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We return for our second panel of the meeting. I am delighted that we are joined by Debbie Adams, director of development and external affairs at Victim Support Scotland; Anna O’Reilly, assistant director of Children First; and Rhona Willder, deputy chief executive officer of the Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance. You are all incredibly welcome today, and we are enormously appreciative of your time.
We have several questions, and I will direct the first questions to Ms Adams. You will have followed some of the previous evidence session with witnesses from the courts system. Has the reduction in the backlog for sheriff court solemn cases reached victims’ lived experience? Will you tell the committee a bit more about the effectiveness of the victim information and advice service?
Thank you for the invitation to the meeting. I am delighted to give evidence on behalf of the victims, witnesses and families who have spoken to us about their experience. A lot of our evidence today will be taken from that experience, which I hope backs up the more technical and procedural discussion that we heard earlier from the first panel.
Consistency is an issue. Some people will have a fair and adequate experience, while others will find that the system is still not responsive to their needs. Consistent communication is also a key issue; we consistently hear that there is a lack of information and communication, particularly in summary cases. There is an issue with regard to speed, and you heard about the number of cases that go through. Everyone arrives at the same time and waits to see whether their trial will proceed on that day.
The system itself is highly confusing for people. Moreover, when I spoke recently to staff, they told me that their experience was that the victim information and advice available from other services can be inconsistent across all of the court system.
For what it is worth, I agree with you. In a high-profile constituency case that I am dealing with at the moment—and which I obviously will not talk about, for sub judice reasons—the victim information and advice service did not contact the victim to let them know when the individual in question was appearing on an undertaking and did not let them know whether they had been bailed or remanded or what the outcomes were. Therefore, I appreciate your putting that on record.
I was struck by Tony Lenehan’s suggestion in the previous evidence session that the support levels for victims are the best that they have been in 20 years. Was he wrong in that?
Support levels for special measures have absolutely increased and improved. If you are eligible for such measures—if you are, say, a child, a vulnerable adult, someone over 65 or someone involved in particular crime cases—what is available to you has improved. Indeed, you can see that from the surveys.
Identifying vulnerability is the key issue. People who are highly traumatised by their experience of the crime that has happened to them are entering a system that, even if it did operate better, is still complicated. You need only listen to the words that people are trying to get their heads around or to people trying to explain the differences—it is complicated even for those who have not gone through such highly traumatic experiences.
Therefore, I would say that special measures have improved, and I am happy to speak to you about other areas that we think could be improved in that respect, but, in general, when it comes to trauma-informed practice for the vast majority of people who do not get such measures, we could see some improvements.
Okay. Just while you have the floor, can you tell us the other areas that you think could be improved?
What has been good is the investment that we have had in remote court facilities. We have a trauma-informed environment in two of our premises in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and we are looking to go live with our system in Inverness. The Edinburgh courts have really taken it up, and it has resulted in victims sitting in a much more comfortable environment. For example, we had a couple of teenagers sitting on their phones all day, and ordering an Uber to bring them food. They were able to do that in our environment, and it was much more conducive to their being able to deal with their trauma.
Therefore, we want more use of trauma-informed remote places outwith the court buildings. People have a great fear of bumping into the accused in a case, and having the ability to move to another building is really key. We want that sort of provision to be increased, and we are willing to be partners and to try to find ways of supporting the courts in that endeavour.
That is excellent. Thank you, Ms Adams.
Turning to Ms O’Reilly from Children First, I want to ask about summary case management. We have received evidence from the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service that 3,000 fewer child witnesses have been cited, which is a 40 per cent drop. Is that right? Are we seeing that borne out in reality, and what further improvements do you think that we need to look at there?
I thank the committee for the invitation to give evidence on behalf of Children First, and the children and families whom we support.
With regard to children’s journeys through the court system in Scotland, I would say that the majority of child victims and witnesses are still experiencing significant delays. The three to four-year wait that was mentioned earlier impacts on child victims and witnesses, too.
As Debbie Adams has alluded to, special measures are available, and their use is now being consistently rolled out for children and young people. However, often the preferred option is the use of a screen in court. The bairns’ hoose model that Scotland has set its sights on and agreed to roll out is the model of the future that we would all aspire to for child victims and witnesses; they would start the child protection and investigation stage in the bairns’ hoose and complete the justice process through remote links to court and with pre-recorded evidence being used as standard in a child and family-friendly environment.
That is the vision that we have for Scotland, but it is not the experience for the great majority of child victims and witnesses. We know what we want to achieve, but it looks very different in different places. Children First, along with key partners including VSS, opened the first bairns’ hoose in north Strathclyde in 2023.
In the past year, a specialist procurator fiscal depute has joined and now works out of the bairns’ hoose. In our experience, that has led to the greatest transformation that we have seen in the many years that we have been advocating for that.
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Having a bairns’ hoose recovery and advocacy worker means that we can link with families from the point of interview through the justice process. That worker can help to fill the communication gap that children, young people and families tell us can exist from the point of the police investigation through the court process. They can also work with the procurator fiscal on the dates on which children appear, either to give evidence on commission or remotely in a trial. Early feedback is that that support is both welcome and transformational for child victims and their families.
