 Welcome everyone to the Equal Opportunities Committee. It's the fourth meeting of 2015. Can I ask you to set any electronic devices to flight mode or switch off, please? I'd like to start with introductions. We are supported at the table by the clerking and research staff, official reporters and broadcasting services, and around the room by the security office. Welcome to the Obsavers and the Public Gallery. We've got apologies from Alex Johnson and I'd like to welcome Annabel Goldie as the substitute. My name's Margaret McCulloch and I'm the committee's convener. Members will now introduce themselves starting here on my right. Thank you very much, convener. Good morning. Sandra White, MSP. I'm Jane Baxter, MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife. John Mason, MSP for Glasgow Shetleston. Annabel Goldie, and I'm not Alex Johnson, MSP for the west of Scotland. Good morning, John Finnie, MSP for Hines and Hines. Good morning, Krishna, MSP for North East Scotland. Thank you very much. Today we have one agenda item, an evidence session with two panels of witnesses on our inquiry into age and social isolation. Before I ask you to introduce yourself, I'd like to give you a definition of what social isolation actually is, because when we did informal meetings, there was a question about that. The definition that we have for social isolation could be defined as an objective measurable state of having minimum contact with other people, such as family, friends or the wider community. Whilst it might be possible to measure social isolation, the feelings of loneliness are personal and individual. For some people it may not be the number of contacts that is important but the nature of those contacts, including who they are, the length of time spent or the activity. I'd like to welcome the first panel of witnesses that we have. Could I ask you to introduce yourself and outline the work of your organisation and any current projects for members? I'll start with Susan. Thank you for inviting us back. I'm Susan Hunter, I'm the Senior Policy and Research Officer with YouthLink Scotland. YouthLink Scotland is the national agency for youth work. We are a membership organisation with over 100 members representing the interests of the voluntary and the local authority statutory sector for youth work in Scotland. Hi, I'm Brandi Lee Loftonnell from LGBT Youth Scotland. Thank you for inviting LGBT Youth Scotland to contribute evidence today. We are the largest youth and community-based organisation for LGBT people in Scotland and we focus largely on LGBT young people. We do that in a variety of ways, particularly by supporting professionals to understand the needs of LGBT people and then also in providing youth groups and national participation projects for LGBT young people. Thank you. I'm Keely Thorpe, I'm the Campaigns and Policy Manager at Enable Scotland. Enable is the charity of and for people with learning disabilities. We have over 5,000 members and a very strong voluntary network of 44 branches across Scotland. We work with young people through various projects and employment projects, so I'd be happy to talk to the panel about those. Thank you very much. My question is to do with social isolation. Could you tell me what you think are the causes of social isolation or loneliness among young people? What effect do you think that that will have on the young people long-term or short-term? Is there an understanding of the impact of social isolation within the third sector and among service providers such as health and social work services? Are they really aware of it as well? That's three questions condensed into one. If you can't remember them, I'm quite happy to go over it again. If you want to take the first one, what do you think are the causes of social isolation? If you want to run into the rest, I'm quite happy to do so. Susan, do you want to start first? Thank you. From my perspective, we find social isolation quite a complex issue. I'm sure the committee will also share that view. From my experience, we would perhaps consider social isolation as both cause and effect. Social isolation may actually cause further issues and barriers for young people's participation in their community and in their lives. It may also be a symptom of other barriers that are already in their place, such as mental health or rurality or poverty. It's about thinking about it in that cyclical way and making sure that we recognise that it can be varied and it will affect different young people in different ways. In terms of the causes, we feel things like unemployment may be a cause of that disconnection from relationships, family breakdown, relocation through housing and short tenancies, leaving school with lower qualifications. It's about not necessarily saying that all of those things will cause social isolation but saying that there may be risk factors in how young people may experience that. What sort of effect does it actually have on young people that you work with? What do you see actually happening to them? I think that what we start to see is obviously that we are a membership organisation. This is the experience of our members who are working with young people on a daily basis. They feel that that affects confidence, self-belief and levels of anxiety on their ability to know that services are there for them, to be able to meet people for the first time. Youth work is all about relationships. We have a network of staff, youth workers and volunteers who at their heart want to build good relationships with young people. We are also aware that young people may find that initial step of making a new relationship very challenging. Youth work has that ability to be adaptive and innovative and to work with the young person as an individual. We have examples of projects where one-to-one work is the start before it comes into a wider group situation. Is your volunteers and workers aware that people could be isolated as well as having other problems? Maybe they have moved into a new area, they are unemployed, they may have mental health issues and that will also have an impact on them? I think that the workforce is aware of looking at young people's wellbeing in its fullest sense and that isolation may be part of that picture and landscape for the young person. We are also aware that that may be the presenting problem, but there may be underlying causes with that as well. On people's radar, we have examples and I can share them with the committee in practice that has been designed and developed to address social isolation. There are national and local initiatives and their exact focus is to ensure that young people are included and involved because they are aware that there will be barriers in their place that prevent that. You will be able to send us examples of that? Yes, we will be putting them out in submission and perhaps over the conversation that we have this morning I can share some of those. Anyone else that would like to comment? I am really glad that the committee has come out with a very clear definition of social isolation and what I would highlight within that is the quality of contact. For a lot of young people with learning disabilities, they have a lot of people in their lives but often they are people who are paid to be there. Studies have shown that up to a third of people with learning disabilities have no contact with friends in their lives. The statistics are really highlighting that it is an issue for people with learning disabilities. In terms of the causes, I would also echo the point about it being a catch 22 situation. The causes of social isolation, some of them I would mention are that communities can be quite non-inclusive to people with learning disabilities. Services are not accessible, other youth services might not necessarily be adapted to meet the needs of people with learning disabilities. Also, in our own communities, people have really negative experiences. They are stigmatised, they are marginalised and the effect of that is then that they don't want to go out and they don't take up other social opportunities. That is what I mean by the catch 22 situation. Social isolation further enhances and blocks other opportunities to meet new people. I would also echo the point about employability. There is an extremely low level of employment among people with learning disabilities and employment is an opportunity to meet friends. It is round about the 7 per cent mark as the employment rate for people with learning disabilities. School life should also be an opportunity for people to make friends. That is where you gain the soft skills that help you to make friends in future life and help you to get into employment. Young people with learning disabilities simply being in the classroom does not necessarily mean that you are included. Young people with learning disabilities studies have shown are twice as likely to be excluded by their peers in schools. For young people who attend special education and need schools, that might be outwith their local area. They have no connection to young people in their local area unless there are interventions made. I can give a lot more statistics about that. That is just a small supplementary question that I find relevant. Is access to anything, even if you go to a cafe or pub, if somebody has a disability? Even now, when you get disabled toilets, they are still used with buckets and mops and things like that. Is access to transport access and access to cinemas? Is that still a barrier? Absolutely. I am very glad that you reminded me of that point. Access is a real issue. For young people with learning disabilities, it is not necessarily that people have a physical disability, but there are still barriers in terms of being accepted, feeling welcomed and other young people understanding their condition and why they behave in certain ways or need extra support. A study that we have done with 120 young people said that 41 per cent of them say that they do not attend clubs because it is not suitable for them. They have been picked on, 22 per cent said that they would not make friends. It is those barriers as well as the physical access barriers that are of a concern. In terms of transport, transport is not an opportunity to go out there and meet friends, especially if your friends are from other geographical areas, but people with learning disabilities absolutely face issues and challenges using public transport. Buses, for example, present challenges around accessible information, understanding the timetable, feeling confident that you have the right money and that you know that you are going on the right bus. Public transport is a known bullying hotspot and a lot of our members have been targeted with verbal abuse on transport and there has been no intervention from the driver who was on the bus. Negative experiences like that mean that they are not going to do that again in the future. I am happy to share some suggestions to improve that later on. I appreciate that. That is really quite sad. Brandi Lee. I was thinking that I am glad that I have gone third because I echo what they have said so far in terms of the causal effect aspect of isolation about the discrimination. Kaylee was talking about the exclusion of young people. The top three things that I would say are issues for LGBT young people is their awareness of their rights. Not being aware that they have the right to education that is free from bullying, that they have rights under hate crime legislation, that they should be safe on public transportation. They are not aware of those things. The next thing is that they experience high levels of discrimination in those areas in education, in their own community, on public transportation. They do not feel safe. I have statistics for experiences of bullying and feeling included in the community as well as not feeling safe on public transportation. The third thing is appropriate socialization opportunities, which was hinted at already. Young people, as Kaylee was saying, young people who feel excluded and isolated from their peers are not going to feel confident. Susan also talked about confidence. I am not going to feel confident to access a service or access an opportunity because they feel that they are already experiencing discrimination. Why would they then expose themselves to further discrimination? Awareness of rights discrimination and appropriate opportunities are issues. Within the appropriate opportunities, there are issues of financial ramifications. We know that for LGBT young people, they are thinking about whether or not they feel that there are opportunities to socialize where they can safely be out about their sexual orientation or gender identity. Those who are over 18 feel that there are far more opportunities than those who are under 18. That also has financial implications because what they are talking about is pubs and clubs and commercial venues. There is that additional element where young people who are from areas of social deprivation, they are not going to have those opportunities. Young people from rural areas are not going to have the same opportunities. I can get into any of those areas if you would like further information. John Mason has a few questions that he would like to ask. Between you, you represent quite a range of services out there in the community. All of us in our constituencies are aware of a variety of services that are available. I suppose that the first question is whether there are enough services. My main point would be that young people who are needing assistance or wanting assistance are aware of the services. How do we get in touch with them? How do you get in touch with them? If they were in touch with a professional, that could be a teacher, I suppose, or somebody else, would they be aware of your services? Generally speaking, is there an awareness of all that is available out there? Are people using what is available or is there a problem in that? I don't mind who goes first. In terms of are there enough services, I think that you will hear quite a lot of