 Thank you. Welcome to the 11th meeting of session 6 of the Qualities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. This is the first meeting of the committee in this session where there have been people observing in person and you are all very welcome. If I can ask members of the committee and our guests to ensure that all mobile phones or other such devices are switched silent for the duration of the meeting and we have No apologies for this morning's meeting. First, agenda item is to agree whether to take items 4 consideration of today's evidence and item 5 consideration of correspondence from the health and social care committee in private. Is that agreed? That is agreed. Thank you. The next item on agenda is consideration of a negative instrument and I refer members to paper 1. Do any members have any comments on the registration services, fees etc. Scotland amendment regulations 2022? No member has indicated that they have any comments to make. That being the case, are members content formally not to make any comments to the Parliament on this instrument? That is agreed and that concludes consideration of the SSI. The next agenda item is to take evidence on children's participation in the court's decision making process. I welcome to the meeting our first panel, Sarah Axford, service manager, children first, and joining us remotely Dr Leslie Anne Barnes McFarlane, senior lecturer in Scots private law university of Glasgow, who is joining us remotely, as I said. I refer members to papers 2 and 3. To kick off, I invite our witnesses to make short opening statements. I wish to start with Sarah Axford, please. Thank you. I would like to start by thanking the committee for inviting me here today. My name is Sarah Axford and I'm a service manager for children first, which is Scotland's national children's charity. At children first, we stand up for children's rights and highlight when we feel they are being violated by decision making processes. We do this through regular contact with organisations such as the Children and People's Commissioner for Scotland and the Scottish Women's Rights Centre. We believe that when families do well, children do well, and the way we do things is to put relationships at the heart of everything we do. Children first are a trusted and established provider of children's services in the Scottish borders, providing abuse and trauma recovery supports children and young people and their families. We consider the only service with the skills and expertise in creating safety for families in supporting their recovery, particularly when living with ongoing abuse through child contact. This is because we have developed a high-quality, experienced and qualified staff team who are delivering unique, person-centred and holistic approach, and it is with these expertise that I come before the committee. There are two ways in which children and families who support coming to contact with the family justice system, child contact cases and residency and permanency cases, which I hope I can also touch on in this session. For the majority of children and families that access support through our domestic abuse services, their experience of the family justice system has left them feeling unheard, insignificant, distressed and worried about the future. Many children tell us that they don't feel part of decision making processes, even when decisions are being made about them and that they feel overlooked. This has a significant impact on their development and happiness, especially when unsafe or concerning decisions are made about contact with their parents without their consent or without effort to understand why they may be reluctant to see a particular parent. So, while I look forward to sharing with you the child-centred, relationship-based, non-judgmental and non-stigmatising practice that makes up the children's first way of supporting children to participate in decisions about them, I would hope to share with you some examples where children who we support have had their input disregarded by those making decisions which affect them. I would like to share the voices of two young people who have had very recent experiences of not being listened to in the civil court process. The first young person, well, both young people have had their views heard, well, taken several times but not listened to. So, the first young person said, it feels unfair. I feel because I'm a child, my view is unimportant. If an adult didn't want to see a parent, it wouldn't have to go to court. It felt like I was treated like property, not an individual. I feel disrespected and disempowered. This is from another young person. I feel the sheriff didn't listen to me, and my right is to be heard and listened to, and that didn't happen. I feel listened to by other people like my mum and school and everyone else except the sheriff, and he has let me down. Thank you. Thank you. Can I hear from Dr Barnes McFarland? Yes. Good morning and thank you very much for inviting me today. As the chair said, I'm a child and family law researcher working in a team of researchers in the field at Glasgow University in the school law. Before I became an academic over a decade ago, I was a family lawyer. I represented adults and children involved in family court cases, and I also worked as a child welfare reporter and a curator at Leighton. I've been asked along today because I was commissioned in 2019 by the Justice Committee to produce an independent report when the Children's Scotland Bill was being considered by the Scottish Parliament. My report evaluated the current law, which was and still is, part 1 of the Children's Scotland Act 1995. I was asked to review the 1995 act to comment on areas that might be in need of updating and possible reform from a human rights perspective and particularly from the perspective of children's human rights and the child's right to participate. The areas that I considered for potential reform included, for example, the imposition in current law of an age presumption of 12 years and older for the capacity form and express a view, and the general lack of infrastructure to support and guide and inform children who are involved in family court cases. My report also analysed the 2019 Children's Scotland Bill, which is the Children's Scotland Act 2020. Most of that act is not yet in force, but once it is in force, it has the potential to make positive changes in respect of enabling children to participate more fully in family court cases about them. We will be asking some more questions in depth, but I wonder if, initially, both of you could give us an outline in practical terms how we try to hear the voices of children and where that maybe does not work in practice. Sarah, do you want to make some initial comments on that? The ways in which the 1995 act outlines that children's views can be taken. The current methods are at the F9 form, child welfare reporters, and then either speaking to children entitled to have their own legal representation too, or to speak to a sheriff in private. In practice, the only way in our experience at the moment that children's views are being taken is through child welfare reporters. We do not consistently see the F9 form used, and we do not particularly agree that the F9 form is an effective way to take children's views anyway, but child welfare reports are the most common way we see children's views taken. Again, in our experience, that is pretty inconsistent too. Commonly, children under the age of 12 do not have their views taken. We would see that, and even speaking to a solicitor fairly recently, about a five-year-old's views, that was pretty much dismissed from the outset, so that child's views would be considered. In terms of the form that we will go to, the F9 form needs to be completely replaced, is that your view? It relies on adult support to be able to complete that form, and often families do not understand how to fill it in and what should be on that form. We see reluctance from professionals such as teachers to help to fill in those forms, because it would be viewed as them having a bias towards one particular parent over another, so it is really difficult. Lesley-Anne, if you could comment on that form as well, that would be helpful for the F9. Okay, thank you. I will comment first on the current methods to take children's views, which Sarah is very helpfully outlined, including the F9 form. The possibility of speaking to a sheriff but not many children do that is what we know from what limited research exists. Most children give their views through speaking to a child welfare reporter. Children can instruct their own solicitor, but that tends to be older children and, again, relatively few children actually do that. In terms of some of the areas in which the system could be updated and improved and, again, the Scottish Government's family justice modernisation strategy flagged up a number of those areas. The presumption of age 12 plus, an age limit, is not given in article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is the article all about the child's right to participate. Among lots of different countries in the world, we are really the only country that put an age benchmark in. That would be contrary to the guidance that has been given by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, which is the international watchdog on children's rights. Certainly, the age presumption has not been helpful, although there are certainly reported cases where courts have taken views of younger children and there are certainly guidance to child welfare reporters to do that. When the 2020 act comes into force, it will, in fact, replace that presumption with a different presumption entirely. The new presumption will be that all children have capacity to express a view. What we should see is that all children, regardless of age, are being asked what they think and how they feel about their family law case. What that means is that within a legal system where asking the views of younger children has not traditionally been done, there is a whole new area for training and development. I wonder if Sarah May might want to comment on that further. The age 12 presumption has been a difficult area increasingly. The lack of a supportive infrastructure for children who are supporting views is that there is not anyone in the current system who is there to support or inform children to help them to articulate their views, to explain the process to them, to give them appropriate information at the right stages and, importantly, to explain a decision to children once it has been made and to let them know that they are being heard. One of the reforms that the 2020 act should be bringing into force is the appointment of a child advocacy worker who can fulfil that role and who can help to create an environment where children actually feel supported and listened to. I can certainly follow up on some of the other areas, as we discussed further this morning, for example, in the provision of explanations to children, which is a new thing that the 2020 act will bring in. In terms of the form F9, I watched the round table when that form was criticised by a number of people. I do not really have any specific points of criticism to add to that, but I do agree with the criticisms. I believe that form F9 is certainly not the best way to take the views of children. It is the current way that court proceedings are intimated to children. If it is going to be replaced, there will have to be some other way that children are told about the court process that is happening about them. Certainly, we would expect that to be part of the discussions when the 2020 act comes. As you said, we will be covering some of the issues in more depth with questions from other members. I would like to ask a question in the context of the pandemic. It has highlighted quite a few issues for a number of demographics. However, in the context of how it has affected children's participation in decision making, has there been any new issues highlighted, or have there been any extra difficulties that you have seen? Is that for me first? I suppose that one of the things that happened in our experience is that children's views were taken less. Because of the less not-face-to-face meeting and things like that, children's views were just not taken rather than a way found to take their views. I think that the impacts of online hearings have been really difficult. I think that a lot of the parents that we have spoken to have found that really disempowering and felt less able to voice their views at online hearings. Prior to online hearings happening, I suppose that we are still hearing of teleconferencing happening in certain places, or when the online technology does not work, then we are reverting back to telephone conferences. Again, people find that even less able to engage with that. We have seen as well long delays in hearings happening, big gaps in between hearings. I think that is probably the main issue that we have seen. I invite the views of people who are working in the system and who have experienced the delays and the pros and cons of technology, in particular. That creates opportunities to work in different