 Wel i'r parlymy ddweud. Rwy'n gweithio i'r parlymyd Carn Adam i'r sgwrs, a rwy'n bwysig o'r ddweudio siaradau cyfnodol o'r cyfreithiadol yn gweithio mewn cyfnodol. Rwy'n cael ei wneud i'r gweithio i'r 2022 ffestifol o'r ffordd, ac mae'r ffordd o'i gweithio i'r ffestifol y 18 yma of provoking, inspiring and informing people of all ages and from every walk of life to engage in three days of spirited debate. We're delighted that you'd be able to join us today to participate in the care, love and understanding panel and this is held in partnership with Who Cares Scotland and later I'll be inviting yourselves to get involved with any questions or comments that you have and if you're keen to continue to throw your thoughts out there you can do so by using the hashtag, hashtag, uppercase F, lowercase O, uppercase P, 2022, Festival of Politics 2022. So I'm very pleased to be joined today by Nicola McCartney, Kenneth Murray and Ryan McHague. Nicola McCartney is a Scottish based writer, director and dramaturg and talent behind the rehearsed reading, holding on many of you have just seen. Kenneth Murray is a writer and campaigner with a passion for transforming public understanding of care experienced people and Ryan McHague is chair of the board at Who Cares Scotland and is a practicing lawyer. So there will be an opportunity for members of the audience to put questions and views to the panel throughout the event so if I can start, I'd like to start by asking the panel some questions just to warm us up and get us going a little bit here. Can you define what do we mean when we talk about someone being care experienced and who would like to answer? Who would like to kick off? You know I think that's something that's shifted over the years and I think to give you an understanding of how real that shift is so you are a part of the cross-party group on care leavers that's a term that is becoming extinct in Scotland is a term that people are moving away from it's a you know it becomes like an illegal term care leaver is somebody who is looked after at the age of 16 and they are entitled to lots of support if you stop being looked after like many people are at the age of 15 and a half you're not entitled to you know the 10 years of support that comes after that so I think just to give you that real understanding of how shifting those sands are how traditionally understood is somebody who is looked after either in foster care in a local authority home secure care by a relative or is looked after at home with social support or somebody who is adopted. That's great thank you very much. So to get a picture of what the care system looks like in Scotland in 2022 there is a list of diamond statistics when it comes to care experienced people and the barriers to achieving a person's full potential from the disproportionate numbers for example in the prison service which in 2019 25 percent had been in care and for individuals who are homeless thought by practitioners to be between 30 to 50 percent which is extraordinarily high would anybody like to come in and give their thoughts on that? I as well as being all the things though I do object to the word talent but all the things that you were saying that idea I was also a foster care for Glasgow City Council between 2006 and this year and I've been trying to stop in a foster care for quite some time so I can only speak about my experience of working within that system I can't speak as a care experienced person these guys can and other people in the room but and I've worked in prisons and I've worked with homeless people etc and you're absolutely right that for me there is a common theme but one of the things that I think given that we're a country that keeps kind of broadcasting itself to the nations as being really progressive really different to the rest of the UK and our care system is fundamentally broken that's my experience of being inside it what I watched the young people that I had a role in caring for go through was harrowing heartbreaking and most of the time really didn't work because they were not treated as people and because I think that the care system like one of the characters in the piece says it doesn't exist really to care for young people in the system and I was a carer that those were not the instructions that I was ever really given in reality by any of the social workers that I worked with and it made me very angry and I still am the care system is there to protect the adults within it it isn't even about child protection that's my experience of it it's all about protecting the social workers and for me the foster cares and there's some very good foster cares I have to speak up you know foster cares are in a really difficult position too but our care system isn't is not about care and it's not about certainly about looking after the people it's meant to be looking after and it's been like that for a decade and I would really like Scotland and our parliament to stop saying that it wants to kind of lead the world and start doing it particularly for our most vulnerable people what do you think would be the most important part of that what would be the first steps to action rather than just talking for example I've spoken to a few friends who are care experienced and something that they would like to see is perhaps people who are care experienced it being a protected characteristic I don't know I'm gonna I'm gonna pass that along but I think it starts before that okay so I think it starts with us actually caring I think it starts with the way that MSPs politicians civic leaders talk about care experienced people to change the media and I know we're going to touch on that to change its representation of care experienced people but fundamentally it's about making the care system about care and that is a complex thing but I would say protected characteristics is an icing thing and not a deep systemic change that needs to happen but then again I'll pass on to people who know more than me just on protected characteristic and that's a not to be a lawyer and but that's a UK piece of legislation so that would