examples of services that are available for young people and provide positive interventions and social opportunities. What I would say is that it is going to be a postcode lottery because what you are dependent on is funding. You are often funded by one local authority to do something in the area, and in another area you are funded by a big lottery to do something. You have a really good example of a service in one area, but it is only available to young people in that area. There are sometimes quite restrictive terms on that. For example, only being able to service young people up to the age of 18. It is all very fund-independent, and what that means is that it is a postcode lottery in terms of service availability. That probably is relevant in terms of the rural and urban question. In terms of awareness of service? On that point, I will ask you. Sometimes I have visited a group where I have been surprised that there has not been very many people at it. Sometimes there is a service there, but for whatever reason it has not been taken up. Is that sometimes an issue as well? I think that services should probably be looked at in terms of how well they are engaging with young people. Something should not just be funded on the basis that is always being funded or that is always what has happened. You need to evaluate and sometimes services need to modernise and do different things. If they have been doing the same thing for a long time and they are not being used, then absolutely it is time to look at whether they need to change things about. I think that there should be a sort of evaluation of services and see how well they are taken up. In terms of awareness, we would always try to raise awareness of services that are available in local areas. We have a phone line called Enable Direct, and what they try to do is map out services, not just enable services, but services that would be appropriate for people with learning disabilities across Scotland. People can phone up and speak to an adviser who knows that area and find out about services that are available there. We try to raise awareness, but I would imagine that there is probably more to be done. That is a way to link into schools as well. Sandra, do you want to come in? Sorry, Susan. I think that the point that I made about the postcode law today is very much the case. For the youth work sector, where funding is perhaps best, a three-year funding cycle, some of those services can disappear quite quickly in the lives of young people. The role of the professional is really crucial in helping a young person to be signposted into other services. We find that within youth work. Young people have a youth work journey. They may have had that first point of support by attending a uniformed organisation or local youth club, but that enables them to access other opportunities as a result of that. We probably need to work really hard and harder at that initial engagement to show that there is a universal service and an offer there for every young person in Scotland. That is what we want our ambition for youth work to be. We also need other factors. Volunteers and a girl guide in Scotland have a waiting list of about 7,000 girls because there is not enough volunteers. We need to make sure that we have a sector that can support every young person in Scotland if that is what they want. Research from the Prince's Trust, the Youth Index, showed that 13 per cent of young people feel too anxious to leave the house. It cannot always just be about a physical service. Sometimes we need to look at online solutions which I am sure the committee will be interested in as well. I think that what youth work can offer is a personalised offer and we need to work hard as a sector so that other professionals realise that if there is a need and a young person has a need, youth work can probably find a solution and make an offer to that young person. Perhaps the service does not exist just now but if that need is identified and talked about, that can be met. Have you done any work on how young people come into a group? Something like the guides everybody knows about. Is it mainly through word of mouth that a friend tells them? Typically it is through word of mouth and the establishment of networks and local communities. Does that mean that if somebody was isolated and didn't have many friends, they are less likely to hear about it? Unless there is a more targeted approach and that is what services need to be smarter and be more able to do, that is also quite labour intensive and funding intensive and making sure that organisations are working in partnership is crucial to it and using things like the wellbeing indicators of GERFEC will help identify young people who are socially isolated by looking at the factors around including and respected and nurtured because they are about relationships and connections so hopefully universal services such as health and schools and colleges will be able to make sure that young people can access wider services. People knowing about them? I would say people do not know about the specific services so that is one particular issue so as you said, young people who are not well connected are not going to know about services that meet their needs. There is also an issue of mainstream services. Mainstream services focus on the wellbeing of young people and any wellbeing of young person if it is person centred can meet their needs but it is about recognising that services need to be explicit about their inclusion of particular protected characteristics because if young people do not see themselves reflected in the way that those youth groups advertise themselves they are not going to access that service. There is also an issue of professionals that are signposting young people to those services often in terms of LGBT young people when we work with professionals professionals think that young people need LGBT specific services so that is an option which means that the young people are not signposted onward to services that could support them. It can be local authority youth groups and what the key is there is making it explicit that yes our youth group is inclusive of all of these protected characteristics we do not accept any form of harassment or bullying and we will support you to figure out your goals and your activities and to build friendships and explicit inclusion of protected characteristics within local authority youth groups. Can I ask you about that? Just take scouts and guides as an example because they are quite big but is it that they are inclusive and they are not portraying that very well or is it that they are not really inclusive? I do not want to guess about third sector organisations because we are a third sector organisation and so are the girl guides and we work with young people that may or may not be also involved in other third sector organisations. We have young people who are involved in Princess Trust et cetera but it is really the public services the local authorities that have that responsibility to promote good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not that are not necessarily fulfilling that. I take the point that the public sector has got a role in there but given that the third sector is quite a big player in this can you even just give us an overall feeling that they are doing quite well or they are not doing quite well or anything? I think that where we are at is that we are seeing pockets of really good inclusive practice but we know that that does not happen for every young person and across the board and that is down to if you think of organisations where they are largely volunteer led it is about skills, but capacity it is about confidence potentially of staff to make sure that those environments are safe but YouthLink Scotland produces a link magazine and our next edition of that will focus on tackling equality issues within youth work and youth work being both part of the offer to young people so they can see that as a space where they can talk about equality issues and start to understand difference and their views and potentially their prejudices and ways in which they can be inclusive in support and development of their peers but also what can youth work do more to make sure that it really is for every young person in Scotland and potentially some of those barriers are there because of funding our facilities are not up to speed then there's a barrier in the first place if there's transport that a young person can't get to you've got another barrier in its place every young person has a personal care need there may not be the staffing in order to meet that need but there's certainly some really inspiring examples of how that's been broken down and organisations like the Skypes they operate within hospitals so they're working with young people who have long-term illnesses and can't sustain their participation in their local scouting group but they can do that in hospitals so it's about being innovative in how that is achieved Can I just bring and welcome Anelia Anela from Roshni I think that Anelia would like to say something as well Yes, please. Thank you for your comments about overall feeling I wouldn't want to comment on farm statistics I don't work for the girl guides or the scouts but our overall feeling is definitely that the youth work sector is not doing enough to engage with minority ethnic young people and in terms of I would echo your comments that resources are diminishing and as they diminish there's less that we're able to do to engage with those communities that have been termed or perceived as harder to reach or difficult to engage and the experience working with minority ethnic young people is because of those additional cultural, ethnic religious barriers it takes a bit more of a concerted or targeted effort to engage with those groups and that's not always done very effectively by the local authorities sector, youth work sector or even third sector youth work organisations We have done some work with YouthLink, YoungSkull and others to try and build that bridge and close that gap but there's only so much that can be done by niche organisations like ourselves and mainstream organisations need to take more responsibility I would say to do more to engage with those groups and there's also a level of work that needs to be done without communities to encourage parents to allow their young people to access those opportunities because some types of perceptions that the sector isn't for us or isn't suitable for us parents can prevent their young people from accessing opportunities that others will and have open to them and I think that there is a perception issue that those services that are available are not suitable for minority ethnic young people or there's a complete lack of awareness that they exist and there needs to be work done to promote those within those minority ethnic groups I think that Annabelle would like to come in I think that it's a very brief supplementary and it goes back to a point that Kayleigh made supported by brandy about public transport and I think that Kayleigh used to phrase a hotspot for bullying intimidating and unpleasant behaviour I mean I am aware that in trains for example there are notices warning passengers not to abuse staff and I've seen something similar in hospitals but would it be helpful if we have notices telling passengers not to abuse each other and if they do they'll be chucked off the public transport and it might give moral support to other passengers and it might give moral support to the bus driver, train conductor, whoever Kayleigh Just to come in on that or be the change campaign was specifically targeting public transport and we spent a lot of our budget on posters on public transport, on trains and on buses and the point of that was to spread awareness that it's not acceptable to use abusive language against people who have learning disabilities and it was very much asking people to rethink those actions and to challenge their own behaviours and also to step up and challenge other people's behaviours but that costs a lot of money so yeah it would be probably more efficient because we could only target certain areas it would be more efficient if that was an initiative taken forward by transport providers Kayleigh can I ask were you able to assess if there was a consequence to that approach putting those posters up in the middle of evaluating the posters at the moment so we have had some really good feedback on a survey and 97% of people said that it's absolutely right for Enable Scotland to be challenging these behaviours in this way 64% of people said it made them think differently 64% of people also said that they felt more confident to challenge other people using language Is that something that might be shared with us? Absolutely Can that be made available to the committee? Thank you very much Can we move on now to Sandra? Thank you very much Good morning everyone I wanted to raise the issue of social media which I had raised at the very beginning and I noticed that Susan had mentioned online solutions and basically social media is used very much obviously by young people and lots of others as well and I just wanted to ask that your opinion be used of combating loneliness and isolation We had witnesses who said that it was a very positive tool and others said that it caused more bullying as well so I just wondered what your thoughts were on that and what your organisations do to promote it being more of a positive tool in that respect Susan? You think that Scotland is a strong proponent of social media and digital tools for including people and we worked in partnership with some other organisations to produce what we call digitally agile national principles and they set out principles around how digital tools can be used for inclusive practice so one of those principles is that we will be supported to enhance use of digital technology and social media and that our use of digital technology is accessible and inclusive and driven by the needs of learners and communities so we've set