstances where you and your teams deem them to be exceptional circumstances? I mean, certainly from Glasgow City Council's perspective, we did make a submission to the original consultation, but any of the comments that we made is fair to say that we are on the margins because we accepted the regulations and the guidance that accompanied that. We are broadly similar to what has operated within the interim scheme in terms of your question about where are the flaws. I would particularly highlight from a delivery perspective that we think will significantly change how we operate the scheme just now. We will continue to have that dialogue with local Government colleagues to try to ensure consistency with other organisations and with the Scottish Government to continue the good work that has been done since the interim scheme was introduced. I agree with that from our point of view. Our team has done an assessment on the awards that have been given over the piece and none of them would have had any difficulties in terms of the new regulations in terms of being able to have made those awards. I think that the concern that we would have in terms of flexibility that Mr Stewart is talking about is to have that discretion and flexibility and not have arbitrary levels set in terms of the number of grants that can be awarded or some definition of what low income is. Again, that is relative to where you live. I would imagine that our average income in the Hebrides is much less than just about any other local authority in Scotland in terms of the average incomes. Having those arbitrary levels set would make it difficult for our officers to deal with some of the cases that they are coming across. I think that the flexibility that is there is very supportive of the approach that has been taken with the regulations that are built on the evidence that has been gathered through the interim process. It is really just to echo what Kevin has said about the willingness of Scottish Government officials and the practitioners group from local authorities to work with the third sector and their buy-through with users of the service to actually improve, to identify best practice, to identify barriers that could exist and to try and address those barriers. That has been an ongoing process throughout the interim scheme and has continued through trying to work on the regulations that have emerged. We have been quite pleased at the willingness of both officials and practitioners to learn and to listen to the experience of the users and people first who are learning disabled group and British Deaf Association have provided training to practitioners on some of the barriers that disabled people face in accessing the Scottish welfare fund. Again, we are very open to learning and addressing those barriers. One thing that I would like to return to and what Neil has raised about the figures. I think that it is really important that the figures are produced quarterly. Every local authority should do a return to the Scottish Government identifying applications that are made, applications that are awarded and the percentage of budget that is spent. I think that that should continue with the new system so that councils continue to be accountable to both the users and wider society. We would not like to see that dropped because it is a level of scrutiny that needs to continue to be able to identify if there are any difficulties with some authorities in using the budget that they have been given by the Scottish Government. We know that there are some authorities that are bent to budget and over it, but there are other authorities that do not use all of the resources that are being given to them. We do not think that we would agree with Western House. The need does vary between areas, but we are absolutely certain that there is poverty throughout Scotland and that the resources there need to be used to address that. I just wanted to agree with the points that have been raised. The level of engagement with key groups throughout the process has been commendable from the committee and the Scottish Government team. Like Bill, training of some of the potential assessors has involved care experience to young people as well and potential care studies. We would hope that going forward that level of attention to detail on the training of individuals will continue in some level. I think that some of the potential issues that could still arise, as I have mentioned already, understanding about the types of context that the key groups that we are representing around this table are likely to experience are going to be essential for potential assessors of the applications to understand clearly. Not just that, but a recognition of the fact that, for example, for care experience young people there is still a massive issue of stigma that they hold. We see that across our communities when local communities are campaigning to have children's houses built within their area because there is still a perception that being in care is associated with bad behaviour rather than the reality of facing neglect or that your family can or won't look after you. For young people that are in care who witness that, the feeling that that can then give to you that you have to then hide your care identity and that potentially when you are trying to access funds that you might not disclose the fact that you have been in care can actually be to the detriment of that individual who makes the application. I think that we have to be extremely clear with our young people that this is an entitlement of theirs. They have the right to apply and that we need to make sure that they are informed of that. Obviously, in some areas, the level of training that has been taken place is huge. The level of co-operation between various agencies is probably greater than I have ever seen. In the north-east of Scotland, the group of practitioners and third sector organisations who are looking at all the impacts of those social security changes, the work that they have done is immense. I think that we have heard from others before that maybe one of the areas where we do fall down is in terms of dealing with care leavers. In some regards, that should be