 Maen nhw, ac wrth gwrs yn fwy o'r gweithio'r cwestiynau â'r ddweud o'r Sfodd i'r enw i lywodol a'r ddechrau yn ymgyrchol Cymru yw 23. Mae'r ystafell yn ymgyrchol ar y cyfrifol yw ysgolion ymlaeniaeth sy'n ateb o gyfrifol people transitions to adulthood scotland bill, and we have one panel of witnesses joining us today. I welcome Ann Marie Starwick, vice principal, student experience of boarders college, representing colleges Scotland. Mike Corbett, national official Scotland of the NESUWT, Dr Fiona Whelan, assistant director, accessibility and inclusion, student services at the University of St Andrews, representing University of Scotland. Louise Story, safeguarding and practice lead at the Donaldson Trust. Good morning. We have a lot of ground to cover today, so we will move straight to members' questions. The first group of questions is from Ruth Maguire. Last week in evidence, we heard from panel members about some of the challenges around supporting better outcomes for our children and young people with disabilities. They spoke about availability of services, about resources and capacity. I am interested to hear your reflections on what you think the key barriers are in getting those better outcomes for our disabled children and young people as they leave school. Ann Marie, you are nodding and making eye contact, so I will come to you first. Good morning. I am quite nervous, but some of the main challenges are the anxiety faced by families during the transition process and getting the right service in place for the young people and their family. From a college's point of view, we try to go in at S2 and S3 to have that discussion. We also have school-college partnerships just to try and ease the transition, but it is a deeply personal experience for the young person and the family, and each person is different to the next. Getting that individualised support and transition is what is really key. Having a contact person for the family is really important. The key challenges are what is next. My young child has gone through school and I have had a key contact, but what is next in the big bad world out there? What we try to do in the college sector is just ease that anxiety. You spoke about key contacts in the colleges, which are members of the College of Scotland who have someone there specifically for a young person coming in and their families. Each college has a student guidance and support team. During the application process, if the student had not gone through the schools-college partnership, we would invite somebody to put on their application form if there is a disability. If they would like a conversation with a guidance and support team member to ensure that the process and transition into college is smooth, there is a lot to get through. It can be very small to very big. When I came in here this morning, there was a fire drill, so somebody with a disability may need additional support during a fire drill, something as simple as that. We need to establish what are the additional support needs so reasonable measures can be put in place. That is a word that is banded about, but it is individual measures that we need to address. Everybody is different who comes through with a disability and everybody has different needs. Getting it right at the application stage and the transition stage is very important. That is in, but there is also the transition out of college upon completion. We will talk a bit more about that in a wee while. First, there are probably too many competing policy drivers in the first instance. There are responsibilities about additional support needs. There is GERFEC, mental health and wellbeing. It is promoted much more, and rightly so. There is a right for co-ordinated support plans already, and then we have what is in the bill. All of those individuals are admirable, but there does not seem to be a coherence about the different initiatives that have come in at different times. Sometimes they have come in and they are not fully acknowledged when we come to the next new initiative, so that is one issue. I am sorry to interrupt, but can I just use the word competing there? Is that that there is different? Are they actually competing or is it more that it is a bit cluttered? I think that it is a bit cluttered. Let us take co-ordinated support plans as an example. They are statutory, and you would think that there is statutory force behind them, so therefore that should be clear and they should be in place. We have evidence, particularly from an issue that I had in a special school a couple of years ago, and that is where you would expect a significant number of co-ordinated support plans to be in place. When we initially got involved in that school, there was a single co-ordinated support plan for a single pupil, so that shocked us because we were like, well, there is no way that that should be the case. That is just one example. Totally understanding what you are saying about that kind of complexity of policy and guidance, and perhaps adding to that might not be helpful, what is it about that complexity of policy specifically that gets in the way of there being better outcomes for disabled children and young people? Talking purely from a school's and teachers' point of view, what tends to happen in practice is when you do not have a clear overarching framework or coherence about the variety of policies in place, and local authorities often put downward pressure on schools and teachers to make those decisions and to make things work at local level. I think that it came out quite clearly in Angela Morgan's report at one point, that what ends up happening is that teachers at the sharp end are doing their best in difficult circumstances, trying to juggle all those different things without the appropriate resource, crucially without time as the crucial resource to devote to all of the existing things. That is why sometimes things fall through the cracks and some young people may be not getting the support that they need and deserve. As well as that resource and capacity bit, is it also about leadership then, if you talk about downward pressure on front-line workers? I think so. I am not saying that it would be simple or easy to look at all of these different areas and try to bring together a coherent approach, but the lack of that and the leaving it to local level, which becomes leaving it to schools and teachers, certainly causes some difficulty. The view of you and your members that something needs to change, but perhaps it is not another layer of difference or complexity? That is one of the reasons why I am a bit disappointed with the response to Angela Morgan's report, because I think that a lot of people saw that as, right, this is where everything that comes anywhere near the banner of additional support needs potentially could be brought together and a co-ordinated approach taken. I know that it is partly when that report fell, in terms of the height of Covid, it maybe did not quite get the attention and the commitment it deserved, but we are disappointed that that maybe was not the signal to try and bring a lot of these things together. Thank you, that is helpful. I think that in terms of the barriers in that transition to higher education, and again a little bit what Anne-Marie was saying about timings being quite critical, because our goal would always be to be able to put an appropriate support plan in place for a student at the point at which they start with us, but there are challenges around that, particularly around the timings at which students are declaring a disability to us, and at which point we can really start to engage with them. There is a window in somewhere where there is a lot of pressure on disability teams within universities to reach out to students, to do needs assessments, to help them apply for disabled students, so that on day one of their course they have the support that they need. But we do know that students struggle with that, and that they will experience delays in getting the different support that they might need. One critical area there is around the disabled students allowance, for example, so universities and their disability teams will work and support students to apply for their disabled students allowance, but to some degree outside of our control, particularly around SAS and delays in getting things in place for students. The communication can be a bit of a barrier. SAS, for example, does not tell a university when a student has got their award, so it has left the student to navigate those complex administrative structures. There is something around joining that up better, so that we can get those supports in place for students as quickly as possible. Fiona, can I just make sure that I heard you right? From universities, we'll begin working with the young person in the summer before they attend in September. We can be in touch with students once they apply. In my institution, for example, if a student declares a disability on application, we can start that conversation, but I'm obviously conscious that students might not be sure exactly which institution they're going to go to, so that's why there's a window when a student gets their offer that we really ramp up our communication with students. Can you tell me, then, in your experience, who it is that's supporting young people and their families before they get to that stage? Obviously, there's some work involved there, so who is it in your experience that's supporting the young people to get to that application stage? That one's probably a little bit more difficult for me to answer, but I know, certainly, that our admissions teams will work closely and do outreach within schools, whether it's guidance councillors within schools that are providing that support. I'd be really interested to hear that perhaps you could send us a note after that, if that would be okay. Louise, can I come to you now? Just to follow on from what Fiona was saying, the challenge that can sometimes occur is that not everybody recognises they have a disability, so they will not acknowledge that there is a disability and they want to fit in and not express that and don't really recognise that their condition brings a host of challenges and difference that makes barriers a little bit more complex for them. I think that that's a challenge as well, and I think that that also fits with people who are undiagnosed, who are going through a process of diagnosis at the point of a transition and going into a service. How does it work for somebody who potentially is going through the diagnostic process at the point of a transition and doesn't have something to confirm that they have a diagnosis? I think that identifying needs at the appropriate time to enable a more aligned person-centred transition for people. I think that that's a bit collaborative working between agencies and partners to recognise the needs and sometimes that involves health being quite involved and maybe it's not about social work and education at certain points in someone's life because someone's mental health or their health needs might be more pressing at that point, so how do we involve those people and those processes? I think that the other thing that can be quite challenging for parents is that the transition is as