ways, but it should always be done in a way that is based on what needs of a particular trial bar, rather than the convenience or cost. Certainly, when the new act comes into force, there will be a provision that children's views should be taken in the manner that the child prefers and that the child should be able to say whether they want to have a meeting with an individual, whether they want to send an email, whether they want to talk through an online meeting, and so on. Again, those are positive steps in the way forward. Great. Thank you very much. Good morning to you both and thank you for joining us this morning. I have a couple of questions. I suppose that that build on some of your comments around how we hear children's voices and give their voices due weight, as the UNCRC requires that to happen. In Glasgow, there are specialised hearing suites for criminal cases. I wonder if you have any thoughts about using prerecordings, using remote evidence giving, and I take on board what you say about some of the issues with virtual hearings, Sarah. However, those specialised hearing suites offer us an opportunity for sheriff courts, as well as criminal courts, to enable participation of the child in a safe place, in a safe space, in a more relaxed environment. Sarah, I will come to you first and then to Lesley-Anne. Absolutely. I would stress that they need to be child-friendly spaces, too. I think that we need to recognise the importance of creating child-friendly spaces in order that children can share to the best of their ability and the best of creating that ideal environment is the most important thing. Given children the opportunity to, I think that children feel completely detached now from the process. They hear about it and they might get a 30-minute and hour-long meeting with the child welfare reporter to hear their views, but that does not always happen. They feel quite detached from the process, relying on their parents to communicate that to them. If there was a space where a child could go and give their views and they know that that is directly connected to the court process, then— Before I bring Lesley-Anne in, can I pick up on something that you said about the time of the child's welfare reporter? You said that does not always happen. Is there more that we should be thinking about ensuring that it does, or is it not always appropriate for it to happen? I think that, certainly in our experience, it is localised. We have a wider children's first experience, but certainly in our experience there is not a consistent approach to when and why child welfare reports are done, and a child welfare report may be done without speaking to the child, so that would be, looking at the context. Again, there is not particularly a consistent approach to that either, so some appointed child welfare reporters might do it in a particular way, which would not necessarily match the next person that came along. There is that view that children under a certain age do not have the ability to speak to a child welfare reporter, or that they are not able to form a view, so that is just not done. Lesley-Anne, your views on the specialised hearing suites and associated possibilities? Yes. My view would be that anything that serves to meet the process of participating in family court cases is less intimidating for children and more accessible is absolutely worth considering. I think that one of the most encouraging things to read about these suites is that it was children and young people who were involved in the development of those suites and in the consultation process and that they co-designed the website and chose the images on it. That is certainly very much children's rights compliance in terms of what rights of the child would say, which is the best way to put in place the best methods for listening to children is by planning and working in developing those methods with children and listening to what they are saying, making them happy or frightened or involved, or detached from the process, which is absolutely what we do not want, because it is a process out of them that, above all, has a massive impact on their day-to-day lives. If I can follow up with a connected but separate question about advocacy services, the 2020 act makes provision for advocacy services to be provided as ministers consider necessary. I am interested in what you think about whether that provision should be enforced and whether there would need to be restrictions or stipulations around it. How do we balance the rights of the child to be heard themselves with the rights of the child to be supported and hear their views either through an advocate or is the advocacy there to support them to have their views heard? Leslie-Anne First and then I will come back to Sarah. In terms of the advocacy service, we are talking about a lot of ways in which the system can be improved and modernised. In fairness, that is a system that came into force over 25 years ago with the Children's Scotland Act 1995. At that time, it was quite radical to be listening to children at all. Over the last 25 years, we have begun to realise that participation actually means more than just taking a view from children and using that in an adult-centric process. What it really means is involving the child in some kind of dialogue where they understand what is going on. It certainly seems to me that the plan to create children's advocates solves a number of problems with the existing system in a single stroke. It would give an individual dedicated to a child. That individual would explain the process to them. It would help them if necessary to articulate their views and feelings in a court process, which should be all about them, but it is still quite adult-centric. That person would offer support, appropriate information and would also explain to the child what a decision means in the context of the impact that it is going to have on their life. I cannot see anything negative about having a children's advocate. I would go so far as to say that I am not sure that the provisions in the primary legislation in the 2020 act are going to make that much difference to children if there is not a change to the basic structure that is carrying children through the process that they are experiencing when they are involved in good-stressing cases about their lives. For me, it is an absolute necessity to enact the services for children. I completely agree with what I am saying. I think that addressing children's advocacy is really critical. If we are serious about improving children's participation rights, I think that advocates can be a key part of children sharing their views in a number of different issues. It addresses a number of different issues that are around for the Scottish Government around the children's hearing system, obviously civil justice processes, but also just that advocacy for points in their life when things are difficult, when there is social work involvement or police involvement or something that is a concern for a child. I think that an advocate can work with a child as well to help them decide how their views are shared as well, whether that child is sharing that in person, building that confidence to do that, because it is about confidence. We would always want children to be able to share in person, but it is about giving the child that set of resources to do that. That is about a relationship with the child and working for a period of time to build up that relationship, that time being given. Do you see that as a potential way of dealing with some of the challenges that we have talked about at a previous session here, the tension between the child's welfare and their rights to be heard, their rights to participate? Absolutely, because that person can contextualise that child's life. It is about that person working alongside a child to understand what their views are but the context to that as well. What are the other things that are going on within that child's life, which is often just lost within the current civil justice system? I think that Lesley-Anne has a small last comment to come back in. Yes, I was just going to comment on the children's hearing advocacy service, which has now begun and about which there is incredibly positive feedback. It has been noted that having an advocate improves the quality of discussions and the decisions and helps children to realise their own rights. It is all about facilitating children's hearing. I thank the panel for joining us. It is nice to see people in what I think is called the gallery for the first time since I have been here. Thank you for the evidence this morning and for all the work that you have done over the years. I have two questions. One of them is specifically about the Children's Scotland Act 2020. Children's first gave quite a lot of evidence to the bill and made a number of recommendations on it. Not all of them were taken on board, but some of them were. Could you tell us a little bit about the impact that you think the changes that were taken on board will have when they come into effect? Could you also set out any implications that you think there could be from the delay of introducing them? We are trumping at the bit for the Children's Scotland Act 2020 to be implemented. It can't come soon enough for us. The delay is impacting directly on children and young people. We know what said in the 1995 act that there is some really explicit stuff about listening to children's views and including children's welfare within the considerations. We are not always seeing that consistently met now. We are really keen that the 2020 act, for that to go further, but my concern is that we are not seeing that coming quick enough. We are silencing children as a consequence of that. From memory, I can't remember what we didn't get in, what we recommended that didn't get in and did get in. I have to rely on my colleagues to feed back on that. Certainly, we were pleased that some of the stuff around presumed presumption of shared parenting was in that. Obviously, the stuff around parental alienation is being taken out. Do you have anything to add to that, Dr Burns? Not in particular. It is recognised that the 2020 act is the first step in a process of beginning modernisation of the family justice system and that it is important in terms of compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to keep that system under review but, as Sarah Smith said, the pandemic has caused a lot of disruption to work in life and processes, but I am keen to see the 2020 act coming to force. The final question that I have for the panel is about the presumption that children have capacity to express their views. It is going to be a huge step forward and we have heard a lot this morning about the structural changes that we might need to do that. Could you say something about whether you think that there needs to be specialised professionals who have got experience of taking the views of particularly young children in the context of both criminal and civil justice cases? If that is okay, we are keen to hear your thoughts. Do you want me to start? Yes. The short answer to that, we really strongly advocate that professionals taking children's views should know how to speak to children and understand child development. I suppose the complexities of safety and welfare around children, we absolutely think that children younger than 12 are able to form views and it is not just about interviewing a child that we think that children should be able to give views in written form or in drawings and things like that. We have had recent experience of a permanency case where we were able to support a child's view through some of the pictures that that child had done that were clearly saying that he didn't want a relationship with his father. We were able to communicate that in the court setting to say this is what this child has represented in picture form. It needs, like I said before, those relationships need to be given time. A child doesn't form a view. We don't think we're giving children the best chance by being interviewed for half an hour by a child welfare reporter. That relationship needs to be built, that safety and security needs to be felt within that relationship in order to give that child the best chance of being able to communicate their view effectively. Dr Barnes at McFarland, do you have anything to add to that? Yes. I think just to add one small point which is that taking the views of younger children and involving them in any kind of legal process is a really new concept in law. So yes, there definitely would be a need for and opportunities for training of appropriate professionals within this sort of new approach that we're developing. Can I ask one follow-up just to the answer specifically there? What sort of training do you think would specifically be needed and is there anyone in particular who you think would be best to provide that? Well again, a lot of—Zera might have more information about specific providers of training but I think it would be a requirement to understand aspects of child development in dealing with younger children in particular about how younger children communicate. As Zera said, younger children