 Good morning and welcome to the seventh meeting of the Education, Children and Young People Committee in 2024. The first item on our agenda is an evidence session on additional support for learning inquiry. This is the second formal session that we have had in recent years to how it is working in practice 20 years on. We will focus on three themes throughout the inquiry, the implementation of the presumption of mainstreaming, the impact of Covid-19 on additional support for learning, the use of remedies as set out in the act. Today we are going to focus mainly on the second theme, but not specifically on that. We will probably stray into other areas as well. I welcome Susie Martin, the external affairs manager for the National Autistic Society in Scotland, Glen Carter, head of the Scotland office, Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, Dina Aitken, director of development and external affairs at the Salveson Mindroom Centre, and Irene Stove, deputy head teacher and committee member of the Scottish Guidance Association. I welcome all of you, and thank you for your written submissions that you have provided ahead of this meeting. They have been extremely helpful. We are going to move straight to questions, and I have taken convener privilege this morning, and I have got the first one, a bit of a scene setter. It is really focusing in on Covid and the impact that it has had on our young people. What do you think are the main impacts that the pandemic has had on pupils with additional support needs for children, young people and their parents? To what degree have those impacts been mitigated by the support that schools and local authorities have in place since then? I think that the pandemic has obviously had a significant impact on children with additional support needs, and those impacts have been varied. One clearly has been during the pandemic the issue around access to services, where they struggled to get access to a range of different services. Our member of speech and language therapists rapidly changed their way of doing business to offer virtual offers. They already had established good social media presence, so that was very helpful. However, many of them were redeployed to adult services, which reduced their capacity to provide services for children with additional support needs. When the schools started to reopen, access to schools were variable. Interestingly, depending on the local relationship and whether they were seen as core members of the team, they indicated whether they got access to schools sooner rather than later. Clearly, there was the access issue, but for children themselves, our members, early years practitioners or teachers, are saying that there has been a very significant impact on children. Primarily, the impact that they have seen is the increase in complexity of needs that is presented to them because of the lack of early intervention and prevention. We know that the majority—a very significant number of children with additional support needs—have communication needs, and we know the real quality evidence for the alignment between communication and their attainment, their wellbeing, their attendance at schools, their behaviour and their future life chances. We are seeing an impact on all those areas. I suppose that it speaks to the importance that I have been able to get in as early as possible to meet the needs of those children. In summary, we are seeing an overwhelming increase in demand and an increase in complexity for those children. I know that there are lots of members who want to ask specific questions around the speech and language therapy as we move throughout the session. Susie, what about yourself? I will give a very brief introduction to our organisation for anybody who is not familiar with it. The National Autistic Society Scotland has been supporting autistic individuals and families for over 25 years. We have a range of support services. We have some that are directly for autistic children and young people, including a programme of support that looks to support those children and young people who are not currently engaged in education. The team either looks to re-engage them in education or where that is not possible, put measures in place and put them on the pathway to a positive destination. We also have a programme of support called Empower Up, which is for autistic young people to give them the tools and strategies to navigate the world around them. A network of 16 branches across Scotland, many of which are run by autistic people and parents and carers, and a lot of them provide support directly to families as well. We also campaign alongside autistic people and their families, as I'm sure many of you know, will be familiar with our campaigns. We had the Not Included and Not Engaged Not Involved campaign around education, which launched in 2018. We also have an on-going campaign for a commissioner for autistic people. I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity today and say from the outset that I'm going to draw on a number of sources of evidence. Our report from our Not Included and Not Engaged Not Involved campaign, our left stranded report, which was UK-wide about the experiences of autistic people and families during Covid, and also a short survey that we did just before Christmas specifically for this inquiry, which garnered over 100 responses. In terms of the impact of Covid on autistic children and young people and on their education, I'd just like to say from the outset that the problems that we experienced in Scotland with additional support for learning provision and the issues around the presumption to mainstream existed before the pandemic and they persist today. The pandemic did not cause those problems, although it did in no doubt exacerbate the existing problems within the system. I think that you heard that last week at your session and you likely will have heard it at your participation session, so I just want to say that from the outset. Lockdown obviously significantly disrupted the lives of autistic people, in particular autistic children and young people and their families. Many of them used school as a coping mechanism. It provided routine, it provided structure, where there was support provided, it provided much-needed support for learning. When that was withdrawn, there was obviously a huge impact on those children and young people in terms of their learning and their education but also their social life and their skills that they had learned at school. There was an impact on the family unit as well. Our left stranded report found that 68 per cent of families who responded said that their child or young person was anxious at the loss of routine and 65 per cent said that their child or young person couldn't actually engage in online classes. That is a significant impact. We also know that some children and young people had a different experience. Going to school can be a significant cause of anxiety and stress for many autistic children and young people for a variety of reasons. That is largely down to a lack of support in schools. When school was removed from their life, the need to go into school was removed from their life, that removed a big source of anxiety and stress for those children and young people. I am not going to say that being at home learning online was better for those children and young people. For many of them, it would have still been extremely difficult, but certainly some will have found online learning experience more positive because they did not have the stress and anxiety of going into school. The members will drill into some of those things later on, Susie. I want to say that we cannot understate the importance of being in the school environment. When it comes to schools supporting children and young people back into school post Covid, we call for transition plans at the time. Some schools did that well, others did not put transition plans in place. There are some autistic children and young people who are still not at school today because there was not the right support for transitioning out of Covid back into the school environment. There are some great examples of good practice where schools have mitigated the impacts and got children and young people back into school, but there are some who are still really struggling today and their families are still really struggling today. A similar picture to what you have already heard, we support parents and carers of children and young people who are neurodivergent and the children and young people themselves. We do some transition work in schools with children who are considering next steps after school as well. It is true that those families were struggling pre-pandemic services. We are already scant for the families and they were struggling, but the pandemic has really put a sharp focus on the isolation and difficulties that those families have been facing. Post-pandemic, I think that what we can say is that we have seen a surge in demand for our services. We are supporting three times as many families post-pandemic as we were in 2019. The level of distress in those families is much deeper. The complexity of the issues that they are bringing to us is more complex. One of the key issues that we are seeing among the young people is the impact of the pandemic, which is the absence of transition. There are children in upper primary school who missed that key transition from the play-based learning of primary 1-2 into the more structured learning of primary 3-4-5. They are struggling in upper primary school now to make up that difference. There are the adolescents in secondary school who missed the in-person transition from their primary school to the much larger secondary school. One of the key issues for those children is socialisation. The levels of anxiety among those children are really quite extreme. We are supporting lots of families where the children are not in school at all or they have very, very part-time tables, maybe just a couple of hours of teaching. We are finding that the children who are out of school are taking longer to help them to return to school and they are out for longer periods. Those part-time tables are persisting for longer periods as well. I am sorry that it is a bit of a bleak picture, but we are facing quite a difficult period for all the schools and the families. Putting the spotlight on the issues is always what we are looking to try and do. I know that a number of you have mentioned the stay-home, stay-lives and how the young people really took that to heart, and they are still finding that as a source of anxiety to come back. I was wondering, Irene, if you could maybe comment on that. In your evidence that you have presented around keen to learn about the families aspect of it and the role of respite services, which were stopped and in many cases have not returned, I was wondering if perhaps you could respond to that element of it. We had, as guidance teachers, a lot of children who did take the message to stay home literally, particularly later, children with autism and anxiety. Children who were having to isolate because of suppressed immune systems as well as family members with suppressed immune systems would continue to cause them a level of anxiety. Across Scotland, as I am sure you are all aware, attendance has dropped. We have children who have not made it back to classes or whose attendance is incredibly low. We have children who are perhaps waiting for medical treatment and are taking time off before medical treatments because they do not want to catch something in schools, so that impacts on attendance and all of those things impact on families because they are struggling to engage with schools and to support the young people back into school. I have had meetings, as have my colleagues, with parents who are really worried about the level of their child's anxiety and who have had to engage with mental health services that they would not have had to engage with before the pandemic. What we have seen in schools is that the pandemic has caused us to have an increase in children with additional support needs because of the levels of anxiety. Diana had mentioned about dysregulation as well. We have seen a lot of children with dysregulation linked to their stress and anxiety. What Glen was saying about the services is that they are not getting into schools to be able to support their communication. The children were not getting the services during lockdown. When lockdown was lifted and we were back in school, but we had all the mitigations in place that meant that it was really just school staff and core staff that were in school. That meant that some children have had to wait quite a long time and that it has impacted on their communication needs, which then impacts on their anxiety and impacts on their ability to regulate. In schools, a lot of our members were engaged with the connected and compassionate communities to make sure that all staff were trauma-informed and were unable to support young people. Education Scotland provided a lot of resources that schools tapped into to try to redress some of the mental health needs. For parents, coming back into school, we were having parents nights online as well, not building the same relationships. As Dinah said about transitions, transitions for our most vulnerable young people normally are enhanced and go over a long period of time for them moving from primary to secondary. Some of those were online, which was the best that we could do. Schools were trying different things. We had schools that were doing virtual tours. Someone was going in and taking a virtual tour of the schools that young people could see, but it is for young people with complex needs that it is just not enough. A lot of parents mentioned respite services, and respite stopped. It puts an immense pressure on families and impacts on their mental wellbeing as well. Respite, from our experience, has not gone back to pre-pandemic levels. It was also in your evidence that spoke about how respite, when a young person goes to that facility, they have a social network there as well, so it is beneficial for them as well as their families. It gives the family a break and time to spend with other children, but it has a huge role in keeping a lot of children used to look forward to respite. I do not think that there is still a level of anxiety with the young people that we see who are accessing respite, because they have not had the same opportunities to be away from home, so it is just more daunting. I want to bring in the other members of the panel. I am interested in emerging specifically, or the insights gained in the pandemic, how dysregulated behaviours became more important, how they increased and to what extent, in your opinion, they may have become embedded, particularly in children in early years. I know that there was a lot of information that you gave in your evidence to that, but it is a chance to put it on the record. Perhaps Glenie could come to you first and then you, Susie. There is no doubt that we have seen an increased number of children with behavioural difficulties. In the context of children with communication needs, all behaviour is some form of communication. We know that, in terms of communications, part of who we are as humans and that we long for connection. If that connection is not there and the inability to communicate is not there, we become distressed, we can become depressed and low, or behavioural issues come to the fore. That is certainly what we are seeing. Children with communication difficulties are far more likely to have behavioural difficulties and are desperate to have their needs met and to express what their needs and wants. That is where having speech and language therapists within educational establishments can really help, because we can support staff to understand those needs, to support children to express their needs and wants, and to get that connection that