that out and we launched those principles last year in November during national youth work week and they're for all the L&D practitioners not just for the youth work sector but we know that youth work is evolving and developing to services online and randomly we'll be able to tell you about the excellent work that LGBT youth have done in that area but organisations such as the RNIB their HagGuy which is their youth forum they're using platforms like Facebook because of the technologies they're to allow text to speech technologies or magnification they were actually for the first time able to connect young people who had sight loss and visual impairments together and from that we're able to set up a media team which meets purely online and they produce their magazine their bulletin through that so you can take people who are in quite disconnected places but have a common interest or common cause a common experience and bring them together using social media and it's not about having additional platforms about using resources that are already there and a lot of these resources are free for third sector organisations as well so there's quite an enablement in terms of reaching more people and also just for signposting of services as well but we certainly are aware that there are risks and when we came and presented to you around discoping there were contributions from Childline and from Smaritans around some of those risks around online bullying and things like that but we would really consider that bullying that happens online is another place in which it takes place and respect me's research really shows that young people who experience online bullying they're normally the person that they experience that from is known to them a sense of the online virtual world being a place where people can feel quite lonely within because they've got an opportunity to compare themselves to others, whether they're true representations of people's lives or otherwise so we have to be aware of how that space can create impact on young people's lives but certainly there is real scope for opportunities to connect young people together Thank you Brandi initiative? The National Youth Forum I'm just going to start with a quote from a young person from research that we did on education, health inclusion in the community etc and it talks about why a young person doesn't access a youth group and then also where they seek support and it's online in terms of social media I do not socialise with other trans people as I don't know any that live nearby I could attend an LGBT youth group but I've been put off by the idea as I don't really identify as a person within the LGBT youth although at 24 I do fit within the age group I usually socialise with old friends that I have in trust or I will socialise with the online trans community via YouTube I do not feel comfortable meeting new people in person and it can be extremely isolating experience when your identity is not understood so that is the context of a lot of young people who don't come to youth groups in relation to the confidence and withdrawal that we talked about earlier one of the solutions that LGBT youth Scotland has come up with is our digital youth work project and that enables young people to access our website and leave a message or email us when a youth worker is not logged in and then at particular times several times a week several youth workers log on to the online web chat and they have one-to-one chats with young people and the young people can be from across the country from other countries as well because it's filling gaps where they don't have access it began in September 2012 and the top issues raised are coming out as LGBT or T difficulties at schools such as bullying or general acceptance by peers experiencing family problems relationship problems and bringing out information about youth groups or services so that is a service that has grown exponentially since we started it Can I just come in? I don't want to interrupt you Could other groups access I don't mean access online but could learn from that programme that you're talking about and share within other groups would be beneficial, a positive aspect We believe so We've shared it with Youthling Scotland in this magazine which is the link and it's a digital youth work special so I can make sure that the committee clerks have access to that for you but it's about taking away the fear and actually saying to youth workers as professionals that this online space is an opportunity for you to connect with young people making sure that there's parameters around that but the project, the LGBT youth have set up it's a trained, qualified youth worker who is communicating with this young person and that in itself is really important that it's there The young people are leading on that because they're putting in their comments of what they would like it's not them answering questions and actually putting forward their ideas That's the second example that I would like to share The first example is one to one support The second example is from a pilot that was done in the Scottish Borders so recognising that it was very difficult for young people to reach a common meeting space as well as their fears of travelling on public transportation in terms of experiencing discrimination from other passengers or having to leave too early to even attend the group in order to return home at night There was a pilot done in the borders and it was supported by Scottish Borders leader a grant from that foundation and the learning was that when there was a set member of staff when there was a youth worker that would log on at a particular time to an online chat forum and young people then logged on together the youth worker facilitated activities and facilitated the young people together and that was youth led so young people said this is what we want to work on and that enabled face to face contact with their peers so they could interact directly with their peers So the first example is more a support aspect that young people get out of youth work and the second one is the peer socialisation that they get out of youth work I just want to speak a little bit about connections and we've talked this morning about working smarter I think Susan said we have to work smarter and I'm a big believer in that and then Brandi Lee talked about being mindful of protected characteristics and I'm mindful that Scotland's now got a children and young people's act and the graphic process and every child's might have a child's plan and I wonder if witnesses think there's scope for the voluntary sector to be more engaged with that local graphic process, that child planning process do you think that healthcare and social work staff know enough about you to be mindful of you when they're thinking of how to plan for a child's future Can I ask a question So you said do we think that they are mindful at the moment and how can you make them more mindful if they're not Okay, Anilla I think for me in theory that should work I don't think that it does work in practice at the moment so I think in theory I think local authorities should definitely be mindful of everyone in a child's life that can make a positive contribution from family to community to third sector organisations but to go back to the point I was making earlier on is when we earn a time of diminishing resources where capacity is being reduced funding is being reduced it's very difficult for the third sector to take on more than what they're already doing and I think for the young people that we represent and the young people that we work for is they still feel very disconnected from the vast majority of the youth work sector and from local authority services that they understand their needs and they feel very much trapped in a situation of culture clash where they feel they don't fit within their own community or they don't fit within the mainstream Scottish community and until, for our young people until we can overcome those barriers and hurdles whether they be real issues or perceived issues I think the child's plan will only go so far it's about encouraging that engagement encouraging that trust and dealing with the issues that we have in Scotland at the moment around racism, discrimination Islamophobia discussions around radicalisation which are further isolating our young people rather than bringing them together and I think then processes like dabed personally professional child's plan will work effectively but until we can see a Scotland for all that engages all I think that process won't work that's definitely the opinion of our young people we have a youth advisory panel which leads on all of our youth engagement work utilising tools like social media and direct engagement with young people and time and time again from the consultations that we have with minority ethnic young people it's not less about process more about engagement more about being able to see that services are for us and we can engage with them and they understand our needs That's a big challenge then for all those public sector agencies it's good that you've got it on the record at this moment Anyone else? I think there's an opportunity to make partnership planning for children and young people services to make sure that third sector organisations are part of that process and it's very difficult sometimes because they're typically in receipt of funding from the statutory partners who are trying to create that balance of a partnership so there's sometimes just some of those tensions within and how they're recognised but there's also an opportunity that in September this year the first community learning development plans will be published in the local authority area and through that it's a new statutory instrument so that will identify needs of communities and will also have must involve consultation with community members now as Anilla says that will only be as good as the evidence and contribution of partners and of young people and their families so I think in September we'll have for the first time a national picture of what's there but those plans will be published a few years and I think that we'll see improvement over time with that instrument Thank you Kaye Randili, do you want to ask? I'm just going to build on that the planning element of it it's important that local authorities and community planning partnerships and anyone planning for services considers the needs of all protective characteristics we know that when we see impact assessments there's often little notes that there's no evidence found or no impact and that's not the case because we know that there are impacts for these things and yet year after year those little those little indicators or qualifiers don't change and so that research is not actually sought no one undertakes that consultation with their potential service users and so that gap is not being filled and so that's the important element for that to actually have a full effect Kaylee I would just like to say that the Children and Young People Act does provide an opportunity I also think that there is guidance being developed at the moment around commissioning and I think that within that guidance there's space to encourage local authorities to be engaging with the third sector and thinking about when they're commissioning children's services that they are meeting the needs of all so that's a point I would also like to highlight that health and social care integration is also an opportunity to tackle social isolation and the strategic plans that could be developed and each local authority area should mention social isolation and that very much fits with the integration principles so I think that there is a way to capitalise on all of these big changes that we're seeing in Scotland and make sure that social isolation feeds in and throughout that, it's the central theme throughout that and we move on to Annabelle that you come in a supplementary very short supplementary and then you want me proper I want you proper supplementary then for her I found this this very past evidence session extremely interesting because I think that very important is this broad issue of identification is there a problem and who's going to pick it up and also following that early intervention and I was struck with what you were saying because it seems to me that if we take young people some of this grouping may obviously be at school and the likely individuals to see that there is a difficulty will be teachers and I'm just wanting to what extent local authorities expect schools just to operate within their own local authority protocols and guidances or guidelines whether you are actually as third sector agencies asked by schools to go in or try and help a young person are you ever aware of getting a referral from a young person who said my teacher suggested I contact you yes we receive referrals all of the time from schools who refer young people to schools that contact us saying a young person is experiencing bullying or has come out to them and they don't know how to handle it while it's a positive thing when they signpost young people there is also an issue of staff confidence to deal with experiences of LGBT people as well but for the most part schools do know about us and they signpost young people but again it's about considering is the need to immediately signpost young people outward or is it to address their issues in the current service that they're accessing and so I would agree that it's the latter I think that the success of youth work is through its partnerships with schools and in most local authorities and probably in every local authority there's close working relationships but youth work also happens in schools so we'll have third sector local authority youth work staff working in the schools part of the delivering of the curriculum are working with individual or targeted or identified groups of young people so that relationship there is strong and is continually developing I just wanted to pick up really on the point of schools and actually the need to