are less likely to articulate their feelings in language that adults will immediately be able to understand and process. So I think that we need to begin to learn how to listen to younger children and I'm not sure if that's something that we do as a society particularly well. I think that the legal system is just one facet of that. But yes, I think that it would involve a multidisciplinary approach with people who understand more about child development than lawyers do. Thank you. Thank you, convener, and good morning. Thank you for your comments so far. You both touched on the issues about children being overlooked, being disregarded in this whole process and you've also talked today about the child welfare reporter. That is seen as the future as to support and try and balance that difference. Do you believe that that will be the case? Because it is giving the opportunity for the individuals to express their views and opinion, but is it maybe not the same that there's not a relationship there or how do they build that relationship? I get from both of you today that it's about confidence, it's about the child feeling confident, it's about the child feeling that they are given the chance to express their views, because in the past it would appear that those views have been disregarded or ignored. If we are putting a lot of emphasis on the child welfare reporter, what needs to happen with that to ensure that it is successful and that there is progress? Without that, we're back to where we started. Let me see the first. How would you be that we could draw on? Really, I don't think it matters what profession somebody comes from. I think what's important is the ability to form a relationship with a child and understand how to communicate with a child at different ages and stages. I think that comes from training. I think that comes from having a system that is more accountable than it is at the moment and more structured. I think what's really important is for somebody to go into being a child welfare reporter who has an interest in children's rights. I think that's where it needs to come from, where I think what we're drawing on at the moment is no disrespect to the legal position, but we are drawing on solicitors who, child welfare reporting is incentivised financially. We're drawing on a very limited pool of people and they are also representing as defence agents. For me, that's a real conflict of interest. I think that the important thing is that the profession doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what we draw around. What matters is that it's interesting working with children and getting children's views. Lesley-Anne, you are a lawyer and you have that background. You have heard the comments that Sarah Smyddia said. Do you believe that the child welfare reporter is being managed in the right way, the focus is in the right emphasis to ensure that that relationship can be built? In terms of the way that the system is set up under the 1995 act and that it will continue to be set up under the 2020 act, child welfare reporters fulfil an important function, but they do lots of things. They don't just take the views of children. The court rules say that their job is investigative. They carry out investigations, usually investigating family members, teachers, other professionals that might work with the child. Importantly, they make recommendations to the court about what the court rules call effective and expedient resolution of an issue or a dispute about children. Once the 2020 act comes into force, there will also be an additional role, which will be where the court asks them to provide an explanation to children of the court's decision. That's an awful lot of roles that they are exercising. What they absolutely are not is a child's advocate. Their role is not to support children and be the person that gives them information. Yes, there are very important professionals in the process, and if they were replaced, something else would have to be there to facilitate the court's decision making, but they are not there to be the child's representative, supporter or advocate. There is still a big gap there for someone who can make the process less upsetting and intimidating for the child to make the child feel that they are being heard. That is not really the function of a child welfare reporter. I would absolutely support the steps that the Scottish Government is taking to have a register and in terms of having more uniform training, particularly in terms of taking views from younger children, but my view—and I understand what Sarah is saying and what the children's organisations are saying as well—is that a separate role, entirely—a children's advocate or whatever you want to call it—is needed to support children through that process. I have no particularly strong views whether the child welfare reporter is a solicitor or someone from another profession. I think that the important thing that Sarah says is that they have an interest in children and that they understand children's rights and that they understand the process and can investigate and give recommendations to work in that process. The Scottish Government has talked about the necessity to broaden the scope of the role and to try to bring in other professionals. You have touched on that. At the moment, it is primarily the legal service that has the lion's share of that, but there has been talk about broadening that to social work or psychologists to try to bring them into the role to try and once again tease out or embrace some of the focus that has been identified. Do you think that that is a successful way of trying to move it, because by taking it into a different area and giving more opportunity for individuals to participate, that may well be successful also? Absolutely. I think that that is something that we are definitely discussing with the Scottish courts and tribunal service about the benefits that other professions can bring in, particularly when it comes to expertise in talking to very young children. Sarah, do you have any comment on that, bringing in the different professions to the process? Like I said, I think that it is about that kind of interest in working with children and the interests in children's rights. My question is about judicial specialisation. Some legal systems around the world and in the UK make greater use of specialised family courts or specialised family judges. We know that, in the larger urban areas in Scotland, some young people will have access to specialised sheriffs, but others do not have that. What impact would the wider roll-out of the greater court of judicial specialisation have on children and young people's participation and decision making in Scotland? My question goes to Dr Leslie first. I think that it is absolutely a system in which people understand and know more about children and their rights and how to communicate with children can not be a bad thing. Yes, absolutely, greater specialisation for those working with children is definitely something worth discussing and considering. I absolutely agree. I think that we need to offer equity of service across Scotland. We are working in a rural area and we have only got two sheriff courts in the area and only one or two sheriffs presiding over all criminal and civil cases. I think that we would absolutely welcome specialisation. I think that it is really important to differentiate this particularly complex area of civil justice. It needs to be protected and treated differently. Absolutely. Thank you. I have just got one more question. Just going back to something that my colleagues spoke about, Pam Duncan-Glancy, back to the 2020 act. We have heard about Dr Leslie talking about that she gave comments in to make sure that certain things such as children under the age of 12 views are heard. Just now, with Karen talking about the pandemic, my colleague is talking about and, after the 1995 act being there and now the 2020 act hopefully coming into force, but not in force yet, is that anything that you feel that now moving on today that should be in that 2020 act, that you did not feel at the time, even a start with Dr Leslie Ann when she talked about it? Is there anything that you feel that you would bring now into that act that was not there before? Do you mean in view of the pandemic and the challenges with that? In the pandemic, and obviously the view of now the child hearing and the systems, and the child hearings and all the systems, how we did hear from yourself earlier on, talking about that. Sarah mentioned that children were not heard when it came to online and everything, so do you think that act now needs to be changed or amended in any way that now taking that into account and that such a pandemic can happen and where we are today? I think fundamentally the provisions in the act are a great step forward. I think where the concern lies is that the supportive infrastructure below the act because when we think about people's experience of going to court, yes, they are told about the primary legislation and the kinds of orders that they might get at the end of the day, but at the end of the day, for family members, might actually be months or years down the line, and their day-to-day experiences of going through a process, how well they understand the process, how well they are represented, how well it is explained to them and for children, it is an incredibly long process and although they are the subjects of that process, very often they do not feel part of it, but they do not feel that they are involved or listened to, and that is what we hear time and time again. Yes, absolutely, the 2020 act is a great step forward and it is something that we will have to keep under review. There will be areas that will need to be tweaked and amended over the years, I am sure, but it is the supportive elements, the day-to-day management of cases that have to be considered, and that is why we have been talking quite a lot about support worker children, about somebody who can actually make sure that children can navigate their way through a process that adults find stressful and baffling at times. Thank you, Dr Leslie Sarah. I do not think that there is anything I would add to that. I completely agree with what Leslie Anne is saying. I think it is just really important that we enact what is already written in and try to speed up that process of implementation. It was a long consultation process, I think so many of these issues were around before the pandemic and have only been exacerbated by a pandemic. I think that it is really important that we just try to put some of these new bits of legislation into force as soon as possible. Just one more question on that. Earlier on you did mention that, obviously, through the pandemic, when children obviously went online, they felt that they were not heard. We heard from witnesses earlier on in some sessions, they talked about that online sessions, a lot of people found it better, and some people, obviously, like you have said, have not got any views on that. I think that it is about choice. I think that it is about giving young people choice. I think that we have got the use of virtual technology and the speed at which we had to implement a lot of that. It has given us more options in terms of how we engage with children and young people. We have had to do it, but some young people are more comfortable in that space, some are. It is just about being child-centred. It is another option that we can offer to children and young people. I think that we have covered a lot of ground here in the two questions. I apologise in advance because part of it has already been covered. I want to ask again about the child welfare reporters. I was an MSP in the last committee that seen the legislation through, and that was an area that we had a lot of discussion about, as the panellists will probably remember themselves. We talked a bit about who the child welfare reporters are, and that discussion was obviously heard when the bill has been brought through as well, whether they are legal professionals or social workers or psychologists. In more broader terms, Sarah, if I could come to you first if you could think about whether you feel now that it is the correct approach and what are the main features that you think the child welfare reporter system needs to have in order for it to be a success moving forward? I would be happy to go to Sarah first, if that is all right. Yes, that is fine. I was just thinking about my answer. I suppose, like I said before, the most important thing for us is that ability to speak to children and that interest in speaking to children and that protection of children's rights. I think what is important for us as well is parity of service for children and young people. What we see is a very inconsistent approach to that child welfare process. What Lesley-Anne said about child welfare reporters having an investigative role as well is that, in our experience, we do not always see that as happening. I think that we see that investigative role happening and then not the children's views bit happening. What would be important for us is that structure to it and that equity of service for children and young