they so desperately want. There is a real connection between communication and behaviour. We know that if we manage to give those children a voice, that all settles down. They feel connected and supported by those around them. It is a really powerful tool to reduce the level of behaviour. Susie, do you want to come in? I know that this is something that you referenced. I want to say that, obviously, we have heard from your evidence session last week, and I am sure that we will hear it this session this week, that there is felt to be an increase in the number of learners with additional support for learning needs. Autism is a lifelong disability. Some autistic people do not consider it a disability, they consider it an integral part of their identity. I would say that if there are more autistic children than young people, that is, as a result of more awareness of autism and people coming forward to seek a diagnosis and support for their autistic experience. Without a doubt, Covid-19 will have caused autistic children and young people a lot of anxiety and stress, which has probably resulted in dysregulation and certain behaviours. The removal and withdrawal of certain services certainly will have exacerbated that. For autistic children and young people, it is all about the support. If the support is there and the services are there, then they are likely to be able to really enjoy their school experience and enjoy socialising with their peers. If the support is not there, then yes, they will experience dysregulation and they will potentially behave in such a way that others around them perceive that as challenging or problematic. I agree with what Glen Zedd said about communication. Communication is a key part of that, as well as other supports that need to be available. Autistic children and young people, part of the autistic experience, can be difficulties with social communication. Being able to communicate well with teachers and peers is a big part of being able to enjoy school and socialising. Covid-19 will have resulted in more autistic children and young people feeling dysregulated and all the behaviours that come with that. Just picking up on the way that I framed the question, many of you and your evidence have presented how it has led to more dysregulated behaviour. I was interested not just in the increase, but in the instances in which you think that behaviour or issue has become embedded depending on the learning stage or age that the child is at. Therefore, to put in place some mitigations to overcome that will be extremely difficult. I think that I would defer to other colleagues about whether that has become embedded at specific age or stage and whether autistic children, young people or others with additional support for learning needs are still experiencing that dysregulation as they get older and certain behaviours as they get older. I would say from our experiences that when families receive the support that they need, the autistic children and young people really do start to progress and do much better at school, at home. For us it is really about getting the support in place and that is what families are fighting for. I defer to other colleagues, colleagues in health and social care. I can see smiles as people wait. Obviously I want to come in. Diana, you caught my eye there. I can see Deborah, you are keen to come in now as well. Again, I am not sure about commenting on whether this is something that has become embedded. I would certainly want to use the same phrase that Glen used, that all behaviour is communication. We do, as an organisation, have success in supporting families and improving those situations, but it is very much a relationship-based approach and building up trust and learning the communication needs of the particular individual. That is quite labour-intensive work. It takes time, so there is not really a quick fix for some of those children. They do need intensive support in order to be able to manage better in the environment that they are in. Deborah, I know that you have not had the chance to contribute yet. Good morning. Good morning and sorry that I have joined you late. The other email slipped by at the time it changed, so I thought it was 10 o'clock. From our perspective, we support the whole spectrum of neurodivergence within families. There is a direct link that our training programme will highlight that puberty. The stage of puberty quite often causes regression and behaviours throughout. Early puberty can be problematic, so that can be a period of late primary school and that transition into secondary school. When puberty is kicking in and regression and behaviours can present as major difficulties within that transition on to high school, and that is where we see lots of behavioural situations occurring. There seems to be that lack of understanding that there can be that behavioural regression during puberty. Irene, I know that you have not had a chance to come in yet, but I will lead off with my next question and you may want to pick something up. In the light of what we know now or what we have a strong sense of, what do you consider to be the key points of intervention post-pandemic and where do they differ to what we might have thought pre-pandemic? I was going to speak about how the whole online learning increased issues for young people through communication, because we were basically asking children to communicate and engage with computers and social media as a way of communicating. That has led in schools, our members have noticed a big increase in cyberbullying. That leads to greater anxiety, stress and dysregulation. I think that the environment of children being at home as well, the lack of opportunity to learn social skills through play has caused an impact. Can you repeat the last bit of your question? I suppose that I was interested in if we were able to capture what we now know with hindsight would have been the key intervention points where we now know that it tipped into dysregulated behaviour. What we think is the key intervention points have we gained new insights? In other words, a positive from the pandemic. We knew before what the key points of intervention were. Are they still the same? Have they simply been exacerbated or have we got any new insights? I suppose that is what I am trying to get to over the inquiry on steroids there, is it not? I do not have an answer fully in the shell, but I am happy to give a bash. I am not convinced that necessarily the intervention points are different per se. I am happy to be corrected by other colleagues on the panel. Early intervention is key, and we always knew that. I think that when it comes to dysregulation and autistic children and young people struggling, it is largely because their needs have not been identified or overlooked. It is always going to be about coming in at the earliest possible opportunity. Our programme of support for autistic children and young people is not engaged in education. The main bit of feedback from the young people, because it used to be 12 to 16, was that it was fantastic. I wish I had this when I was at primary school. We reduced the age from 12 to 10, so we now support 10 to 16-year-olds. That change happened just after Covid, and that means that we can support people with that transition from primary to secondary. I am not convinced that they are necessarily different. I am not necessarily convinced that, unless others want to say otherwise, it is always about early intervention as early as possible. That goes back to your previous question about the dysregulatory behaviours being embedded. I am not sure that I would use that term, but you are absolutely right that the earlier we get in, there is not the harm that occurs, and therefore we can prevent some of those behaviours. That is not to say further down the line that we can still provide effective interventions to turn things around and support kids to have their voice heard to learn to make friends in education context. On your broader question, I agree with Susie that the key points are still the same. It is still about early intervention and prevention. Something that I observed during the pandemic was that we had done quite a big bit of transformational work, a whole system approach, within our educational establishments, and where that was working extremely well. I noticed that, when therapists couldn't get into that placement, that work was still going on, if that makes sense. There was still an element of sustainability within the placement because we have been empowering educators, we have been developing the environment, they were effective at early intervention and identification, and that was beneficial for the kids when we are not getting access. I hope that that gives you some sense of the learning and the pandemic that is shown on the light in that particular aspect. Can I formally welcome Debra Best, who is the director of Differabled Scotland to the committee this morning? I now move to questions from Ruth Maguire, please. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Thanks for being with us. I think that my questions are for the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, but I am happy to hear from anyone else. We have heard in your written evidence the importance of communication and its impact on attainment behaviour as a protective factor against mental health issues. In your evidence, you say that there is a marked increase in presentations since the start of the pandemic and that demand is still high three years on. I was quite struck by the numbers in the written evidence that there was over 6,000 children waiting and that the average longest wait for initial contact and individualised therapy was over a year. I have a number of questions. Has there been any easing of the pressure? Also, with the average longest wait for initial contact and individualised therapy, is that one year over a year that a child is likely to wait or is that two years, if that makes sense? Do they have the contact then for the individual treatment they have to wait another year? I would be interested to hear the impact of those waits in terms of development. In answering my colleague Michelle Thompson, you spoke about the importance of intervening and that we could catch up, but it would be helpful for the committee to understand what the impact might be for a three-year-old or a four-year-old or whatever age to wait for a year and then have the intervention. Yes, there has been no doubt that there has been a significant increase in demand. I think that we are very fortunate in speech, language and communication to have high-quality prevalence data. We knew pre-pandemic. There was a brilliant report called equity for all, which the Scottish Government commissioned. That was the first time in the world that we have seen that we were able to scope out the needs of a country and their communication needs. That was about the estimated 275,000 children with communication needs. Public Health Scotland has come out with reports citing a sharp increase for the health officers noticing communication as their highest concern. That is always the highest concern, but they notice a sharp increase, particularly around two and a half years old. That is a key area for speech and spoken language development. Finally, we did a survey with Early Years Scotland where we surveyed all of their members and 89 per cent of them have seen a significant increase in the numbers and the complexity of communication needs. I can come back to the why in a minute if that is helpful. To answer your question about waiting times, the demand has been very significant. We did the freedom of information request to all health boards, local authorities and health and social care partnerships. You are right to say that the average longest wait is one year, one month for individual contact. Different services manage it differently. Sometimes that will mean that they wait for initial contact and sometimes that also means that they are putting on another wait for an individualised support if they need it. Not all children require individualised support, but some do. You may ask whether that is a normal sort of wait, but in our FOI analysis we were able to show that over the last five years that has increased. The initial contact has increased by seven and a half months, and the wait for individualised therapy if it is required has increased by 10 and a half months. The reasons behind that are complex. Of course, we have the increase in demand. We have a poor supply of speech and language therapists in Scotland. We have only two HCIs who train therapists. Currently, we have vacancy rates of between 10 and 11 per cent. A really important thing that has come to the fore in recent times is that funding for speech and language therapy services is complex and extremely vulnerable to cuts. We saw just last week that one local authority cut 100 per cent of its funding for speech and language therapy. These are challenging financial times. I am not blaming in that position, but what I am pointing out is that those are very difficult decisions and they can potentially and will, I would suggest, significantly impact the future of our children. To respond to your question about impact, for a child to wait that amount of time at that age is, in my view, unacceptable. Again, I am not a portion of blame, but for adults to wait that long that is bad enough depending on what they are waiting for, but for children that is a very significant amount of time. The amount of development that they do, particularly in the early years, and critically around two, three or four years, is an extremely long time to wait and has a very significant impact on their outcomes. We know that to be true and that is why we are expressing a concern about it. Does that help? That does help, thank you. Speaking about resource there and the fact that it straddles health and education, I will not ask the conveners to ask me to ask, but I am not going to ask which local authority it is. What needs to change? Children's services as a whole straddles health and education, so it seems that the obligations to support children should already be there, if you know what I mean. I struggle to understand how that can happen. I agree, because in the end these are not health children, these are not education children, these are Scotland's children, they are whole children. In my view, and this has happened in some areas of Scotland, one local area answers the question, what do children with communication needs require in order to be stationary, safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, etc. They answer that together as an integrated team and then they pool resources to deliver on the answer to that question. Each area is different, you will have remote challenges, you will have inner city challenges, but that answer should drive the funding, if that makes sense, not the other way around. I have been working across Scotland with key partners ADESC, COSLA, HPE directors and speech language therapy leads to come up with an answer to the question that you have had around funding. I think that we should have a partnership funding agreement between health and education, we are developing a consensus on the challenges, we are trying to get to the consensus on the solutions, but in my view we should find a way to support these children needs and not fight over who is paying for it, because this is too important for Scotland to wrestle with that. At the moment, there is no accountability for the types of outcomes around communication, there are no particular measures, so there is something that we could do in Scotland to provide accountability to health boards and local authorities. That should be, I would argue, a joint accountability, because it is so relevant to health and education. I think that that would help to drive some of this change. However, it is a complex issue. As a service lead, I have been