build inclusive schools I talked a little bit earlier on about children being isolated in schools and children with learning disabilities experiencing exclusion by their peers and Able Scotland have done a lot of research around this particularly looking at young people in schools and what we found was that there is a reluctance in schools to talk about difference and why this person needs additional support and what that does is that puts up a barrier right away to people forming friendships because they don't understand it's a lack of understanding is a big part of bullying and exclusion we have been developing lesson plans with Strathclyde University and they very much create an open space for young people in schools to talk about learning disability and to talk about being a friend to someone else and they have had a lot of support with partners in the third sector and in education what I would say but schools obviously have very strict timetables and what they can fit into to their schools is very much it's up to the head teacher or the local thoughts that you can get everything into every school so I think there's an effort to be made to think about if there is an issue in your school or even if there's not an issue in your school if we want to build inclusive communities we need to start in schools so build inclusive schools and then you'll build future communities that are much more accessible and inclusive I've got to keep this brief that's the environment of schools I'm interested in the environment of health because a GP will only see a young person if the young person goes to the GP so how do we identify the young person who may have issues but is not attending a GP because there may be no one else going into the house there's a role for health visitors for example we might have knowledge of a broader family background with challenges in the family and might pick up on a young person with difficulties before you answer the questions I'm really conscious that we're running short of time if you can keep your answers quite brief because I've got another two members who would like to ask you questions as well so Anelia I think the short answer to the question is there's a role for all universal services so as you say a young person might not visit their GP but they may have contact with a health visitor education services I think have the biggest role to play with young people because they will see them on a day out basis and I'll echo some of the comments that Rady's made previously on calls or referrals from schools and it is that issue about are we reinforcing that us and them if there isn't the capacity or confidence within the school to deal with the issue and we really need to be looking at building that staff confidence within the education sector and also there's the element of teachers and schools feeling like how much more have we to deal with our role is to teach children what else are you wanting us to bring together and that's where those strong partnerships as Susan was saying come into play and we'll be aware of maybe indicators and signs that there are an issue and knowing where to take those concerns and where to share them but I would say by a large education has the biggest part to do Anyone else? I think there's also a role of school nurses as well who will provide drop-in services and will have close relationships with pastoral and guidance staff in the schools so it might not be the GP but I think there are pathways into health services for young people Was it question 13 that you wanted me to be responsible for? Yes, absolutely This isn't the broader issue of preventative measures dealing with the challenges of loneliness and how we might try to prevent that happening Now we've heard about the importance of friendships at a young age and the ability to make social connections when you're young How can those positive social connections be encouraged? I'm going to bring it back to the Equality Act so I think that the role of the public services where young people spend the majority of their waking lives education promoting talking about learning disabilities talking about minority ethnic communities talking about gender identity sexual orientation all of the protected characters at early stages talking about bullying and harassment building explicitly inclusive schools and services so the promoting good relations between those who share protected characters and those who don't ensuring equality of opportunity etc so those things are very, very key and there are several different ways that public services can do that so being explicit about the inclusion within their services both to their service users and to potential service users discussions in the curriculum repeated and constant sorry, I'm trying to rush at the same time addressing of any sort of discrimination so just being explicit about inclusion Kayleigh Brifle I think there is a place to be encouraged in these positive social connections I think we need to think about removing some of the barriers that have already been identified such as transpor and non-inclusive groups and things like that what I would say is that for some people we've talked about that they don't have a friend at all so it's very difficult to meet another friend or they've never had the experience of making a friend so some people do need that additional support to be able to learn those soft skills and quite a lot of the feedback we get from people with learning disabilities is if I had one friend and that is how Friendship Networks work what we use in some of our youth groups is a peer support model and it's someone who's attended the youth group for a while or goes to a local school will befriend someone and be a peer supporter what I would emphasise with that is none of the youth workers allocate that peer they are observed and see who naturally goes to each other and that's how we encourage people to form that friendship and then it's supported that way thank you excuse me we're actually running short of time can I move on to Christian now please thank you very much convener it was very interesting so far the conversation particularly the last point I found it very positive finding a friend and that if you compare it with the anti-bullying policies that you had so far to address to address the person who does the bullying the victim of the bullying and all of us who witnesses bullying is there a need for that kind of communication of promotion to really pinpoint this problem because of the isolation for young people social isolation for young people maybe a positive thing like you just talked about adopt a friend what kind of example can we have really to move forward to take it away from bullying to have something better than bullying Kayleigh a lot of the feedback we get when we have discussions around friendship is the importance of having a support network and how that can prevent bullying so I absolutely think that there is a big focus on bullying and I think that we need to maintain that but we also need to talk about being a friend to somebody the more positive message that's a lot about what our campaign is about is about being the change it's not saying you are a bully and you must stop that it's more about let's think about things differently let's actually just be nicer to people so yeah I think there's a need for a positive approach to be taken and maybe of us can answer this how can we target the difficult one heart to reach maybe don't see themselves bullied we have definitely socially isolated what kind of campaign can we have on this and who is best to deliver this campaign I think for me peer to peer education has to be the way to go and I think that's going to be the most effective and for us we found that to be the most effective I think social media has a part to play but the issue I have with that is sometimes with social media we lose connections rather than build them and young people can forget what it's like to be the company of other young people and for us it really has to be about creating understanding across all of the protected characteristics is developing that understanding about what's the same between us remembering that similarity is between us but also celebrating difference so not always seeing difference as a negative thing and that education which as I'm saying is most effectively delivered peer to peer I think is one of the best ways to tackle isolation and to stop certain young people feeling isolated or different and to try and help those people who perhaps are more negative or bullying within schools or communities for them to be part of that change and that's definitely the approach that we have taken and who can do that I think the role really is for the third sector supported by Government and local authorities to deliver those peer to peer education programmes Susan, we would like to see the opportunities for young people to design those campaigns as well so that they're actually led and designed by the views and experiences of young people and I think that all of our organisations have got a good track record for doing that and that in itself will help young people to consider this as an issue and when we came to the scope and we talked about young people recognising loneliness as an issue you know is that the language they would use to articulate they certainly wouldn't say I'm a socially isolated young person so what does that actually mean and feel like and how is it experienced on a day to day basis for young people and the only people that can tell us that Thank you, Christian Can we deliver that kind of programme you know is local authorities, health boards and Scottish Government how can we make a start on this and is it really, I'm not challenging a question of funding because of course if we give the ownership to the young people you know funding is maybe not as important as that I think Well it needs to be youth led 100% but those young people need to be supported to do that and who are those young people already engaging with in an effective way I would say third sector organisations above all and those third sector organisations need to be supported so funding is definitely an issue I know it might sound like a broken record as third sector organisations sitting here saying funding but we want to be able to support young people to make a difference to their own lives but we need to be supported to be able to do that to give those young people a voice briefly anyone else want to come in and say something No Can we, are you okay now to move on to John Finnie now Thank you convener I had a couple of questions about examples of good practice but due to the comprehensive responses we've heard from the panel we've been assured that they'll be shared with us I wonder if I can briefly put a point to Kayleigh if I may please and if I know you did correct to Kayleigh you talked about appropriate social inclusion opportunities I was assisting a family with a young woman who had learning disabilities and was in mobility issues too and the local authority thought it appropriate to have her socially included with a group of literally wheeled into a room with older people how typical is that because certainly this young woman may have been in a room with lots of people but she certainly felt more isolated than ever That absolutely highlights the inappropriate social opportunities I can't list off the top of my head another example of that happening but I can say that people are maybe signposted to services that are just inappropriate for them I listed some statistics earlier on and I could also mention an experience of a young woman who attended several different youth groups and her mum's feedback was that she was excluded from activities in school she was excluded from activities in the youth group because she got very excited and upset the other children or they didn't like how she was behaving and when she first started attending some of the Naplescotlands youth groups what the mum kept asking was is it okay if she comes back next week and that really spoke to me because of course she can come back next week she's a young person this is a youth group but what I would say is that I don't think that there's a place for just a youth group that's just for people with learning disabilities what we want to build is inclusive youth groups all of our youth groups are for people with and without learning disabilities and we absolutely encourage young people who don't have learning disabilities to attend our youth groups and we'd like to see that and it does happen in other youth groups that's not in Naplescotlands parade here youth work happening so that's the kind of model we need to see and we need to build on that ensure it's a universal service and is available across the country but absolutely not should a young person be attending an elderly group that's just nonsense would it be you if I may Kelly that shows that there was an inappropriate needs assessment of that individual and that service should be exclusively tailored in some instances yes absolutely thank you very much Sandra's got a question that she would like to ask and if any of the other members have got any other quick questions you'd like to put to the witnesses if you just indicate let me know thanks very much just one quick question at the end the carers trust are coming in later to give evidence and questions as well and they mentioned the fact regarding online help and what they actually want I just wanted to be a quick yes or no then is this a way forward I mean I know listen to what you've said you obviously consult with younger people and you're working together as a group but if it wasn't the carers trust that was going to do this type of exercise would other organisations do individually or collectively or who should do that to ask young people to set up the need of online help that they need and what should be put forward on that I think that what's crucial is that you're asking the right young people for the right issue if that makes sense so we have organisations like Young