people, that they know what that role is for and why and that process is explained to them and that they understand it and are able to contribute to that, that they feel that it is about that participation in it, it is about that relationship with that person in that particular role. I do not really have any points to add to that. I think that the child welfare role at the moment in terms of the system is a necessary role, as far as I can see, but it is not a role that is purely focused on the child's participation. There is a need for something extra for another person who is more specialist and who is more dedicated to the child, because, as we can see in terms of all the different functions that child welfare reporter fulfills, taking the child's views is just one of those. Again, if we are bringing the views of younger children into the system, it is not really reasonable to think that people in a legal system that has never done that before are just automatically going to be able to do that, which is why we need input from child development specialists. We need training on how to communicate with and understand the views that are expressed in lots of different forms of younger children. I suppose that your answer leads me nicely to my final question, which is about the bringing the section 21 into force. I know that we have touched on that already. Obviously, the Scottish Government has expressed a policy concern about bringing this section into force, because, if you like, the fear that children could end up with multiple support workers. I have gone from my own experience—that is not an uncommon scenario anyway—that the children have multiple professionals or agencies working with them. However, do you think that, in that context, that that is a valid concern, or do you not? Do you think that it is more about an integrated approach, as a way of addressing it? I am happy to stick with you, sorry, Doctor. Yes, I do not really see that as a valid concern. I think that children need to have access to advocacy support in whatever forum they find themselves. That is regardless of whether it is the children's hearing system, the criminal system or the family court system. There are a number of advocacy providers across Scotland, and their views could be sought on whether they see that there are any practical or substantive problems with them, for example, providing advocacy services to the same child as an integrated way across more than one particular forum. Certainly, what we know from the advocacy service that has been provided through the children's hearing system, although it is relatively new, is that the Government of the Scottish one-year review of that is stated to be essential to children's properly understanding and realising their rights in that process, and that it is improving the quality of discussions and decisions. That is very much what we want to see within the family court forum, and that is very much what we think is missing. Thank you. Do you have any views on that final question? It is just important that children and young people have that advocacy role. I think that it is about absolutely prioritising that, and that person being able to be alongside a young person on whatever journey that it is that they are going on, whether that is through criminal process or through civil process or whether it is both. It is about that trusted person, that relationship. I think that that would minimise the risk of re-traumatising children. Children have to tell their stories multiple times. Being asked six or seven times the same thing by different people is not okay, so we need to be able to give children that consistency. Thank you very much. Is there any member who has any final questions, or are we? Thank you to both witnesses for your evidence. That has been really helpful. We will now suspend for about five minutes until 11 o'clock. So we are going to be restarting in a bit. Okay, thank you. We now welcome to the meeting our second panel. We welcome Alasdor Hogg, head of practice and policy at Scottish Children's Reporter Administration, Mae Dinsmure, chamber president of the health and education chamber of the first year Tribunal for Scotland additional support needs jurisdiction, who is joining us remotely, and Jordan Crone, advocacy and participation manager who cares Scotland. You are all very welcome. Again, I invite witnesses to make short opening statements if they wish to do so, starting with Alasdor Hogg, please. Thanks very much, convener. My name is Alasdor Hogg, I'm head of practice and policy at SCRA. The children's hearing system, as I'm sure committee members know, has been in existence for over 50 years now, so we very much welcome the committee's invitation to give evidence today and to share our own experience over the last 50 years, which has been a real journey in terms of our encouragement and improvement activity in relation to obtaining children's views and obtaining wider meaningful participation of children in our hearing system and processes. I wouldn't want the committee to think that we are claiming that we've got it all right. We certainly do not do so. We try to get it right as much as we possibly can, and over that 50-year journey, we have made lots of improvements, changes and adaptations. We've had lots of engagement with children and young people, both individually and collectively, and with organisations who champion children's rights, and we are still on that journey of improvement, which has been re-energised through the promise and our activity in relation to that. What I would like to say is that, having had the first session today and prepared for today's meeting, although this is an area that is not easy, not in the slightest bit, it's as I say, we're still on a journey after 50 years, but in some respects it's quite straightforward and it's not that complicated. If you're trying to obtain meaningful participation of children, you need to provide the right foundations that allow them to provide those views and to meaningfully participate. I'm sure that we'll explore those foundations in the questions and discussions, but, essentially, children need to be properly informed. They need to be assisted and supported to help them understand what is going on. They need to be properly prepared for whatever process they're engaging with. They need to have their rights protected and promoted. They need to be supported before, during and after. They need to have a consistency of that support. They need to be allowed to build relationships with people who will help them to participate and provide their views. They need to have the right environments. They need to have the right conditions and the right tools, which will assist them to provide their views. To create those conditions that enable their voice to be heard, and their views need to be valued, there needs to be a way of ensuring that they know that their views are valued. All that takes investment, and it takes investment of time and investment of resources, and that's what we've found over the years. I'm happy to share any of our experiences and to provide any detail of that if it's helpful to the committee. Thank you very much for inviting me to give evidence on the experience of the additional sport needs tribunal. We're not as old as SCRA. The additional sport needs tribunal in various forms has been around for 17 years now. We've learned that meaningful children's participation has to begin at the beginning, not midway and not at the end. In our jurisdiction, children and young people sit at the heart of our processes. They have the most authentic voice, and that's very important here, authenticity. They hold the expertise. Beginning at the beginning can feel quite risky from an adult perspective. You don't hold complete control, and a child or young person can sniff out a fraud easily. I expect today that you'll want to hear about the sensory hearing suites that we've created and our journey to get there. I'd like to refer to that briefly to illustrate what I mean about beginning at the beginning. After many years myself as a children's reporter, a mental health lawyer and then as a member of the judiciary, one thing was crystal clear. Children and young people's voices are often drowned out by the sheer volume of personal and professional adults in their lives. When I became president of the former additional sport needs tribunal for Scotland, which it was before it transferred into the first tier tribunal, and I became president in 2014, I then made a public commitment to learn how to deliver justice by listening directly to children and young people. What I meant by directly went beyond the great value of listening to children's organisations and the children's commissioner, teacher, parent groups and so on, and into the company of children themselves. I began this journey by meeting first with the young ambassadors for inclusion and then moved on from there. I started with a large white blank sheet of paper. That was the only tool I took when I went to speak to these children and young people. I asked two questions. First, do you want to come to hearings? Whichever type of hearing that is, do you want to come? Do you want to participate in hearings that make decisions about you? When I spoke about hearings, I meant children's hearings, additional sport needs hearings, sport hearings that I wanted to hear from children's experiences themselves, whether they wanted to be involved. After that question, I asked, if yes, what should a hearing look like? I have to say that, from every group and individual child that I have listened to, the answer to that first question, do you want to come to hearings, was a resounding yes. That took me back a little because I expected there to be a high volume of yes's, but I did expect to hear some no's, but that was a very resounding yes. The answer to the second question, what should a hearing look like, led to what we now call our sensory hearing suites. That big blank sheet of paper began to look entirely different to what I thought it would, right from the get-go, and it is from that that we built layer upon layer, an accessible justice environment, each layer designed by children and young people. They own what we now have, and they themselves deserve the credit for that. I have to say that, like Alistair, we are on a continuum of improvement. Improvement isn't static, and we are continually learning and improving on what we have. I want to stop now with some quotes from children and young people. One teenager, when I asked what would help him to feel equal in a hearing, said a suit. Another, when asking for a table, said the table should be round, like King Arthur's round table, where everyone is equal. Finally, one child, when asked what would help her to feel relaxed and involved in the hearing, said a drinking straw. Access to justice isn't always complicated. I am an advocate and participation manager for Who Care Scotland in the south-east region, and on behalf of the organisation and our members, I thank you very much for inviting us to contribute today. Who Care Scotland is the country's national, only national independent membership organisation for care experienced people? We currently have over three and a half thousand members, and our strategic vision is to secure a lifetime of equality, respect and love for all care experienced people in Scotland. At the heart of our work are the rights of care experienced people, and over the years we have seen the power of their voices bring about change for our community. We provide relationship-based independent advocacy services, and a range of connection and participation offers for all care experienced people across Scotland. In the past year, we have provided advocacy services for over 1,600 young people, and our helpline also offers a lifelong advocacy service for care experienced people, for adults who have lived experience of the care system. We also work alongside corporate parents and others to improve the understanding of care and challenge the stigma faced by care experienced people every day. We work to create opportunities for our members to influence policy makers, leaders and elected representatives both locally and nationally to achieve positive change and build on the aspirations of the promise. My role is to manage a team of independent advocacy workers in my region, who work day-to-day with children and young people to help them to play an active role in the decisions that are made about them and around them. When describing our role, we often describe it, and it is interesting that May talks about the noise around young people at formal process meetings and hearings. What we describe ourselves as their own megaphone, we are there to raise their voice, and we are not interested in the noise around them. It is their way of raising their voice. It is a really nice way of explaining it in very simple terms, because, like Alistair May said, a lot of the answers that we may be seeking here can be quite simple. Independent advocacy is different from advocacy, and I guess that the simplest way I can describe that is that we are skilled professional advocacy workers who have no other purpose