talking about this for a very long time. I do not think that the vulnerability around funding for speech language therapy is different from some other areas, particularly and I am not seeing that vulnerability in other areas of the UK, so it is a concern for me and we need to act quite urgently on that. I am conscious that we, the committee member, spent some time with children and young people and heard what was important to them. One of the things that struck out for me was the thing about positive relationships and just how important and protective and empowering that is to have positive relationships. Obviously, communication is key to that. You spoke about a whole-system approach and gave quite a helpful example of where that was built in, where all the staff or people around the child could pick up on those approaches. What needs to change for us to have a whole-system approach? Is it the case that getting it right for children with communication challenges or difficulties is better for everybody? It is good for all children, and it is not just about a specialist service, if that makes sense. You are absolutely right. This is a whole-system issue and everyone needs to be involved with everybody's responsibility. I think that speech language therapy is a core part of it, but there is so much more to that. What needs to change? Speech language therapy and allied health professions as a whole in children's services have done a load of work to transform how they do business in terms of early intervention and prevention. I have bucked the trend that I would suggest in health services to get upstream. You will know the pressures on acute services, where there is a lot of power within acute services. There are some unhelpful issues around the focus on waiting times. Sometimes that draws people back to a more individualised support clinic-based approach, which I think is unhelpful. That drives some of that. That is why we are asking for different types of measures that can be helpful and can drive the system. The whole-system approach, we need to value early intervention prevention and see how important that is. We need to value the whole-system approach where you could have a speech language therapist and that is what we are advocating working in every school and every education placement. It is not necessarily there to do what people think speech language therapists do around individualised support, although that is part of it, but they can do stuff around embedding and supporting teachers and practitioners and modelling and coaching contexts. Formal training is great, but without coaching a model in context, it does not work. We know that from research. We know that this works. I have been working on this for a long time as a speech language therapist as well. You need a whole-system approach. You need people to value that. You need local authorities to value that as well. In addition to that, you need a threshold resource to deliver it. I have been saying that we need transformation, but we need adequate resource to deliver it as well. Thank you very much. Pam Duncan-Clancy, you have some sups on this theme. I do, and it relates specifically to the point about behaviour and behaviour as a communication. I just wanted to ask Glenn, could you tell me how involved has the royal college been with the summits that the cabinet secretary has got on behaviour in schools? Have you been engaged by the Government on that? Honestly, we haven't been as engaged. Pam, clearly we are making the case around the link between behaviour and communication, but in that specific bit of work, we haven't been involved. Liam Kerr? Thanks, convener. Just briefly to pick up this exact theme, Glenn, specifically on Covid and its impacts. Your organisation has made very clear that the interventions that you might make need to not just be a one-off in the early years, but to cycle right the way through, or ideally cycle right the way through. Did Covid break that contact for a lot of young people? If so, post Covid, has that been easy to pick up again? Or have you gone back into the challenges that Ruth Maguire picked up about waiting times, for example, or even have some people been lost to your interventions? You are right to say that we are seeing a very significant number of kids in early years placements and schools that are inadequate with spoken language skills. We are hearing from early years practitioners saying that pre Covid they had a small group of non-talkers and a group of talkers as they define it, but post Covid that has been flipped, so that is a worrying trend to hear about. We know the interventions and the supports that can close the gap for those kids and provide them with the spoken language skills that they need and communication that they need in order to access their environments. However, as you pointed out, that needs to be maintained throughout their school career. As soon as you stop working on communication and spoken language, that gap can widen. We are seeing a variability across Scotland for quite a lot of services where the pressure is on waiting times and because the demand is shut up, there is a risk that they are being pulled back to old traditional models where they get through the waiting times and that is where they sit around individualised support rather than the whole system support. I think that the pandemic has put extra pressure on that. The anxiety and stress that staff have been through the pandemic is a very difficult place to be. Waiting times are a blunt instrument. All they measure is the people in the queue. What they do not measure is the people who cannot access that queue. They are the ones. The most vulnerable people who are struggling living and poverty do not necessarily access that type of model as effectively, so they are the ones that I am particularly concerned about. I want to ask something a bit more generic. We have heard during Covid, and I think that it was Susie who spoke about how some of the online learning opportunities were far suited for some of the young people with additional support needs. I want to understand a bit more of the challenges that were involved in developing some of the more flexible school education services during Covid or keeping them going perhaps now. I can start with Susie and then we can move around the rest of the panel. I would like to clarify that, yes, for some autistic children and young people, they felt that online learning was more positive experience for them, and a lot of that positive experience would have been because the stress and anxiety of the school environment was removed. It is about making the school environment inclusive, as opposed to necessarily assuming that online learning is the answer. I think that online learning definitely has a role to play. We do not necessarily feel that there has been sufficient learning around online learning since the pandemic, where autistic children and young people who could not go into school and were not getting an education before Covid and suddenly online learning was available and they could engage in education. Having gone back to in-school learning, that online option has been removed and they are now not engaging in education. We have not necessarily seen that learning continue into the post-pandemic environment, which has been very disappointing for many families who did benefit in some way, but I do not want to understate the importance of making the school environment inclusive. I do not want us to all around the table assume that online learning is the answer for all autistic children and young people, because it is not a case of one size fits all. I cannot speak specifically to the challenges that schools experienced with putting online learning in place, but we do know that online learning and not being in this class environment increased some staff capacity. That allowed, for example, for more one-to-one with staff and learners that they would not have received necessarily in a class environment. There was some capacity freed up in some situations that learners benefited from. Was that online one-to-one? Yes, it would have been online one-to-one. They would not have necessarily received that in school, so that happened in some cases where autistic learners were maybe receiving a little bit more support than they had been pre-pandemic. However, our survey that we put out specifically for this inquiry showed that over half of the respondents felt that their support got worse during the pandemic, so it is a mixed bag. Deborah, can I bring you in on that and question 2? We have experienced something very similar, and parents are reporting back to us at the moment. The number of children not attending school has come off the back of Covid, because for so many of them, the learning environment from the safety of their home was much more suitable to their style of learning. We are aware that there are some children that that really was not productive for, but overall we find that it has been reported back that so many children preferred learning in that remote way. In our thought is could there be a hybrid model of learning where young people could attend school, children and young people when they are able to, but when there may be struggling that there is still access to that online learning and still access to curriculum from home and attain? One of the things that happened for the families who were learning at home during Covid was for the parents that were able to take up that mantle of doing the home learning with their children. They were sitting alongside their children. They were understanding more about what the children were being required to learn and they were seeing more closely what it was that their child was struggling with and they were understanding their child's learning style and learning needs much more than perhaps they had before sending their child to school and just asking them when they got home, how did you get on today? Exactly. I think that when the schools went back, the parents were much more informed about what their children's needs were and were asking the school for more support that would benefit their child better. I think that that has possibly added to the increase in awareness of additional support needs within the schools and the demands on the schools for suitable support for the children. The families we support, which range across all types of neurodiversity, also had similar mixed feelings about online learning. For some children, that was great and they really took to it. I would like to continue with it, but for others it does not work. A hybrid model perhaps is giving people choice, which would be potentially the way forward, because there is not a one-size-fits-all, unfortunately, for these families. Before I bring in Irene, you spoke about parental involvement with that young person learning, but in some families, the parental engagement was not as positive, shall we say, and that would have a detrimental effect on that young person even more perhaps? I think that particularly during the first lockdown, when parents were just thought they had to replicate the school day at home, people just did not know what to do and it was overwhelming. Even with the online stuff, for some families there was so much online. It became a full-time job for some of the parents who were able to do it, to administer all the lessons and the different documents and different platforms that were being used. It was very difficult and some families just simply could not deal with that at all. I think that maybe by the time of the second lockdown, people were a bit more relaxed and realised that they could not replicate the school day and just to keep their children calm and happy was perhaps going to be as beneficial as actually trying to replicate full-on teaching. Thank you. Irene, your comments on that. I think that the online offer across Scotland was very varied depending on where teachers were within their learning of using these sort of resources. We saw a lot of pupils who did not engage with learning, did not engage at all with the online offer. Staff were trying different things. They were phoning, checking in with children in different ways. I know guidance teachers were posing silly questions at times like what is your favourite flavour of crisps just to try and get a response. There were a lot of young people who were, for them, online learning just wasn't an option. Children with complex needs, children who don't make eye contact, who don't respond to the questions that are being posed. We saw staff trying to send resources home, paper resources. As things progressed, we were able to have some walk and talk sessions as well when it was allowed. There were lots of different ways to try and engage young people, but for some, as Susie said, they loved it for some children with autism. It was great and it was the most response that we'd had for some people, but the hybrid model for schools would need to come with additional resources. We're already struggling in schools to cover classes. A lot of my colleagues, her principal teachers are covering classes. I know that I myself, as a depute, spend a lot of time covering classes, because the absence of staff has increased as well during the post-pandemic. Their mental health has suffered too. While I would really love to welcome a hybrid model, I'm not really sure how, without additional resources, we would be able to source that in schools. Thank you very much. Can I come back now to Pam Duncan-Glancy, please? I should have said earlier before I asked my question, to say welcome to all of you. Thank you for all the information that you've given us in advance and also for the information that you've shared with us this morning. It's really crucial. I wanted to take a more general question to start with, if that's all right, and possibly for Susie and Deborah, if that's okay. The first action in the Scottish Government's action plan on pupils with additional support needs is a vision for pupils. It is that school should help me to be the best I can be in schools in a place where children and young people learn, socialise and become prepared for life beyond school. I ask both of you whether you think that this is happening. If not, why not? I might have another supplementary, but I'll wait and see how we get on. First of all, I would like to say that we welcome the additional support for learning action plan. However, progress has been slow and it's currently not created the change that we needed to see. That is very obvious still to this day because we hear from families every day that they do not feel that their autistic child or young person is supported or included in the mainstream school environment. We see continually that autistic children and young people are forced to, in inverted commas, fail at mainstream before any other option or support is offered. Even still, families are forced to fight the system to get that support, and many are forced into legal action and engaging a solicitor before a solution is found. Clearly, something is not working and the system is not working for autistic children and young people when it comes to receiving their rights to an education. We don't necessarily know the scale of the problem because, for example, recording around part-time timetables is not consistent and not accurate. That is something that we do not currently understand the scale of, but we know from families that we hear from every day that it is a huge problem for autistic children and young people in terms of engaging in education and not feeling included in school. There are three fundamental things that I want to quickly mention that are part of the solution to this. It is environment first. Ensuring the school environment is inclusive and there are lots of things that schools can do. Some do very well. The trend towards super schools is potentially unhelpful and quite harmful, depending on what those super schools