Scot who are really really effective in reaching a mass population of young people who come from all different backgrounds so that might be the most appropriate route Scottish Ruth Parliament is another way of doing that about what more they want from those services and they may be best on small, local, specialised so it's not a one size fits all for consultation and participation and certainly we want to potentially move beyond consultation and actually having services being designed and led by young people rather than something being proposed to them for them to comment on Just a really quick point that we do have some large organisations in Scotland that are often used to engage with young people and consult with them but sometimes those pockets of more difficult to reach, more isolated young people are missed from that so that's why we do, I would echo what Susan is saying we need to be really clear who we're trying to engage for what purpose and what is the demographic and by working with ex-organisation to consult with young people are we really reaching everyone and I think that really needs to be kept in the top of the mind when doing any use consultation Christian I believe has a quick question because you've got a little bit of time very briefly if you've got a natural campaign to tackle social isolation what should we be called to? I'll move on to John John briefly If a young person has friends within their own group let's say so it could be enable it could be others with learning disabilities or it could be say within the Pakistani community but they have no friends outside of that is that isolation is that a problem or should we not worry about that? I would say it's definitely a problem I think that on a first step when we're trying to engage with more hard to reach or difficult to engage groups we tend to do things in silos maybe that's the right way to do it and that can be a first step but ultimately we should be working towards integration and that has to be key because we need to look forward and have an inclusive and happy and healthy society we need individuals to be engaging across the board otherwise we're just perpetuating the sense of isolation so I would 100% say we have to move towards integration Last volunteer to answer question we've got anyone everybody agree thank you very much you can email the committee thank you all very much for your contribution it's been very interesting I'm sorry we don't have enough time to carry on, we're really stuck for time but I'll now suspend the meeting for the change of panel and the second panel will begin approximately at 10, 15 thank you very much once again I'd like to welcome you to the Equal Opportunities Committee at 10, 15 and again to remind everyone to set any electronic devices to flight mode or the off position please my name is Margaret O'Culloch and I'm the committee's convener and for the benefit of witnesses and members we'll now introduce themselves and turn starting here on my right with Sandra Sandra White MSP for Glasgow, Kelvin morning on Jane Baxter MSP for Miss Scotland and Fife John Mason MSP for Glasgow Shetleston Annabelle Gory MSP for the west of Scotland that morning John Finnie MSP Highlands and Islands good morning Krushan and Ard MSP for North East of Scotland thank you and I'll welcome the second panel and ask witnesses to introduce yourselves and can it also invite witnesses to outline the work of their organisation and any current projects for members please and we'll start with David good morning my name is David Millick and I'm Scottish director of Homestart UK and Homestart is very briefly it's a home visiting service for parents with very young children there are various other add-on services but that's in a nutshell what we do thank you, Heather I'm Heather Nollar, I'm the policy officer at Carers Trust Scotland we're Scotland's largest charity that supports carers and young carers and we provide that support through a network of carers services and young carers services specifically they run youth groups for young carers and they provide that support as well I'm Pauline McIntyre I'm the parliamentary and policy officer at the office of Scotland's commissioner for children and young people in terms of our role we promote and safeguard the rights of children and young people across Scotland we work with children and young people up to the age of 18 or 21 if they've ever been looked after we provide a range of services more about the rights and we also work with adults to help them learn about children's rights we carry out research, we work in schools and we also have an enquiry service that we run where parents, children and young people and professionals can contact us with questions around children's rights and this helps us inform some of the policy issues that we then take forward as an office so I'd like to thank the opportunity to come along today thank you very much can I ask if you want to come in and answer any questions if you indicate through myself or the clerk my left hand side and also to members as well if you want to come in and supplementaries before we actually start I'm going to give you a definition of what we put together is social isolation and the sort of definition we've got for social isolation could be defined as a relative measurable state of having minimum contact with other people such as family, friends or the wider community whilst it might be possible to measure social isolation the feelings of loneliness are personal and individual for some people it may not be the number of contacts that's important but the nature of those contacts including who they are being spent or the activity that's the definition we've got for social isolation as opposed to loneliness which is different a couple of you have been listening to a former evidence session so I'd like to ask you what you think from your perspective is the causes of social isolation or loneliness amongst young people and what effect does that have on their health, mental or physical and who would like to start David I could refer to we actually conducted a study social isolation is one of the main factors which is stated to us when our coordinators visit the families that have either self-refered or been referred to them and because social isolation was such a big factor we conducted a study into the families that we support but I have to say it was 2006 but the statistics we've had since then suggest that things are not really terribly different in terms of numbers and what we found was that because that was the greatest thing we looked into it in more detail and what they said contributed to the main feelings of isolation and loneliness were issues to do with herself where they live health disability issues issues to do with their children and issues to do with their home and issues to do with their self were very much lack of confidence and self-esteem being alone with children most of all of the time no family nearby etc and where we live was a number of factors safety unsafe neighbourhoods living away from family and friends fairly obviously and health and disability issues were very much mental health problems mental illnesses and issues to do with the children where we're being on their own with children no safe place for them to play etc so that was our findings it's a huge factor in the number of families we support social isolation we don't have a definition of it though we allow people to say if that's their feelings they feel social isolated that's where we get our statistics from thank you Heather would you like to contribute is a really big issue for young carers this is recognised in Scotland's young carers strategy as well the isolation can be as a direct result of the caring role young people who have caring responsibilities might not have any time to spend with their friends because they're spending so much time caring or there might be like a compounding issue so they may have a friendship group that they can spend time with because their peers lives if they're not caring themselves they might not understand what the young carers life is like it might be difficult for them to understand what they're going through and that's why it's important to have that specific support for young carers through groups or through online services so they've got an opportunity to meet with other young carers there's also issues I suppose with different caring roles and how that can cause different kinds of isolation if a young person is caring for someone who's got a mental health issue or a drug or alcohol addiction it can be difficult for them to maybe invite friends back to the house so that's another compounding issue but again, we as an organisation we don't have a definition of social isolation but we know that it's a real big issue for all the young carers that we work with Thank you, Pauline I think what we would say is it depends very much on the individual child or young carer in terms of their perception of what it is that makes them socially isolated I would say there's a number of elements across the board for many children and young people it's about not being able to participate in activities with their peers either through a lack of services or through a lack of support I think there's something about standing out from your peers as well being different, looking different, being perceived as different and there's something about not having the same opportunities as well so that might be due to a range of factors for example a disability or poverty even can have a massive impact I think that the overarching thing for me though is about for children and young people it's to do with feeling powerless about what happens to you it's about that power and balance between adults and children where children and young people just feel that they don't have a say in what happens to them and I think that's key if you're looking at how you unpick social isolation you need to look at how adults interact with children and young people and the contribution children and young people are able to make in contributing Can I ask you very briefly how far up on the radar is isolation and loneliness and the fact that it can have in people's health when you've got a third sector and social services actually working with these groups of people is it the forefront of their mind or are they aware of it is their systems in place to highlight this for these organisations as well let's take this into account David it's probably difficult to answer because for the people who are engaged with various services the chances are the level of social isolation is going to be diminished or you would certainly hope so it's the people that we don't access that are of more concern because it can be difficult people find it difficult to either refer themselves to services and if you're feeling socially isolated it takes quite a lot of courage to come forward and say hang on I'm hanging around a house with my young children I'm a wee bit scared to go out because people are scared that something's going to happen to them as a consequence of that so they'll tend to keep it to themselves which is why particularly I welcome this inquiry that you're conducting because I think it's much more wide-ranging than probably any of the statistics that certainly we would gather and many others are actually going to inform us about the silent people who are feeling isolated but not engaging I think that probably some of my colleagues will probably pick up on that you're the silent minority or majority of people that are out there they'll no doubt have a question to ask and develop that question further anyone else want to comment on that? Just to agree with David really it's the hidden young carers who are probably going to be more isolated than the ones who are attending young carers groups or the ones whose school or college know that they're young carers and can provide support to them if the young carer is hidden and they don't get that support from school or from other agencies that are working with them that's where the problem is okay thank you and I'll pass you now on to John Mason thanks so much convener I mean I think it was yourself Ms McIntyre already mentioned the phrase lack of services is the biggest problem a lack of services is it that there are services but say a young carer just cannot get to them or is it that there's a lack of knowledge of services that are available I suspect that it's a mixture of all three but I'm interested in where are the big problems what is the issue because I think to some extent I feel maybe lack of knowledge of what is available out there is a big part of the problem and it's a combination of all those factors I think one of the key issues for us is about whether or not children and young people are disproportionately affected by some of the cuts that are coming in now so if local authorities are looking at services are they disproportionately targeting children and young people and I think that's one of the big issues that is key for us I think there is something about children and young people being worked with to give them the confidence that they are isolated but the very nature of it is that a child who is isolated won't feel that they can reach out so some of it is to do with adults having the skills to pick up on that social isolation at an early stage because I think the danger is that if you don't pick up on it early on what happens is that the young person's situation spirals and you end up in a much worse situation further down the line so would you say then that some young people are going to take somebody to reach out to them to get them engaged I think that's a big part of it in terms of support for children and young people they tend to seek out local support so they tend to go to people that they trust so it's about having those key people in place that young people can choose to go to who can then help them identify services that will then support them I think asking a child or young person to self identify and then present themselves at a service