or role within the young person's journey, other than to help them understand their rights, to realise those rights and to represent their views in an informed way, so making sure that they have all of the information that they need to make an informed choice and to express those views to the people around them. Independent advocacy is defined by the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance, as speaking up for and standing alongside individuals or groups and not being influenced by the views of others. We believe that this is a key tool in helping children and young people to claim and understand their rights. I hope that, after the conversation, we are able to offer a little more clarity on advocacy, but also the difference between that and independent advocacy, and how we can best help to ensure article 12 in the UNCRC and realise the rights of young people to express their views in a way that suits them. We have 40 years of experience as an independent advocacy agency, so we are not quite at the 50th yet. I do not have anywhere near 40 years of experience, so anything that I can answer, we will offer written evidence to the panel as well. Committee members will direct their questions at witnesses, but if they have not asked you and you want to come in, they will just indicate and may, if you just put R in the chat, if you are wanting to particularly come in or come back in. You have already given us a lot of information and a lot to think about. Following on from the questions, I asked the first panel around advocacy services. I am going to ask all three of you if that is okay. Can you tell us a little bit more about the role that the children's advocate performs under the current hearing systems and tribunals? What can we learn from that? What are the pros and cons of having a system that has a significant role for children's advocates? When I come to you, Jordan, maybe I will start with you, given that you spoke about advocacy. Jordan, you talked about the distinction between advocacy and independent advocacy. How do we draw that out in the children's advocate issue? I guess to start with that last point, but how do we draw that out? I guess that the simplest or the thing that I want to get across the most is that the independent advocacy worker only has one role and does not have as what we have described as having a lot of different roles. That helps to redress some of the power balances that young people face with adults around them, understandably they feel sometimes at the bottom of that power balance, that they have one person within their professional sphere that is just there to help them to make sense of their views because sometimes they do not know, they can change, they have every right to change their views as well. It is really about investing time in that process in order to make young people really be able to grasp that and understand it. That is where advocacy within the CHS, and we have been providing advocacy services both locally and nationally for just over 40 years. We have been doing it in various different ways all across Scotland. Currently, we are working 29 of the 32 local authorities. With the introduction of advocacy within the CHS, we have a lot of other providers in different local authority areas as well. The main thing around that is time as well. There is a five-step process, and without going through all the steps, it is a beginning, middle and an end. However, the aspect of relationship-based advocacy is about giving the young person choice to be able to continue that as well. When we previously spoke about how there are going to be multiple advocacy workers for young people, that is an issue that we have already faced within the CHS. We are already dealing with that, and it goes back to the principles of the promise. It is all of our roles to be able to speak to young people and to be able to advocate for them, to make sure that people are listening to them. However, the independent advocacy worker—what we would suggest is that the importance of that being independent is that they are skilled professionals and that is their sole purpose. Thank you. Alistair, do you want to come in on that as well? Yes, I would be happy to. First, as Jordan has alluded to in the hearing system, advocacy has been around for decades. What has changed just over a year ago was the implementation of section 122 of the 2011 act, which allowed for national provision, so that the ability to access advocacy right around the country, whereas previously it was only if that service was available within a particular local authority area. The advocacy service has been a resounding success in terms of the section 122 provision, but prior to that as well, I think that it was widely recognised that the benefits that advocacy workers would bring to hearing were substantial. The advocacy worker is there to support and represent, to assist the child, and that support, as Jordan says, before, during and after is absolutely crucial. We know that the consistency of relationship is very important. Jordan Young people tell us that all the time to build a relationship and to have that consistency is pretty essential. Having someone independent with them can be extremely helpful for the child or young person, and there is something also in terms of what children and young people tell us, in terms of what inhibits them in participating, which is about the power dynamics that can go on. That is not just within children's hearings, but within any kind of core or tribunal setting, in that sense that there are others who are in control, there are others who have the power, and what can you say that may change that in advocacy worker or some kind of representation for a child can really help to address that sense of power imbalance to address those power dynamics. It has been very successful. I cannot remember if there was another part to your question, sorry. It was that connection, that independent element, but I think that Jordan has covered that. Mae, can I come to you now? I'm thinking about particularly your experience. I've got a question about access to justice, which you ended on, which I'll come to, but specifically around advocacy in the additional support needs settings, how is that distinct or different or what benefits do you see it playing in those settings? Advocacy is critical in the additional support needs tribunal, and our primary legislation, the Scottish ministers, are obliged to make provision of advocacy services for children and young people who are going to be involved in our proceedings. I've served in a number of jurisdictions over the years, and I would have to say that it's in this jurisdiction where I've seen advocacy most available that the problems in other jurisdictions over the years were that it was difficult sometimes to find provision, and the statutory basis of provision wasn't always entirely clear. I think that we start with a very clear premise here in having an obligation to make that provision. From our perspective, I've never had any real difficulty in finding advocacy services across Scotland, although there was a period of time where, briefly, we struggled to see advocacy provision in the north-east, but that was largely resolved. I produced guidance on independent advocates in our proceedings in 2018 to reinforce understanding and the value of their role. I couldn't better the comments that Jordan has given about the role of the independent advocate, and it's that that makes their relationship with that child so valuable and so important. We emphasise throughout our proceedings the importance of independence, and we always talk about the independence of the tribunal that we've got nothing to do with health, social work and education. We stand or we sit wholly independent of all those, but the independent advocate has an even stronger value to the child in that element of independence. I think that it's also important to acknowledge that developing a relationship between the child and the advocate does take time, and that's something that Jordan commented on. There is a beginning, a middle and an end, and one of the questions that was asked earlier about the role of advocates in different proceedings is that my hope would be that there is a place for a single advocate to be with a child on their journey across multiple jurisdictions. Ultimately, that advocate is there to support the child, to give the views not to act as a representative. That's quite a distinct and separate role, but it ought to be possible for that one person. We have learned over the years that children need a consistent individual adult in their life, whoever that adult may be, and I think that the advocate could actually be that consistent person. One thing that I would say as well is that the committee might be interested in the work of the Scott review looking into the mental health act, and its focus on children and young people has made a suggestion in their consultation document about whether there is value in a single system for children instead of children having to go through multiple systems, going through one system that would deal with multiple areas of law. That might seem a bit blue sky thinking, but I personally don't think that it is. I think that we ought to be very ambitious when it comes to children and young people, but I mention that because I think that an advocate can journey across more than one system. It's very valuable and very involved. I can't think of many hearings where a child does not have an advocate who is most likely to have, and if he doesn't have his own independent advocate, we will instruct an independent advocate to go and take the views of the child. While we are the ones instructing that, that doesn't compromise or interfere with the independent relationship of the advocate with the child. That is helpful. My final question is just to pick up on your final point about access to justice that doesn't need to be difficult. It sometimes involves really easy and, once we think about them, very obvious adaptations and things to put in place. What lessons do you think that the sheriff court system should be learning from the additional sports need tribunal system to enable and enhance access to justice in that safe, informed and consistent way that all three of you have already spoken about? I think that we all need to learn from each other. Our journey of learning has come from a variety of sources—who cares Scotland or Jordan's speaking for them today. We learned from who cares Scotland. We had a young adult come to speak to us who taught us that the impact of re-traumatisation is so considerable that wherever he walked past the place where children's hearings were held, he was physically sick, even as a young adult. I would say that learning from one another is absolutely critical. The tribunal is different from the courts. We are a specialist tribunal. We only deal with children and young people in this setting. Using that specialist knowledge, we have grown and developed over time, so we need to continue to share with one another and to illustrate that the judicial institute has regularly asked the tribunal to come and deliver training to courts on what we have learned in terms of the impact of the environment for children and young people. What I say to the courts and others who ask is that I have learned that it is not rocket science. Sometimes, they are not highly expensive magic ingredients. What we have developed, for example, in the sensory hearing suites, could be recreated, perhaps not to the spec that we have created them because we had an investment of resources to do that. However, I have said to others that we can find a round table. If children are saying that they prefer a round table, but they do not want it to be a rectangle and they want it to be round because they feel as if there is parity, take away the different sizing of chairs and have all the chairs looking the same. Have less adults in the room. Stop drowning out the voices of children in that way. Ask them what they want before they come along and help them to understand what they are going to face, what the place is going to look like, who the person is, and what they are going to be giving their views to. Use social stories is a great tool that we have used regularly throughout the pandemic because we have had to help children and young people to give their views on-screen. We learned that they were better at that than we were. We were far less comfortable than children and young people, where they taught us a great deal more about the use of screens. We need to share our learning. I think that there is an awful lot that we can learn from one another. Ultimately, we need to learn authentically, as I keep saying, the authentic voice of the child to listen to what they are telling you. When you have developed something, do not think that that is it. You have cracked it because you have discovered that there is something else perhaps that you could do better. However, the young person who came up with the round table when he came to the launch of the sensory hearing suite in Glasgow walked in. I was more nervous, I have to say, about his view than I was of the