That is great.
I have a question that is pertinent to articles in The Scotsman and The Herald today about the use of Taser guns on children in custody. I understand that they were used 43 times and that there were 262 strip searches of children. Given the topicality of the issue, would Children First wish to comment on that? We will want to have conversations with Police Scotland about how children in custody are being treated.
Our view is that any child under 18 who has cause to interact with the justice system in Scotland, whether as an accused person, a victim or a witness, should have a child-centred, trauma-informed experience.
Ms Willder, we heard a lot earlier about summary case management and the reforms that are apparently making a difference or having an impact. Will you talk a little bit about the impact on advice services and what more you think needs to be done on that side of things?
Thanks for inviting Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance to give evidence today. Independent advocacy and advice are different and distinct forms of support. Independent advocacy would never give advice; it exists to ensure that a person’s views are heard.
Independent advocacy provision in Scotland is quite complex, and not a lot of independent advocacy support is available through court processes. There should be. The right of access to independent advocacy exists under the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003. That is a broad right of access, so independent advocacy should be available in more settings and be less siloed than it is.
We know that, for example, people with learning disabilities are more likely to be victims of crime, so they should, in theory, have access to independent advocacy support as they go through the court process. However, in reality, that is not the case. Largely, that is due to issues with health and social care partnerships, which have a duty to ensure the availability of independent advocacy, and to the narrow interpretation of what that right of access means.
Will you say a bit more about that? Silo working is pertinent to the Parliament’s discussions on public sector reform, which I suspect will dominate session 7. You have given the example of disabled people and health and social care partnerships. Are there any other examples that you can share with the committee?
One of our members, who works in the state hospital, provides independent advocacy only there and is commissioned through the health board. People in the state hospital go through the criminal courts fairly regularly. However, the health board does not have the resources to commission our member to provide support to people going through court processes. In the rare times when the board has commissioned their services, we have evidence that the support provided was very helpful for the person.
The support enables people to understand the processes—for example, the independent advocacy can help them to understand what a solicitor’s role is. It is also about linking back to the impact that criminal proceedings have had on people’s mental health while they are in the state hospital.
Independent advocacy is there to see things from the person’s point of view and to explain the whole system to them. That support is really helpful and important when it is made available. It is just not funded in a way that enables independent advocacy to support a person through the whole process.
Thank you. I appreciate your sharing that.
I will bring in Ms McNair.
I thank the witnesses for their time today. I want to put on record that although the journey through the courts system has improved, so much more needs to be done. The deputy convener mentioned poor communication, which remains an issue. That has come up in my inbox, along with the lack of support for people as they go through the court process.
I want to go back to the bairns’ hoose model. What kind of early lessons have emerged from the implementation of the bairns’ hoose? Anna O’Reilly, I will come back to you, because you spoke about that a moment ago.
The lessons that Children First can speak to most are linked to the north Strathclyde bairns’ hoose, which was the first to be opened, in 2023. There, we learned that, if you create a family and child-friendly environment and you have good multi-agency working, you can enable children to give a high-quality pre-recorded interview. They meet police and social workers in the house to do that, and that quality interview can then be used as the evidence in chief, so that the child does not need to go to court. Children can come back to the familiar environment of the house to give evidence by commission or remotely to court, if needed. The feedback that we have had from children and families who go through that process is that it is really helpful.
We have really sped forward with regard to the justice journey for children in the bairns’ hoose, and the greatest learning from that has come in the past eight to nine months. For the first couple of years of operation, we were working with the bairns’ hoose facility for interviews and post-interview support but although the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service had worked with us to set up the justice suite, we did not get the expected volume of children coming through. There is something about the system—we have heard this morning how complicated it is—that means it can sometimes feel siloed. Even though the Crown Office and the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service where key partners in our bairns’ hoose and we had switched on the technology, we simply were not able to get underneath why children were not coming through the service.
The real game changer has been the appointment of a procurator fiscal depute who is based in the north Strathclyde bairns’ hoose and who provides an immediate link as well as a focus on cases involving children and young people across the sheriffdom of North Strathclyde. There is evidence coming through about what works; the small things are always the big things with children. For example, we ensure that, when children are brought to the house, they are not waiting until half past three before they are called, which would mean their having to return six weeks later. When they are called, we need to ensure that the system understands that they are coming in and that their evidence is heard on the day. For children, that means they are not losing endless numbers of school days coming and then waiting nervously to give evidence.
The procurator fiscal depute has been able to speed up the process and ensure continuity of sheriffs for cases. Their specialist knowledge of the complex prosecution process, viewed through a lens of how they can make that function best for children and young people, is really working. We are excited about what that means for other bairns’ hooses. Every local authority now has a bairns’ hoose partnership, but, as it has been rolled out, the emphasis has not actually been on ensuring an absolute focus on the fact that the bairns’ hoose should be about reducing retraumatisation through the justice system. At the moment, in Scotland, the north Strathclyde bairns’ hoose is the only one that has that facility. The exciting thing is that that learning could easily be rolled out across Scotland.