one of the areas where practitioners are well aware because of corporate parenting responsibilities. Why is it that we are not necessarily getting that right, then? I think that we know that care leavers have faced some of the worst outcomes, potentially, with only 6 per cent likely to go on to higher education after school, yet to make up 30 per cent of homeless populations and 50 per cent of the prison population. Our advocacy experience tells us that those stats probably do not even tell the truth because they do not have hidden homeless populations and that prisons might rely on self-identification of care. First and foremost, there is a lack of understanding and recognition about the difficulties that a young person faces when they leave care. An individual's care journey can be blighted by instability, by care placement breakdown. We accept that. However, it seems to be that when an individual chooses to leave care or leaves care too early and without the preparation for them to then go on and manage independent living, that our tolerance levels across the public tend to be lower or that there are other avenues of support that might be there. With the corporate parenting legislation, we have a real opportunity to make sure that local authorities and other corporate parents are working together to make sure that they are providing the right supports for our care leavers. If we think about the Children and Young People Act broadly, being able to access after-care support until 26 is huge, but unless the local authorities, the individuals who are involved in assessing the applications, are aware of that, we will continually fail to identify and signpost these young people back to the kinds of relationships and support that they need to progress in life. That is something that needs to be brought up at the practitioners group so that all local authorities are aware of those responsibilities. I do not want to dwell on that too much, convener, but I just wonder... Hold on, Kevin, because John wanted to come in. I think that we should know from local authorities if full-gate training... We will come back to that in a minute, but John wanted to come in. This was in response to your initial point about the engagement, and we would not disagree that the Scottish Government's civil servants have done an excellent job with engaging practitioners and third sector, but specifically when we are thinking about these regulations, I think there is a tension there. It comes back to that point about the flexibility versus the consistency. Regulation 7 of what we have got here is a good example of that because it sets out the procedure for applications. This would be for us the place where you should be setting out exactly what people should be able to expect across Scotland in terms of the way in which they can access the fund, but all regulation 7 actually says that a procedure must be established and put on a local authorities website. We are not suggesting for a second that there should not be the discretion to make an exception where somebody has already had three crisis grants this year, but to us that seems to be an example of where there is too much flexibility because it is not about who can get a grant, it is about the ways in which grants are made accessible, and as pressure on the fund increases in the longer term, local authorities of course are going to have to make tough decisions, and it will be places like this where the regulations simply do not say what is necessary, how many application channels you have to provide. In terms of our view of the balance of flexibility versus consistency across Scotland, that is one area among several which are in our written evidence submission, where we think that perhaps there should be more consistency put within the regulations, and the guidance does build on that to a degree by suggesting that local authorities should have multiple application channels, but that would seem to be quite clearly something that should be on the face of the regulations for us. Kevin Stewart, do you want to come back to the training issue? Is the training issue round about corporate parenting because obviously it does seem to be an area where there is some misunderstanding, shall we put it that way. Can I ask if those folks in the front line get training about corporate parenting responsibilities, Morag? Chair, I am not able to confirm or not whether that is the case. What I would say is that certainly the guidance does talk about our role as corporate parents, so that is something that has been very explicitly pulled out. We also, as a council, work very closely with our social work services colleagues as well, and certainly possibly not through crisis grants but through the community care grants. I would say that we are certainly supporting care leavers, but it is certainly something that I will take back to the council and follow up on after that. Norman Wightman, as a member, we were given corporate parenting training and the people who were involved in the delivery of it were some of the folk who are in the revenue and benefits section. They were involved in it as well as other people through social work and our legal department in terms of the training that they provided to us. For them to be able to do that, they themselves must have had some corporate parenting training as well. I think that it is really important to have that understanding of the responsibility. If we can come back to a point in terms of the flexibility versus consistency, I think that what there has to be is consistency of approach, that the approach is the same throughout the country in terms of the way that we deal with it. I think that if we try and define that consistency to the nth degree, then we will be setting arbitrary levels that will become an issue for us. I think that the consistency of approach is something that is important and with the flexibility goes accountability. We have reports coming every quarter. The reports that are prepared for going to the Scottish Government are presented to members at the Policy and Resources Committee on a quarterly basis. That is where we, although it is not per se our money that is providing the service