Minister for Children and Young People who was with me at the time, but he walked in, looked at that round table, tapped it and said, this is cracking. This is absolutely cracking. I am happy to continue to share what we are learning from children and young people. I think that the courts are open to that. I think that we are all keen to get this right. We are all keen to do it better. Pam Goswll, please. Thank you very much, panel, for your opening statements. I will ask this question to the previous panel and just ask that question again. There is a common theme that was raised among witnesses at the previous session arising from the pandemic. It was whether a child should have the autonomy to decide for themselves the manner in which they wish to be heard. That could be online, it could be in person and also how they wish to be represented. The implementation of article 12 in the UNCRC would strengthen the child's right to have their views heard. Do you think that being more flexible and adaptable to what the child is comfortable with is key to the court making the best decision in the interests of the child? I would go to my question first to me, because I know that you spoke about straws, roundtables, suits. How do they feel and how relaxed are they? The question is to you first. That very question goes to the heart of what we do. I always say to my tribunal members that anything is possible, which is possible. That is the premise. We always give the child the opportunity to decide how they want to be heard, where they want to be heard and the best way in which they want to communicate. If we look at that before the pandemic and we are beginning to reintroduce some aspects of in-person hearings, we are on a journey towards that. However, a hearing room can look exactly as the child wants it to look. It can have its own imaging on whether we have a sensory wall in our hearing suites. If a child says that the colour red helps me to soothe or that I would like to doodle, I have a great doodle and I would like to put in the wall, which is where the concept came from. It came from a child who was doodling the mane of a lion of all things. He said that the doodle on the wall would really help that child to relax. We can personalise the hearing room itself. We also have a breakout area in that hearing room, which has bean bags and a little fridge where they can access water and snacks, filled with autism. They really find snacking very helpful. They like to bite in some biscuits and sweet things. All of the children said that they needed fresh water. The principle of that breakout area is that it belongs to them. It does not belong to us. No other adult can use that area. Children were telling us that they get fed up with adults telling them when they had had enough. Sometimes children would get upset when they heard people talking about personal things, but they wanted to be able to remain in the hearing. They did not want the fact that they had become upset to result in them having to leave the hearing room. That breakout area is a valuable area where children can go but still remain in the hearing room itself. They can choose to sit at the table in a sofa area that is to the side of the chair. When it comes to online proceedings, they can choose which room they are going to be in. They can choose whether they want to speak to everyone with the cameras on or off. They can choose to send a video. They can choose to use talking maps. They can use Macaton, VSL and various different forms of language. Ultimately, I cannot think of anything yet that we have had to say that we cannot do just before the pandemic hit, much to my disquiet, because I was the legal member on the hearing. The child who was coming along wanted to bring a very large guinea pig. I was told that it was about the size of a rabbit, not my favourite animal, but that was fine. We learned from listening to registered intermediaries who are specialists in communication with children and young people that bringing a pet to proceedings can sometimes help to produce the very best of evidence, because the child is most relaxed. We allow pets. During online proceedings, we have dogs and cats on screen. Various animals, such as children, feel, are going to help them the most. I brought my own dog into an online hearing at one point to help a child to relax, introduced my dog to them, helped them to settle down and they were much more comfortable after that. I could go on endlessly, but I think that that gives you the best sense of the approach that we take. Really, we do say that anything that is possible is an ought to be possible. Thank you. I am just going to that question to Jordan, because Jordan, you mentioned that in the last year over 1,600 people came to you for your service. Anything from them on this or their view on whether they would like to be online or actually in presence there? It really goes back to the original answer from this morning, as well, of choice. The pandemic showed that it did not really give young people that choice. We were all forced into a situation in which we had no other choice than to go online. However, that leads us now into a situation in which we can meet in person again. It is great to be here today, in person, as opposed to being on a screen. For young people, we now have a system, particularly within the CHS, of being able to support young people's choice whether to be online or not, because each young person is so different. Depending on the circumstances around them, depending on what is going on in their life, their choice is to be either online or in person. It might change from one meeting to the next. It is really great that we have that choice. Here in May's examples of how you can help to involve young people are just incredible. I have really not got much more to add on that. Other than that, we also have loads of really inventive and creative ways of gathering views for young people and then helping them to choose how they want to express it, whether it is arts and craft-based activities. We have some advocacy workers who use Minecraft as a digital tool to help to explore their thoughts and feelings, and they can build this digital world and make sure that to members of the panel at children's hearing. However, in terms of the court system, one thing that I would highlight is that flexibility is key but also consistency. Particularly right now, when young people use our services for family law or for anything to do with the courts, we have had a lot of examples of where there has been barriers even to being able to access advocacy. They have the advocacy relationship. We had a specific example of a referral that was made by a social worker for a young person who was already receiving advocacy and already had a relationship with our local worker. It was around contact arrangements with mum. That young person spoke to their advocacy worker, explored how they were feeling about it, decided that they did not want any changes to be made to their order on contact. They liked the fact that, at that moment, they could choose when they wanted to see mum, and that was important to them. However, when those views were represented—they were fed back to the social worker who represented that to the court—the written views were not accepted because the sheriff decided that, because they had not asked for those views, they were not going to listen to them and instructed a child welfare reporter to go out and speak to the young person. Although the advocacy worker was able to support the young person, he could not say anything. That can also have an impact, because we build relationships with young people and we figure out between the two of us what is best for them and what works for them. Another example is that a young person who has an advocacy worker is autistic and, when they are in meetings, they like to listen to the question, write their answer on their iPad and then show it to their advocacy worker who says it out loud. That is a perfect example of the very essence of advocacy of being that megaphone. However, in that particular meeting, they would not have been able to do that because that is where flexibility is key, but also consistency in ensuring that it is not up to whatever the role it is, whether it is a sheriff or a child welfare reporter, to ensure that young people are given that flexibility and consistency to be able to do it time and time again. Thank you, Jordan. Just over to you, Alistair. You did speak about having the right—being on that journey and having the right foundations in place. You talked about children being prepared, informed and supported before and after. What is your view on online and in-person attendance? Just as me and Jordan have said, your choice is absolutely key. You need to have a range of options. Talking about online or being in person, certainly pre-pandemic, that was a choice that we were trying to work towards. That was technologically proving very difficult and challenging. The pandemic arrived and that changed instantly overnight. It is incredible how you are able to achieve things in a crisis. That technology and the journey of virtual hearings has been on a real improvement trajectory ever since then to now a much more bespoken and supported offering. We definitely had feedback from children and young people that it is their preferred way of engaging with the hearing, not for all. Not every time, as Jordan says, either choice will change depending on what the circumstances are for that individual child at the time. We absolutely continue to offer that choice. That choice can be to attend your hearing in person. It can be to attend a virtual hearing, which is fully virtual, or it can be that you can virtually attend a hearing where other people are physically in a room. Technically enabling that is challenging, but we have been able to achieve that quite successfully. There is a lot also in terms of the actual environment. If the individual child wishes to physically attend the hearing room and the hearing centre, there is a lot that we can do and that we do to support that. We have not gone to the lens of having dogs and guinea pigs in the hearings, but there is no reason why we could not consider that if that is what is going to help the child to participate. However, we have embarked on a project of changing every single hearing room in which we operate children's hearings. We are nearly at the end of that first cycle of that journey to have them all done. Contrary to the information that the young people said to me, rather than having a round table, the children and young people fed back to me and said, no table please, we do not want a table, because that was felt to be impacting on the power dynamic again. We do not generally have large tables in our hearing rooms. We arrange and organise and plan them in accordance with what young people tell us to do, and that can be relating to the furniture, to the colour scheme, to the pictures on the wall, but also what they wish most of all is that a hearing centre is safe and that it is warm and that it is welcoming. Those are the environments that we try to create, and we offer lots of ways of trying to support them. Pre-hearing visits, for example, come along to the hearing centre on a day before your hearing is taking place to see the environment, to choose where you want to sit, to get a feel for whether that is going to fit with your needs and ability to participate. As Mae has said, there is a huge amount that we can all learn from each other, and I am learning from today as well, so I hope that that is helpful for us to share our experience. Thank you for your information and answers to date. We have talked about the whole idea of trying to ensure that young people feel at ease and are part of the process. We have learned through not just today but from other discussions that a young person could have anything between eight or ten adult professionals working with them through their case or their support, and that can be quite daunting for anybody at any age, far less a child. It would be useful to get a flavour from you all about the strengths and the weaknesses that you see at present in the system that you have and how that system can be adapted and supported to ensure that there is a better outcome, because it is about outcomes that we want to hear from the young people themselves. You have already given examples about how you can facilitate some of that, but the basic outcome that the child wants is to be listened to and to be acted on and supported and potentially protected. What strengths and weaknesses in the system do we have today that need to be looked at to achieve that goal for those young people? Maybe I will come to Alasdor first, because you have the organisation with the length of experience of all that over the generations. What we have heard for many years now, most recently through our hearing our voice project, which is a group of young people with either current or very recent experience of children's hearings and who provided their 40 calls to action in a fantastic document. Within that, there are lots of indications of where we can make the changes that will help. One of them