What must happen to roll that out across Scotland, aside from taking the learning from the bairns’ hoose that you deal with? Can you tell the committee anything else about that?
Bairns’ hoose provides the model, and the Scottish Government and previous ministers looked at the barnahus model in Europe and agreed to adopt that here. The implementation in Scotland has been somewhat permissive, and, potentially, a more strategic and slow approach is needed. Some countries have taken a regional approach, starting in one place and systematically working across the country. Such an approach might allow some of the learning to be built on more efficiently and effectively than we have seen.
We are aware that, although the amount of funding has not been confirmed, there has been confirmation that bairns’ hoose will remain a focus for the next three years. It would be a wise consideration to ensure that each bairns’ hoose that is supported by the Scottish Government has an acute focus on minimising retraumatisation and on getting remote links to courtrooms up and running. Doing so could achieve great things for children and young people.
Bairns’ hoose is a complicated model, though. It is equally possible for areas to make a lot of progress in bairns’ hoose in the next three years yet do very little to change the process for children and young people. It is about knowing what you need to change and focusing on that, sometimes to the exclusion of other elements.
What has been the impact on children and young people? What is their feedback on the model?
Their feedback has been that they have found it supportive. It has made the process less scary. Coming in and giving evidence has been easier. I suppose that there is a contrast between their feedback and the feedback that you often get from children and young people on how hard it is to remember something that happened two to three years ago. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and children and young people have been involved in developing our bairns’ hoose environment and shaping it. They think that all children who have gone through such experiences should have access to these spaces.
In fact, in north Strathclyde, there are bairns’ hoose change makers, and I am sure that they would be disappointed if I did not invite committee members to have the opportunity to visit them and to look at their building and be shown around it by them if they wanted to.
I am sure that the committee would take up that offer.
The committee would be very keen to take up that offer. We will follow that up.
Sorry, Anna—this is another question for you.
Bairns’ hoose sounds like a really positive, interesting model. Can you talk me through the journey of a child who does not access that system? What does the process look like in comparison?
Most children in Scotland should now have access to the first part of the journey through a joint interview with police and social work using a new framework called the Scottish child interview model. The model means that the child’s evidence is pre-recorded and of a high enough quality to go forward for prosecution. However, there are some areas in which decisions are taken at an early stage that mean that some children—some under-18s—do not have that interview. If they do not have their evidence taken in a pre-recorded way at that point, the Crown will sometimes ask for it later. That can mean that the first point at which pre-recorded evidence is given by a child can be many months after the initial disclosure. That is a discrepancy.
The ambition is to make the SCIM available to all children and young people who are affected by the most serious crimes, but that is not currently the case. For many, and potentially in most areas, the position remains that the police are the lead agency. While the police continue to investigate the case, they stay in touch with the family and tell them what is happening. However, when the case goes forward to the Crown, the gap in communication can start. Typically, it is not unusual for eight to 12 months to pass before a family is contacted by the Crown to let them know the next stage. As they move on through the process and the relevant timeframes, there could be a point at which the victim information and advice service gets in touch with them to speak about special measures.
Often, for children and families, contact from the victim information and advice service asking a young person what special measures they would like can typically come less than a month before the trial date. The actual date has to be a minimum of two weeks away. Children and young people are living for many months with that uncertainty.
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Would it be fair to say that, at present, a postcode lottery determines which system a child goes into?
It would be fair to say that there is only one postcode in which they would have access to the most trauma-informed system in Scotland.
Thank you. This morning, we heard a lot about silo working in organisations and that the best practice would be joined-up thinking. Has any work been done on working with multiple agencies to identify children before they get to the bairns’ hoose? My thinking is that the bairns’ hoose is for children in cases in which we know that something has happened. Are you aware of family C and the learning review?
Yes.
In that case, the abuse was not identified, yet there were lots of warning signs. I am just wondering whether there has been any modelling or joined-up thinking across the whole system regarding what you have been learning from the bairns’ hoose, and how that learning can be taken to the wider child protection arena.
You are talking about the case in Glasgow, which was about protecting children. There is the opportunity to learn from what Denmark has done when it comes to the possibilities that the bairns’ hoose provides for Scotland. Denmark’s barnahus is delivered on a regional and local basis, and it is the centre of excellence for all their child protection work. The children and young people who then need to be interviewed because of suspected harm flow through that system. If there had been a fully functional multi-agency model during that particular case in Glasgow, with all the known vulnerability factors, the family should have found itself in a bairns’ hoose arena with a different level of scrutiny.
Thank you—that is very interesting.
I will focus on a little exchange that I had earlier with the witnesses from the Crown Office and the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service, in which I suggested that the current system is failing victims. They refuted that suggestion pretty strongly, but I am not sure that they convinced me, so I will ask Debbie Adams a series of questions to highlight the experiences of victims in the justice system. First, do victims ever disengage from the justice process because of proceedings going on and on and there being a constant renewal of their trauma?