that will support them is a big challenge particularly if a child or young person is isolated so I guess it's about having that support network in place at a local level so that they can help the young person to take that first step towards further support Well, if you don't that's given me more time to go on something else which was a geographical isolation I mean I think some of us that live in the cities might assume that if you live in an island you're automatically more isolated but on the other hand there's maybe a closer knit community in some islands than there are in some cities How do you see the geographical side? Is it just a problem across the well for your like carers trust is it a problem across the whole country or is it a particular problem in geographical areas? I would be reluctant to describe it as a problem We at Carers Trust Scotland we work with around 50 young carers services some of them kind of participate in our network more than more than others but there is quite a good geographical spread The problems come with perhaps the large rural communities like Highland where the actual groups for young people will be concentrated in the cities and the centres of population. There are outreach projects in all the young carers services they will do their best to try and reach young people where they are and work with other youth services to try and make those links and connections but no it is a difficulty as well and even in the cities the larger centres of population young carers services are oversubscribed some of them have waiting lists and it can be difficult to manage the kind of sheer numbers of young people who are wanting to get support from the services Our services are provided in people's own homes and we have projects in rural and urban communities and we don't notice any difference in the level of isolation that occurs in the different sizes of the traffic distribution of communities Are you able to give the same service whether it is a rural or an urban area? Just to say that there are very practical factors often that come into play in terms of the rural versus urban question for isolation One of the things for us is that we recently had an issue raised with us around transport that was provided for children and young people to do activities. Some of the local cuts meant that the service had to be reduced and the knock-on effect was quite huge in terms of the ability for children and young people in that area to meet with their friends and to be able to socialise and undertake those activities. For us it is partly to do with the fact that there is a rural element to it or an urban element to it but it is also about thinking about those practical decisions and about children and young people being asked about what is important to them so being very clear about reducing isolation, that after-school activities and taking part in those particularly if you live in a very remote area where going to see a friend after school is now an impossible if you do not have access to transport either public or through a lift from a parent Are the expectations of young people different in the rural and urban areas? I do not think that they should be in the sense that they have a right to socialise in the way that any other child or young person is. I guess that they are realistic in the sense that there are practical problems in terms of transport but I think that for young people living in rural areas they have that right to expect to socialise and to participate in activities as much as anyone who is living in an urban environment. I think that it's about looking at what measures you can put in place to make that possible for young people. Thank you Annabelle. What tends to trigger involvement by home start in a family situation? We either receive referrals and 54 per cent of them are from health visitors because we deal with young children. Approximately 15 per cent are self-referos and the rest come from a mixture of community psychiatric nurses, the nursery school etc. Anybody who is noticing that their family is having some difficulties so that's how we tend to be involved. Thank you very much. I'm going to carry on a theme of social media in regard to does it combat and help people who feel socially isolated alone. What would your views be on that particular social media a positive aspect of the work that you do? We've heard about negativity in parts where there's bullying but from the panel previously it seemed to be more of a positive aspect so I just wanted to hear your views on that and what you do to promote social media with your own organisations. We don't directly deliver that kind of service ourselves but in general having that kind of contact for children young people can be exceptionally useful particularly if you're talking about a young person who might be wanting to seek support when other support services would be closed or if they live in a particularly rural area where accessing those services is quite difficult. I think it can be a useful way also of providing children and young people with an ability to talk about their problems in a way that doesn't take the control away from them because quite often if a child or young person goes to an organisation and admits that they're having difficulties it can then be taken from them and measures can be put in place whereas having this social media approach can allow them an element of control and allow them to disclose things at their own pace. On the other side of that you need to be very careful that A, you're not replacing services on the ground it should be something that compliments services that are there already. You also need to look at whether or not all children and young people are going to be able to easily access those services. We recently carried out a report with Save the Children where we looked at some of the difficulties children and young people living in poverty were experiencing in terms of education. One of the key things was access to laptops and iPads. The things that many children and young people take for granted were not easily accessible to them. Also, for example, another great look after children and young people if you're living in a residential unit you may not have easy access to Wi-Fi you may also not be able to access the internet for your own safety you have to do that in a public place. Of course, if you're seeking out help or in your seeking support that makes it very difficult if you're having to do that in a public forum. I think generally very supportive of it but it also needs to be accessible for children and young people with disabilities so if you're going to provide that it needs to take into account all the needs of children and young people across Scotland. I agree with all the points but they're all very relevant for young carers specifically. Social media and online services are really important for young carers mostly because this comes back to the rural and urban thing we've just been talking about. If young carers aren't able to leave the home in the evening or if they don't have a chance to get away and go to a youth group or go somewhere outside of the home they can get a break from caring in their own home by seeking online support or by using social media so that peer support aspect of it ought to speak to young carers support workers online. That's something that our online service for young carers which is Babble which I've submitted a paper about. It offers both of those opportunities for young people and they can use either or both of those as they wish whenever they wish and they can also use it as a bridge to accessing youth groups if that's what they want to do as well. We are aware of the risks here as well as somebody on the other panel spoke about the potential for becoming more isolated if online interaction is the only thing that's happening in a young person's life and we are aware of those risks as well so do the best that we can to monitor those and to support young people to make all kinds of links and reduce their isolation. We're in a slightly different position because we tend to deal with children under the age of five predominantly so they don't access social media but we do. Many of our volunteers have a work mobile phone which the mums will text back and forward so there's an element of texting and of course many of our projects have got their own social media pages who engage with people as well but it's not a major factor in our service provision. Can I just pick up? Thank you. From Heather's one you'd given evidence before about the carers trust having to consult with young people to develop online and I did ask the previous panel and I know you were there and they'd said that one size doesn't fit all and obviously the various groups have varying issues so how would you go forward what's your reaction to what the previous panel said in regards to what organisations would take forward the individual organisations that we hear from or should there be an overarching organisation to ask young people what they want to see online? I think the space for everything and as wide a consultation as possible that's one of the reasons for being person centred and young person led is so that the services are shaped by young people and meets their individual needs because one size doesn't fit all. Babel is a kind of replacement for a young carers online service that my organisation has been running since around 2004 and it's moved from a kind of forum structure which was popular back then to now I don't know if you had a look at the website it looks a little bit more like Facebook it's got that kind of interaction where people can like other people's posts that kind of thing and so it's based on existing services that young people are already using and so that was a kind of clear message that we've learned from other kinds of organisations and other kinds of social media and online services and we know that that's what young people want to use it has been very much shaped by them because if you present something to young people without consultation with them if it doesn't suit them they won't use it so it's a waste of time and a waste of money and so I think we do need to do as much consultation with young people as possible to make sure that services are right for them can I pick up perhaps David you mentioned the fact that you deal with children who are under 5 and they don't obviously use social media but you also mentioned in your introduction remarks about young parents when they're single parents or young parents who feel isolated and can't go out would social media help them in that respect? Well it could do but again only as an add-on because I guess if you're stuck at home with three fairly young children for example social media would be useful in as much as you can access it when you've got two spare moments in your life but it certainly wouldn't be a substitute for actually interacting with people which is the main gap in people's lives but no it's a valuable add-on but I wouldn't say it as a replacement I wasn't thinking of a replacement but I'm just thinking it would be an add-on but if people want to access information and where they can go and how they can get help or if there's other organisations out there would it not be a good idea to link your own organisation and others onto a social media site or would you not work that way? Yes of course it would and an important part of our volunteer's training is ensuring that they're aware of what's available within the community and that if people do access us then that knowledge can be passed on to them and the information and in fact sometimes our volunteers one of the most useful things that they frequently do is say come on I'll chum you along to something and it maybe gives somebody the courage to attend something a mother and toddlers group or whatever that they otherwise would feel daunted by the prospect of walking into so yes I agree it is important and that is one of the things that we do but it's still the people who are not accessing our services or that's not going to reach them and that's the difficult bit I think but the point I was trying to get there are agencies out there like Mumsnet and others and if that was added on to a profile on social media attached to your own profile not your profile but your group and people were looking at that they could get the information through that yes it is and it does work that way quite often so can you link into Mumsnet and other services yes we have good relationships with NetMoms and Mumsnet and there's two or three aren't there but yes no they're hugely useful for some parents particularly if they've got a specific issue that they want to raise that they just type it in and back come 50 suggestions so it's great yes thank you thank you for that and we'll move now smoothly on to Jane to ask you some questions all of you have contact with young people or the organisation you represent and those young people are engaged with other things like schools and youth clubs and the voluntary sector and I'd like to ask a little bit about how everyone works together to plan services for young people who might be social isolated and is there scope to use the graphic process or the child's plan the statutory planning processes that are in place to increase awareness of social isolation as an issue and to maybe increase awareness of our professions about how they might respond to that Heather on a local level services in a certain area will definitely work together to support young carers without reach young carers services will work with local schools with local youth services and anywhere really it will depend on the specific local setup to make sure that they reach in young carers as much as they can with regard to GoFec and child's plans not a lot of young carers will have a child's plan it's not being very popular particularly for older young carers who are reaching their late teens to have a child's plan but if that is identified if there's a young carer who has that kind of vulnerability or