look like. Training and ensuring that staff have the appropriate level of autism understanding, and that touches on Ruth's earlier point about positive relationships. How can you have a positive relationship with an autistic child or young person if you don't understand what autism is? The final thing is that there will always be a need for specialism within mainstream. Glen has touched on that as have others. We need to ensure that that specialist provision within mainstream is adequately resourced to ensure that schools and education are inclusive of all and that all young people and children can access their rights in education. I really appreciate that. Before I bring in Deborah, the point about the recording of timetabling data is not what it should be. Can you tell us a bit more about that and what you think we need to change to make it more fit for purpose? Of course. A code for recording part timetabling was introduced only in 2018 and 2019 off the back of the included, engaged and involved guidance. It has only been recently that schools have started to specifically be able to record part timetables previously. It would have been recorded as some kind of authorised absence under a different code. Obviously, we expected the recording not necessarily to be great for the first few years because it is a new code. Schools are getting used to how to record it. However, the last dataset that we had was still the case that there is a note against the data saying that it is still inconsistent and there is still significant variation. It is about ensuring that schools are following the guidance about recording absences and awareness of what that guidance is and ensuring that they are specifically recording part timetables. I think that there is an issue in schools where schools and teachers are struggling with resource and part timetables can be a supportive measure and are often used with the intention of being supportive. In a lot of cases, they are sticking plaster as opposed to being supportive. They are sticking plaster for a lack of support and they can be quite harmful in that it can be very difficult for young people to get back to full-time education once they are on a part timetable. Some part timetables could be three hours a week. I have heard of autistic children and young people receiving only three hours education a week. I think that there is also an issue in schools with how part timetables are being used and, potentially, that feeds into them not being recorded accurately because they are seen as a supportive measure, but the way in which they are being used is not necessarily always supportive, even if there are the best intentions behind that. I hope that that makes sense. Just to follow one of Susie's part timetables, we get lots of negative comments about and informal exclusions. Parents are coming regularly to take their children out of school for the safety and wellbeing of their child. However, that means that parents have to commit of work, that child is not accessing education. When I last, several years ago, challenged that from a parental perspective, I asked to see how that was being recorded on the school register, and it was sent home, sick with permission. It is not there, as in the parent does not want to remove the child from school. The school is refusing to keep the child in the school environment. That has a huge impact on poverty, because parents lose their job. It is really difficult to sustain work. It is really difficult to maintain good physical and mental health, because if you cannot go to work and access some respite, because your child is either on a part timetable or being sent home most days of the week, you just feel that fundamental right to education has been taken from you. That is a huge issue. If it is all right, one of our parents gave a wee bit of input. She engages with a lot of other parents through her child's primary school. It covers a lot of it, so if it is okay, I will read that out. She said from her point of view and experienced many families, she speaks to continue to fall between the presumption of mainstream and special needs education. The first of those young people thrust into mainstream, who are essentially allowed to fail due to inconsistent almost support, especially in the early years, despite strong evidence of need and promises of support. It would seem now that it is almost a requirement to first fail very badly to then get seriously considered for a specialist placement. She has even heard this said to families from within education. Meantime, the child and the family endure so much trauma, and trauma is a huge issue that takes years, if ever, to recover from. Evidence tells us this. The school staff are too traumatised, and we see that with staff absence, unsustainable stress, and even some leaving the teaching profession altogether. The other extreme she says with her youngest child—she has three autistic children—is that when they do get a specialist placement, the bar of expectation is set so low and assumptions are made about abilities or lack of and yet undiscovered potential so much that life chances and outcomes shrink and become limited. That is impacting on emotional and mental health and wellbeing of both the young person and the family. They do not even get a chance to choose subjects. Many cannot be offered within that special needs placement, and due to cuts, the model of going to other schools is becoming less and less of an option. Traditionally, children from the special needs school system would go to other schools to sit higher because they would not be available potentially in their school. However, we also know mainstream education, especially in secondary, would and does not suit many of our highly anxious yet highly able young people. We therefore need a model of education that can better differentiate and celebrate the strengths of all our young people and offer support that is consistent and not removed when they begin to succeed. They succeed because of good support, not because they suddenly do not need support it anymore, yet often we see it removed just as it is beginning to work and we say, would we take a ramp away from someone requiring to use a wheelchair because they can then access that room so that it is really looking at, these supports are regularly removed once the person starts to make some progress. Instead of presuming mainstream for all, we need to presume a young person's potential and as a collective of families and services find creative ways to unlock and celebrate this potential, however it looks. For this, we need trained staff that not only understand many diverse presentations of neurodivergence but who can also show genuine compassion and acceptance of our young people and their families, just where they are even when it isn't easy. We need more peer supports, we also need advocacy so that families can feel empowered and part of the solution working with services and not always fighting for them. No one really wins when this level of battle wages on and on. Energies need to be conserved and used widely by working together for the same ends and that can be summed up as a thriving next generation of young adults who are differently abled and proud to be who they are without apology or limit. Ross Greer, who has a line of questioning on the thread, thanks for coming in now. Just to pick up on something that you said there about the ASL action plan, welcome the plan but being frustrated with progress. I just wanted to tease out from your perspective, if anybody else on the panel has a perspective on this as well, that would be useful. Is the issue that the plan, it's a good plan but it's not being implemented quickly enough or well enough or is the issue that even if we implemented everything that is currently in that plan, it wouldn't make the kind of progress that you require? The solutions to those are different. If the plan's the problem, we can revise the plan but if there's a good plan sitting there and it's implementation then we as a committee will obviously need to understand what the implementation barriers are. Yeah, thank you for the question and I do think it's a really important one. The action plan is a good plan. A lot of the actions within it, however, are quite technical. Some of them are things that probably should have been happening anyway. We would say that there are some pretty fundamental things missing within the plan. Some of the actions go someway to the solutions that we need but not necessarily the full way. I think that there's a mixture of things. Sometimes it is implementation and how the actions are implemented but also the plan could go further. We do welcome the plan and we particularly welcome the work that Nate has done, the National Autism Implementation Team, to make sure that there are objective measures against the plan including measures around exclusion and part-time timetables, which are really important for us to understand the problem. We really welcome that work but I think that it's a mixture of both. There's a mixture of sometimes the implementation is not happening or not happening the way we would like but also those kind of fundamental things. I spoke about environment first training, which we would expect to be mandatory and on-going. During that level of specialism within schools, whether the plan would achieve those things, we would question that. The plan's due next revision or update relatively soon. If you are making a specific submission or proposal to Government on that that you would be able to share with the committee, I think that we would find that very valuable for the purposes of the inquiry. Thank you for that. You finished on that thread. I will just double-check in. Can I ask one more question? Thank you, convener, for allowing that. Thank you very much for that testimony. The point that you made about a ramp being taken away is a really good example of how having support doesn't necessarily mean that you're independent and that it will take it away, so it's incredibly important. The point that I was going to ask is possibly for Glen and Irene and it's around co-ordinated support plans being in place. I just wondered if you've got, we know there's a very small number of those in place and giving your role, Glen, and potentially Irene's role against teacher role. Could you maybe talk to us a bit about why you think there are so few in place? I think there are so few in place because, from a school point of view, we've got your IEP, which gives direct support and you might be using specialist support within that. You've got your children's plan, which is multi-agency normally and you've got a lot of support around that. When you've got your CSP, it's another plan because normally your children who are in receipt of a CSP have got those plans already and the CSP is just co-ordinating what supports are already in place. It's not adding anything to it. So, without landing people in it, it's a lot more work for very little benefit. Do you think there should be one specific plan to replace all of those then? I think you're still always going to need an IEP, or some different local authorities call them different things, but I think the child's plan does a good, robust child's plan is better than a CSP. Do you want to come in on that, Dina? This has been a problem for a long time around the CSPs and for us as a support service, where we are very keen on telling parents and carers and children and young people what their rights are and how to enforce those rights. The CSP is important because it's a legal document and that sets it apart from the child's plan and from the IEP, which are the more practical working documents. It's a source of frustration that there are so few CSPs and, in fact, there seems to be confusion about why you don't need a CSP because you've got a child's plan. Well, actually, if you meet the threshold for a CSP, you're entitled to a CSP. When you're advising families about what their rights are, it's also a difficult position to be in to be saying that you're going to struggle to secure those rights. I think that goes a wee bit to Ross's question about the ASL plan. However good the plan is, if there's no real accountability for delivery of what's in the plan, then it's not going to take us far enough, first and foremost. Yeah, absolutely. CSPs, if we go back to just the child plan, majority of parents that we engage with don't even have a plan. There's planning but there's nothing on paper. Enquire will say go back to the child's plan, but when you don't have a plan from the school, it's very difficult to go back to that. The CSP, I know on one council website, the link to apply was there and then it was removed, so it's not even visible to parents anymore, so they don't even know how they would start that process and again that process has to be formally requested. We do regularly flag it up to parents and the difficulty they have quite often in that process being started and being discouraged as to that they don't need the CSP for my own son when he was at school, we did have and I thought it was highly valuable and definitely required over and above his individual plan, but your average parent isn't even aware of the CSP plan and if they have CAMHS involved or social work, they automatically should be able to apply for that plan, but it isn't highlighted nor suggested. And Glen Carter, do you want to come in as well? Thanks very much. I was speaking about practitioner having worked in this before, clearly the parent's view of this is really important about whether they feel it's beneficial or not, although I think that iron rays is an important point where services are working well, when we were working and things were well co-ordinated, we felt in some ways it was a paper exercise because things were going really well locally, but there's no doubt that the CSP is at weight and it does ensure that services focus down on how are we really going to co-ordinate around the needs of this particular child, but a good child's plan can be very, very effective as well. Clearly we don't want to turn into being a combative type approach, but it can have its place. Thank you very much. Bill Kidd, can we come to yourself now, please? Thank you very much, convener. Thanks very much for everything, the breadth and depth of your replies, so I'm going to give you something to give you a bit of breadth and depth opportunity, if you like. In 2019, the Scottish Government published guidance on the presumption to provide education in a mainstream setting. Given the tight financial situation facing the public sector in Scotland, where might any additional resource have the most impact in supporting outcomes for pupils with additional support needs, please? To echo one of Susie's themes, training would be very important. I think that initial teacher education could be broadened out to include much better training for teachers coming into the profession and, indeed, other additional support staff in the schools around neurodiversity and other disabilities and additional support needs. Thank you very much. Anyone else? Oh, Irene, Susie, Deborah and everybody, just go. I would echo training as well. We have a finite time in schools to be able to train because of our service days to be able to make it compulsory training. That impacts on the training that we can provide for pupil support assistants as well, which are really, really valuable to support learning and to support our young people in schools. Most pupil support assistants in Scotland work a 27.5 hour week, so there is no extra time at the end of the day to offer training that is all done through goodwill. If we release pupil support assistants from school to engage in training, then there is no supply list there to be able to replace. If you are fortunate enough to be able to get a supply person in to replace the person who is away on the training, they do not know the needs of the