When I ask our staff about the experiences of victims, I consistently hear that victims frequently say, “I wish I hadn’t bothered.” The issue is broader than just disengaging with the current trial, because it affects public confidence. It would not be accurate to say that victims’ experience of a delay is, in and of itself, the only factor that influences disengagement; there is also, as I said earlier, people’s fear of meeting the accused and the question of how things will go when they are actually in the court.
Is that to do with confidence in the system? Do they feel that the system will not work to protect them?
It is sometimes about the physical buildings and the fact that—
They might bump into the accused.
Yes, they might bump into people. Special measures allow for other arrangements to be made, but if a person does not have special measures, they will enter the building and could be queuing beside the accused and their families.
Beside the alleged perpetrators.
Yes. That fear is one of the risks that can cause disengagement. There is also a connection with communication. It is difficult to get information in the time between when a person gives evidence and when they get the letter to come to court, and people do not know how to get in touch. They report to us that they have long waiting times when they phone the court to get information.
I have some sympathy with what the SCTS said earlier about modernisation, because every other service that people engage with has some way to give them information or to allow them to access information, whether that is digitally or through self service. At the moment, it seems that people must phone and they will often wait for a long time. All those conditions lead to a risk of disengagement.
I can relate to that on a personal level. Who is responsible for connecting the dots for victims? My experience is that communicating trial dates and postponements, for example, seems to be up in the air. What is the general experience of victims?
When you look at the various bits together, it is really complicated. The issue is how to provide information that people can access themselves. That should be the bigger question. There should be a way of updating people as they go through the process. There seems to be—
Are you suggesting that there should be a notification when something has changed?
Yes, to let them know what is happening next. A lot can happen on the day.
We are really pleased with the developments to the justice digital front door. In relation to a victim-centred approach, we have been asking how the different systems notify people about the information that is available to them. When a person enters the police system, the incident is recorded, a crime type is allocated, and they are assigned to that category.
Then there are the fiscals.
Yes, then there is the Crown system.
How the information is recorded makes information exchange really difficult. I do not think that people are sitting there thinking that they will keep all the information to themselves. The issue is the way in which information is recorded in different systems.
Do different parts of the system think that they will be the ones that will let the victim know what is going on? Is it very clear who should be doing that?
No, I do not think it is.
It is not clear?
No. VIA has a role in doing that, but our experience is that the service is very patchy. I hear good things about certain courts and about it being poor in others.
There is an opportunity to think about front-facing roles and having those staff based in the court while proceedings are under way.
Does it depend on the court or the fiscal’s office? Is this another example of the postcode lottery that Amanda Bland referred to?
Unfortunately, yes.
Now, to be fair to the system, if other people who have a role to play do not turn up, the trial will not go ahead. It would help if people were more proactive in providing information.
Victim Support Scotland has volunteers in every court across Scotland when trials are in session. We could play a greater role, but we sometimes struggle to get information about—
You struggle to get information?
Yes, on updates.
I will bring in Ms Willder, as she is quite keen to add to this discussion.
Just to add to Debbie’s points, one of our member organisations provides independent advocacy through the Glasgow youth independent advocacy project. Its role is to work with young people to explain charges and the roles of Police Scotland, COPFS, the courts and solicitors in an accessible way, and to help them to prep questions. Those providing support provide communication support, and can explain someone’s communication needs to all the other professionals who will be interacting with them in the system.
The role of those providing support is to sit alongside the young person so they can help the person’s views to be heard. However, they do more than that; they also help them to interact with other systems, such as the education and health systems.
They provide broader advocacy.
That relationship-based support is key.
If they were not there, I take it that, in relation to the Crown and the courts, the person would be treated like everyone else.
Yes. One of the advocacy partners—those are the people who receive independent advocacy—said that they felt the communication from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service was confusing and overwhelming. That is an example of—
Or underwhelming in some cases.
Quite possibly.
The key thing for us, as the national membership organisation, is that that happens only in Glasgow; it does not exist anywhere else.
In a sense, that reinforces Debbie Adams’s point that provision is a postcode lottery, rather tragically.
I return to Debbie Adams. Will you describe to us, as evidence, before this committee, what it does to a victim of attempted rape or rape to have to wait 1,000 days before they understand the outcome of the justice process? What does it do to someone to live with an unresolved criminal case of that solemnity and soberness hanging over them?
I do not want to understate the depth of trauma and the fact that you have to carry it with you and that there is no resolution until you can get to trial. That process is difficult in and of itself. Those who have to carry that trauma also worry about their ability to keep their evidence in their head and to give their best evidence on the day. That is why special measures are so important—as I have said, progress has been made on them and the requirements in that respect. However, we also have to consider what else might be happening in relation to the crime—for example, whether the accused is on remand or on bail—and the fact that the longer the delay, the greater a person’s chance of bumping into the accused in their community.
More broadly, we need to think about the economic impacts on people of court delay and adjournments; in order to turn up, you have to get cover for childcare or take time off work, and then you might have to come back again. Colleagues have also spoken about the educational impact on children, but the stress and trauma of the situation also affects interpersonal relationships.
People have talked about this being a whole-system issue, but we need to bear in mind that it is actually a whole-society issue, because of its knock-on effects on the other areas that I have mentioned.