support needs there hopefully all the services that are available to them and that they are accessing will work together to support them as much as they can David I find it quite different in because we've got 32 projects which isn't one per local authority they happen to be several and none in other areas it's very different in all the different areas and our local projects do obviously know what else is available within their area but in some areas there's almost nothing additional available or very limited additional services and in others there's quite a range but we find at a local level it tends to be quite well coordinated but there's not so much nationally OK, thanks I would say I could see the role of the named person playing a definite role in helping to identify to young people at risk of isolation I think in terms of the services that they might place on the back I would hope that there would be a very much a participative approach towards that so that they would talk with the young person and find out perhaps maybe what they thought some of the solutions were that once a child has disclosed that they are isolated that it's then on the adults to sort it all out and actually children and young people are very good often at coming up with potential solutions to problems so I guess it's a combination of factors so I think the named person definitely will be helpful the other thing that we found from some recent research that we carried out we looked at how young people's participation supports achievement and attainment in schools part of that we looked at children and young people who were living in poverty who were in schools but who were doing much better than expected and one of the key findings from that was around the schools they were in had a very much a respectful and inclusive feel to them they included children and young people in all the decisions that were made not just through the traditional routes like pupil councils they were involved across the board I think there's something around there that's fair and culture within a school that then will help pick up on the isolation of others I think that's what I was trying to get to is how we build that culture throughout the public sector if that's not too big a challenge for a number one meeting I'm not sure I can do that alone I think that comes into it though I think that if you can spread the lessons from there if you can create a culture where children and young people are seen as agents in their own change they're seen as people who have the power to come up with solutions to their own problems and who can seek out support and who can then be supported I think that those things are crucial in terms of trying to sort out the bigger problems Annabelle, do you have any questions you would like to ask? Margaret, thank you very much I was struck by something which was said earlier by David about where referrals come from and the percentage coming from health visitors because one of the dilemmas is trying to identify where a problem is Now, obviously, by getting a referral you can go in and you're in a family where there are children of under five Given the percentage coming from health visitors I mean, is this obviously an important reference point for you or a referral point for you is that something you'd like to see built on in conjunction with local health services? Absolutely I would have to say that we think health visitors are wonderful because they visit all young families and of course people can hide things and frequently do but because of the universal aspect of them visiting newborn and young children then it's a fantastic source of referrals and we work quite hard at a local level with the health visitors to ensure that they're aware of the capacity and the areas in which we're able to be of assistance and when that works well then that's fantastic So yeah, I'd love to see that built on No, thank you for that David Can I also ask, I mean, obviously you may be dealing with in that situation a parent who's a young person Now on this whole issue of how we try to address the development of social connections and friendships is the presence of home start able to nurture something with the parent, maybe a young person and is there a legacy even for that young child? Yes Absolutely, I was hoping to be able to make the point that it actually helps children become more ready to attend nursery and nursery school and primary schools if they're already engaging with other children so if somebody's stuck at home with their children then it's not good for the very young children and in fact it's going to breed isolation in very young children to that extent So yes, it's very important No, thank you very much indeed I think that can have led on to my next question, convener but perhaps we can hear from Pauline and Heather Is this whole issue of the importance of social connections and friendships and how do you think that it's important and encouraged? That's a big question I suppose what I would say is that there are two elements to it I guess for children and young people the people that are most important to them in terms of not feeling socially isolated are their friends and their peers so it's about creating opportunities where they can have that contact with their peers and not be isolated from them in terms of the other support that they've provided That's a difficult question I'm not sure I can pass on to my colleagues I think from the young carer perspective yes, it's about nurturing links and friendships that are already there and for young carers that's about supporting them to connect with other young carers with their peers but also maintain friendships outside of that and again it's back to the young person's choice for a young carers group because sometimes that might not be a break from caring for them either actual or imagined they might just think they're going to be talking about caring issues and they just want to get away from that they just want to talk about things that any young person wants to talk about So there's a quote from our website actually from Babel which someone had joined up and posted they talked about their caring role and then just at the end said I'm interested in taekwondo singing and dancing to talk about their caring role and their experiences with wanting to talk about their hobbies and interests like any other young person would want to so again it's about working with schools and young people's services or the universal services for young people making sure that they're aware of how to support young carers making sure that other pupils in the school or people who are going to the young young person service can be aware of young carers issues and make sure they can be supported in a range of different situations but I agree it's a big question I'm not sure how we can kind of solve that one I noticed when I was asking David about health visitors you were nodding approvingly Heather, how does that impact on your particular client group if you like of what carers are trying to cope with particular young carers? I was nodding because I don't really know a lot about health visitors and the carer interaction if a professional is aware of a family where there is a young carer whether someone with an illness or a disability then anyone who is in contact with that family on a professional basis should be aware of how to refer and how to support people but for our young carer services most of the referrals will come from schools and after that it's from social work services and from GPs so I don't really know a lot about health visitors and what their role is Thank you for that Can I come in very briefly and just ask you about GERFEC we've heard in other evidence sessions as well that everything seems to lead back to this named person and the role of that named person and responsibilities seem to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger How can we ensure or how do you think a suggestion from yourselves how can we ensure that these named persons have the right skills and tools at hand when they are appointed as the named person because if you've actually got someone that's a social worker, a health visitor, a teacher they've already got the skills and the training so how do we ensure that the named person will have those skills Yes, Pauline Speaking maybe perhaps not about health visitors but in terms of education just generally in terms of the head teachers they will already have been in contact with a lot of the issues that will be raised with them as they take on the named person role I think the key is training to ensure that there's training and there's awareness raising of the different issues affecting children and young people and also the support that's available to them because I think one of the daunting aspects of being a named person would from my perspective sitting on a whole raft of information and trying to figure out well where do I go with that and how do I make sure that I'm doing that in a children and young person centred way because I think that's the key but it's about making sure that whatever action you take and whatever support you put in place is entirely appropriate to that children and young person and that they are part and parcel of that decision making process so I don't think that named persons will have an easy ride of it in a sense that they've got a lot of pressure on them to know where to go but I think it's almost about them having the confidence to know where to start and then that other support can then wrap around it afterwards Is there adequate training or will there be adequate training given to the named persons then? Are you aware of that? I'm not aware of specific training that's being offered to named persons I don't think that there's a national programme but I'm not entirely sure of that Okay, thank you Christian, I think Christian's a few questions would like to ask We had a lot about anti-bullying policies and campaigns and how effective they were Do you think they are very relevant to social isolation and do you think that we need to have specific policies for social isolation Have you got any? Because you did some research David, but have they linked policies from the Scottish Government from local authorities from NHS from public bodies? Excuse me, bullying is not really something that we tend to certainly doesn't come to the forefront of anything that we deal with I'm quite sure that many of the families that we do deal with there is an element of that but it's not something that's predominant so I'm not really very well placed to answer that My point was anti-bullying policies have been very effective to do what they do We have no policies on social isolation Do we need something similar to this? You don't need to answer That's quite a difficult question because you don't like to give a blasie answer Obviously the existence of services which are going to combat social isolation is of huge importance It would be well worth identifying exactly what can combat social isolation and a strategy to ensure that an adequate amount of those services was available to those who would need it That's going to be a big task Not just the identification and the creation of a strategy but the resourcing that would be required to go along with it would be significant as well That would be a great step forward You were asking about whether or not you should create a specific policy for social isolation I suppose I would say the same as with anti-bullying policies I suppose they're only as good as the people that are operating those policies so I think that's a key thing to bear in mind but I suppose if you're asking should there be something somewhere that automatically makes people think about social isolation for children and young people One key way that you could do that is by looking at a new proposal or a new piece of legislation that you're carrying out of children's rights impact assessment so you're looking at it from the perspective of a child or young person and you're making sure that you're covering all their rights and that you're thinking about it from the perspective of a child or young person because I think quite often policies that are created that have a massive effect on children and young people I think that the other element to it is when someone's considering a change to an existing policy that that should also be part of it because even what might seem relatively minor changes can have a massive impact on children and young people so for example one of the issues that's been raised with our office recently is about reductions to additional support for learning for children and young people with disabilities and also additional support for English for children who have English as an additional language so if you remove that support at that level the knock-on effect in terms of social isolation is huge so you need somebody to have that overview of if you do this at this stage what's the impact on the child later on I think it's that broad overview that you need and you do need social isolation to be up there as if you do this this is one of the likely risks to a child or young person so you don't think we could have a distinct policies as a view of the free members I think I would absolutely agree that yes a policy would be a good thing but as it ever is will policy translate into practice just echoing what the others have said really it needs to be you need to make sure that the people who will be implementing policy and carrying out service provision and carrying out work with young people can implement the policy as fully as possible and that's something that we can't really predict what about the camping the anti-bullying camping have been quite successful do you think the Scottish Government should have a national camping I don't see any reason why not but again it would have to be led by by young people by people who are experiencing social isolation and that again would cause its own problems we've heard a lot about the lack of confidence that's caused by isolation and