much a transition for the parent as it is for the child and I think that parents finding out information about what the future holds at the same time as a transition process is quite challenging because they're processing that as well as thinking about how do they prioritise the needs of their child and what do they need to be in a forum around a transition while they're trying to process what it means? Are they making the right decisions on behalf of their child? So I think that perhaps looking at how we involve parents and what the future holds in a different way and engaging them at the right time in a transition process as well would be helpful. I'd like to ask about transitions within university and college and then on leaving as Anne-Marie had started to speak about. Can you say a bit more about how young people are supported within college? We heard also some evidence about the need for flexibility that young people may start something and it's not quite for them. What can colleges do to support that sort of situation and you had started speaking about that transition out of college into the world of work or university? So there are different transition arrangements for different students because there are different disabilities. If students are coming through with additional support needs there's a very firm transition arrangement there between the schools and the college. If the student has been on a school-college partnership programme doing a foundation apprenticeship or another similar course there's a transition there between the guidance team. In terms of when the student starts the college they will have a point of contact within the guidance team of a go-to person and they're the kind of centre or point of contact between the curriculum and the needs of the student. It's so personal it's so individualised you know some students coming through need one-to-one support when they're at college that throughout their college experience some people need help with their personal care so it's so varied depending on the young person transitioning but what the college has is a student and guidance team very similar to the universities where upon application if it's not done through the school college partnership it's identified there and there's an opportunity to speak with our student and guidance staff but I will echo what my colleague said quite a lot of students coming through maybe going through a period of diagnosis or they may not have gone through school and had identified as having a disability and when I say identified as having a disability diagnosed so sometimes the college will colleges I can speak for universities will have to undergo that process along with the young person and then that's where there's a bit of a gap because it's about we've now identified this we start the process over again and that could be in this the middle of an academic term where the whole support arrangements need to change for that young person. Do you have any information on the outcomes for young people that come in on the different routes when you spoke about beginning to work with people in S1, S2, the school partnerships or people who just apply I don't know the numbers maybe make it not possible to do that but is that something that colleges Scotland would look at? That is something colleges Scotland look at education Scotland come and look at our equality status while they come and do their progress visits our funders which are predominantly the Scottish funding council look at we have an equalities reporting mechanism so for people with disabilities they have better outcomes than our care experience students but we do have students who have multiple disabilities so my question was about the outcomes when the young people come in on the different routes so if someone's had that support from school there's been a school college partnership or if they come do you disaggregate by that at all? I can get that information I know the overall outcomes for people with disabilities in the college sector that data has been released for 2021 but in terms of who's come through a process I don't have that data all right okay and you spoke about the transition out of of college do you want to say a bit more about about that how colleges support young people so the transitions in the to me this bill will really firm up and set up a framework in a process to ensure nobody slips through the net the transition in and out is a bigger challenge because you could have a young person starting university or college at 17 this bill goes up to the age of 26 so the transition then would either be to employment or to university or back to a service so that's really an important process for the young person who is reaching a stage at their life where they may want to move out of their mother and fathers or their carers house and set up their own little abode so the transitions out is the really critical part as well what's happening just now with that so it differs for individuals so for people with learning disabilities which is kind of under the umbrella of disability we would continue our links with social work throughout the process so what we don't want is somebody finishing a coming to college or university finishing a course or maybe not completing a course and then lost so during the process we constantly keep up with our social work partners for um there you know there's physical disability services as well we would work with the help boards but for our students with other disabilities it's about the just making sure that their transition to university goes ahead our employment is the the big the big thing moving on to employment agencies thank you and Fiona yeah so very similar in terms of looking at that transition in and what we can provide to students and there would be two layers for what a university can support students with the first is the kind of the individual internal adjustments that we can make for students so whether that's adjustments to teaching their learning environment their exams and support with accommodation and we know for some of our disabled students really important that they can stay in halls of residence for example and that really helps with that transition to independent living and which is a big a big transition you know it's not just about that kind of step up in learning to higher education there's for a lot of our students that's leaving home for the first time and some of the loss of that one-to-one personal support that they might have had at home and then the layer on top of that for our students would be those that are eligible for disabled students allowance and the extra support that that can unlock for our students so whether that's through assistive tech whether that's through non-medical personal helpers that can provide things like mentoring or study skills support and as I said earlier getting those in places as quickly as possible really helps to set that transition up for for success and all universities will have a team of disability advisers they might set it up in slightly different ways but students will always be able to access support from their disability adviser throughout their studies and as we've discussed that might be from disclosure pre-arrival but it might also be the exploration of a diagnosis that students want to explore with us so their status can change at any point during their time with us as an institution and we do support with diagnostic assessments because disabled students allowance for example does require evidence and so that is one of the barriers is that delay that students might have had support in place in school on the basis of needs and now there's a requirement for some documentary evidence and that can cause some challenges so we do support students throughout their their studies with us and then as we've talked about that piece about that transition out and it can be quite multifaceted in terms of the support that students need and we've talked a little bit about you know multiple disabilities but there's also the intersectionality so students who might be disabled but also care experience and might have particularly complex needs leaving us so for example at my institution we're talking quite a lot about leaving university well and what what that means for students we work very closely with our career service to provide some bespoke information to our disabled students we work quite closely again with our money advice team so students who might then want to get some information about accessing PIP for example and then also involvement with social care and housing and things like that so that students aren't afraid of what comes next and anecdotally they are we did a joint survey at St Andrew's between the disability team and the career service and in some respects we were really pleased by the survey students said that they felt very supported by the university but also really afraid that they were facing a cliff edge and what that meant for them so that's something that we very much taken on board and I know the sector does as well. Thank you we have some supplementaries now from Graham Day and then from Stephen Kerr so Graham Day first please. Thank you for your morning panel I want to go back to something that Fiona Hewlin's touched on earlier in evidence because in university Scotland's written evidence they highlight very specifically an issue around students in that pre-arrival period and in particular where they've had a conditional offer and therefore it's very relatively late in the day before they know they're coming to that university or the university knows they're coming. The evidence that we've received suggests that there are issues purely around timing and that you can have a situation where returning students' needs are already known and they're almost ahead of the queue in trying to get the resource that's needed and it could be very frustrating for the new students. How significant a problem is that for universities? To some degree it can be a resourcing issue within the teams that if you have sufficient capacity you should be able to manage that. One of the challenges that we particularly find is we hit an embargo period in August where we can't communicate with applicants and that actually does slow us down because there's no reason that we can't be in touch with students who might have a conditional offer just to kind of start that dialogue and that conversation and they might feel comfortable sharing any documentation that they have with us the embargo hit and we cannot communicate with them and so it's a very short window maybe one to two weeks. Sorry what's the embargo? So the embargo is through UCAS where effectively universities know, tacitly know the results that students have but it cannot be communicated in any way so it's a very specific period to make sure that universities don't accidentally indicate to a student whether they have an offer or not. So effectively communication with applicants has to shut down and that's from UCAS. So that is another barrier that we have in terms of communicating with students so we do as much as we possibly can before that period but equally we do have students who don't want to declare a disability at application and I think over the past