The total cost that you have just described, and the fact that this reaches every part of a person’s life—all their relationships, their employment and everything—are certainly something to think about.
Absolutely.
If I might, deputy convener, I want to ask a final question. What has been the impact or effect of this Parliament’s decision to remove section 23D of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 in relation to bail? What has been the impact of that post the passing of the victims act? What is the name of the act again? Is it the Victims and—
Do you mean the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025?
I should just have referred to the 2025 act.
I do not have that evidence to hand, but I would be happy to write to you afterwards on it.
Would you do that?
We have already given evidence on our views on bail, so I would be happy to provide you with information afterwards.
I think that that would be useful in the context of the evidence that we heard last week, too, which you may be aware of.
We will take that away and provide some evidence on it.
I would appreciate that.
Thank you, Mr Kerr. I will now hand over to Mr Macpherson.
You have provided me with a good segue, Mr Kerr—thank you.
I wanted to ask whether the witnesses had any other points that they wished to express to Parliament, through the committee, about the implementation of the 2025 act—which, for full clarity, is the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025. What constructive difference has it made thus far? What are your views on the need for implementation, and what is your understanding of the issues and opportunities with regard to the implementation to come?
Given the size of the bill, I will just focus on a couple of areas. We were most concerned about the issue of parole, and the consideration of parole in cases where the person had not disclosed the whereabouts of the victim’s remains. We are happy that those provisions have come into force. We were also hugely supportive of the abolition of the not proven verdict, and it will be interesting to see how that flows out through the courts.
There is a lot of legislation in the 2025 act, and we want people to ensure that it is implemented, because the fact is that we learn from its implementation by reviewing it. I am happy to come back to you again on any particular issue in the bill that you would like us to comment on, but quite a lot of it still has to be implemented.
One issue of interest to us is referrals. At the moment, the referral process for victims of crime is an opt-in one, which means that the police cannot automatically refer them for support to organisations like ours. With special measures, there is automatic referral, but everyone else must request it. One of the things in the legislation that passes over into the court system is that any delay in the system getting in touch with someone causes, in turn, a delay in that person being offered support, and it is not clear how anyone other than those who get special measures can ask for support, given that referral is not automatic.
Therefore, we would like to see much more of a link to referrals for support. I know that things have improved, but the system is still very complicated, and if you can have someone beside you who can try to explain things, it makes the process feel less daunting. Victim support services, be they provided by us or other partners, are key to that.
Just to bring it back to the legislation, I would say that we are waiting on that element with regard to the police and want to see how they improve referral for support. That passes over into the court system; as I have said, only those on special measures get automatic referrals, and those referrals have been reducing.
Are the matters that you have just highlighted a priority for implementation?
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They are the ones that come to mind, but I am happy to take that away and provide you with some information and our views on that. I had not prepared to answer that question, given that we are looking at court delays.
As you wish. That information might be helpful.
Good morning, and thank you for your contribution so far. I have a range of questions, but will start with questions about independent advocacy.
Rhona Willder, you spoke about some of the issues with identifying vulnerability. Can you say a bit more about what works when assessing vulnerability from a statutory perspective as well as practically, because of the kinds of people who offer that support. What gaps should we be looking to plug, and how can we extend independent advocacy support?
There are a number of referral routes. A lot of independent advocacy work is referred through social work or is self-referred in specific settings. To go back to your evidence session last week, often, there is a self-referral process in prisons. Independent advocacy services exist in most of the prisons in Scotland, but there are six prisons that do not have any of those services, due to commissioning processes. In the prison setting, if someone is interacting with NHS services because of a health condition or medication, they are more likely to understand that independent advocacy is available in the setting.
The services are very underfunded and have limited resources. One independent advocacy organisation has a budget of £15,000 to work in a prison for the entire year, which does not cover anything more than one day a week. That will not be consistent across the prisons that have independent advocacy provision; it is incredibly variable. The resources dictate who can use the service. There are not the resources to actively promote independent advocacy, explain to people what it is and why they might need it. It is much more of a case that, if someone is at crisis point and needs a different type of support, they may be referred to a service or they might self-refer.
As the membership organisation, we do not provide independent advocacy, but we get repeated phone calls from prisoners asking for that support. It is a time-consuming process, because we have to write letters to them and signpost them to the relevant organisation in their area. In all the criminal justice processes, prisons are the places where our members have the most experience of providing independent advocacy. It is complicated, but it is very much dictated by how much resource each organisation has for the specific area where they are working.
It is helpful to hear your description of what happens in prisons, which connects to some of the broader issues that I know that the committee will spend more time on. If we think more broadly than the prison sector, how is independent advocacy viewed in the pecking order of what should and should not happen? Where do you see a need for legislative change, or do we have the legislative platform that we need? Are there things that we should be looking to do differently with what we already have?