relates to the number of people and the number of people in the room, the number of people involved in a child's life. We also know from research that we carried out jointly with our partners at The Who Care Scotland that one of the issues is about the number of people with whom their very sensitive and confidential information has to be shared. The more people that are involved, the more people get to know all about their private life. That can really impact on a child's sense of freedom about sharing their views and information. There is definitely something that has to be addressed in terms of trying to ensure that we are very careful about how many particularly professionals are involved in a young person's life. I think that there is a difference between those people who are necessarily involved in a child's life and those people who are involved as a result of the process. A child or a young person will have lots of people in their life with whom they have an existing, trusting relationship. To allow them to be part of their journey and their process, it would be really important, so if a child or a young person wishes someone to come with them to a hearing to support them, they will ask them who they would wish that to be. That might be somebody in addition to an advocacy worker who is being titled to have that. That might be their uncle, that might be their grandfather or grandmother, that might be a neighbour, a friend, but that is going to help them. We have to be careful about just how many people get involved. I guess that possibly links back to the question earlier today in terms of the potential for there to be multiple advocacy workers. I would echo what Mae had said earlier in relation to that, that it should be possible to have a kind of integrated advocacy service which could provide that service no matter what process you were involved with. Jordan, you talk about trying to facilitate and you are facilitating, there is no question, but are there any specific areas that you believe that you could enhance or you have already identified have a weakness or a blind spot? Yes, I guess that some of the strengths, as Alasdair said, are definitely interesting going back to that, because it was quite a significant difference in a hearing centre when the table was taken out. I remember that I was an advocacy worker at the time in Midlodian, and when that table was coming out, it was quite a significant moment. Actually, it was recognised by the hearing centre, it was really like keyified, it was all soft furnishings and it was led by the young people, it was co-designed by young people and it was a really significant moment. There is definitely more choice and a more value on advocacy, but also on value and the importance of young people feeling comfortable, as comfortable as they can in situations that are not always, we are talking about difficult circumstances and emotional topics. Weaknesses, I guess, and this won't be news to anyone because it's all highlighted very much in the promise, but particularly language that we use. Even at Hooker Scotland, we are going on a journey about what language we use. I think that we have all got a bit of work to do around language, but also how we document as well, how we write that down. There is a piece of work going on called Write Right About Me, and it's really about involving young people as much as possible in how we write about them because it's their information. Members at Hooker Scotland have done a lot of work on the impact of receiving, of getting your papers from social work and how challenging that is and how difficult that is, particularly when there's lots of information redacted, but there's also just things that we would not want written about us. There's a lot of work to be done there, I would say, in general. You've talked about trying to ensure that the policies and procedures are there to ensure that organisations and individuals feel part of the process and being accepted into the situation, but, once again, if there are layers of individuals who are adult-based trying to manage a child's situation or circumstance, what strength or weakness does that have to ensure that they feel as if they are getting their information and they're getting listened to and they're being confident and communicated about? I think that, just as Alistair and Jordan have touched upon, we're on a continuum of learning here and trying to consistently do better. The strengths in the additional support needs side, you know, there are many strengths. The first is, first of all, that a child or a young person can be a party. They can raise their own case in specified circumstances and there are very clear party rights extended to them. Very recently, I updated my own guidance on that because the National Children's Agency, My Rights My Save, fed back to me that the adult parties weren't treating the child parties as equals in the hearing process and so I was invited to reinforce their rights as a party in guidance, which I then published and which I did. That's an example of that continuum of learning. The majority of children who appear in our proceedings have neurodiverse conditions. Many of them have autism. I think that we're beginning to learn in Scotland that we are only touching the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the number of children and young people who have neurodiverse conditions. When we talk about their ability to participate, especially in the context of multiple adults, if we don't meet the physical environment as child, accessible and friendly as possible, we're failing at that first step. We have a responsibility to think about that when it comes to the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. The environment is very important. The sensory concepts that we have include that table that the children's hearing system took out. When I went in the beginning of the journey, I expected the children and young people that I was meeting to say no table please, because I'd just gone on a nice tour and looked to all of the new hearing suites as they were then in the children's hearing system. However, there's also a place in the hearing room for no table, I should say. There are three principal components. There's a soft seating area with no table. There's the round table and there's the breakout area. That reinforces the choice. We also limit the number of people who are permitted to enter the hearing room at any one time, whether that's online or in person. It's not the case that whoever turns up comes in. It's the case that the minimum number of people are in the hearing room and anyone who is there to give evidence comes in, gives the evidence and then leaves. That has been a very critical tool for children and young people in their journey through the hearing process, because, as Alston has said, they don't want everyone to know their very sensitive and very private details. Children can give evidence of how they choose, as I've mentioned before, but I haven't mentioned to you the one-to-one room that we have, which is something that was drawn from the Barnahouse model that we're looking at very closely in Scotland. It's a small room comfortably furnished with two soft arm chairs and a number of sensory toys. It has a window, which appears as a window in the room, but it's a one-way mirror that allows the hearing tribunal members and representatives to watch and observe. Children and young people only use this room by their own choice, so they have the choice to use it. In that room, they will be aware that everyone else is outside watching, but they only have one person in that room and they speak to that person and they can choose to use that. I have to say that the one-to-one room has proven to be very important to their people. We need to exercise. The other thing that I should say is that, in our proceedings, I don't permit cross-examination of children or young people. There has to be a list of agreed questions, which both parties agree upon, and then the tribunal decides who will ask those questions. If the child has an independent advocate, that will be the person who asks the questions. Sometimes, it is a tribunal member, and that leads me on to the point that the tribunal has very specialist knowledge and expertise. We have members who are speech and language therapists, psychiatrists, teachers, occupational therapists, people who have had experience of additional support needs either because they are a parent or a carer, or because they themselves have and have had additional support needs. I am pleased to say that we have representation on our membership of care experience, because that is another critical part of the additional support needs definition that children who are looked after automatically have additional support needs. Advocacy, as I have mentioned before, is very much a feature in our proceedings, but I think that I should also mention that one of the strengths is the specialist training that is given to our tribunal members. They are not left without the tools that they themselves need to have in order to make sure that the child is able to fully participate. I also did not mention the sensory room that we have in our sensory suites. That is a room that has various sensory components. The lighting is very particular. There are lots of soft toys and tactile features that children who become stressed or distressed can go and rest in and then come back into the hearing room itself. We use social stories to make sure that they know what their journey is going to look like. We have also developed a website that needs to learn that has unique features to reinforce our independence, which is accessible for children aged 12 to 15 at this moment in time. We are going to gradually bring that down ages so that it is more accessible for younger people too. We are about to introduce animations on our website that talk about what to expect when you come to hearing what it is going to look like, what to expect when it comes to giving your views, and we have developed child and young people forms that they themselves can use when they are parties to the proceedings. In terms of weaknesses, I think that the greatest weakness—this is something that touches on what Alistair said at the very beginning about children knowing what their rights are. I do not think that children in Scotland know enough about their rights. I think that a right is only a right when you know you have got it and you know how to exercise it. I think that that is a weakness across not just my own jurisdiction but across all of the jurisdictions. I think that we need to do better to overcome that. One of the weaknesses is that we are only at the beginning of a journey in developing sensory hearing suites. We have them in Glasgow and we are developing them in Inverness, but I think that we need that rolled out across Scotland. Although it is a strength and a great strength, the fact that we have so few is a weakness. I am going to have to ask Members and the panel to try to keep future going forward. Contributions are a little tighter. It has been really good, so there are lots of useful information that is really helpful to the committee. Thank you to the panel for the testimonies that we have heard this morning. It has been really fascinating and interesting to hear how far we have come. I am sure that, 50 years ago, we would not have understood how important it was to validate a child and how traumatising invalidation can be or how important boundaries and consent are. It is gone are the days where children are seen as immature adults and are now seen as people as their own person within themselves. I think that something that may have touched on when she spoke about the young person who wanted a suit. I have kept reflecting on that throughout this morning. That young person wanted to be taken seriously. I think that that spoke volumes that they wanted to be seen as an equal in that room and to have the table taken out and to have that equal standing is really important. Thank you for all that. It is certainly food for thought this morning. I would like to ask that some of the sheriffs do not communicate directly with children a great deal. We know how effective communication really underlies the entire legal process and ensuring that everyone involved is understood and understands is extremely important. Do you think that any decision maker can be trained to work with children and young people, or do you think that only specific decision makers with specialist skills are equipped for this task? I think that for us there are two parts to this. Going back to that idea of within the promise, it clearly sets out that we all have a responsibility to fulfil the promise. That is how we treat young people, how we behaviour on young people, how we support them to give their views and treat them as people with their own views and respect those views. However, in order to navigate what can be very complex situations, and in order to do that while giving the young people something that they are in control of, it is their only sole purpose to help the young person to come to an informed decision about what they want, how they want to represent their