loneliness and therefore participating in developing a campaign around it it's kind of a cycle of of not being able to be involved so in theory absolutely but I'm not sure how it could be implemented not well enough that's the wrong word but you know how it could be implemented effectively I can see it would be difficult to have a national campaign because the objectives would be quite wide-ranging and it would be difficult to be able to identify how successful something like that had been unless you can focus it and narrow it down sufficiently or compartmentalise it I'm not sure I think in theory it's a good idea in practice I can see some difficulties and again as my colleagues have said the implementation of it is obviously the key as well any of the road you'll see the Scottish Government to have to combat social isolation I think it kind of comes back to what I was saying earlier on it's about just having that awareness of the impact of actions on children and young people and also including them in decisions that are being made about them when the Scottish Government are putting together wellbeing indicators for example making sure that those are rights based indicators so they're not focused on the behaviour of the child or young person something that they've done that's focused on the support that could be provided and to enable them to be the best that they can be so I think it's a cultural shift that you're talking about I think that's what you're aiming for although a campaign could be helpful in terms of highlighting the issue I think what you're really aiming for if you want to make a difference is a cultural shift and I think rights are a big part of that the Who Care Scotland carried out some research in December of last year and one of the things that they found when they were looking at people and their hopes for the Children and Young People Scotland Act in relation to corporate parenting one of the things that they were really key about was that where they had people who were adults who were aware of rights then the consequence of that was that it was a much more participative and open environment for children and young people so there's a sort of dual bit about children and young people knowing more about their rights and being able to enforce them so that they can then be more open to engaging with children and young people Can I come in very quickly on that? I'm very conscious that we're talking about what Christian says about some sort of campaign but I'm thinking that there could be young people out there who are isolated and lonely but they're depressed and they don't associate that with the situation they're actually in and they don't realise that if they could remove the loneliness and isolation then that would help the depression and other effects that these two actually have on them and I think is there anyway that there could be some sort of highlighting campaign in schools and hospitals and doctor surgeries that to make people aware that if you're depressed or you're ill it could be because you're lonely isolated and here are the simple things that can actually be done to help that recovery I think it's something quite simple is that so simple that it's ineffective or would it actually work? Instead of thinking that way thinking the other way, we're promoting interaction between young people because do we have that kind of campaign? We've got another question coming in however if you feel that you don't have answers just now, we're quite happy to write out to you what those questions and you can reply to them and write in our email and I'll pass you on to that and also Annabelle to what Heather was saying my understanding is that every local authority education department should have an anti-bullying strategy and that should be operated and applied in every school for which it's responsible and I just wondered Pauline, if any assessment work had been done about how those strategies work in practice? It's not been work that we've carried out ourselves but I suspect there's work that's been carried out about respect me who would have a remit for that I think in terms of our own experience of the type of stuff that comes through our enquiry service it comes back to what I said previously that it's often about every school can have a strategy and every school can have a policy and practice and I think there are real difficulties for people who are being bullied where they feel that the solutions that are offered actually isolate them further so instead of tackling the bullying itself what you're doing is taking that young person who's being bullied out of the situation and I think that that's a key part of it so whilst you can have a policy and a strategy again it does very much come down to how that's used and the knowledge of the people that are using it and the understanding of the impact the actions that you take will have on that individual childing impression so that underlines your point about changing culture absolutely culture does come into it and other issues as well I have a worry defining isolation, loneliness everyone has their own definition and this committee has also but the worry that I would have if you were putting forward a project that would be a tick box exercise because we had evidence from Childline where a child had phoned them up at Christmas time and was lonely but they weren't disadvantaged in any other aspect every single person in that house was there but they're all on different types of social media so that's a culture cultural change that's coming forward I would far rather I would like to look at it as a convener has said about either you've got depression that reflects itself in isolation or loneliness or the loneliness causes the depression which is more likely so to look at as Christian had mentioned a more positive aspect of pushing forward social media connections what groups are available and for all the voluntary groups to get together and have a register of where people can access I would take to think we'd have a tick box exercise I think that would be the worst thing we could possibly do anything for yourselves but thank you Does anybody have any supplementaries on that if not we'll move on to John Finnie It's a question for you Pauline and it's regarding what I feel is a lot of misrepresentation about the name person issue we heard from David there that the bulk of his referrals and he's dealing with pre-school people to his organisation come from the health visitor that to me and on health visitor is the name person of course for a pre-school person that's living proof that the system is absolutely working would you agree with that? I would say that the name person is essentially consolidating good practice that's in place already absolutely I would agree with that excuse me I think health visitors have been identified as being best placed to pick up on those issues for children young people under the age of five and then teachers, head teachers in primary and secondary schools and people absolutely I think they have that knowledge they have that day to day connection with the child or young person and they're ideally placed to figure out what's going to work for that child or young person I'm giving it the professionals and they should in any case be working collaboratively with their colleagues the question of additional training is in many respects a relevant it's core training yes it should be core it shouldn't be seen as an add-on to having to make a child protection referral for example we'll know that that takes quite a personal toll on you if you're sat there with information you're trying to decide what the best cluster of action is and how to pass that information on who to pass that information on I think that's a lot of pressure to put on one person within a school luckily the name persons that are there are well trained and have that ability to kind of take that forward but I think recognising the pressure and the wide range of decisions that they're going to have to make on a day-to-day basis is key David, I had a range of questions on good practice and we've heard examples of good practice you referred to a study from 2006 and you said that it may not be the case I suspect that it is the case that many of the factors still apply would you be able to share that information with the committee? Yes, of course Another thing I noted from you was that you talked about some of the referrals came from people noticing difficulty and in some respects that must be after you had mentioned the various professionals that's very reassuring in some respects and might suggest that people aren't as isolated as they may be imagined In some instances, yes sometimes it's people's friends who refer them but then they're going to tend to be people who are less isolated if they have friends who can refer them so it's quite difficult to generalise from that it's a relatively small proportion of our referrals as well but it's true to that extent We've heard in the previous panel about the role that community psychiatric nurses play and the awareness there's a challenge there, of course it is a catch-22 the need that might not be prepared because of their condition to seek help anyway Do you see a role for more than just a raising awareness? How do we get people to come and get the help that might in some way alleviate their isolation? I would say there's definitely a role I suppose what you're talking about is our dual thing about how children and young people know to seek help and when to seek help so I suppose there's an information element to that but the other bit for me is about people who work closely with children and young people and people who have contact with children and young people picking up on the signs, the early signs that something is going wrong in that child or young person's life Again, you mentioned the name person earlier and that's a key part of their role is to look at early support, early intervention to avoid problems spiralling from our own experience we had a recent example of a young person who had severe mental health problems and some of the delays that came out of accessing the appropriate support for them led to their condition deteriorating significantly so it's about saying that even a delay in providing a service can actually have a massive impact on that child or young person's wellbeing in the case of this young person they missed out on their right to education and their mental health deteriorated to the extent that they became violent so they weren't able to have contact with their peers so they became more isolated they weren't allowed to go outside for their own safety so I suppose it's about saying we'll look here someone in a particular situation if you don't put that support in at that stage or you don't pick up on that issue it spirals out of controlling you're potentially ending up with a much worse situation for that young person further down the line and you're not having the young person's rights met I suppose it demonstrates where a failure to provide a service seems like something that you can blame on a lack of money but if you look at the real impact that it has on a child or a young person it's huge and with a long term viewpoint it's much better to provide that service at an early stage where that young person is still at a position where they can recover than waiting until they're much further down the line I think there's a little difficulty with what the services are and what services are available as well because people are reluctant sometimes to come forward people are scared to say that they need support because they might make them feel inadequate or it may more likely worry them that somebody else is going to think they're inadequate and take some action which they may or may not like Most art works well because it's all about choice or choosing to be with the families and the families are choosing to have the support so that's quite straightforward that we're a relatively non-threatening organisation but the same can't always be said for all organisations I mean we know fine that people are scared if they engage with social work department that their children might be taken into care and while it's fine for me to know the statistics of how frequently that happens that's not the perception out there so it's not just the availability of services it's the willingness to engage with and the manner in which they're delivered which is very important it clearly depends on the extent of somebody's need how far down the line and maybe home start isn't appropriate for somebody where perhaps the children actually need to be taken into care or looked after but for lesser degrees then it's important that the service is non-threatening supportive Is that an issue with young carers too than Heather, the fear of perhaps some of them stepping and they'll be separated? Definitely, for young carers who are caring for someone with an addiction or for a mental health problem then yes they are very worried that the family is going to be split or poor that the parents or the siblings are going to get into trouble and again yes there is the fear of health care services as well a frustration that the parent or the sibling on the person they care for isn't getting better why aren't the health care professionals making them better when solving the problem for younger people that can be a real issue and if no-one's explained to them enough about the condition of the person they're looking after it can be really frustrating and difficult for them Thank you very much Does any of the members have any other questions that they'd like to ask the witnesses? No questions That concludes today's meeting and I'd like to thank you for coming along and sharing your knowledge and information with us as it's been really really useful and our next meeting will take place on Monday 16 March at the bridge in Easterhouse where the committee will take further evidence on its inquiry into age and social isolation and I now close the meeting Thank you very much for coming Thank you