need the UK government to reopen the equality act and I'm not sure that there is actually much appetite for that at the moment what I think we can do here in Scotland is we can change how we think about care as we've just seen so powerfully demonstrated by the performance which was fantastically written and amazingly delivered by the way I just wanted to say it's one of the most accurate depictions of care experience I've seen so thank you for that but what we've seen from that is that social class and where you're born just so often defines where you end up in Scotland too often if you think about the fact that there are 6% of the Scottish population go to private schools yet 45% according to a 2015 report 45% of the top judges in Scotland are privately educated yet relying on self identification 25% of the prison population are care experience so what we're seeing is that where you start off often determines where you end up and the way that we can stop that is we can stop siloed thinking so one of the things that came out of the promise was that care experience people often have to deal with one person for housing one person for their care one person for this one person for that because it's siloed thinking now the Scottish government recently released a child poverty action plan and the promise action plan to deliver the promise to reform the care system thinking about those even as two separate issues potentially makes us gloss over the obvious solutions like families need more support we've seen here it's poor kids who get their wanes 10 off them on paraphrasing the play but that's so true and actually if we see this as an issue of poverty first and foremost and don't see poverty as neglect necessarily see that as a family needs to be supported if we change our thinking around that we can get some quick wins i think in the care system do you know one of the the interesting things about that poverty and where it comes from is my pal Charlotte and I we operated a book club in Pullman with Care Experienced Men and we went in on a sort of regular basis we've read books done critical analysis and one of the key contentions within Pullman a working in Pullman which was a really sort of confined environment was that we would know people there you know people would identify Charlotte would identify me or they would know where we were from and you know then that becomes you know the line that uses others intelligence on you you know security are interested in how you know this person and where they're from because the fear is that then this person's going to use you to bring in drugs or to do you know whatever sort of the fear is activities and I think it's that suspicion and so some of the guys we met had been through secure care have gone through children's homes have been in foster care everywhere they went we met with suspicion and here they were in prison and I think you know when you live your life that way it starts to define it starts to become a self-fulfilling in art but can I can I just it would have been a proper time just as I discussed just a link to Charlotte who's in the front row because Charlotte has some has some really interesting things at the end of the film version of of this piece Charlotte gives a speech to camera which she wrote herself which is largely addressing the questions that you are that question that you're asking us so I just wondered if we can ask Charlotte what she thinks I think yeah we need to look back and accept that we've had a role as the oppressor in these people's lives and before before we can look at things like protective characteristic there needs to be a recognition that we've caused a lot of pain and turmoil and trauma to a collective generation like successive generations of people before we like if we don't do that we can never move forward I look at other liberation campaign movements I look at like the LGBT community and like some of the stuff that we're seeing now happening for the LGBT communities only happening because we're looking back at the past and recognising where us not just the state not just the state it's really easy to blame the government and say it's just the government but all of us as individuals have had a role in oppressing care experience people throughout history and I think to move forward as a government as a as a country we really need to to take that recognition individually in ourselves because even myself as a care experience person I have a role to play in that and like I talk about you know I was Lisa in the in the play I talked about intergenerational cycles of care but those are so interlinked in intergenerational cycles of poverty it doesn't take you like very far back in my family cycle to see where poverty has affected our family like right the way through probably the very beginning of our family I think those things are so closely linked and I guess what I'm saying to sort of sum it up is that we need to look back in order to to move forward and so far we've not been doing an awful lot of looking back in my opinion there's not an awful a lot of recognition like part of my provocation at the end of the film which I highly encourage everyone to come watch is talking about the fact that in like 100 years realistically not an awful lot has changed in the care system there's been a hell of a lot of legislation there's been a hell of a lot of like well intentioned policy but when you really think about the experience of people and what like people went through 100 years ago it's not massively different to what I experienced when I was in care and that I think that's damning actually that I could experience something that a Victorian offering would have experienced like have we really moved forward my like honest opinion is I don't think we have and you know we're replacing an awful lot of emphasis on this promise but we're promising pretty much nothing if we don't actually look back at where we've came from thank you you know I really appreciate what you said there Charlotte and I think it's a whole societal shift and outlook that we have to that we need and also