five to ten years there's been really great strides in changing the perception that declaring a disability is a taboo or that if you declare a disability to the university your offer is going to be revoked but I think there might still be that perception for some students and that's why we do get late declarations as well. Okay if I may be convener if you indulge me to probe this a little bit more. So there's a reference in the written evidence to the issue of the schools being closed at that point. To what extent would you be able to explore with the schools the specific needs, to what extent are you permitted to explore with the schools the specific needs of a student who may be coming to you? Very enlarge we communicate with this student and we wouldn't really have much communication with the school if any really and that's certainly the experience that I have within my service is our dialogue is with the students with their consent it's with the parents if appropriate and so it really does rely on the student actually communicating with us more so than with the school but there potentially is a role within the schools to help students understand that administration that's needed in order to get the support put in place when they join us. Okay thank you. Stephen Kerr. Two quite of questions. Mike Corbett mentioned conflicts of policy. I would suggest that there's quite a clutter of policy and it's quite hard to discern exactly how these policies often work together sometimes they don't. Does this bill add to that clutter or does this bill facilitate some understanding about implementation among practitioners? I think you know for us it does add to the clutter and potentially add to the workload ultimately of teachers if there's not you know a better overarching coordination which has to come from outside schools. Right that's very clear and Anne-Marie you interestingly said in the evidence you gave earlier that you felt that the bill would form up arrangements for transitions out of college how did you come to that conclusion? So just from reading the bill and the question asked by the panel in advance so when I always look at this from an end user's point of view so I would agree with my colleague the people who are using this are people with disabilities and their families and cares were the implementers of the bill so my policy is well let's keep it simple and make sure it interconnects with others the difference with this bill when I was talking to my colleague outside is that it does provide a framework that every person who has a disability will get a transition plan from school to college or university and that's what I liked about it so that you know we have the Garfeg which is getting it right for every child we have the additional support needs we have the UN convention of the rights of people with disabilities and how it filters down and just from what I looked at it it kind of brings it all together but I do agree it can be very complex if you're a parent and you're really worried about your child moving on and what's the next stage and you want to go and look at a piece of advice there might be a little bit too many you might go to Garfeg and get the information there you might come to this bill so we would always have to ensure that our parents and the people with disabilities that we support know the rights according to it the communication and the imparting then the information of this is really important and that that is the situation now isn't it so what does the bill as it stands change well we were talking about this in the in the lobby as we were waiting to come in here and we were just going what's so unique about this and well it's a bill you know so there's a right to us but there's also a framework for parents to work with in and young people to work with you okay thank you very much thank you steven for asking that selection of questions bob dorris you have a supplementary on this before I move to michael marra and for once it is a big supplementary. I'm ready to start up what the committee is trying to wrestle with I think was what you've said and what Mike Corbett said I think Mike Corbett said that there's a right for recording support plans currently and that's the statutory right that exists but it doesn't happen consistently irregularly and Anne-Marie you were suggesting I hope you're absolutely right that this framework means there'll be a more consistent streamlined approach to making sure all young people get those rights and transitions they're entitled to so my question would be if it's not happening with coordinated support plans why would it happen under this bill differently so I mean you don't have to have an answer to that I'm just I think I'm mirroring what the committee is wrestling with which is why I want to give you the opportunity to see a little bit more about that that's all it has been an evolving process over the years capturing people with disabilities within the education sector you know when we report back to our funding council now there's a numbers of disabilities that we we get but some people we don't actually realise there's a disability until they come to college or university so it is difficult to capture everything what this is setting out to do and the purpose of this is to get better outcomes for people with disabilities in scotland I think that is helpful a more consistent capturing of those with disabilities we'll talk more about that later thank you very much convener that's helpful thank you does anyone else want to respond to maybe yourself louise yeah I think it gives clarity I think it gives clarity what to what's required so the additional support for learning act gives information about coordinated support plans identify needs this bill also talks about identifying needs and it would be interesting to see if the identification of need within this bill correlates with what the additional support for learning need statement of need is and I think it's about it's about the reach of this bill in terms of who's accountable and who sees responsibility within it so additional support learning we look very much at education and we look at that period of a person's life this goes up to the age of 26 so therefore who are we capturing in terms of the audience to have responsibility and accountability under the the act thank you louise Michael Marra can we move on to questions from yourself now please thanks convener and it does follow on reasonably closely I think it's about the gap between implementation of policy and duties I mean would the panel recognise this discussion we've just had at the moment about whether we call that clutter or the search for clarity that the outcomes at the moment are not good enough in terms of those that is there I mean Mike yeah absolutely and and as I say it comes back to the fact that for us too many of those decisions are not just left to a local level but pushed down into schools and teachers and for us particularly I think it's the teachers are your guidance pastoral teachers who in most schools I mean they don't have a consistent approach in terms of the time they get to devote to that side of their work so you go from one local authority to another they've got a different policy in terms of that time so that is is a huge challenge and one of the reasons why we end up with you know different levels of support at school level okay let's see as well okay can I maybe come back into some of the areas I was interested in this I suppose part of bridging that gap between implementation and the experience and I was interested in some of the longer term planning because this bill deals with young people from the age of 14 I mean how many what kind of proportion amyri Starrick of young people with disabilities entering college come through a school college partnership do you have any information on that yeah I do sorry yes I do so in colleges across Scotland just now there are 30 sorry this is from last academic session because we don't have students are still start we have 32,987 students who have entered identified with disabilities so that represents 15.4 percent of the student population in Scotland's colleges out of that 39,000 or 32,987 9,612 have identified with multiple disability and out of that 15.4 12 percent have come from schools so some people we we also offer education to our adult learners as well so there is quite a high proportion of students who come through the school system through a school partnership program yes across Scotland okay and could you have any indication of how many young people who are seeking to access college defer entry due to a lack of support being in place I don't you don't is that something the university of Scotland would have except I've been told that this is a significant problem for young people that perhaps the package of support they require to make the kind of transition we're talking about isn't in place it's not something that I have to hand but it's something that we could look look at see if we can provide that I think that would be really useful to provide that to to the committee and I suppose they reflect on the school college partnerships understand some of the colleagues are exploring the challenges the university is around acceptance points is that kind of a program that universities run in terms of a school university partnership with children with disability I couldn't say definitively across the sector but I know that many admissions teams will have bespoke outreach teams that work in different areas so around unwinding participation for example and disability so many admissions teams will have bespoke programmes for supporting our applicants and university Scotland is currently running a pilot project on supporting disabled students through the admissions process and I know that there's going to be some key principles that are going to come out of that so that's quite exciting as to how we can make that process smoother and more clear for students as well okay and so the your kind of longer term there's really a longer term plan around students disability sounds like there's a real rush in that period as identified in the written evidence and you've been exploring with colleagues within a very contained period of time to try and address the issues of application are you constrained by capacity to deal not with that process but actually to deal with students with complex needs it will depend team by team I think across the sector there are concerns about capacity and it's a hard metric you know the ratio of a disability adviser to number of students isn't an accurate or meaningful measure because a student with dyslexia could be quite different from a student let's say with multiple disabilities and and the needs they're going to be quite different but it is something that we talk about in the sector around resourcing because yes we have that critical period at the start of an academic year for new students where you know we try and get the support needs put in place based on the information that we have and we can build on that and one thing we always say to students is it's a it's always an ongoing conversation as you adapt to life at university you might find that there are other things that are going to emerge that