children and they are not able to support effectively. One of the things that I cannot remember who it was on the panel that spoke about earlier was about super schools. We are building schools that are really big. We need to be, in my opinion, looking at the environment that we are expecting children to learn in. We are seeing a lot of open schools, with large airy buildings that are quite similar to hospitals or to shopping malls. You have a child who is dysregulated on the ground floor and it can impact on the learning across the whole school, and there is very little that you can do about it. Looking at our school buildings, I think that if we were able to look at the possibility of some junior highs, you have schools where there is better transition arrangements, built into the actual fabric of the building, better opportunities for staff to get to know young people, better opportunities for our allied health professionals to work and do through work with the young people. That would be helpful. I am a teacher, so I am going to say that reduction in class size would also be really beneficial and an increase in support staff. Who is next? Does everyone want to come in? I just want to flag, first of all, pleased to hear such support for the idea of training. I just like to flag that some of this work has already been done. Strathclyde University carried out pilots on introducing a training module on autism into IT initial teacher education. That has been developed by Strathclyde University. It has been piloted. The evaluation is very positive. Strathclyde University now delivers that training as part of their IT course. I believe that it is part of their PGDE, but do not quote me on that one. I probably want to check with Strathclyde University. They have made that module available to all providers of initial teacher education throughout Scotland. That module is there to be used. We do not know how many providers are using it. Some of that work has already been done, and it would not necessarily cost any money to put it in place. It is just the case of providers putting that training in place. Obviously, that only accounts for new teachers, not existing, so there is still an issue around existing teachers. I think that that would be a good place to put resource. There are the issues around protected time and capacity of teachers, which would need to be addressed, but that would certainly be a very good place to put resource. I am not going to say that one thing is more important than the other, because that is not the case. They are all very important. If we are building schools, let us be cognisant of the environment. If you are spending that money anyway, let us spend it well and spend it correctly. The specialist provision within mainstream is going to be the most expensive thing. There is an argument there, potentially, that that is where some of that resource needs to go. I am not going to say that one thing is any more important than the other. Before we bring Glen in, from the evidence last week, we had some questioning around that initial teacher training element, and it is interesting to hear your comments around Strathclyde University. We have written off to get some clarification to the Scottish Council of Deans of Education to get some information as to what is provided, so that is helpful to join that in. I can also provide a contact at Strathclyde University who led on the pilot to the committee if that is helpful. Sorry about that, Glen. Over to yourself now. Thank you, Bill. That's a great question. I think that we need to be brave to stop doing what does not work. My view, and I have talked about the whole system, is that schools and education nurseries are complex dynamic environments. Teachers and nurse workers are so busy that there are lots of things to juggle. Having done that for years and years, the power is in the local relationships. If you have people embedded in the team, I think that specialists should be closer to the population where the population is in schools or in nurseries. That is where we should be located in my view. Continuing on with medical type approaches in an education setting, I do not think of working. Extracting a child, doing a bit of work and expecting them to be fixed and putting them back into an environment that has not been adapted, is not the right way forward. We have done loads of work on that. The balance system is a great example of it where you take a whole system approach to it. You adapt the environment with the school. It is not the expert coming in. It is working as a team to improve the environment, how we interact with kids. Training, of course, is important. You need quality training, but the thing that facilitates behaviour change and a shift in how we facilitate kids' communication is being in there and coaching and modelling with other people and not just throwing training at them and walking away. We know that throwing training at people rarely works without follow-up and without coaching and modelling. We need to be brave. We need to stop doing what does not work and making sure that we improve the outcomes of the kids. We cannot wait any longer for us to continue with the models that are not working. Thank you on that, Bill. Following on from the design of the schools, we are guessing that more people are struggling with the open plan format when children run. The fight-of-life response to regulate is running through the whole school. We are also thinking of the sensory aspect of the noise coming from other rooms. They all seem to be in a new open plan design. The question is, who is the architect? Could that be changed going forward? When you have lots of children with ASNs, no doors on classrooms are not ideal. An area that comes up as a law is the de-escalation of children within the school environment, where they are removed from the classroom. Many schools have nurture rooms, nurture teachers and quiet rooms. There are all different names for those break-away spaces. Again, what is happening in those spaces is that quite often children are removed from the learning and put into this room with a support teacher for sometimes the full day. They are not accessing the curriculum. What is the purpose of going to this room? The training that our trainer delivers at Diffrable Scotland is a background in sensory integration, so it is really looking at should every school, every nursery have a proper sensory environment where children and young people can go to de-escalate. There is still too much focus on—I can still go with the lights in here—the sounds. I have friends who are in education trying to unpick what the sensory environment means. There really has to be that strong focus on vestibular and proprioception, some movement activities, not so much nice lights and fancy textures and low sounds, but for those young people and children to be able to burn off some energy. For those who require movement, it means that they can quite easily go back into the classroom environment and be in a much calmer place to learn and attain. The training at Diffrable Scotland—we did pilot training with some Glasgow schools, and we delivered that in service days. We also delivered it in the staff development time. I have a friend who is a head teacher. Again, we know time and provision for teachers to get covered to be trained is really difficult. When training has sometimes been booked in for in service days, then the local authority at short notice then changes the plan and it has to be cancelled because there is something more mandatory that has to come in. Against staff development time, I think that there is the hour and a half, sometimes after the school day, is that a slot where potentially some training could potentially be happening. The other thing within the school environment—this comes from a lot of the young people. I do not know if you heard it during the consultation with them. My son always reported back that he couldn't learn. They are not attaining in maths and English currently. Lots of our neurodivergent children because, more often than not, they are removed from the main set and taken down to the subset within the school, which is the smaller group environment with more support, lower speeds for learning. For many of them, it is a disruptive learning environment. There will be a lot of movement in the class, a lot more noise, a lot more chatting. There really has to be somewhere else in a small group format that these children can be taken to in a small group format at the school because the number of them that are not attaining that five English in maths and that is going on to really have a huge impact and their progression throughout life. With school league tables as well, in my own personal opinion, they should be abolished because so many of the young people are refused to be presented for that fives for fear of the grades and they are being kept at that force. Again, that really impacts on their progression post school. That is an area that is flagged up for us very regularly. I know that we have had a little bit of commentary about the physical estate and things, and Liam Kerr will be asking some questions around that later on. I come to Sups from Willie Rennie and then Ben Macpherson, please. Clen, your point comes to the heart of what was discussed last week because there was a discussion about compulsory training and it was felt that that would be inappropriate because there is not one type of additional need. There is a huge range and it is constantly moving, and I presume that training is constantly moving as well. Your point is that, rather than expecting teachers to be an expert on everything all the time, we should reflect on that model and go back and say that we need specialists to assist directly rather than put in that extraordinary pressure on teachers to be up-to-date on everything all the time. Is that your summary? I absolutely agree with that. We say that experts should come into the placement and do individual therapy with kids. Some kids need that, but there is so much going on for teachers. Each class is different and the needs of that class are different, so you have to be able to adapt to the needs of that class and that child. The way that it works, there is no doubt in my mind, is having relationship and trust in the setting. You can have an expert come in, give advice and then go back out again, but unless there is trust and you allow a bit of safety there to change practice, it rarely works in my view. You have to have people close to be able to do that work, so I agree with that point. I want to be a wee bit provocative, because I think that you disagree with the other members of the panel. I think that the other members of the panel are saying that some of you have even mentioned compulsory training. Can I just flush this out? What actually do you think the consensus is on this? Are we for compulsory? Do we want every teacher to be an expert or are we relying on more pulling in experts when it is required? Susie, do you want to come in on that? I do. I can tell you that you are being provocative. I am going to come back and say that I do not doubt that there is a need for specialism in the mainstream setting, but we have to acknowledge that there is a large range of additional support for learning needs looking specifically at autism. Autism is a spectrum, so I want to just flag that there is a potential quieter majority here of autistic children and young people who are in school, are engaging to some extent in education, are not necessarily disruptive in the classroom, are perceived as challenging, do not necessarily need the input of speech and language therapy or additional support for learning teachers, do not need to use a base. Maybe their difficulties are more with their peers, maybe they are very socially isolated, maybe there are particular classes that they are not doing well in, but because they are not disruptive, because they are not causing problems in virtue commons for the school, there is very little resource put into ensuring that they have a good school experience. For those children and young people, that is where the training comes in, so it is really important that school staff understand the autistic experience, understand what it means to be autistic, understand how children and young people might present if they are autistic and what they might do so that they can identify maybe where someone is isolated, where someone is being bullied, where someone is struggling to focus in class and support that child or young person, so I do not think that it is necessarily an either or situation, I would say. You could be a good liberal. We need to be clear from this. What we are saying is that the type of training for teachers needs to be much more clearly defined, rather than expecting the full spectrum of stuff to be taught. We need to understand which groups require an expert to be brought in and which group requires a teacher to play the central role. There might be a bit of both on that again, but is that what you are saying? We need to be much better at defining what we are actually asking teachers to do. We need to certainly have realistic expectations of what teachers can do, and I think that the training needs to match what we can expect teachers to do within their role. I do not think that we can expect teachers to have a specialist understanding in speech and language therapy or even in additional support for learning and being an additional support for learning teacher, which you can specialise in being an additional support for learning teacher. Do not expect them necessarily to be experts in behaviour either. I think that the training needs to match what we are expecting teachers to do and where additional resources needed, that specialist resource needs to be embedded in the mainstream setting. Do you think that education leaders understand what you have just said? I think that education leaders do understand that. I think that most teachers want to go out and get the training, and actually we see teachers and schools coming to us asking for the training, but it is getting the time to do that and ensuring that it is on-going in some way, that there are opportunities to refresh and that that learning is put into practice as opposed to necessarily one-off and that is it done and dusted. I do think that there is an understanding of that. I suppose that that embedded and on-going leads into the coaching that Glenn has been telling us on several of the times this morning. Do you want to come in on Willie Rennie's comments? Just to clarify, I think that quality training is absolutely required. That is a core facet of this work. Teachers play a central role in all the kids. They are the ones who are with these kids every day, which is why we need to empower them. They do not necessarily have to be the expert in everything, but they need to know who to go to and that support needs to be available when it is required. I hope that that clears it. Let me just clear then. What are you saying? When you said earlier on that the system is not working, we need to stop doing the same over it. What precisely did you mean with that then? Let me paint a picture. In my view, what works is that we take a whole system approach to this. You embed people like speech and language therapists in an education setting. They are not necessarily doing all the individual work or all the work, but they are working with teachers to empower them to do some of this. Communication is so prevalent, for instance, that they need some level of a base level of knowledge and skills. Those therapists develop relationships with the teachers. Yes, they provide formal training, but they also are available to do stuff in a whole class, in a group or in an individual setting. They help to facilitate the environmental change, they help identification and provide support around effective interventions in context. Kids are asking for their needs