it does sit with that equalities and that internal biases that people have and it's in our language and it's just in how we act and how we treat people who come forward to talk to us and how even listen you know to those stories and I think that's an incredibly poignant point thank you so I mean moving into that up linking into that how does society treat and view young people and adults who are care experienced you know we can think about the prejudice that some people have in regards to orfinani or you know harry potter and things like that and I'm wondering if anybody would like to come in that I went to this interesting exhibit at the Founderland Museum in London which is like a really neat move by a charity to reconstruct the image but one of the things that they had in there was the very first issue of Annie as a comic in the Chicago Tribune in the story centres around young kids from the neighborhood in Chicago wanting to come and see what orphans look like and any sort of challenge on their prejudice and I think that was in like 1901 or something and I don't know that much has changed you know I think there's this kind of we talk about your poverty safaris and things like that and you know whenever we have events we can experience people there are so many well well attentioned folk they want to come along and be seen and you know that's seen in its most gross form in America but you know they do fun fairs and you can come along and meet some of them and I think the media has a huge part to play in that you know there's this narrative of a superhero to psychopath and some of the best-selling movies and books and most of your tv shows get Marvel you know you like on Netflix which you know people are like oh I can't wait to watch it you know sit down and be like a bar of chocolate and like a wee coffee and it's actually a guy who grew up in foster care was abused and you know because of that he wants to murder and rape people and I think like it's just a straight line you know I think there's an element of lazy writing I think there's an element of sort of really embedded prejudice that's gone on for hundreds of years and this is what we're being fed you know and there's a play on in the fringe just now and the advertise is we spoke to some people come along see it and they do a little bit like chat and stuff and it's so interesting because that's like a selling point people come along see it because of that but nobody are tall in the production or around it is care experienced and I think you know it's because of that there's something missing you know something different to this performance and I think for me until care experience people start to define that narrative we're going to start seeing that this going on for even longer just to pick upon that I think is as Nicola was saying in Scotland we are very forward about seeing how progressive we are as a country now we are relatively progressive certainly in the UK and we have a left of centre government and we have a government who have committed to reforming the care system because it's the right thing to do right but in order to create that change across society going back to the question we really need to examine how progressive are we really when there's a proposal to put a children's unit into a nice area somewhere in Scotland what are the what are the responses to that plan and permission proposal mostly going to be that's where we see actually what type of country we are when it comes to how we view care experienced people coming into our communities and mixing with our children in all the types of phrases that you see in newspaper reports and all these planning portals and I think that's why it's so important that we educate people from as early as possible and one of the projects that we've done at Hooker Scotland that I'm really proud of is communities that care so we had volunteers in schools and in communities in Renfrewshire right across and what we've seen is a marked change in attitudes towards care experienced people we saw the community start to own care experienced people and we were teaching people as young as primary school age about care and why people going to care why it's not their fault and why they are an asset to their community and if we can get projects like that right across Scotland we can change attitudes across generations and hopefully then we will actually be as progressive as we think we are. So one of the things through doing this project that became even more clear for me was this whole care market thing and how utterly broken that is because I was working with one particular individual who works within a private care organisation and you only saw a bit of what she told me it's appalling and also two people working in a local authority to sort of repatriate young people who've been sent out with that local authority to private care firms who are ripping us off they're ripping us off they're ripping off the Scottish taxpayer but most of all they're destroying the lives of those children who were placing there and and I would like to see a root and branch review of the private care sector market in Scotland specifically for children and young people because it's utterly appalling these children's lives are being their potential is being wasted and their lives are being destroyed and these people as the character Ellie says the directors of these companies are drawing in huge profits we can't let that continue can't let that continue of children's social care in Scotland yeah thanks yeah and I think you know that's always the issue if we mix any kind of profits with care whether that's you know within the health system the the elderly care system you know and and children's care young children and young people's care it's um that does not mix I don't think it ever does mix and can I have a point as well I think what I think what she really interests illustrated was like the need to sort of end this idea that when you leave care that suddenly like you're off that cliff edge and that's where the support stops because like I said that in peace like being in