views, what their views are and how they understand and fulfil how they realise those rights. I think that that has to be someone skilled, trained and completely independent from all their services. I agree with Jordan. Just as he said, there is a lot that we learn from the promise in this regard and an expectation that all decision makers and actually everyone involved in all the different systems and processes should all have a level of skill and training in terms of how to interact with and communicate with and listen to children and young people. The training and skills that the promise reflects is to have an awareness of the trauma that may have impacted on the child, how that has impacted and how that might affect the way that they provide their views or their ability to provide their views, how they behave and how they act. They should be skilled in terms of understanding how to communicate, they should know about child development, how that will impact and they should understand neurodiversity as well. Collectively, everyone has a role in ensuring that they are skilled and trained in all those areas but, particularly, decision makers. I will be quick, but I really enjoyed what you were saying about the aspects for BSL and Macaton. Oftentimes, I forget that a lot can get lost in translation, so ensuring that that is really effective communication is so important and it is great to hear about the work in those areas. I wonder if, in the interests of being succinct, I can just rephrase that question and say that I think that any decision maker for children and young people must have specials training. I know that you have asked all, but I think that it has to be a prerequisite, it is certainly a prerequisite in our proceedings. You cannot just come along and do your best, you have actually got to learn, understand, develop the concepts, develop the practice. As Alistair has said about the promise, that has to be trauma-informed practice, so I think that it has to be the case that if you are going to make decisions about children and young people, you have to have that special training. I think that that has to be a prerequisite. Thank you, convener, and thank you to the panel for your evidence so far. I am particularly struck by the good practice that we have heard this morning and particularly from me and the ingenuity that you have explained and described. I have often said that if we can get it right for disabled people and disabled children, we can often get it right for everyone, so it feels like that is a really good benchmark to be at. Well done for everything that you have outlined. It is really important that we engage in an inclusive way and also to yourselves from the way that you have taken your approach and the learning that you have all shared, and I was struck by the fact that you all said that it was important to learn from each other. I just want to very briefly ask about the 2020 bill, and specifically it mentioned that there were a lot of things that we could learn from the children's hearing system and replicate some of those in the family court system. Perhaps, if I will start, it would be good to hear from you about what you think those things are, where they should be replicated and how other parts of the system could have the good practice that we have heard described this morning across your various different services. As a supplementary to that, what impact do you believe the delay in introducing the changes under the 2020 act has had on the ability of young people to fully participate in decisions? Okay, so I'm aware of the time, so I'll try and keep it concise. I mean, I think we've heard an awful lot already in terms of what could be learned, not just from the hearing system but clearly from other tribunals as well. We've heard a huge amount from me, which is incredibly impressive. So we've spoken about the foundations and investing in those foundations. So, if the family court setting wishes to try and learn and improve in relation to genuinely allowing and enabling children to participate and to share their views, then there really has to be an investment in that. I heard discussion earlier about child welfare reporters and their role, which is a particular role, but also whether the introduction of advocacy within that system would be really helpful. That's certainly a lesson from the children's hearing system, and even prior to the introduction of the national provision under section 122, our experience of advocacy workers in hearings was extremely beneficial. There's also the role of the safeguarding within the children's hearing system, which might have some analogy not all in relation to child welfare reporters, but a safeguarder would be an independent person trained, appointed to investigate and to engage. That would include engagement with the child or young person and to make recommendations to the hearing. That might be a role that it would be worth looking at. I'm sure it already has been. Just about that whole issue around creating choice and adaptable choice and consistent choice, never assuming or expecting that the same choice will be made by the child or young person as to how they will engage. Creating the right environment, the right conditions, providing the right tools and crucially the right support. As I said earlier, I wouldn't claim that the hearing system has all that right, but we've got an awful lot that we've learned. We've had a project that has been on-going for almost a decade now called Better Hearings, which is all about improving and creating bespoke hearings to meet the particular needs of the individual child. You create the circumstances, you appoint the right place, the right time, the right circumstances, you invite the right people, that all of which is going to better support and enable the child or young person to share their views. That will then be built upon by all of our work in relation to the promise, both in terms of improvement work that's on-going and also redesign work that's already started. In terms of your second part of your question, which is about delay, I mean clearly what the purpose of the bill is to try and address what are perceived to be issues and gaps, and clearly if there's a delay in the implementation then those gaps are not going to be filled. As I think is one of your contributors said earlier, then as long as there is that delay, then there is a barrier to children's meaningful participation in that family code process. Thank you. Just briefly to add that obviously there's a lot in the 2020 bill that we are really encouraged by, but one thing that we would hope to achieve in the not-to-distant futures is a right to independent advocacy for all young people. Also another thing to note is access to advocacy as well. I spoke earlier about the number of young people that our service was providing advocacy for last year. It was 1,628 young people and that is with 14,458 young people in Scotland who are experiencing care from last year. The numbers are still very small. We certainly wouldn't say that all young people would want advocacy, depending on their—but they have a right to at least have access to it, so that's just what I would add. Thank you, convener, and it's now good afternoon. Good afternoon to the panel and thanks for all the evidence and answers so far. It's been a really worthwhile session and I think similar to the last one. Again, the difficulty with going last, if you like, and also being the only remote member today, a lot of the areas have been covered in great depth. I do appreciate that. In particular, I did have areas of questions around how young people can be helped to give their views, but I think that we've covered a lot of that today in some really really good examples, even talking about pets and the use of tables. When I was a social worker, that was always a thing at children's hearings as well. The big table in the room and it's great to hear that we're really moving on from that. I guess what I'll then focus my substantial question on is legal representation. I'm happy to take in any order. In your own experiences, how common it is in practice for children and young people to be legally represented at children's hearings in tribunals? When does that happen? What do you think are the advantages and drawbacks of that? In our proceedings, it's very common for children and young people who are parties to have legal representation. Part of that stems from the national children's agency My Rights My Say, which introduces advocacy and legal representation as a service to 12 to 15-year-olds who had rights to bring a case to the tribunal extended in 2018. It's more common than not, and I suspect that that's less likely to be the case in what Alasdair speaks, but if I can refer briefly to another tribunal, the mental health tribunal. Again, there, like the additional support needs tribunal, it's common for children and young people to have legal representation in those proceedings. I suspect that's because there's very clear and distinctive parties in the mental health tribunal and in the additional support needs tribunal. Therefore, there are distinctive rights, and one of those rights includes the right to representation. Not expressly legal representation, a child or a young person could bring someone else who is not a lawyer to represent them, but in my experience, across both of those jurisdictions, it is commonly a solicitor who is instructed to represent the child in the tribunal. Happy to come in as well. In terms of legal representation of children and young people, it's not very common within the human system, but it automatically occurs in certain situations. There are certain criteria where they are met where legal representation will be provided automatically. In situations where there is a risk of the child being accommodated in insecure accommodation or where child protection order has been taken, there are situations where there is a really severe and acute interference in the child's life. More generally, similar to what Mee said, there is a right of representation, so a child or a young person always has that right, but that right requires an ability to instruct, particularly a legal representative. What we find is that it is very uncommon for a younger child to instruct a legal representative, less uncommon for an older child to do so, but still relatively few occasions where that happens. It is probably much more common for them to be represented by someone else or to have an advocacy worker with them. In terms of, I think, the other part of your question was what advantages would legal representation bring. I mean, as always, legal representation will bring a protection of your rights. In essence, a legal representative's role is to ensure that your rights are protected and to advocate for what you want to achieve. I suppose that it also helps to address the issue that I spoke about earlier, which is the power dynamic. It is much more common in the hearing system for the relevant persons, parents or carers of the child, to be legally represented and for the child not to be. Sometimes that power dynamic is quite imbalanced, so sometimes it can help to address that, but equally so that that kind of imbalance can be addressed by other representatives and other people that support the child, such as an advocacy worker. I guess that, to add to that, it goes perfectly on to my point of advocacy, an independent advocacy worker. We work quite a lot with young people who have legal representation. Like Alasdor, there are certain circumstances where young people are automatically given legal representation, and they can really complement each other. I guess that, to point out the difference between a legal solicitor and an advocacy service, we do not give legal advice. I guess that it is just to give an example of how it can really complement a young person in accessing their legal representative. If a young person has a meeting with their solicitor, it is very common, and I have done it myself, where the young person would like their advocacy worker to go along to that meeting. For one meeting with their legal representative, the advocacy worker would meet them, travel with them to prepare for the meeting, start to discuss how they want to represent their views, what they want to say, what is important to them, support them in that meeting with the legal representative, make sure that they understand what has been discussed, and then, afterwards, travel back with them to gather their thoughts, have any reflections, and make sure that they understand what they have said and the information that they have been given. That is how advocacy and independent advocacy can complement legal services. Okay, thank you very much. Thanks a lot, convener. Okay, thanks everyone. Time is well past time, so we'll have to wrap up there. There's lots more for us to think about in the contributions that you've all made, but thanks to all three of you for your evidence that's been really helpful. I'm sure we'll be back in touch as we consider how we might look at some of this work in the future, so thanks all very much. We'll now move into private session for the final items of our agenda.