that the Scottish Government funding is doing, but we are accountable in the same sense as our officers are. We take that responsibility quite seriously in terms of that because ultimately we have had times in the past where there was not sufficient funding in any one year and we committed some of our reserves to that rather than stop giving awarding the grants. That is not something that we are going to be able or prepared to do on an ongoing basis, but again that is something that, as an authority, we recognise that we have to have some flexibility in terms of the way that we deal with it too. Back to the corporate parenting. It is probably an area that our decision makers need further information on, although they are aware of it because it is in the guidance, but, as Carly mentioned, unless that individual tells us in application forum that they are leaving a care situation, then our decision makers really will not have any way of knowing. It is about getting the right information on the application forum or from the applicant at the time of submission so that we have enough information to make the correct decision. Carly? I agree with the points. It is really promising to see that the corporate parenting legislation has been included within the guidance. That is really encouraging. We, as an organisation, deliver corporate parenting training to all corporate parents and we have a team dedicated to focusing on that. As it stands just now, that training would tell the corporate parents about the live experiences of care experienced young people in terms of working alongside the corporate parents and it would definitely be something that I would encourage all to pursue. In addition to that, I have just lost my point, the other point that I was going to make was in relating to informing care leavers that they should have a care experience. Within the regulations it talks about the local authority informing people via their website about the types of methods that they are going to adopt for their application process. One of our suggestions would be that the welfare fund act has identified key groups that are likely to apply for assistance and care leavers are one of them. We think that local authorities should be attempting to target specific groups, for example focusing on leaving care services or local care placements prior to a young person leaving care so that they are equipped with information about what they are entitled to and they know how to ask for it and what information to give as a more proactive method. I just wanted to come back to Mr Stewart's comments. I know in your written submission that you have given quite detailed timescales about delays and benefits such as 46 days for child benefit and 77 days for child tax credits, but you mentioned the problem with the DWP in continuing national insurance numbers. When we were doing our previous report on women in welfare, it was a theme that came through. Something that was highlighted was the difficulty for refugee women who were fleeing domestic abuse. I want to get a bit more information about what the scale of the DWP problems are and the length of time it is taking and whether there is any explanation as to why it takes so long for that to happen. The issue of benefit delay among new refugees is something that is far from new. It is something that we have been trying to get a handle on for some time. The way that it should work is that national insurance numbers should be requested by the Home Office upon someone being granted status. The DWP should then be looking to get someone in for national insurance number interviews as soon as possible. It should follow on from there. Through the new Scottish refugee integration strategy, which the Scottish Government has been doing in partnership with ourselves for the past two years now, we have been trying to get to the bottom of those delays. It has been quite difficult and there is no instant solution to get to those delays in getting national insurance numbers in place. It is certainly the case that this is a system that could be well improved between the DWP and the Home Office. I would probably say that about most of the benefit delays that happen generally. The Scottish Government, along with all levels of government, has a key role in trying to tighten that up and ensure that the Scottish welfare fund is not a sticking plaster on a broken system, which at times it does appear that that is the case. I think that using the information that comes from the Scottish welfare fund and why applications are being made by them and gathering information on the types of groups that are making the claims. Currently, we do not have a way of tracking refugee claims, for example. I know that I have had some discussions with Glasgow about how we can better track that to use that information to try and mend a system and to reduce that pressure on which it should not necessarily be there. As we stand, we are looking at the delays that are set out in written evidence longer for—you are looking at that sort of 42 days for Job Seekers Alliance—longer for other benefits, so the impact on, for example, women who are more likely to claim income support, children who will wait the longest for their child benefit and child tax credit to come into payment. In the meantime, until that system can be mended and to operate properly, there is a real role for the Scottish welfare fund, which is currently being in use and which we will continue to work on. Just to pick up on Jamie's point, it is important that, in that kind of situation, the Scottish welfare fund is not an additional barrier. One of the cases that we cited in our written evidence was of somebody who was refused the Scottish welfare fund grant because they did not have a national insurance number. There is nothing in the act of draft regulations or guidance that would support that decision, and that is just one case. I think that it goes to the regulation on decisions on fund applications and the wide discretion given in terms of information required to make a decision on an application. I think that it is really important that decision makers are conscious of the fact that some people