care was something that happened to me but it's something that'll carry with me for the rest of my life like I often reflect on the impact that's going to have on me as a parent like where that's going to take me right away through my life and if you want to speak about care experience it's an experience that is lifelong like it doesn't just suddenly okay I have life care at 16 and that's me that's me completely finished with that experience in my life like the way that um the lady was explaining that the impact it's had on our sons right the way through every single person that's been in care feels that right up until the day they die like the experiences that they go through are with us every single stage of our life and like they present themselves completely differently every single stage of our life so there needs to be a real focus like something that I praise highly the Scottish government for is the removal of a great age limit for the care experience personally that's a really good piece of work that has enabled people to to go to university and I'm directly benefiting of that myself right now I think more work like that more recognition stop putting age limits on the support that they're giving to care experienced people because our experiences don't just suddenly expire when we turn 26 that's not the way it works unfortunately I mean it would be great if it did something unrecured no absolutely and um you know I have constituents who have came to me and um you know I don't want them to be identifiable but there has been as I'll watch you all generalise this but there has been issues with them now as grown adults and services that they are looking to support for you know just for everyday general things and there seems to be a bias there and they're wondering why life is harder for them than other people there seems to be a bit more gatekeeping a bit more suspicion even like in the maternity booking in yeah there's a list of questions and it's like have you ever been a sex worker have you ever been in prison have you ever did recreational drugs oh and by the way have you ever been cared like yeah package of yeah it doesn't matter if you left caring absolutely maybe at 33 and have to declare the fact that I was in care and be no risk at all I could be seen as a success but as soon as that goes on it's flagged up to social work immediately absolutely yeah and I think you know in terms of that support and I think you know when you think about what the government can do you know there's so many things so you know we had a national confidential forum we've got a Scottish child abuse inquiry that's ongoing we had the independent care review which has become the promise and you have a promise collective you have the promise oversight board you have you know all of the different co-chairs we're all like sort of doing things and there's lots of interested people and there's lots of support but you know things like redress Scotland for example you know there are very tight limits on how you can access that support who gets that support who that extends to I think when we think about the support we all thought a good experience people would try and think about it in boxes in that way that in the piece to talk about you know emotions being in boxes and I think it's easy to sort of start to categorise things because it means you can at the end of the day go you know I think I've done something I've ticked that box we've moved it on we've given that support and I think you know we need to start taking a whole family a whole life approach to to some of this stuff absolutely a whole a holistic yeah as I say approach yeah um moving on from that and I suppose that you know this is linking into it as well though what roles to class and poverty play in the care system yeah not to repeat myself but I think it's a massive indicator is your likelihood 10 at the care system I grew up in Easterhouse um then probably still now was regularly labelled one of the most deprived areas in Europe um when I was in care I was moved into Parkhead lived in Bridgeston apologies to anybody who's actually from these areas we know they're actually called Easterhouse Park Keedon Bridgton but I'm just translating it for the Edinburgh people right here so um yeah but but all of those areas where I lived right high concentration of poverty high concentration of addiction high concentration of care experience intergenerational poverty intergenerational childhood trauma that's the reason I ended up in care you know and when I read my care records it's full of threats towards my mum to address her addiction or I'll be taken away there's no really that support to try and actually alleviate her problems which were coming out of poverty and you just need to to see the start contrast and attitudes towards this if you go to any bookshop any card shop any supermarket and you'll see a card that says why mommy wants to drink wine or making some kind of joke about using alcohol as a as a dependency or as a coping mechanism when it's like on a class on a card and it's like a kind of middle class joke it's like oh yeah why mommy drinks wine when that happens in a scheme it's like let's take your kids off you so I think that actually we need to recognise how much of an impact class is not just in how we see care but alcohol addiction everything that's such a remnant of like factures and though if you think about like where we were in the 80s and the impact that that had on Scotland it seemed like the way that Scotland's housing policy was completely different like the way that that's so closely in our life I would love to see a study on the way that factures have had an impact on Scotland and the like that we think about like diseases of despair we think about people that are getting their kids taken off of them because they have addictions and like they're so in our life it's unbelievable there needs to be a huge piece of work to go back again I keep talking about going back but like the way that like even in the 50s and 60s after the war the way that housing was completely different in the