to be adapted to and differentiated, so teachers need support with that. You have not answered my question. What is not working? What is not working is that the general model, because we do not have enough resource, is that some of those kids who are having to be extracted from educational placements have a bit of something and then are put back in and the environment has not been adapted. That was very provocative of you, Willie Rennie. Still on this theme of training, we have Ruth Maguire wanting to come in before I come to leave. Just briefly, it has been a very interesting interaction and a helpful one. Quite often, a lot of us can think that the answer is to cram everything into initial teacher training, which it clearly is not. I just wondered if panel members had any examples. I would recognise the model that Glen Carter is talking about in terms of allied professionals being embedded and children's teams being embedded, but, in my experience, it is a specific school. It is not across the board even within a local authority area. I do not know if that is a question for Irene if there are any examples, given the challenges of getting cover for training and coaching for teachers. Work is done within the classroom and perhaps even with the children and teachers, so that it is beneficial to everyone, if that makes sense. I do not want to always come back to speech and language therapy, but they are a really good example because communication is key. My experiences have been when I have worked alongside a speech and language therapist, not in my current role but as a teacher. I have had them be part of my class, part of the young people that I am working with, so they might be there for a specific young person, but the whole class can benefit from it because you are learning about a programme. You are learning about a specific piece of work that you will meet with a speech and language therapist, discuss what needs to be done, how different approaches are for it, and then you, as the class teacher, will go on and deliver that piece of work, but keep in contact with the speech and language therapist to be able to get feedback, adapt things and assess where the young person is. That is one way that I found really helpful and it is an easy way to work as a teacher because you are not being taken away from your class, you are something that is manageable within your class time. When we are looking at offering training for staff, we are starting through our improvement planning process and we are making decisions a year in advance about what training needs to be covered and then you have something different appear and that becomes a priority but you are not able to always address it the best way. I know that local authorities are engaging in things such as circle training where there is a local authority lead and they are given over time to meet with members of each school and the member of the school will take on board the circle training. That is something that is happening across the various— Can I just briefly come back? When you said that the improvement plans are done a year in advance, they are prepared without knowing what children are in the classroom and what their needs are. You will not necessarily know your new intake. You will know quite a lot about them because of the transition work that you are doing but it might not always catch the ones that appear later on. Thank you for your patience, Liam Kerr. I will go back to something that was said earlier. I will start with Deborah Bess and I will go to Irene Stove but I appreciate that other members may wish to come in. Deborah, you were talking about the physical environment. You made some suggestions. I would just like to give you the chance to elaborate on that. How do you suggest that the school of states physical spaces could be adapted to support pupils particularly given the resource constraints and who should be leading on collating and driving forward those solutions? I will go back to sensory integration and probably what is needed within those spaces. As far as I am aware, there are only five train sensory integration OTs in Scotland that have the background of understanding the sensory system and how to regulate to that therapeutic level. Could there be OTs within schools? Could there be specialist OTs that might be pulled again amongst various other schools? There is just this lack of—apparently in the UK we are quite behind in relation to sensory integration and that understanding of the sensory needs of many of our neurodivergents and I think even the dyspraxics, the DCDs have not been spoken about today. We say we are dyslexics but there is this tradition that people can only move to a shared space where so many of these children need a personal space to move into, to de-escalate. For example, my own son in the secondary school environment, he had access to a small room and access to classic FM and some headphones and that was all that he needed was to go to this space and de-escalate then he could re-engage into education. I think I've wandered off from what you initially asked me. No, that's hugely useful. I'll put the question to Irene Stove but if you think of something that just catches my eye and will come back. So, Irene Stove, do you have any thoughts given your experience on what needs to happen to adapt the physical school estate for all pupils and particularly counter—you raised an example earlier about the dysregulated child on the ground floor of the super schools, I think you called it—any particular points on that? I think when we're building new schools we need to really think about the environment and speak to teachers and our partners who work with the young people so that we can make sure that the space that we're providing is going to be fit for the purpose. We need to look at outdoor spaces as well. A lot of children are away for them to be co-regulated and to be able to regulate themselves is to get outdoors but that needs to be done in a safe outdoor space. So, we need to know that if we've got someone who's a—I think someone who's the term runner earlier and that's how I would describe some young people as well. If they're a runner we've got to be able to keep them safe. A lot of schools are community areas so that the gates aren't locked and the children can run out into busy roads. So, we need to think about how we keep everyone safe in our schools. We need—in our buildings we need to have some adaptable spaces so you might be looking at a sensory room in a school but you might actually want it to be also a low arousal room so you might want to think about how schools are resourcing that and how they're making—because if you have a sensory room you generally don't—there's a lot of stimulation and some children can't cope with that. So, if you're able to have a room that has sensory equipment that can come into it and be taken out so that it can be adaptable for the use of young people, what Deborah said about having areas in the school where you can just de-stress, that's really important, having little breakout rooms, whether those are outdoors or indoors depending on the age group as well, I think, is something that you need to think about. The noise in some schools is so echoey, it can be really difficult if you've got a hearing impairment to be able to focus. Our buildings, quite a lot of them, they might have big glass panels on the side of the doors, which is great as a member of the SLT, so you can just walk past and you can see how things are going in that classroom. However, if you're a young person with ADHD and you've got someone running or in the corridors, your ability to focus is really, really difficult, really challenged by that. So, I think more consultation with staff who know young people and know the needs of the young people in the community that are really listened to, because over the years I've been involved in consultations for new builds and it's not always been listened to and I know that's the same for my colleagues in the committee. I just wanted to come in and say that we acknowledge that it's extremely challenging potentially to retrospectively adapt existing school buildings, some of which are potentially going to be quite old at this point and that's not necessarily a cheap thing to do either. New schools is another matter, it's about spending the money well. However, when it comes to the existing school estate, I think that there are things that can be done that don't necessarily require lots and lots of resource. However, caveat that with, that shouldn't be a reason not to fund appropriate adaptations to school. We recognise that resources are not necessarily readily available for the kind of adaptations that would be the ideal situation The national autism implementation team has some great guidance on, for example, safe spaces for children and young people. I think that there's been a lot of talk around sensory rooms and things like that, which can have value, but we need to understand that a safe space for an autistic child or a young person should be individual to that autistic child or a young person, otherwise you're going to potentially end up with 10 children and young people in a sensory room at a given time who are all wanting to use it at the same time. At that point, it doesn't particularly become necessarily useful for anyone. The rooms potentially have value, but it's about the individual child and the national autism implementation team does have great guidance. It can be really simple things. For example, there's a high back chair in this particular area of the school that that autistic young person can go to and it feels enclosed, it's private and it allows them to regulate. Something as simple as a high back soft chair—I think that we've got some of them in the Parliament probably—can be a really helpful tool. Something as simple as there is a desk at the back of this class with some sensory toys at it that if a particular young person needs to, they can remove themselves to that desk at the back of the class where they can't be looked at by other pupils. The example of having glass panes indoors, potentially it's as simple as putting a bit of paper over those glass panes if you know that there's a child with ADHD who does struggle to focus if it's kicking off in the corridor. If there's other people kicking off in the corridor, there's people walking past. So there are things you can do, I think, within the existing school estate that will help, that don't necessarily need to come at huge cost, but I don't think that that should be a reason not to spend the money if the money is there to spend to make proper adaptations to schools. Dina is keen to come in on this as well. Apologies if you wanted to speak in the last question. Let me pose the question if you could, convener, because yes, I'm keen to hear thoughts, Dina, but also if you can also deal with how Susie's point about individualising the need relates to your proposals and your submission, you mentioned a universal design for learning and I wonder because I couldn't quite find what you meant by that and I wonder if you might elaborate on that and if there's a universal design how does it relate to the individualisation that we just heard about? I think the principle of universal design is that you build a more flexible, more adaptable environment from the ground up so that when you have somebody who needs individual specialisation, you're making a more minimal adjustment, you're not having to go in and start from scratch to make the adjustments for that person because the environment itself is more flexible and the way that pupils are taught is more flexible from the curriculum is designed in a more flexible way so that it accommodates different styles of learners much more easily as it's being delivered in the classroom. That links to what I was wanting to just mention is that we do already have legislation in place, it's quite old, I think local authorities have forgotten that they have the requirement but they should all have an accessibility strategy and that should deal with the estate, it should deal with communication and it should deal with curriculum as well and so for again for us if we are trying to support parents to access their rights and entitlements we might say to them well check out your local authority accessibility strategy and that's meant to be proactive as well it's you know a lot of what we're discussing is reactive, we're presented with a child who's not managing, how do we adapt to cope for that child but actually we should be planning ahead and and these types of adaptations that we've heard would be wonderful in the schools and they would make a huge difference and they'd make a difference for all the children not just some of the children that we're particularly focusing on this morning. I've got supplementaries on this from Willie Rennie and then Ben MacPherson's first sorry and then Willie Rennie sorry Ben. I was looking. Thanks for being with us today and for your submissions with absolute appreciation that to use the phrase that one of you did, no one size fits all, the individual needs of every student, young person is important and with an appreciation that you've already covered many different areas whether it's staff training and specification, continued professional development, the facilities in this state and the support that third parties give with regard to the reconsideration of the action plan and how we go from identifying the problems and the challenges to where can we find solutions and improvement, what in your view could be changed that is deliverable that would improve things on a consistent basis because to me what's coming through from all of you is that the consistency of support is a real challenge in different parts of Scotland or depending on how empowered different families feel what the information is that they have. Now how do we get to a better position of consistent support with an appreciation of the fact that every individual child needs their other own? I don't think that it is one size fits all but those three fundamental things that I mentioned at the start and I think they are all equally as important as one another you know so there's not necessarily one thing that I would say that we should change that is deliverable but certainly I think schools require direction and some resource to make environmental changes and I think the direction on that is quite important ensuring that they know where to find the guidance on what changes work for children and young people so it's not just about go and make adaptations actually let's provide direction and guidance to schools about what that should look like and how they can go about putting that in place that would make a big difference and I think there are things you can do with the existing estate you know even though that does pose challenges so we need a specific set of guidance for all 32 local authorities that says with your buildings you should seek to do abcd or whatever yeah I mean we said in our written submission that direction schools need direction and resource when it comes to making environmental changes and that does need to be you know sustained it can't just be go and do this and then that's it you know they need to be encouraged to you know make changes over a period of time and improve those adaptations where they can so but they do need that that guidance in that direction I think and I think also the base basic understanding from our perspective of autism is fundamental for all staff you know that you know with the the nuances of specialism is always required staff have to have a fundamental understanding of what autism is not all staff do they might and that's training and continuous professional development that's what we would want to see yeah training continues pressure development the first place to start is it the pilot's been done the evaluation the module is there let's use it and