will, particularly refugees, asylum seekers have no documentation and face real difficulty-proven their identity to the satisfaction of DWP decision makers. It is really important that the Scottish welfare fund does not then exacerbate that problem by imposing similar requirements. Jamie Eiloron talked about regulations and guidance. John, you also referred to some of the specific regulations. The way that the system works or the procedure is that we can either accept the regulations or reject them, we cannot change them in any way. Therefore, the question of guidance becomes of huge significance. We have talked a lot about crisis grants and touched on one or two other things, but coming back to Bill's point, I think that this has been echoed not just at the meeting today but over a long period of time, there has been very positive co-operation between practitioners and the civil servants who are involved. It would be useful for us to know, firstly, whether you are generally content with the regulations and then secondly, what comments would you have about where the guidance can be improved or some changes to the guidance that you think would be beneficial? First, are all of the witnesses generally supportive of the regulations being passed? I do not think that anyone would be opposed to that. What about guidance? Are there things that you think could be done in the guidance that would help Carly and then come back to John? It is just to echo a point that has already been made about the strict limitations, while the wording and the regulations allow for professional judgment and exceptional circumstances to potentially come in to allow somebody to agree to an application. We are really going to be reliant on the guidance explaining what exceptional circumstances could potentially include. I would never suggest that the guidance should be too prescriptive in its method, however it helps to potentially have some case study examples about the rarer circumstances that may occur and the types of individuals that are likely to apply to the fund. John and Jules? Absolutely better to have the act and the regulations and not one example. We have talked about a lot of families under exceptional pressure. The regulations are drafted in the only way that can be given the content of the act. I was having a look at the guidance this morning at the guidance, but it is still in draft form under regulation 10 where it talks about the form of crisis grant assistance. In these regulations we have the thing about not forcing an applicant to make over the payment to a particular person in a particular way. That does not apply if the local authority considers it to be advantage to the applicant for the crisis grant to be provided in a different manner. A lot of people around the room commented on the importance of taking into account the views of the applicant. Just on that really specific point, the guidance suggests that a local authority must have evidence that it would be of advantage to the applicant for a crisis grant to be paid in a different manner to the default. That is really interesting because the regulations do not say that there has to be any evidence that just says that the local authority has to consider it. I think that it is really important that, particularly in these cases where the regulations have left almost total discretion to local authorities, the guidance really does build in things like the views of the applicant and is careful not to go beyond what is required by the regulations because that is ultimately limiting the ability of the decision maker to exercise their discretion. If you look at your guidance and it says that you must have evidence before you can consider an alternative form of crisis grant provision, you are unlikely to look back at the regulations which make no such requirements on local authority decision makers. That is a very tiny point, of course, but I think that where these regulations are leaving such a broad discretion, which is ultimately a good thing in terms of allowing people in, that discretion should be gone through with a tooth comb to make sure that it is not pushing people out. Jules? A very homeless specific point, but within the guidelines it does allow for people to be moving from temporary accommodation into their own tenancies to access community care grants slightly ahead of time to avoid that kind of gap between the move taking place and so on, somebody is without goods. We would like to see that pushed a stage further where somebody is entering any temporary supported accommodation, then is allocated what they are going to be allocated or informed of what they are going to be allocated, be it furniture packages, money or whatever they can expect, for that almost to be able to be put to one side and part of their support and just signed off on the point of them moving into a tenancy just to kind of stop there being that gap, because one of the issues that we have seen within the new process, which I have to say is much better than it used to be years ago, but one of the issues is still that gap and time lag between somebody receiving the yes for a tenancy and then actually receiving the goods for them moving in so they can still be having to lie on a floor for a few weeks until they actually receive the items, so just really guideline specific for that. Okay, Bill. It's really technical points that Carly and John have made earlier about the route to a process to making an application being on websites. Over half the disabled people have no internet access and even if you gave them the internet access, a lot of disabled people wouldn't be able to use it, so it is making sure that guidance does actually say to councils, look, there has to be more than one route to making an application, because that recognises that people with different impairments might need different routes to be able to make that application. If you say that it's telephone only and it's somebody with a communication impairment or a hearing impairment, they're not going to be able to use it, so it's having a variety of routes that people can genuinely access the fund when they need it without additional barriers being put in their way. That's