schemes of Glasgow than it was like comparable cities like Manchester or Liverpool we see like high death rates in the population of character between people like that this is also closely linked to things the way that policy has been enacted in Scotland in a completely different sense that has across the UK and we wonder why like for example why we were having a drugs crisis in Scotland just now there's people that are very interlinked with the crisis that we're experiencing for people just now like there are all conversations that are happening in different sections of the government and they all need to be happening in one place like at the root of that the cause of all of that is poverty like these are things that connect that's why I said James's story beside Alex's story that's section about people's kids that exists in the performance with James who grew up in a scheme in north Glasgow in the the 50s and 60s and Alex who's grown up in a scheme in north Glasgow in the 90s and very little about their living conditions and their poverty haven't changed but everything about societal fracture and community being changed which I would say directly links to that tourism of course and what kind of you know there is no such thing as society in the breakdown but I think James makes a really good point there that community still exists it's just that absolutely everything in in our culture is stacked against it so actually one of the things that that for me I try I try to do is be community wherever I am because we have to be resistant I think being community for each other is like one of the strongest strongest ways that we can resist kind of all of these kind of nefarious forces that are that are working on us right now but especially like understanding the care experience people are our community they're they're part of us we're part of them we're we're kind of you know we're we're interlinked to each other I think um that's you know such an important point an aspect of that because we know that connection is incredibly important to human beings whether that's place or with people and connecting with identity and it could even be you know hobbies and passions and disconnection the opposite to that is is the the ill of many um problems in society actually the extreme scale in this country we literally put kids on boats and sent them to Australia to Canada to rely on them how many people in this room do that pretty much probably don't want everything so that's the huge part of our history we eventually took children's kids off of them put them on boats and then sent them across the world because we didn't want to place them in the UK like that's absolutely insane and I think that you know community and identity and so I've I've I've tried and think about my my childhood homes you know like where I lived the only ones that are still standing are the ones that belong to the foster carers like all of the the homes that I grew up in in housing schemes are knocked down for like regenerated housing and they take the people from those homes and they spread them out across the schemes and the different schemes you know they can labour them you know people from Easter house be moved to Govan and just sort of totally disconnecting them from their communities and exactly the same has happened in the 50s and 60s as James is saying when he got moved from a poor community in the city centre to a north Glasgow housing scheme sort of 50 years later it's the same so we seem to be doing the same things over and over again and it all seems to centre around how we're dealing with poverty that then has all these horrific consequences for our health service our prisons and our care system and those are all people so yeah well we haven't planted or anything to find maybe a four or five bedroom house now not saying the foster carers didn't need that they didn't need that to provide the accommodation for the children but actually the family needed that to begin with they needed help to move out that area and I always had to care a problem with that because I could see the care the children were getting but I knew what support the family needed and that's something that comes back to class and poverty and where we see how we invest in people and the value in people and who is to say that the foster carers were worth more investment than the the children's parents and the children themselves I have to say as a recent until recently foster care that that's really changed and nobody ever gave me money to have a four or five bedroom house I don't have a two bedroom flat and merry hill so um but uh with foster carers a lot of that's changed too like that's why foster replacements are so unstable in lots of ways there's very little will to hold placements together when they're when they're working and often the evidence of a placement kind of like um working is is when it becomes like the young person is just behaving like a young person like you asked about um attitudes the entire care system is riddled with this um how would you put it it's like pathologisation of young people in care so everything they do becomes about well it's cos they're in care they're just being a teenager they're just being a child you know but actually there there isn't the will often you know i went through one heartbreak in placement that changed my life where it was ripped to pieces by a system which could not say that like that young person just needed to be held longer and looked after and treated just like a teen a 16 year old teenager who was having a really hard time not like some specimen that had to be removed to a dustbin somewhere else because they weren't working you know and i've seen that happen to other young people what i ended up doing was as a respite care supporting placements that were breaking down because i've been through one that was pretty pretty hardcore and um and again it will again not the young person everything else and actually what's really interesting about the Scottish Government extending to 25 is that often foster carers are discouraged from keeping young people in their