you're going to need to adapt or we're going to need to add to your support plan so often what we're trying to do is get the essentials in place and then build on that to support the student throughout throughout their degree I suppose I'm interested in around that whether the kind of the concept of transitions is something across all organisations that you feel is embedded in the culture the way that you deal with disabled young people I mean there's a lot of the words you're using doctor wheeling around adaptation addition you know it feels like coping perhaps rather than dealing with that transition phase which clearly has to start prior to arrival or acceptance it would just think that transitions is a concept that the sector understands and sees as central to what they do absolutely but I think one of the challenges that universities are going to have is that they're going to be dealing with disabled students coming from multiple different areas so we would have Scottish students potentially coming but support from local authorities but potentially not then we've got students coming from England Scotland sorry England Wales in northern Ireland different systems that we have to work with and then for many universities we're going to have a large cohort of international students and one thing that we strive to be able to do is to provide a consistent experience for students irrespective of where they're joining university from that's not what that it's challenges because some students will be eligible for disabled students allowance and some aren't and that does create some degree a bit of a two-tier system there is certainly a drive across universities to recognise that while there's a need to put in place individual adjustments based on individual needs there are things that we can do as a sector to strive to be more inclusive so embedding inclusive practice and universal design for learning so that some of the the main adjustments that we have placed and put in place for students would actually be accessible for all and we've seen through the pandemic that some of those adjustments have been hugely beneficial for our students so access to online learning access to open book exams more flexibility and choice embedded their degrees all of that has helped to improve the outcomes for our disabled students so we really are trying to support all students irrespective of how much the support they've had or not had before they join us. I wonder if Louise had any comments on that just at the moment almost an external? Yeah I think when you talk about transition being embedded I think the people that are sitting here on the understand that and I think the services that we work in with the people that we meet understand that and the need for that. I think our experiences will probably vary greatly based on some of what Mike has said around pressures, resources, I think also the other external agencies and partnerships who you work alongside to support that person have different views on priorities within transition and I think that's due to resource pressures I think it's due to understanding and experience and I think it's about understanding the broad diversity of people and recognising that some people need a little bit of extra support and they might not see that and they rely on us to give that information and then quite often rely on us to lead on the actions to implement a transition and take that forward and I think that aligns with what Mike was saying about the additional pressures on people in front line to embed that because they have the relationship at that point with that person and they are the person that are committed that because based on that relationship are probably in some cases best placed to bring about an introduction of change and a concept of what life might look like and I think that that is based on relationships and I think that part of transitions is about building relationships and who we identify to come into someone's life to really truly understand what they need and for them to really get that. So I think that yes we get I think we understand it I think the experiences we have are variable and if we have variances and experiences providers and as people who support transitions then what is that like for the people that are experiencing that transition and how do they make sense of that? Thanks and on that Louise perhaps if I ask this quite sort of curtailed question it might help Mike and Louise and the new guys to come in it's so you've mentioned about how you understand the principles of transitions but that there's variable experiences so what are the reasons the specific reasons that you can identify between the gap between the implementation of the policy and the concept of transitions and the duties that are there with what's experienced by our young people. Mike can I come to you first? Yeah I mean a lack of time for guidance teachers in particular at the sharp end is certainly an issue so they're doing their best but sometimes from local authority to local authority with a different amount of what's often called management time to do that and then as I touched on earlier if you like a lack of leadership outside of the school as well but I think what was touched on there I think is important is difficulties in taking that joined up approach so something as simple as if a guidance or pastoral teacher is trying to get together a social worker and someone from the health sector etc you know just the time that that sometimes takes because those other areas of the public sector are struggling with staffing etc that also feeds into it as well at a school level and I think the other thing that I would touch on finally just given some of what's been said earlier is I think that school and college partnerships are more well established and so perhaps there's some better work going on there just because the relationships that already exist but that kind of relationship between schools and universities doesn't really exist there is not as strong for the reasons that have been outlined earlier because no one knows sometimes which university someone's going to go to because they haven't had their offer etc so that obviously is a challenge as well. Thank you Mike Louise can I ask you to respond. I think to give an example would be the transition from children to adult services so you can be working with one one local authority area and policy and practice varies greatly across the departments and therefore that transition between between one department to another is hugely difficult and in some cases we support people that have no social work involvement no support involvement so when they are transitioning they are transitioning on with no scaffolding around about what the next destination is and I think the certainly the children to adult services transition is hugely difficult and you can you can work with one team and one authority and think that there's going to be a seamless move from one direction to the other and actually it's not that experience at all so you can have a child that is actually still in education that receiving an sds budget for support outwith school hours so falls under an adult legislation and there you're you're kind of crossing the barrier between the two so how do you support that person adequately and how do you make sure that there's partnership working between the departments and interdepartment and interagency working and that's hugely difficult particularly in cases where a child maybe is in the process of transition from one department to another and has not been allocated so therefore there's someone in the ether and that's hugely difficult when someone has been discharged from adult services from children services not picked up by adults at that point. Thank you and specific examples like that are very helpful. Can I come to questions now from Graham Day, please? Thanks, convener. I've got three questions but the good news is that I'm mostly focused on universities and college so you won't all have to answer those. The first one concerns the independent living fund and the disabled students allowance. I don't know if you on a wheel and touched on the latter earlier. I'm interested to explore with you the extent to which those interact with the experiences of the students and the support that's provided them and how effective they are in delivering what the students need or supporting them to go through college and university. I can speak to the disabled students allowance which I think for the students that receive it can be hugely beneficial and it actually can make all the difference. Very much dependent on the individual need, the disability and what that needs assessment comes out with but the access to assistive technology, the access to physical equipment that they might need and as I've mentioned before the potential to access relevant one-to-one support and that could be study skills support, study skills co-ordination, mental health mentoring, that can be incredibly beneficial because that's a category of disability types that we've seen the biggest increase in terms of declarations so for students being able to access that support can be absolutely critical but it is a challenging process for students to understand particularly if maybe they've gone through school and been able to access support on the basis of need not on evidence and so they enter university and we provide support and guidance about what a needs assessment is and then the application for the disabled students allowance and it's left to some degree to the student then to figure out what that means what that support package that is recommended is and it can be delivered in different ways so for some students they will get a recommendation of here's your suite of support that's paid for for others the money just gets put into their account and they don't quite know what to do with that and that's where one of the key problems we have at the moment and it's very specific to SAS in comparison to the other funding bodies is that we as a university we will sign off the needs assessment by and large for the student but we're not allowed to know when they've got their award so we can't say to them great you've got your award let's talk through the different support and how we put that in place and that means that some students do get missed and it does mean that we don't provide accurate reporting on the numbers of students in scotland who have dsa okay and what about the independent living fund what's your experience of the impact that has on supporting students that's not something that i have much awareness of no i'm sorry i don't have much awareness okay okay let's move on then so the students are in your vets you've identified what their leads are and you're supporting them how do you monitor any changes in their needs how do you monitor whether there's something you've missed and and then seek to provide that support that could be done in in many ways and i think most universities would strive to have a very constructive and open relationship with students so that they they know that they can come to us if there is um anything that they want to discuss if if the support put in place isn't working and that they need any adjustments but