the sort of stuff we would like to see in guidance. Again, I'd echo John on payment provision. We do think that there should be a requirement that there's evidence that he should make it in another form to cash, because we would hope that the applicant's preference is normally observed where it can be for the payment to be made in cash where they genuinely want that. I think that the guidance has to be consistent with regulations and they have to be very closely aligned, otherwise it will become somewhat disjointed. If we end up using exceptional circumstances all the time, it means that there's something that we haven't quite got right in terms of the discussion. That's something that we have to be mindful of in terms of the guidance that allows the flexibility that everybody spoke about earlier on. Earlier on, Morag, Jackie, you also referred to what you were talking about, the profiling and how you manage the budgets and the assessments and the reporting. Is there an onerous bureaucracy or responsibility attached to it or is it a fairly simple process? It's fairly simple from our perspective. Not every local authority uses the same recording system but the system that we use, we can get reports out of it fairly easily. Similarly, now that we're into our third year, we've refined the processes that we've gone along. I wouldn't say that the recording of information on budget management is onerous. Are there any aspects of the regulations or, indeed, the guidance that haven't been touched on, which any of the witnesses would want to comment on before we close? To echo the points around the need for case studies and the need for it to have room within the guidance to have detail case studies, for example, for a number of different groups, including refugees. The main point that I would like to make in terms of the guidance and the standard application form that is going forward is the point around national insurance numbers and making it clearer to local authorities of the fact that applications can be taken without national insurance numbers. There's an additional factor to this. The question about having applications refused because of national insurance numbers has historically been something that we've come across quite often. We've worked a lot with Glasgow City Council to make sure that that doesn't happen. I think that a lot of that has been to do with the application forms and the standard systems that are used by Scottish welfare funds going forward, which don't like it if you don't have a national insurance number. As we go forward with refugees, with the wider dispersal of refugees through the Syrian resettlement system, we're likely to see more refugee populations outside of the Glasgow area. In Glasgow, we have a workaround on how to deal with applications that don't have a national insurance number, but that certainly won't be obvious to councils across Scotland as we go forward. Something clearer, something a little bit more, and if we can work on the application form to make it clear from the application form that there is no need for this, that there is a box for a national insurance number if you have it, that sort of thing. Anyone else? Any other comments, John? Just on the regulation about reviews, there's a couple of points there. Firstly, the methods of making a review application are subtly different for the first-tier review to the second-tier review because you've got the Scottish Publish Services Ombudsman setting their own procedure in relating to how you apply for a second-tier review, and that's actually in terms of the methods that can be used with these regulations. It's at the discretion of a local authority to accept a review request otherwise than in writing, whereas the SPSO's regulations actually do say something materially different, which I think is potentially confusing, and that the extension of the time limit to request a first-tier review is at the discretion of the local authority, which to us it looks like if the local authority decides they're not going to exercise that discretion, that would seem to block access to the second-tier review entirely, including consideration of whether it's reasonable to extend that discretion, leaving the only recourse as being judicial review, which doesn't seem ideal, and that's kind of analogous to the situation where somebody's refused a DWP benefit and makes a challenge outside a month, giving the decision-maker discretion on whether you give someone access to an independent review seems to us to be disproportionate. Okay, thanks. Did you want to come in, Carly? Yes, please. This point is slightly linked to something that John mentioned earlier about the views of the applicant. In terms of the written decision that is provided to an applicant, we're really pleased to see that there's quite a substantial list of what should be included within that written decision. The one thing that we think potentially could be missing is clarification about ensuring that the views of the applicant is included within that written decision. Although it does say that the details of the application must be included, that doesn't necessarily suggest that the individual view of the applicant making, the application would be included within the written decision. We would argue that formal written recognition of an individual's view is paramount to them being able to uphold their rights and then to advocate for themselves if they do decide to take that to our review. Okay, thanks. Morag, do you have any final suggestions? Jules? Thank you. Norman? Jackie? Okay, well listen, thank you very much, not just for the written evidence, but for what we've heard this morning. It's been very constructive, thoughtful, clearly you're passionate about the work that you do, but also well informed and that is helpful. It's also been useful to hear that your supportive of the regulations, and I suspect that the committee will be asking for the regulations to be approved, but we will try to reflect where we can, some of what we've heard for the Scottish Government to consider in terms of the guidance, so thank you very much. Okay, and with that we'll suspend the meeting and move into private session.