homes until they're 25 because there's we need beds and also the money changes and it's not a lot of money anyway like i'm still who got a four or five bedroom house you know i ended up subsidising like our living costs out of my own pocket not from what i was getting from Glasgow City Council all the time you know it's foster carers are not actually paid like ridiculous sums unless they're packing them in which shouldn't be happening anyway you know it's it's not a great gig being a foster carer really and that's if if you can't support the carers and it's true of social workers as well if the system can't support the people who are looking after the people then how how does anything work do you know that the love needs to be primarily for those young people but we all have to be treating each other with love and respect or nothing works absolutely it's a domino system yeah thank you for that that that leads on really really nicely actually to to my next question is where do unconditional love, compassion and support all figure in the care system and can you actually embed these vital qualities in a system I think that's seen with Ailey and Kathy shows that so those two workers towards the end neither of whom are social workers one is an educationalist and one is a projects manager and they are trying they are doing love within a system bringing back young people who are out with a local authority to where they live and where they people talk the same language and where their families are rather than just discarding them and throwing them away somewhere else into the private sector they're bringing them back to where they live where they were born and the local culture that they know and they're giving them an education that fits around them and addressing their needs holistically and Kathy says something really interesting we have to hold the young people in the care system as if they were our own child and you know that's what I thought my job was as a foster care you know they're not your own children they never will be nor should they be but you have to treat those young people like that and actually if they can do it within that local authority they can be doing it in local authorities throughout Scotland and I think what you're saying that and I really wish I could remember if I remember this I'll I'll put it out on my socials but there was a quote by somebody who said that you know unconditional love is more than the love you would show your child it's the love you would show yourself as a child it's the person that you needed as a child that's who you become and that's the love that that you project and do you know what that love is it's in people and I think so that's where the love is but I think what we do is we introduce barriers to that you know so there's shift patterns in children's homes or you know you're a short-term foster care or you're a long-term foster you know you're this you're that you know actually the money's going to be this now it's going to be that and I think we're the ones that introduce the barriers to that love because the love is in people you know nobody becomes a foster carer because they don't want to love a child nobody comes to social work because they don't want to create an environment where children can be loved it's you know it's but it's also people that create the barriers and I think you know there's this kind of dissonance that exists within us that we need to address before we can move forward I think that's that's possibly maybe like red tape whereas you wouldn't see red tape in you know in a home but you see red tape in a system that's supposed to so it's trying to you know reflect and mirror a home but it doesn't. I got my medical records just recently and I've been going through them and I really vividly remember lying on a doctor's bed and they were making a note and a figure to show that I'd got my first pub and and for me it was this really in-depth kind of like analysis of my health and you know rolling after me they wanted to make sure I was fine so you know yeah he's got pubs we'll put that down and I could go back to school and be like I've even got a form that says I've got pubs and but for me it's like it's that it's that different way we treat people right because like nobody's mum's like oh here's a card you've got your first pub well done well I don't know but I think for me there's just in those wee details that we see the difference you know the sort of like the red tape and you know the way that we keep records and the things like that you know we treat people like like specimens and for me that's the that's the thing that needs to change absolutely thank you I'm just going to check in with the time I'm okay what time is it oh okay oh no really enjoying the conversation and going a bit over so I suppose for the next 10 minutes we could open the floor to any questions or comments that people may have if you put your hand up the and just keep it up the mic will come to you if you've got something or somebody hi I've been really excited to see this event I think any piece of verbatim theatre that has the people whose stories are represented they're present and any piece of verbatim theatre that provokes a discussion like this is really done as jobs so congratulations to NTS Nicola and the whole team my question's simply given that it's capable of that all you guys are here whose stories this involves and that it's raising these questions will the show have a life beyond this can we take this because it really kicks the door it demands that the questions are asked and it's very moving so it creates an environment I think which should lead towards the important discussions carrying on so will there be a life for the show after this I think there should be and I'm going to do the bone of the horn for it because you know I'm really interested in media portrayal of care experienced people and it's so difficult to find something that's good and I think you know the only other thing that I've seen that it's been any good in sort of the last 10 years was a show called town not to drown