that does rely on the student being proactive about that so obviously there's other mechanisms that universities can put in place to spot students that might still be struggling or might need something in addition so you know across the sector it would be quite standard to have staff within schools that would have a role um so for example at st andrew's each academic school would have a disability coordinator that's a link between the central team and the academic schools and that is a point of contact for a student in their school but also a point of contact to spot any issues and say you know this student's not performing maybe the way that they had expected to can they come and have a conversation with you so we will monitor students performance um uh as as a metric it's not a perfect metric but we do try and track students and there's a lot of discussion in the sector about kind of learner analytics and whether that could be a way that you could do an earlier intervention with the student that might be that might be struggling but i think there is certainly a role for academic staff in being disability aware um and being able to to feel confident in supporting students spotting students having a gentle conversation with the student to say i've spotted something maybe in your essay do you want to go and have a chat with the disability team um so that's another route that we can use to spot students that might be struggling so slightly different in colleges is that the most students get a one hour tutorial every week so within that tutorial the student would meet their tutor and discuss their needs in terms of students coming through disabilities that is an evolving process throughout the academic session um you know i've had experience of a student who had a disability through the has a disability through the transition process had a one-to-one support worker but very very quickly realised i'm not going to blend in here if i've got my shadow here so asked for the removal of the one-to-one support worker and asked for the support worker to be at a distance so there was a kind of a i just want to blend in so it's and that's done very very regularly throughout the process then we also have the student guidance and support team who have who are a contact point of contact for that individual also so the individual could have their tutor to go to or they might go to our student advice and guidance and it's just the flow of information is really important so throughout the academic session it's done we have recording systems as well you know attendance we look at our area withdrawals but we don't want to get to that stage we just want it to flow we don't want it to be data driven it's very personalized okay my final question is about the preparedness of students to come to universities and goddess particularly colleges i suspect in this instance through the careers information advice and guidance and the extent to which students are encouraged to look at courses which suit them and but also meet their ambitions as well and i'm always struck by something a college principal told me their college runs land based courses involving animal husbandry and they had quite an attrition rate and a developing attrition rate dropouts from those courses because they had a large number of students who had mental health issues who had been encouraged or directed to go on those land based courses on the basis that well it would be good for you to work with animals they got to the college and found that as individuals those courses weren't suitable for them is that i'm not going to suggest that's commonplace but is that something you have to contend with colleges yes so it's managing expectations all the time you know in colleges we work and it's not exclusive to people with disabilities where people think they know what's best for you and it's taken into account the the wants and the wishes of the young person that's the most important person in all of this and parents are very important or their carers but sometimes it's what the young person wants and listening to that voice and not was maybe you know this is where my dad works i'm going to go down there or this is where the school suggested i should go it's listening to the student that's really important so we we do have experience in colleges where young people with disabilities come through and on a particular course because that's what perhaps suggested for them but that's not set in tableau this stone we're quite flexible so within a very very short space of time you'll realise this isn't going to work they just don't like it you know some people might say oh you're it's really nice to go work with children and then the young person doesn't like children so and and or maybe just that's too big a term not that they don't like children but they don't want to pursue it we get what you mean and but we have mechanisms in place to transfer students to a different course one of the things that colleges are working on is setting up broad-based courses so young people can make an informed decision about what course they want to do rather than decide this is what and i'm not saying teachers say this all the time but this is what my guidance teacher thinks i should do it's about working together and listening to the young person and there's pathways you know if they don't meet the entry criteria at an sdqf level seven well there are pathways at level six and level five so is there a genuine issue here with young people with disabilities perhaps being pigeonholed when they're being directed towards college university an assumption made about the limitations they might have keen to come in i think yeah i think i think you're right and i think it's because of a lack of understanding of what people need i think it's about a lack of understanding of how to communicate and to express experiences and what experiences might look like i think there's probably a lot of work to be done about supporting students to make informed choice to understand it for people to recognise that someone having an interest in something or a strength in an area doesn't mean to say that they're going to pursue it as their life's journey and how do we ask those questions and i think that's really really important and i think that starts at that point when do we intervene in a transition for somebody that's about gathering that information and allowing them to have their voice and for them to understand what it means because what they think they like and actually what something and experience might look like can be two different things and i think it's really important for people to understand that and i think there's a bit of work to do there and i think from a policy and practice point of view i think for some people it's about identifying that someone has a destination to go to but is that the right destination so in some agencies they might have achieved what they've set out to achieve but it's at the right outcome for the person okay thank you can do is anyone else wanted michael just just briefly on that point i mean i think that careers information and the information that pupils and students get via guidance and pastoral teachers has vastly improved from from perhaps what it was decades ago but there are still some inevitable conflicts and sometimes they're between the pupil and the parent and i think the most important point is perhaps what what anmarie touched on that i think nowadays there is much more recognition that you know a decision you might take as a school pupil going on to college or university is not a final decision and that those you know colleges and universities are much more flexible about if you've not made that right right choice first time to move to something else to suit you better thank you thank you very much we've spoken of earlier on about the cluttered nature of all the various legislations and strategies and policies that are in place right now so i suppose in quite a direct question to each of you and i'll start with mike if that's okay is this legislation actually required to create better outcomes for disabled young people is it required do you know do there need to be better outcomes yes will this legislation on its own guarantee those outcomes i'm not so sure for the reasons afore mentioned particularly the fact that there's a statutory duty about co-ordinated support plans that itself doesn't seem to translate to best practice on the ground everywhere thank you louise that would agree to a degree with mike i think with the asl and education legislation and looking at the age range of this then introducing the legislation to take people through their lifespan it might give more accountability to other agencies and i think for me that's a little bit about how do we pull other agencies into the responsibility within within this so i think yes it gives clarity and i go back to that point of clarity i think the management of the plan for me when i was going through it is the huge bit because how do we how do we hold how are we responsible how are we accountable and how do we monitor and evaluate it thank you fiona yeah i think as a secretary we would have a clear view as to whether it was required i think as you said might do we need better outcomes yes and this could be a tool that could help with that but from a university perspective it would be beneficial to a smaller cohort of disabled students and as i said earlier we're looking at the bigger piece around all of the disabled students that are with us whether they're from scotland england wales or you know overseas as well so it would just be a small piece for us and it would really need to fit in with all of the other duties that we have as well thank you and finally anri do you think the legislation is required yes do you think that there's a gap in it in terms of we're just talking about 14 to 26 there are transitions from primary to secondary also for disabled people thank you can we move on to some questions now from cookab stewart please um thank you convener and um just for absolute transparency i am a member of the hainness utability currently so um but uh i think that mike is probably maybe expecting more difficult questions on that i'll try to be his uh sort of um non bias is possible um just moving on um to who the bill should cover so the bill defines the child obviously as under the age of 18 but the range of it goes right up to 26 so that's a huge band there covering schools and further up and we all know that you know teachers in schools are faced with a wide variety of pupils and needs in front of them on a daily basis so do teachers in mainstream schools routinely consider whether a pupil has a disability as opposed to additional support needs um and how to meet those because there is a difference um as we know um so i'll go um could i go with mike first please and then other members of the panel can come in on that maybe louise in short yes i think they do because i think that there is you know very clear information in schools that goes to teachers when we touched on the primary to secondary transition just there and i think there is you know much improved these days information that goes between primary and secondary schools and then goes you know within particularly