We do not have the legislative platform that we need for independent advocacy. It is mentioned in different ways across 10 different laws in Scotland. Some describe it as a right of access and some suggest that you should be provided with independent advocacy if you ask for it, which puts the onus on the person to know that that is what they want. The definition of “independent advocacy” is different across the different laws and is usually set out in secondary legislation. That has a big influence on how services are commissioned. Some duties to provide independent advocacy are set at the national level and some are set at the level of local health and social care partnerships, and there are then further silos in the different policy areas that the different laws cover.
As a national organisation, we would like to see the implementation of the Scottish mental health law review’s recommendation on carrying out an analysis of where independent advocacy sits across all the laws that mention it. We have sent a briefing paper to a different parliamentary committee and asked whether it would take forward such an inquiry.
It is key that we change how independent advocacy is commissioned, and the complexity of how it is described in law has a big impact on that. That affects advocacy partners, and it means that people have to fit themselves into boxes in order to receive independent advocacy and have their views heard.
That is really helpful. I hope that we can keep tabs on how that committee deals with the issue.
I want to talk a bit about Children First’s work. I thank Anna O’Reilly for sharing Evangeline’s story with us. The evidence that has already been given, including the evidence in that story, is really powerful on the impact of good support and on the problems when support is absent.
We have talked a bit about implementing the things that we should be doing. Have you been involved early enough in the process of designing how that implementation will work? Have experienced voices been involved in that process? Can we do better as we implement the outstanding provisions in the 2025 act and other measures that are still to come?
There has been the participation of children and young people in all the bairns’ hoose development processes. The bairns’ hoose model involves complex multi-agency collaboration in its delivery and, therefore, in its design. The participation of children and young people and their feedback on how Scotland is delivering that model are often not sought early enough; at times, it can feel like a bit of an afterthought. That is not the desire, but it is sometimes the result.
In relation to Evangeline’s story, I would argue that we are awash with feedback from child victims and witnesses. Through feedback on the bairns’ hoose model and other processes, they continue to tell us what needs to change, and we need to continue to involve them. We are where we are not because children and young people have not told us what is needed but because the issue is incredibly complex.
We need to ensure that what children and young people tell us influences change. Is their ability to influence decisions on implementation, instead of just banging their heads against the proverbial brick wall, what is missing?
The participation of children and young people has influenced what we have. The tricky position that we are in relates to the interplay between the national vision and the centralised function of it. Back in 2016, the then Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Michael Matheson, set out a vision for eliminating the need for children to attend court at all during trials, so that Scottish Government ambition is not new.
However, the implementation across Scotland of the bairns’ hoose model—the solution by which all child victims can be kept out of the court process—has not been underpinned by the strong message that the purpose relates to justice. Of all the spaces that are being developed and have been funded, only one has an active link to court and justice: the Children First north Strathclyde bairns’ hoose. Long before we opened its doors, we knew that that was what we were setting out to achieve. We are happy to provide more information on our thoughts about that in the form of advice and guidance. Children First is at the table. We are not a lead partner, but we are always willing to share the latest information from children and young people and our thoughts on how Scotland can get this right. That is the only example of such a model that exists in Scotland, and it has been well evidenced elsewhere. If we can implement it properly, we can use that to transform things for all victims under 18.
I want to come to Debbie Adams on that final point, about transforming things for all victims under 18. There is something of value in the bairns’ hoose model that should be available to all survivors of traumatic crime. Debbie, given the success of the bairns’ hoose model and thinking of all your work in VSS and more generally in the victim support sector, do you see that affecting how victims and survivors who are over 18 are treated, or is that not really happening yet?
I am all for learning lessons, but adults are different from children. People sometimes want speedy justice and do not actually want multi-agency involvement because they want the process that they are engaging with to proceed as quickly and effectively as it can, in a trauma-informed way.
There are some assumptions that are made. People have been talking about summary case management being trauma informed and it absolutely is. We support the efforts that are being made to reduce court delays. Interestingly, there is no information for victims and witnesses about what that will mean for them, and the process has not necessarily been designed with that in mind. It is reasonable to assume that it is a good outcome if someone does not have to go to court, but some people want to have their day in court and to have their voice heard. We will speak to partners about the lessons that can be learned as the process is evaluated and about how information is shared with victims to explain why we are taking one particular course of action instead of another.
You are right to say that there are lessons to learn from the experience of children and families, but I do not think that those are exactly translatable, as some people just want the thing that has happened to them to be dealt with.
That is helpful.
You implied that the system, rightly or wrongly, makes assumptions about what victims and survivors want and need. You said something about sharing information about why a certain route was taken. In your view, at what point should victims and survivors, in conjunction with the different agencies involved, actually influence the route or pathway that is selected—not take charge of the route, but influence it—so that they are not just receiving information about what is being done to them?
Victims tell us that they want agency and want to be engaged. There are parameters and certain crimes attract certain disposals, so explaining that is important for public confidence. Our central goal is to have fewer victims, so if the evidence shows that using alternatives to prison, such as the alternative community payback orders that are in the penal reform proposals, would reduce the number of victims, we are all for that. We want to ensure that that evidence is shared with victims and with the public, so that people understand that those are not necessarily soft options.