that Nicola was involved and again there's a common denominator people who believe in people and put in power at the centre and I think you know again that's somebody's voice who's in it and I think you know we need to to open their arms to to fear like this that gets into communities that gets into people's hearts rather than you know treating it like an experiment and I think for me that that's that is the next step and you know I don't know what's going on like if I get the NTS and their projects and all that sort of stuff but that that's just mapping and there's somebody that was around it I mean I think I don't know so we can all I can also say I don't know there was never this was a pilot project that and I think some of the funders of the project are here today the original project and there was another part to this project as well made by the company 21 common with learning disabled adults a really amazing film that was fantastic so we really don't know I mean I think I think what's really interesting though about a national theatre company like NTS even been interested in doing something like this is is about trying to start a national conversation and you know there is a really strong learning and engagement team that has a history of going into local communities and doing projects like this so but the money has to be there so like everything else there has to be like funding for it and we just we just don't know at the moment um as far as I'm concerned I will keep advocating in all of the work that I do kind of for the communities that I engage with and I think that's all we can do what like when you're an artist all you can really do is start conversations you know and and when you're an artistic company to me that's the point of art start conversations about anything and everything because that's unfortunately what's crippling these islands at the minute is we don't have conversations we just shout at each other and so I think that you know I yeah it would be great if if this project went further either with NTS or or someone else but for me the most important thing is that right at the heart of this are the voices of people in the system and uh and it was the same with high north to dryness about like centering those people the voice not mine you know though my rage is in it is there anyone else with their hand up I should have oh here we go start I should have put my specs on this was wonderful and thank you very much and there's so many points that I would want to pick up and obviously can't with time I am in terms of systems and changing them and how we change them I think it has to be what we're talking about here changing the narrative educating people getting the conversation happening at a group a group sorry a root level and valuing the people who are experts by experience having their voice heard and shouted loud and I think the conversation needs to expand slightly broader than poverty and the other things we've talked about today and we need to look at trauma across the board and thankfully trauma is on the you know it's on the agenda it's front and center it needs to be even more so but part of what the vision is for trauma from Scotland is to recognize the importance of the expert on the ground and for us all to unify systems and simplify things and stop hiding behind the title that is the system and bringing it back to a person. Anyone else that would like to come in? So Matui points was like there's two points and then I've got a question for you guys and so like these we're talking about like barriers and things and like in my personal experience recently and I came across like a situation in like my own story well not my story but like things that I'm going through the now and like basically um there was an assumption made by my one of my social workers who said just because you're in education we expect you to do x yn z which I basically fired at them back to her and was like not everybody regardless of their educational status can make big decisions like move in flat or whatever by themselves they need that support and assistance and the other point was basically like in my own journey in foster care like one of the main barriers was that my foster carer never understood what was going on for me like me and my older sister were placed together and my older brother was separated but like they didn't understand that like obviously going through the process of losing our dads and like the stress and trauma that that brung as well like nobody understood us why we were acting out like behaving the way that we're behaving and then that then resulted in both of us like me and my older sister being separated and my question for you is was like if you can change one thing within the care system that's including your current um if you can change like help to change one thing in the care system just now big or small what would it be so that the people who the people who have experienced the system whether you've been a young person or a child within the system or whether you've been a carer within the system that you're listened to that your voices are heard but especially if you're a care experienced person that you are heard and that your experience is given honour is like respected and given honour and I think that is the most significant thing that will change everything from the hearing system to the care system itself it's a very difficult question to answer I think what I would do if I could change one thing is I think and it picks up on both of the situations that you just described there I think what we really need to focus on is putting relationships at the heart of everything we're doing that sounds slightly club when you say that but ultimately if you start with relationships that that you can't go far wrong and in terms of if somebody is moving house and they have a traditional two-parent household they will not be expected to do that on their own they will be given support emotional probably financial if we can provide those relationships whether that's through foster care or throughout the care system as a whole