in a secondary school where maybe it can be more of a challenge because there are so many teachers um for a pupil but information that goes out to those teachers you know that via the guidance pastoral team etc um in terms of what that teacher should be aware of um and strategies that they can use for for disabled people or indeed a pupil with any additional support need and it might be helpful to sort of like um just tell us um because that is complex it's multi agency and that requires time and you know you've got the teacher at the heart of that because they're seeing the pupil regularly um whether that'd be some single subject or you know for the whole day so how effective is it at the moment and do you think that there is scope in the bill that would improve that process and at that point i think definitely other people will want to come in on that well i you've touched on what is the major issue of time but i think that applies much more to you know the guidance and pastoral teams and sometimes the link deput heads who are trying to arrange things or when you know things change or develop in terms of maybe more support is needed for a particular pupil in trying to make sure that the resource is available or that other teams are involved i think that's where the biggest challenge lies you know particularly for the most part i think the classroom teachers probably do feel that they get clear information um you know for the most part to do their best for the disabled pupils in front of them i think okay thank you mic um louise i think i think in theory the first question you asked around the difference between disability and additional support need yes i think in practice i think that communication doesn't always streamline i don't think always information comes through in the way that it should do and i think with the best will in the world information is shared but it isn't then disseminated to those that need to know and to give you an example of that from a primary to a secondary transition is a pupil who was a type one diabetic who the co-ordinated agencies weren't in place and she landed at high school and they weren't able to support her and there was nobody there to monitor and manage and support her to access her learning um and that's just one example um but i do think that and to to echo mic i think that in pockets teachers are made aware of what children need and that information is disseminated but in terms of reasonable adjustments and what might be required i don't think that that always filters through and i think from a leadership and culture perspective i think it's about how people understand it and the importance of it and i think that's again with policy makers and how they expect schools to implement processes and how to do that so i think we have very good people in in schools that are doing their very best but they need the support and the resources to be consistent with that and i think that's a challenge okay um yeah that's a good example actually of the the transition uh bit um is there anyone else on the panel that wants to come in on that i've just got i'll move on um so does the panel agree that everyone who meets the equality act definition of a disability should automatically have a transition plan um or should there be an element of self-identification and an opt-out process i think previously in some of the answers you know young people might not want to declare they're disabled for whatever reason um and whilst the equality guidance it says that in most cases in the vast majority of cases it will be evident um that there is a disability however not always so there is a bit of wiggle room there isn't there um so it'd be good to hear your opinions on that um i'm quite and mary yeah i do agree that everybody who was covered within the equality act but in terms of the young person getting the services so dr wheeling mentioned that you know the dsa so mental health would come under the equality act so if a young person was to say that they had anxiety it would be covered but would they get so it would be managing the expectations from that just am i making myself clear i think so so so for an example if somebody has anxiety for over a period of six months under the equality act that's could be termed as a long term condition and is a disability so then if the young person would be let's say going to university or college and needs the funding for the disability they may not meet the criteria in that way may not but they would still get the service from the college or university okay so for from a personal allowance point of view perhaps not but from a service point of view absolutely right okay so and do you think that this bill then would sort of like make that a bit clearer um or it wouldn't actually alter that process at all i think that for people who don't want to identify with having a disability i'm not sure that they would recognise that this would bring them value because it's a bit the work that we do with people to help them to understand so to give you an example of someone that i i have supported through a process to attend university he does not want to identify as having a condition his learning is online and he is he receives benefits he receives um support but he absolutely doesn't want university to know that he has a condition he's academically capable what he can't do is manage the workload the time management deal with the social aspect of it and it's overwhelming for him but he will not allow us to engage with the university support team to find alternative and reasonable adjustments to support him so in the one hand absolutely in certain pockets for certain populations yes but when we're working with people who would identify of coming and requiring that support and they don't want it it's very difficult because where do we how do we support a university as well support the person to do that so he has he has withdrawn from his course um because he can't he can't accept his condition and he can't accept the failure that he has viewed as his life because he can't complete that part of his course that's a very real that's a very real example of of what that looks like and you work with these with people to try to help them to understand how this can benefit them but they don't want to be identified under that category or that criteria i think you've highlighted there how individual um it is and you know every young person is individual in their own uh journey there the reason why i'm asking about the scope and exploring that is because obviously the amount of young people that come under that that's going to have a direct effect on resourcing and the financial sort of implications of that so that that's why thank you Mike Corbett wants to come in on response to to that question yeah it was just briefly that i do think that that point is important about young people who are maybe reluctant to self-identify as having a disability and that highlights the irony perhaps because why is that i mean we have we have teachers who are still fearful sometimes of declaring a disability because they feel it'll somehow count against them and it's the same thing with some young people how do you address that well having a bill like this you know and this discussion helps that and that's the irony perhaps so but we do need you know again at the top level um the very loud declaration that having a disability is nothing to be ashamed of but that i think is still that challenge at the individual level with with many young people and even adults as i say thank you um was there anybody else that wanted to um i was going to say that there's absolutely a a role for maybe universities to disseminate information about you know what you're thinking of normalising declarations of disabilities um so most universities now are probably well over 20 percent of the student population declaring a disability so we're talking one in five it's it's it's not unusual and often when i have conversations with students and i explain you know actually here's the numbers of students who are like you it tends to prompt that declaration then because it is more normalized but actually it's sometimes the flip point from what you're saying is we are often seeing a lot more self declarations of disability that might not meet the criteria of the equality act so at my institution for example of the number of students that would declare a disability only around 60 might have a formal support plan so there's something about wanting students wanting to tell us they might not need something they might not have had support in school but they want to let us know just in case something's going to happen in the future and i think that's been what's driving the increase in mental health declarations um within the disability numbers okay thank you thank you we'll go back a little bit in terms of our work how we've been working through our questions today can can i move to ross greer now if that's okay thank you ross primarily um for mike as you mentioned um right at the start of the session around the um morgan review there have been two revisions to the additional support for learning strategy or additional support for learning action plan since then and there's there are a number there's at least half a dozen different references to transition in there and improving transitions i'm interested if that has filtered through at all those repeated updates to that national strategy have they actually filtered through to schools or even from your work are you aware of them filtering through at local authority level i think that's one of the key issues is that i think if you asked any classroom teacher about that very few of them would have that awareness on the ground and i think that that is a real challenge and on the the point that's been raised a couple of times around the variation between both children and adult services within a local authority and the variation between different local authorities there's two schools of thought about what this bill could achieve one is that it would force a level of consistency but the alternative point of view is that this potential results in more tension because it's not about creating a consistent approach across between children's services in general across every local authority or between adult social care services that's a different debate we're having in relation to national care service there's a danger here potentially that this adds more tension because you will still have a different approach between local authorities children services and their adult social care but you will then have a third element now which is what this bill expects nationally do you have any concern that rather than create more consistency this just adds a a third different approach that the other two will have to wrestle with the local authorities pre-existing practice potentially but i think the key is that the the authority is able to work that out between their interdepartment working partnership working because the key is that the consistency remains for the person that's in the transition so how how a local authority and how a department works together to make sure that their practices internally work with between departments is important but actually the key