then the final thing is ensuring that all mainstream settings have an element of specialism embedded because that's always going to be required and you know not all schools do and some schools have some but not enough some schools have great you know specialist resources in place but maybe they you know that they have issues around recruitment and the number of staff that they have in place but that that's a trickier thing and I think you know others have talked about that whole system approach and that is where that whole system approach comes in. Thanks Susie Martin sorry to cut you off but to kind of feed on to Glencarmyn you argued earlier that there's there's not capacity in the system and we don't have enough trained people to provide that specialism in every required setting yeah so is that the priority for you that we need to increase the capacity well absolutely and I think that there's the two key things are of course the system needs to transform but we need adequate resource if you try and do one without the other it's not going to work and I keep saying that and to go back to your point about the consistency you're absolutely right back to equity for all there's areas in Scotland with the highest need with the lowest level of speech and language therapy resource and that is a real concern for me particularly for families living in poverty so there's this you know you can have brilliant policy and I think we do have excellent policy in Scotland but there's a bridge between that and practice and what is it that allows you to deliver excellent policy into practice and I keep going back to the power of local relationships so yes we need quality training we need quality guidance and we need but there's also something we can do at a national level about accountability about measures and outcomes what are we counting is it the right things and how is that driving the system unhelpfully but locally what we can do is try and understand the needs of that local population and then deliver what we need together so it's about facilitating I think government can do that facilitating some quality guidance but facilitating some of that integrated practice on the ground so it is complex absolutely and you talked about access to q earlier do you want to just elaborate on that access and q did you say yeah that was the phrase you used earlier yeah so how do we improve that on a consistent well so so waiting times don't measure demand and and when we transformed locally in the previous service I worked in we got close to the population we saw the huge amount of demand there so we unveiled that demand because we're working in a different way that's not a bad thing but it's the reality and in order to serve that population the most vulnerable people living in poverty we can't expect them to travel to bus rides to a community clinic to access services it's got to be delivered closer to home so that's my view I've got more questions Debra Best sorry Ben I am looking at the time and I've got other people to come in on another section so if you can make your questions more concise please okay I'm trying to consolidate thank you I will do you can be there I'm sorry just Debra Best you also talked about the average patient is aware of the plan is that the key takeaway that we can take from you yes so many parents are unaware of their right to have planning and their need to have planning and without having meaningful planning and you know having actions raised and you know reviewing plans it's really difficult to move forward so you know that's a basic fundamental that every SN child you know requires a plan and it gives that and again working with that parent to create that plan sometimes plans come and they've kind of been done from the educational perspective without the parental input and and do you think that there needs to be greater consistency absolutely and it's back to you know I think nationally with planning and with everything we've spoken about it as a postcode lottery some areas you know there's much better support than others and again we still have huge issues around the you know the highest performing schools and the the reduced supports for a lot of the ASN pupils because of you know the league tables and attainment that prioritises but very quickly you know I know there's been the talk of the training for me I think it's fundamental fundamental has to be mandatory because so many of these young neurodivergen the children and young people are being missed in the first instance because when the evidence is requested from the educational environment as to what's you know being seen from that perspective many parents are currently actually being told that their child won't be taken forward for neurodevelopmental assessment because the nursery of the school are not seeing what they are seeing and if you have a child or a young person that is internalising that's extremely worrying and again you know raising that the under the ASN act if one of these children is entitled to supports but again all too often that's not happening without diagnosis thank you I don't know if our other two witnesses want to add on consistency but I'm happy to ask my other questions later if there's time. Thank you Ben I'm just conscious that the planning element was coming up from sure but that's okay I didn't does anyone else want to comment on the questions from Ben Macpherson? I just want to say you know like the consistency you know the deliverable thing that we could do consistently is making sure there's like staff on the ground is the first place you know there are there are areas within Scotland which is really difficult to recruit staff to so if we could look at how we how we solve that problem and encourage more teachers into profession and allow them to stay in the profession as well I think that would help. I know Dina yourself and then I know Willie's got a supplementary in this team as well before we move on to Stephanie Calhann. Dina? Yeah I don't know if it sits under consistency but I'm really keen to highlight the importance of homeschool partnerships a lot of the work that we do is around restoring broken relationships between families and schools because families have just lost faith that the education system is going to be able to provide for their child or they've withdrawn their child from school not because they want to homeschool but because they don't think that the school can provide the right support and one way to achieve better homeschool relationships is to provide more time for teaching staff and the educational staff in the school to spend time with the families because very often what does this child need you don't need to wait for a diagnosis you could have a discussion with the family and with the child or young person themselves and they would be able to indicate what would make a difference and what would work better within the school but teaching staff just don't simply don't have enough time to spend on homeschool communication and building those relationships it's back to relationships again with the families. Willie Rennie sorry. Have we moved on from buildings? No you're still in that theme space if you wish. So have you got good examples of where new buildings have been constructed that are sympathetic to this and your discussions with government and local authorities what do they say? Irene maybe. Sorry Edward. Do you have any examples good places? Susie do you have anything? I can't give any examples of fantastically adapted mainstream settings off the top of my head but happy to go away and come back to the committee with some information on that. I would say that you know we are approached by a lot of schools who want to either undertake training or potentially do some kind of autism friendly within the school and we try to facilitate that where possible but usually our conversations are directly with schools as opposed to the local authority. So I'm talking about when they're building new buildings I presume you try and make some kind of input into the design. We wouldn't necessarily as an organisation but you try and make the case for a lot of that. Obviously the local community would be consulted I think there's probably something about ensuring that specifically families of children and young people additional support needs are consulted as a group as part of that process. But in terms of specialist advice on what kind of buildings they should be building because I mean we are building a lot of schools and it's alarming that they're not really fitting in with the mainstream policy that the government's got in place so what are we doing about that? I mean when it comes to our organisation we do have a training consultancy team that can advise certainly on this kind of thing in terms of public spaces including schools and the like but it's not something that we do regularly with local authorities. Anybody gone to Jenny Gilruth and said what on earth are you doing? No? Not yet anyway. But again I suppose it does come back to training because I mean there must be architectural services in each local authority who are advising on the design of these buildings and perhaps they also need more training in the needs of the particular populations. We've heard about sensory environments and hard cold surfaces that we've all been in noisy restaurants where you can't hear a word and you know also the toll it takes on teaching staff to project and that was so on. I just want to say very quickly that actually ensuring that public spaces are awesome friendly is part of our new three-year strategies with organisation so it's something that we are looking at as an organisation and how we achieve that and obviously part of that has to be working with local authorities across the whole of the UK where so that work will be happening over the course of the next three years as an organisation but obviously there are different relationships in different places and different people that we will need to speak to and I don't have specific examples at this point. Thank you Stephanie Callaghan online waiting patiently to come in. Over to you Stephanie, thanks. Thank you very much convener and just before we move on from talking with buildings I'm interested in whether the panel think that safe spaces be they well-being rooms, sensory rooms, small rooms, as a minimum should every school have one at this point in time and maybe that's something that we could do more quickly and also is there a need for them to be accessible throughout the school day and not close at some points as well but I saw in the evidence you know we'll talk about children wandering around into toilets and things because there wasn't a space for them to go to. Thanks. Can you direct your question to someone initially please Stephanie? I haven't been able to see convener who's been answering questions at all points in time so I'm not quite sure to have Susie. Thanks for your questions Stephanie, I think well-being rooms and sensory rooms certainly have value as I said before I think we don't want to fall into the trap of that's the place where everyone goes if they need to regulate because you could end up with 10 or more children and young people in a given space at a given time. The net guidance does say that safe spaces for children and young people should be available whenever they need them so it shouldn't be a case of you can't access them you can't access your safe space during class time it kind of defeats the purpose so they should be available whenever a child or young person needs them they should be accessible and children young people should be able to go there safely independently and not being escorted so those are the kind of things that Nate advises so I'll leave it there. And I've got Irene wanting to come in as well. Yeah just to say that yes I do think they should be in all schools I've just I mean I'm in my post for the last 10 months I think it is and during that time we have purchased two safe spaces for our school and we've also adapted another room however I would say that they do need to be managed you do need to be able to keep an eye on the young person when they're in the safe space so that they're not they don't find themselves with other children who could actually trigger them as well so it doesn't need to be carefully managed. Thank you very much for that now Stephanie over to you for your next set of questions. Thanks very much. I want to ask about formal planning processes there do they support better outcomes for pupils in the panel's opinion complex needs and also on the other side of that I suppose about getting the balance right is there also a need to recognise and respect the expertise of parents, carers, statistic children and young people as well to identify their needs and their challenges and how to overcome those effectively with advocacy support if that's needed there. Thanks. I would like to come in first on on the formal planning process. Dina, for you, no? You don't need to you can... No, I don't mind. Deborah has offered. Thank you Deborah, thank you. Yeah, as we've spoke about already that the formal planning really important fundamental and you know for the the school to have to build and have that working relationship with the parent or the carer it's really important that planning is happening and it's happening you know jointly because we'll always say you know as the parent you are the expert on your child and it's key that the parent is able to contribute you know aspects of their child or young person's presentation and information as such is included within that plan within our training we work very much with communication passports and personal profile sensory diets again you know a profile for ASN pupils would be extremely useful and again various staff members coming into contact with that child or young person then has a brief overview of their presentation some of the trigger some de-escalation information and that could be really beneficial. Glen, do you want to come in on this? I think as part of the formal planning process the voice of the child is so important and quite often they don't have their voice heard and particularly difficult for children with communication needs however it is absolutely possible to ensure their voice is heard and particularly with the UNCRC receiving royal assent and the the right of a voice and access to education will be supportive in this but we've got systems like talking mats where we're able to support children to express what's challenging in school, what's going well and what they would like to see in terms of their future and we should absolutely be building that into the planning for improving these kids outcomes. I agree that formal planning is really important and it definitely should involve the parents and the young people and the more successful plans that I've been involved with are the ones where everyone is really clear about what they are doing, what their role is and there's regular revisiting of the plan and there's honesty about what's working and what's not working and looking outwards to get more support when we need it, when things aren't working from other professionals and making sure that we're sharing the plans so that everyone's clear about what their role is. Just to pick up on the fact that we've got quite a lot of different plans, we have the child's plan, we have co-ordinated support plans, child's plans as well are called different things across different local authorities and stuff too and I'm wondering if that in itself just very specifically the fact that different local authorities call plans different things, does that and what do the waters a bit and is there a need to standardise that, thanks? I'm going to kind of answer your question Stephanie, I just want to say that I think for families and young people that outcome is the most important thing as opposed to necessarily the bit of paper or the document that it's written on so I