that's where we really have to start from and it's not just let's do this because it's the right thing to do let's do this because it will improve outcomes for one of the most underrepresented communities in Scotland actually what the promise shows that even if you take an economically conservative view of the care system even if you're on the right ffiscally it doesn't even make sense financially the way we do it it doesn't make sense on any level the following follow the money report shows that we're actually wasting money and if we just done things right supporting people properly giving relationships and stopped them from living in poverty which by the way if you believe any commentator's going to get a lot worse in the next five years if we actually just done that and started from that place we'd make a whole lot of ground that and just the second thing I'm going to cheat and say I would change two things support support has to be lifelong for care experience people it doesn't you don't lose your care experience at 26 you don't lose your care experience at 56 and you should have access to independent advocacy or whatever type of support that you need throughout your entire life do you know I think for me the one thing is so if you go home today and you google tearful sturgeon announces care review and it's the first minister announcing the independent root and branch review of the care system and one of the things she says in it is we need to start making things happen for young people and care you know and for care experience people and not just stop think not just stop things happening to them and I think for me that that's the thing that I would change and start making things happen for care experience people whether that's educational support financial support you know supporting the livelihood supporting rebuilding relationships with brothers and sisters that have been separated from I think that that's the one thing I would I would change I think you know from my point of view who from somebody who hasn't had lived experience lived experience is exceptionally important and I've seen the power of words since I've been elected I've seen the power that people can have sitting at the decision making tables and I've been able to to shift narratives of conversation and pull things in a certain direction because I lived experience that I've had because when you talk from the heart it means a lot more it moves more people you get more people on board in the listen I would like to see more people with lived experience getting involved in politics being at the decision making tables and actually having a direct say in how things are run I also look at what we're doing with the social security Scotland at the moment and all the work going into that and the difference between that and the DWP now the systems to get the disability payments it's the same rank in it's the same you know system that's used but the people have been trained to be compassionate to be kind people are treated with respect and not suspicion now if we can roll that out into these systems why can't we do this in the care system and the other thing is I just the word system is quite irritating because it's it makes you think ultimately of a path that has already been forged for you it's a system of you know paths and connections it's there that can't be broken out of so I think that holistic and in particular an intuitive approach is much more important when we're looking at these you know areas and making decisions but more importantly from myself the biggest change we can make to the care system is is definitely you can start by lobbying all your politicians and make a big racket about it and be seen representation is extremely important so we're running out of time there but I want to thank you all for your contributions it's just been fantastic I want to thank the panel Nicola, Kenneth and Ryan and I just want to take the opportunity to remind you that there may be more festival events taking place today there's an in conversation with the poet and writer Lem Sisi have I said that right who will be talking about his own experience of the care system and his bestselling memoir my name is why and that's at 6 30 today and you also have time to take part in the panel do you trust politicians I'm so glad my children aren't here for that and that's at four o'clock and the state of the UK union at six I might go to that one I do hope you'll be able to join us but what I would like to do before we completely finish up is just to I don't want to be the closing words on this I'd like to ask Charlotte if there's any final words you'd like to say to everybody and she's got a bag on ready to go I saw her getting her toys loose some formal recognition of the history of care experience people today at least like one of the proudest things I've ever done in my life was create national that's not a lie not the national care experience history month in April 2022 I really want to see the government supporting that I will recognition of the immense history that people have that there needs to be I don't know a month that I created but there needs to be some more support behind that because our history is so like colourful there's so much to learn there's real moments of joy and there's moments of sadness that I think people just benefit from from knowing that my life is transformed from my history by my people like everybody wants to know where they come from and at the moment care experience people just don't know and our own individual life histories we don't know where we come from but as a community of people there's not enough conversation about it so I think the biggest thing for me is I want to see that recognition like at the highest levels of government but all the way through communities as well because we've been through like we've been in societies and society stories and we've had massive contributions to that like the way that we've done the recognition of that farm land there so yeah that's the biggest thing that I want to see happen thank you and thank you everybody thank you