is that the consistency doesn't change for the person that's having the experience so how do they do that and i think that's the important bit because i think it's about interpretation of it and i think it's about implementation and prioritising and i think it's about workload and it's about recognising where it sits and i think to go back to mike's point earlier about all the other different elements of guidance and frameworks in girffec it's a if this straddles adult and children services adult services might look at it quite differently than they would from girffec because they would potentially see a girffec not applying hugely in their setting although it does under the legislation in terms of how you'd define a child and when they transition however it maybe brings more consistency to that so that's yeah that would be my view no that was useful thanks anyone else want to comment on those quick nope okay we'll move to questions now from bob doris please thanks community um the interesting change near the start of the meeting where i was asking amary stark about whether the bill was required and i think amary and dr wheel and had had mentioned about it bringing in clarity and i'm more consistent with identifying young people with disabilities or additional support needs irrespective of what the current position is with with local authority so i'm just wondering what the resource impact may be on colleges and universities if the expectation is more young people will be identified more regularly more consistently would colleges and universities be able to support the planning process by taking part in meetings ensuring the grade support is in place and so on for students from multiple local authorities and i know look further education has got more of a footprint in schools than perhaps higher education does but are we anticipating additional workload has that been quantified and is further higher education in a position where they can deliver significant expectations within this legislation so can we deliver on that maybe amary stark have you given any thought to that yeah i've given a lot of thought to that because the the colleges our guidance team are our structures in place just now are resourced and bursting because 29 of people in scotland's colleges just now have the declared disability if there was an increase in that i think colleges across scotland would be concerned about the resource requirement because what we're all about is getting it right for every student and every student with a disability here so if there was a perceived increase i would be concerned about what additional resource we would need to put in and i think the resource that we have put in have in place just now is very good for people with learning disabilities it's excellent for people who have come through a schools college partnership but what resource would be required for people who you know come through that may have not just declared something two weeks before the start college it you're running to make it right for the person to start on that usually the 19th of august so i would be slightly concerned about what additional resource would be required before i bring dr feel around i just nudge you maybe a little bit more on that because if the bill is required then surely many more young people will be captured about the needs of transitions that are just off the radar just now or don't have the plans that are required so would you agree that that 29 percent if this bill works will go up quite substantially so therefore there must be quite significant resource issues would you agree with yes the the bill mentions a plan so if there's more people requiring a plan is the implementation of the own person's plan disseminating the information to all the curriculum teams making sure to support the plan is one thing implementation implementing the plan review and on regular at regular stages is really really important meeting the expectations of the plan so whoever wrote the plan would have to be there in part of the college process you know we would you would write it in partnership with the transition teams does that make sense because if the plan just came to the college we would there could be a risk of misinterpretation for the person it's incredible helpful i just want to make sure that colleges scotland and further education have thought about quantifying what additional resource might be required from there and has consideration given to quantifying that additional resource that would be required i wouldn't say across scotland that's been considered just now i'm speaking on behalf of colleges scotland today if the plan you know we would have to go back look at the devil in the detail because of this 29 percent from a kind of a i work in a college i would know what have to resource our guidance team with an additional individual who's trained on transition there's a training need here as well i'm not really trying to walk her just because additional resource may be required doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do i'm trying to tease out the realities of the legislation dr wheeling from a university perspective i mean i suspect the impact on resourcing within universities would be less than it would be in the college sector just because the Scottish students are a subset of our overall student population for for most of the institutions and you know year on year we have been coping with an increased number of declarations and you know that does put strain on the service but we we can manage and we can adapt and work to some degree use to that i think it comes down to the detail as to what does a transition plan look like what does it contain and is it mindful of the context whether that's college or the context of a university and how that might be different and so can a transition plan help with that transition to a different environment a different sense of independent living a different learning environment as well and i think the other the other challenge i mean in the written submission we talk about time and resourcing at that critical point in the summer just before university start in september and as i said earlier we work with the student and at the moment we don't have very much involvement with the local authorities so again because we are tending to work with 18 year olds we consider them adults so i don't it's hard to predict how much liaison we would need with this plan with local authorities and kind of a coordinated approach for individual students so i think it's not clear at the moment for us to be able to say definitively okay i think that's reasonable louie story i don't know if i'm misquoting here i apologize if i am i've got mixed up with my scribbles in front of me here i think you mentioned that there will be different priorities within within schools in relation to transitions young people with more complex needs and they're the resource implications and resource pressures so i think you're generally supportive of this legislation if i've got that right but if resources are finite might that prioritisation mean that some young people have plans on paper without the resource to make it meaningful and other young people with more complex needs get a get a more significant transition any concerns in relation to that quite possibly quite possibly i think it's again that variable picture that you get and i think resource allocation have across different settings is looks different depending on funding availability i think there's also the ability and i think what needs to be taken into account to that is the current challenge in recruitment across the sector just now and how to retain so getting the right people into positions that are able to support that so i think yes i think probably depending on need there's variances and whether yes what your plan on paper comes to life in a different way from someone else who might have more specific needs okay and might before i bring in one final question to ask me about ask that i'll come to you first mic and i'll give everyone the opportunity to respond if they wish so we know that most young people will come through a local authority through an education route but not necessarily everyone we know with universities those young people may have effectively left school and there's that flux during the summer so local authorities might not always be best placed to take the lead but if there's an expectation local authorities would take the lead in transition cases should that always be the case or is more flexibility required do you think mic orbit i think from a school perspective you know we would hope and expect that local authorities would be taking the lead and that that would be that would be useful if i could just rewind slightly to your resource point i mean that's obviously crucial and in the current circumstances where we've got that commitment to teacher numbers which obviously we support because you need those teachers there to offer this service as well as many others we have found traditionally that additional support needs and similar areas often seem the quite softer areas to maybe make some cutbacks and so there would be a worry in the immediate future about that in terms of resources from our point of view i think okay no thank you for adding that any other comments on who should take the lead we'll take lees first and then i'm ready if that's okay it's okay to make a comment on the resources i think i think relating to resources as well there's the resource need around direct support but there's also the resource need around dealing with families and the the level of time that's required to engage with families when they require clarity when they look for information so whilst on the ground in a school you're dealing with allocating the resource to the child you're also allocating the time of another teacher or a pastor or a guidance teacher to dealing with the family's field and the calls following up what's required and i think that's quite challenging as well to go to your question around leading on transition i think in some cases that health probably need to be considered in terms of what are the needs of the person at that time and does health need to be involved in leading that transition and i think that goes back to those variances around somebody's mental health i think it also goes back to the variances of people's mental health around understanding somebody's condition and whether the resources are meeting the needs of somebody's condition and if they're not then does that impact on someone's mental health okay thank you that's very helpful very reasonable points i have i'm going to start do you want to come i'll louise talk to words right out of my mind but i think to health would play a part because if we were to say it was just purely local authorities there could be a gap we have a significant number of children in schools with health conditions so they may not have a social worker and they would need that health would play a key role in the transition arrangements so i agree with louise and dr Unrhyw o'ch cyfnodol i chi eisiau, rydw i ni gael cyd-dweithyddion Llyfrgellyddiaeth yn dweithgol yn dweith y cydeithasol. Dyw'r ein bach o'r d 들 Hamilton i gael mae Llyfrgellyddiaeth