think you know we can be quite process driven but actually the outcome is the most important thing. I think the point that was made earlier by Dina about the fact that a child support plan is a legal document is important for families because it allows redress and recourse so I think that that is really important but it is a very complex landscape and actually that's the case for not just for families and young people but probably for professionals as well but I just want to keep the focus on the outcome as the most important thing for the families and young people and listening to them and hearing their voice and trusting their expertise again as you say Stephanie it's extremely important. I was just going to add that the advocacy that you mentioned is an important part of that picture as well supporting the parents supporting the child and the young person to make sure that they are equal partners in drawing up those plans and those are the plans that Irene's referred to that I think have the most successful outcomes because everyone's involved in the understand and they've agreed what the outcomes the desired outcomes should be. Thank you Stephanie. Thanks very much convener. It sounds then like if I'm picking this up right that the formal plan's important but quite often it's actually the less formal stuff that lies underneath that that actually drives forward the positive outcomes. I'm also interested as well in how policy makers and local authorities can ensure that there's equitable access to support for families and young people when there are disputes around the provision of additional support and I know that even parents for example who work in local government or inclusion themselves can still struggle to access the supports that their child needs. Who's looking? Dina, you were nodding, can I bring yourself in there first please? Yeah, there is really limited resource for I suppose we're talking about redress aren't we, for about accessing the support that you think that you're entitled to. Obviously there are the formal routes through tribunals and so on but that can be extremely daunting for families who are already struggling with their relationship with the local authority to then, I know the tribunals not meant to be such a combative area as you know the courts for example but nevertheless often local authorities are supported by legal teams whereas it's very difficult for families to find legal representation, skilled legal representation that can take them into the tribunals. So I do think there should be much more accessible routes for families to challenge where they're not getting the support, where the child is not thriving and I'm not quite sure what that would look like but I think it does have to be easier for families to understand the processes and how to speak to local authorities about the provision that they're receiving or not receiving. Thanks Dina, Susie Martin now please. Yeah I guess I just want to reiterate the point I made right at the start that we do find that we hear from every day from families who are really fighting the system and fighting tooth and nail for the support that they need and it shouldn't be that way, it shouldn't be that redress is so difficult to access, it should be much easier to access for families, for children and young people and that's what I think Dina is really referring to and it is a very daunting task for families to have to go to tribunal and seek redress through that route. So something it shouldn't be getting that far in the first place I think is the point so it is you know what comes before that, what's happening before that, that families are not getting that maybe we need to put in place so they don't feel like they have to go all the way to the tribunal or take legal action. Deborah is keen to come in here too thanks. Yeah just following on from that financial barrier for people to access that legal representation. We see many families where they are you know eligible to legal aid and they can follow that course but those in the middle on just a modest income can't afford and it was reported to us I think recently for a parent wanting to challenge a placement request refusal that it would cost them £4,000 to do so and they didn't have that money so people are locked out of you know being able to legally take things forward it would be really good if there was some access to free legal representation when there are these school placement refusals and disability discrimination and as it's been said nobody wants to take that route but sometimes that's all that's left for you to find to get your children or young persons what's needed and unfortunately as a parent I had to do that myself and it was one of the most distressed sung journeys. Thank you Stephanie. I think that's a really important point convener on legal representation but just to go back for a moment to what Susie said there about you know the support should already be in place so that we're not getting to that stage but unfortunately there will still be occasions I'm sure when we do come to that stage so I'm wondering how is it we actually bring the information together and make it easier for people to access is it about bringing everything together on a website that sees like accessible to parents or what are Susie's suggestions around that point she made? Thank you I think you're right it's really interesting actually the survey that we put out specifically for this inquiry there was actually quite a high level of awareness of the you know access to advocacy, abediation, adjudication that you know parents and young people have a right to in legislation however that's a self-selecting group of people that have responded to that survey who probably have a very keen interest in this area and have potentially accessed that themselves so you know I think certainly you know within the autism community there maybe is quite a bit of awareness of some of those options but there are a lot of families out there who will not know that they have those rights will not you know have the financial resource to fight the system I'm not sure necessarily sure website is the way to go I think you know certainly having all the information in one place is no bad thing but I don't think that necessarily provides the solution about you know ensuring that parents and young people are aware of their rights there's probably something that should be done in schools that schools can do to ensure that families and young people are aware of their rights um under within legislation I don't think there's necessarily an easy answer to that though um but certainly we want more families to know what their rights are within legislation as well as you know let's try not get to that point but we do need those legal protections in place to any other family family members panel members want to come in before I move to Ross Greer Irene I mean Inquire already has a really good website and they are a really good source of advice and support for for families and also for professionals um but I'm always amazed that you know even till we've got leaflets in school and you're you're telling parents about that there's still parents who are oblivious to the support that's out there from Inquire and I know that next week we're moving on to actually hearing from the tribunal element of of this so that we can really dig under the surface of that then as everything will cover there Stephanie can I move to Ben it's actually Ben Macpherson that's coming in now if I could just pick up really briefly convener on the last point that was made there about Inquire I think I think possibly you know that's one of the things around advocacy is the fact that there's so much information out there and what parents actually need is to be directed to the information that's actually most relevant to them in their child thank you very much okay ben Macpherson thank you thank you convener two last questions that are on slightly different areas than we've covered already the first is we've talked all about schooling today and I just wondered if there was anything you wanted to emphasise to us about the experiences of young people in further and higher education or in apprenticeship programmes and also related to to what we've discussed already a large majority of the case work I get is on the housing crisis and a lot of the constituents I try to assist have children who require additional support needs and are in temporary accommodation and I just wondered if there was anything you wanted to emphasise about the effect of the housing crisis on the young people that you support dina and then Irene please thanks just on the further education higher education and apprenticeship we've just taken a look at apprenticeships in Scotland because we were trying to trace the the pathway of neuro divergent young people post school and what we found actually was that there wasn't very good data we had a quantitative methods student embedded with us who was going to interrogate the data to let us see what those journeys looked like for those young people but actually the data is collected rather inconsistently across the different types of apprenticeships but also skills development Scotland advised that although they did have some data around neurodiversity it was a very small dataset which they weren't at liberty to share with us because of that and so really all we could see was disability more generally described and it's clear that actually the people that are most disadvantaged going through the apprenticeship system would appear to be care experienced young people followed by people who have a disability but one of our findings was that the apprenticeships that we thought that school pupils ought to be able to take advantage of were incredibly patchy across the country some schools had nothing to offer the pupils others had quite a range of apprenticeship that they could suggest might be a good next step for them and so we have a report on that which I can share with the committee please I've got irons indicated and then Glenn if that's okay thank you I'm kind of echoing what Diane has just said about the lack of opportunities for children with additional sport needs is patchy across Scotland it's really difficult to find apprenticeships and college programmes and you know further education especially for young people who want to leave school at 16 and for some young people it's right move for them to move on but it's finding the right thing for them and if we're listening to the people voice and they are very clearly saying they don't want to be in school for 15 sixth year they want to do something else and there's nothing out there for them that guidance teachers that you know work coaches and things confined then it's really challenging Glenn thanks Ben I think your your point your your question points to future outcomes for these young people and you know the research is really clear we've got 88 percent of young unemployed men with communication needs we've got 60 percent of young people in contact with the justice with communication needs and they will struggle to access some of the services like housing and further education unless we do the preventive work and I you know there's it feels like there's there's not a lot of hope out there I actually wrote an article recently called the the language of hope and and the reason I did that was because yes it's hard working in the public sector it's hard meeting needs and but when it comes to communication needs it's one area that's the most amenable to change if we get in as early as possible and it has such powerful impacts on these future the life of these these young people that we can't ignore it but we're at this tipping point where I'm concerned that unless we take action with the reducing resources feature language therapy the lack of supply that we're going to see this impact for the next generation generations to come Duzzi yeah just um very quickly um I wanted to touch on um you know the links actually back to education in the mainstream setting at primary and secondary age in that education is a fundamental human rights and all children and young people should be receiving an education that right is being routinely violated in Scotland for children and young people who have additional support for learning needs in particular artistic children and young people and that affects their future life prospects we see it affects their you know ability to move into higher further education into employment which then has a knock-on impact for all sorts of aspects of their lives their personal lives you know housing you know contact with the justice system whatever it may be so this is a really important issue and it's really important that we get support in that mainstream setting rights in terms of support in further and higher education we actually provide support for autistic students at five universities I believe it is five across Scotland and that's funded by a government fund so we're doing a bit of that work and actually we find that we do work sometimes with colleges as well there we have a team an employability team that work with young people who are potentially going to college or university and we work with those colleges and universities we find that colleges are quite good at putting adaptations in support in place often that they're a bit better at that than sometimes some universities but yeah there's a lack of consistency it's inconsistent across the country and it very much requires us to be working with the young person a lot of the time for that support to be put in place and don't provide their own support I'm sure some universities do ours we we obviously provide a specific service that's you know funded by a specific government fund but I'm sure there are universities that are putting their own support in place and often we do work one to one with a young person who's going to specific university or college and we'll work with that university or college to put for them to put support in place for that student thanks for correcting me sorry Deborah's wanting in on this team is as well Ben so Ben sorry Deborah best I'll just be quick so again looking at training you know in relation to apprenticeships you know really important that any young apprenticeship they go into that that organisation has the training around their neurodiversity to be able to support them and in relation to the wider access programme for you know those coming from deprived areas care experience background potentially could that be extended so neurodivergent students that really struggle to attain to the level of their ability within the secondary school environment and they you know quite often don't have the qualifications that they should come out with and are losing opportunities within that further education environment nobody wanted to touch on the impact of housing temporary accommodation and I don't know if this panel is particular if that's not appropriate I'll I'll withdraw and thank you for all your or Deborah do you want to comment on that briefly we're just going to very quickly we have a parent who has a young man on diagnosed that was in a supported accommodation and he lost that tenancy and became homeless so extremely sad story again I think the lack of diagnosis hasn't helped because no one really can is understanding his challenges there we go thank you thank you very much and thanks everyone I'd like to thank our panel and witnesses for their evidence this morning we plan to take further evidence on this inquiry at our meetings in March we will then produce a report based on what we have heard with recommendations for the Scottish Government and this concludes the public part of our proceedings and I suspend the meeting till our witnesses to leave and the committee will then move into private session to consider the final agenda item so I'll suspend for 10 minutes and then we will move okay thank you very much