In a previous job, I worked in Polmont young offenders institution. For some young people, although not everyone, the thought of a community payback order would feel far more like a punishment than being sent there. There are alternative punishments, but victims and people who are affected by crime need to be brought along with us in that regard. You have described what might happen and why we might go down a particular route, but you must make an effort and take people with you. We might assume that something is a good thing but, if people do not feel that way, that would not be a trauma-informed approach.
May I ask a final question?
In the interests of time, I will bring in Ms McNeill and I will bring you in again towards the end, Ms Chapman.
I have two questions. Yesterday, a paper was sent to us by the Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice. It is all about the gaps in the law and the position of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—you might be familiar with it. The paper says that article 12 does not cover the child’s right to communicate during their case hearing, but includes their collective ability to communicate. It also says that there is currently no provision in place for independent advocacy for a child accused in the court system, despite a similar provision existing for a child appearing before a children’s hearing panel. Rhona Willder, can you explain why we arrived at that point?
It is down to independent advocacy not being part of the law, because the precedent around independent advocacy commissioning and provision in Scotland has developed through its appearance in different laws.
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So, we have legislated for that in relation to children’s panels, but not for the court system.
Exactly. It could be that, through the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024, independent advocacy provision is being considered—I think that the Scottish Government is currently mapping independent advocacy provision in relation to UNCRC and article 12, which relates to the views of the child. In terms of what provision currently exists, it is not something that happens regularly. The service that I mentioned earlier is one of the only examples of that in Scotland.
But a lawyer would be involved in the process?
Yes. An independent advocacy service might help the young person to find a lawyer, and would often help them to understand what a solicitor is saying to them. One of our member organisations described being in the criminal justice system as like using a map where there are no place names and you do not know where you are. Independent advocacy’s role is to put the place names on that map.
Are there not lawyers that specialise in dealing with children? I do not know; I am just wondering.
Independent advocacy will often help to refer someone to a solicitor. However, solicitors are not always available to meet their needs. There are organisations that will do it, but the provision is not what it should be.
Thank you, that is very helpful.
My other question is slightly different. The paper talks about the need to ensure that a child is not compelled to give testimony, to confess or to acknowledge guilt, and stresses that the term “compelled” should be interpreted broadly. The Parliament legislated to define a child as someone aged 18 or under. What are your views are in relation to those general provisions?
I represent the Glasgow region, and there is a concern in a lot of Glasgow communities about the fact that perpetrators who are defined as a child under the law—for instance, because they are 17—are committing pretty serious crimes but are not coming anywhere near court. I have a serious concern about applying that approach to someone who is accused of using a weapon or of another serious crime.
I know that children’s units deal with some of those cases, and that it is not a matter for you in particular. You might want to try to convince me that I am wrong to be concerned about that, but we are hearing concerns from communities across Scotland about how we have defined a child in relation to some of those offences. What is your view on that issue?
We do not have a lot of experience in that area, but I can give one example of a circumstance that could happen. One of our members supported a care-experienced young person with additional support needs who brought a knife to school after serious bullying. Campus police had told him that he was charged with a crime and later told him that he needed to give evidence against the peer he still attended school with. Independent advocacy involvement helped to establish that he had not been formally charged and supported him to have his original statement retracted, so that he did not have to testify. Our member worked with campus police so that they had a better understanding of what his communication needs were.
Obviously, it is a very serious thing to bring a knife to school, and it could have resulted in a very serious situation, but having early involvement and intervention, as well as ensuring that someone is there alongside the person, can help de-escalate such situations.
You have made a really important point. There were lots of good schemes that young people could have been referred to, but I am afraid to say that cuts to services have meant that that is not happening.
Anna, would you like to contribute anything on that point?
One of the challenges for all of us when it comes to looking at this is that we do not have consistent national data. This is not our area of expertise, but I know through my involvement with the bairns’ hoose about the situation that you have described and the fact that there is clearly a postcode lottery nationally.
I know of children under the age of 16 whose cases have been progressed through the courts system, not the children’s hearings system. You might be supporting the child’s victim or a witness, but because the person named in the offence is under 18 and because of the nature and seriousness of the crime, there will be a dual referral to the children’s reporter and the Crown. For victims and witnesses, that can often lead to a very long wait before the decision on which arena the case will be heard in is made.
However, none of us can analyse that without clear data on how many cases involving those under 18 accused of crimes do not progress and, if they do progress, where they go. The same goes for victims and witnesses.
Thank you. Debbie, you might have a slightly different view on this.
I go back to my earlier point about there being different systems. The law has changed the way in which we deal with under-18s, and there is lots of evidence on why that is the case. The issue is how we communicate that, and how we ensure that people really understand why certain cases have been treated in a particular way. That is a challenge for victims—and in those cases where young people are victims as well as perpetrators—as well as for communities, and we need to think upstream on this.
I know that you asked a particular question about where this sort of thing is dealt with, but the lack of investment in young people’s services locally means that we are not giving young people the chance to thrive or deal with these issues at what is an important time in their lives. We have some responsibility to take an upstream view, instead of just looking at young people when they are at risk of offending, and to create environments where they can thrive and make a contribution to our communities. Many of the young people with whom we have all worked would have had the capacity to do that, had an intervention happened much earlier.