yn gweithleidio'r cyd-dweithyddion i ddeithasol i dwylo. Dweud yn geitwch eich ddau o hyflagodaethon, ac mae wavesfodd cyd-dweithyddion ar gweithgodol yn gyfathol o gael, yn ei ddeithasol i ddefnyddio'r cei nhw. Instead to give universities a more chance to build deeper, stronger, quicker, more meaningful relationships with young people before they go to university? I mean on the question, as to who should take the lead, I think it very much depends on the individual student need. Not in relation to disabled students but I've certainly supported students who are in care experience who have had their social worker come and help with their initial transition gyda univer Wonderful Something, on the University and the value of that but that's very resource intensive. I just want to echo what's been said about health, particularly around mental health. The resourcing on the Universities too to some degree to plug some of the gaps. Particularly around mental health support, counselling support, that is a big resource challenge for us, where that coordination, transitioned support and health element is sometimes missing. What more universities can do to be more proactive. I'm really hoping that the pilot project university Scotland has done around admissions and supporting disabled students throughout the admissions process is going to be quite critical to this. So I think once that gets published and that can be shared and I think those pilot principles then can be disseminated across the sector as well. Thank you very much. We've heard a lot today about transitions from people into the education system colleges and universities. But how does the education system, the schools, ensure that there is a suite of opportunities for disabled young people after they leave school that might not necessarily be around the college or the university sector, work apprenticeships, schemes through charities like Enable? Can I perhaps go to Louise first if that's possible? I think through a person-centred planning process it's helpful to identify what avenue somebody would want to pursue and I think it's within the value in people recognising that there's other avenues to success and opening that up to informed choice around skills development Scotland and apprenticeships and helping people to have those experiences, those link-ups with the local community. So for example things like through men's sheds and things like very practical based experiences and engaging in the community and community participation. I think for people that don't want to go on to further education I think it's the who does that, who leads on that because the support is about you filling in your application to university, you moving on. Who helps to support that, who helps to identify what might be right and is it that cliff edge that stops of you're not pursuing college, you're not pursuing university, so what are you doing? So I think there's probably a gap in how we support that and how we access opportunities for people. Mike, can you respond to that as well? Just following on precisely from what Louise said there I think that is the concern of a lot of teachers would be particularly if they are doing all they can to perhaps help a young disabled person into employment or say an apprenticeship but they help them perhaps through the application process and let's say they're successful and then really that is the end of the schools involvement and as Louise says who then picks up with that young person when they've moved in to say the apprenticeship so I think there is potentially a gap there that needs to be addressed. Can I just make a point in relation to disabled pupils and students who are in mainstream schools and who are achieving and following their national fives of the national fours and the reasonable adjustments that are in place from an assessment criteria point of view that might be limiting in terms of those people accessing normal opportunities as per their peers because the assessment criteria to pursue that particular quality qualification doesn't fit the criteria of assessment for the governing body so that can be limiting so we're potential. Imples of specific examples. So a pupil who is pursuing that five P who has a disability who has been pursuing it has got the support of the school to do that however the SQA assessment criteria is not enabling a reasonable adjustment for her to be assessed in the way that would be suited to her needs and is pursuing and suggesting that she takes up a disabled sport that is one that she doesn't identify with and two isn't something that she's interested with so she's just a crossroads in terms of what does she do and what does her family do to support that and that's an example of sometimes our systems and processes may limit the opportunities. That's made the hairs on the back, that's quite concerning to hear that Louise and that shows the power of examples I think. And certainly if anyone wanted to have other examples or further information on that particular situation I can do that for you. Thank you. Doctor Whelan please. Just for transparency I should also say that I'm a trustee of the Scottish Commission for People with Learning Disabilities so this is probably a bit more of a personal opinion but I think there is absolute scope to talk about who goes to university and who doesn't go to university and who gets included in those conversations and you mentioned Enable Scotland and there's been initiatives in partnership with the University of Strathclyde for example with breaking barriers where it's providing opportunities for students for whom higher education would not be a traditional route for them but to give them that opportunity linked to employment and I think there's real scope and opportunity to look to other best practice in this area so for example Trinity College Dublin has the centre for people with intellectual disabilities so marrying up an academic qualification whether that's that certificate or diploma level with work opportunities, internships that often is leading to paid employment and the benefits for the students, for the institutions and actually for the employers as well is vast and I think this is just an opportunity to talk about who do we consider as you know higher education is a route to and I think we need to actually open up that conversation and look to whether there's opportunities to fund initiatives like that because there is best practice elsewhere and we can open the scope of who gets to have that experience. I agree, I think that sometimes we have situations where we don't recognise what somebody would want and maybe look at the condition and look at the limits in our own understanding of the condition and narrow that to the limits of what they are able to achieve and maybe people slip through the net because people assume that someone can't pursue a career on an avenue that they would want to. Thank you for those responses. Can I move to a final question from Graeme Dey, please? Thank you, convener. I think we're all deeply grateful for your evidence this morning that's been very thought provoking but if you could just indulge me I want to take this off in a slight tangent. Today understand the way we've been talking about the bill and what it sets out to do. Let's imagine we've invited you in not to talk about a bill. Let's imagine it didn't exist and we were simply asking you what one, two, three things could we do to change existing practice and approach that would make substantial difference to the experiences of these young people in the context of what you do or a wider context. What could we do if we were looking at a bill that could fundamentally change and improve a situation that clearly needs to be improved? Repeating points that have been made throughout, better co-ordination of the various pieces of legislation and guidance that are there already, an absolute commitment to resource things properly and I think a stringent evaluation framework so that we don't just aim to do something that at some specified point we take a step back and judge will. Has this worked or not? If it's not, let's try something else. It's a very interesting question and I'm going to answer it from my experience of working with people with learning disabilities and the biggest challenge was the changing in staff throughout their journey in their life. It's shift changes. We've got recruitment issues in social services just now. We've got people who go off sick. We have teachers who leave. The whole thing, we talk about a transition process and a plan and that's great if everybody knows what's on the plan. If I leave work tomorrow and Mike is the person who's going to pick it up from there, who's going to make this journey really simplistic and smooth because you're absolutely right, not every student with a disability wants to come to college. We would love them to, but they don't want to and sometimes it's very difficult sitting in a meeting with a parent in the school and the young person's voice is probably the quieter voice. So we don't lose sight of who we're trying to support here, but to me it's consistency for the family, consistency for the young person. Now I have to say the same thing over and over again because of shift change or a staff that you've moved to America or something like that. It just needs to be consistent for the family. The young person needs a point of contact, somebody they can trust, somebody who will listen and understand them and their needs are at the forefront. I'm supposed to support that. We'd require perhaps one piece of documentation that explains all their needs, what they require and it's just picked up and run with. I would say consistency would be the number one thing and as you talk about something that is consistent throughout that transition in terms of that documentation because at the moment we don't align it. So what they have in school is not sufficient for what's required at universities or the disabled students allowance. So actually changing that approach and maybe it's something radical about giving the universities the autonomy to decide where the DSA funding is going. Rather than requiring that kind of diagnosis, which is putting burdens on the student, burdens on the NHS to provide documentation. So I think that's one really critical change that would make a huge difference for students. The other is just greater opportunity of choice. So providing more choice maybe within universities, within colleges, within other avenues so that students are getting the choice that they want and the pathways that are meaningful to them rather than just something that is decided for them as something that would be useful for them to do. It's their decision as to the path that they want to pursue. I think that we need to accept that everybody's different and I think that that's a cultural approach around values and understanding fundamentally why we're saying what we're saying about what people need and I think that that's about acceptance of difference and inclusion. Thank you very much for your time today. We've found it a very informative session as ever. The public part of today's meeting is now at an end and we will consider our final agenda items in private. Thank you and good morning.