I cannot really disagree with you. I have spoken to many young people who have been victims of youth crime themselves, and they want some accountability for that, too. Thank you very much.
I have a question of clarification for Debbie Adams. Once a victim has made initial contact with the police, how does that victim become aware that they need to opt in for support services? Surely, trauma-informed practice would dictate that they needed to opt out.
It is mostly to do with information laws and the general data protection regulation, and what you are allowed to do by way of consent around information. The police hand out a victim care card, but we think that the expectation in the system must be that people are not always ready to take that information on board when a crime has happened. We work closely with the police on training, and we carry out training at the probationer police college to ensure that everyone is aware of this, but there is an issue with how it is then taken up and seen as a priority. Therefore, we need to think about how that sort of thing gets operationalised. If all that we are doing is handing the care card over, and it is then up to the victim to seek that referral for themselves, I suggest that we should find some way of making that offer again when another agency comes into contact with them.
What does the victim care card say?
That is a good question. Basically, the card refers you to victim support services and says that we will get in touch with you, if you want us to, and discuss whether you are looking for the sort of support that we can provide, such as emotional support, safety planning or financial assistance, should you have been impacted in that way by the crime. We get in touch, and the support that is offered to you will depend on your needs.
Thank you.
On a slightly different topic, we have spoken a lot this morning about resourcing and investment in courts. How concerned are you about the sustainability of your resources and the funding to do the vital jobs that you do?
The Government has committed to fair funding for the voluntary sector, which I know the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations has been pushing for over a long while. It is great to see that the Government is taking that seriously and is thinking about multiyear funding for the voluntary sector, so that we can plan.
The court delays that we have talked about mean that the very nature of annualised funding makes no sense in relation to the support that is provided for people. We are grateful that that funding is there but we have had a flat-cash settlement for five years; just think about what the rate of inflation has been in that time. I could give you the maths on the real-terms cut that that settlement represents, but that is the reality, and I am sure that other colleagues will be in similar situations.
The voluntary sector and support for victims cannot be seen as an afterthought in the reform; it must be seen as an integral part of it. We cannot only look at the big numbers. Services such as the victim-centred approach funds, for example, and other resources need to be integral to our thinking on how we resource that end of the system properly. It feels to victims that a lot of the attention is on the accused, the perpetrators or the people who are in prison. We have to show by way of funding multi-agency work and proper uplifts that we can continue to provide the services that are so desperately needed.
Would you like to add anything, Anna?
In relation to child victims and witnesses and, in particular, on rolling out the bairns’ hoose model, evidence has emerged over the past three years that having routine access to support, advocacy and recovery for children helps buffer the system and reduce the retraumatisation—although we cannot take that away altogether in relation to the justice system. Having that routine access also provides them with ease of access to recovery for whatever harm they have experienced.
In relation to the overall funding pressures and the complexity of bairns’ hoose, our concern is that that routine offer of support, which is an absolutely core part of bairns’ hoose, would not be consistent across the bairns’ hoose. Our concern is that that element of the bairns’ hoose would not progress if there was a lack of funding or a reduction.
We only need to look to the countries that told us what the bairns’ hoose model could offer. Sweden has had a national barnahus network for more than 20 years. This year, the Swedish Government has put significant investment into scoping the barnahus, mapping the network and understanding what each barnahus has offer, because it realises that it has a national network of places that call themselves “barnahus” but offer something completely different. Similarly to Norway, the room that is always missing, if there is any, is the one for support.
In Scotland, children have an enshrined right to recovery from harm. That has been one of the least developed areas over the past three years, so our concern is that, if funding was reduced and services were looking at what they could not do, it might be that provision. Of all the things that children and families tell us, it is not that they do not need support to recover.
That is really helpful, Anna. Thank you.
For independent advocacy, SIAA, the membership organisation, is in a similar position to most of our members, whose core contracts often have not had an uplift in more than a decade. That is a tough position for our member organisations to be in.
Given that the main funding that is provided to independent advocacy is under the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003, and we know from the Scottish mental health law review that 95 per cent of people with the right of access cannot access independent advocacy, it is very underfunded.
There is also a prevention angle here. At least in the health and social care part of independent advocacy provision, for every pound spent on it, there is a £12 saving, of which £7 can be attributed to local authorities and £5 to the NHS. That analysis has not been done in the criminal justice setting, but if it were to be, we imagine that similar savings would be identified.
There is also the issue of fair funding, which Debbie Adams mentioned, and which SCVO champions, and preventative budgeting and tagging of what work is going on out there that can help to save public resources.
This has been a very helpful evidence session. It has also been a long session, so I appreciate your patience, particularly earlier when we had the broadcasting issues that had a knock-on effect on timings. I thank you on behalf of the committee members and the rest of the team here at the Criminal Justice Committee for your time and your evidence this morning.
As was the case in the first evidence session, there were issues that delved into budgets. When we move into private session, we will look at pre-budget scrutiny, which I am sure will enlarge our minds.
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Meeting continued in private until 13:03.
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