Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 06 Mar 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 6, 2001

Official Report 182KB pdf

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Adoption and Fostering

Item 3 on the agenda is to decide whether the committee should conduct an inquiry into adoption and fostering, what the remit of such an inquiry should be and whether an adviser should be appointed.

Members will have received a paper on the report that was published this week—"Learning with Care"—and the recommendations that it contains. I am sure that the committee will agree that it is worrying that so many young people who are in care do not yet have individual learning plans or care plans and are not achieving as much as they should be. The committee may want to pick up on that.

Our agenda is slipping and becoming increasingly full. A major inquiry into adoption and fostering would be on the committee's agenda only towards the end of the summer. We have received written evidence that we must consider before then, and an adviser may be beneficial. I invite members' comments on the Scottish Parliament information centre paper that has been circulated.

The issue is important. I have read the SPICe paper, which is comprehensive. In the light of the findings of the report that you have just referred to, convener, we might begin by prioritising areas that we want to address. The proposed inquiry should be a priority for the committee, and an adviser would help us to carry out that work. I would like us to begin the process as soon as possible.

What status do the recommendations in "Learning with Care" have? Will local authorities be required to implement all of them or do the recommendations not have that force?

The minister has asked each local authority to indicate by 31 March how it intends to implement the recommendations. It might be useful for the committee to write to the minister, asking what action he is taking on the report, what status the recommendations have and what action he can take if they are not implemented by local authorities.

That would be useful. It was interesting to read how many inquiries and investigations are under way under the broad heading of adoption, fostering and looked-after children. It would be useful to get some help in pulling those reports together to find out where the gaps are. I was especially pleased that the University of York is going to undertake research into the support that is or is not available to young people who are leaving care. The lack of such support has been a recurring theme in some of the evidence that we have received from organisations representing young people.

We must also bear in mind the barriers to change that have been identified in research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation; those barriers are fundamental and exist at the level of the rights and needs of children. If those basics are not right, anything else that is done is simply tinkering at the edges. We must examine the fundamentals of how we relate to children and what kinds of services we provide for them.

A major report needs to be put together on looked-after and adopted children. A consistent theme in what prospective adoptive parents have said to me has been the inconsistencies in the time scale, assessment interviews and employment rights. Last week I dealt with a case in my surgery involving someone who in usual maternity circumstances would have had leave with payment. That does not happen in the case of some folk who are adoptive parents; they are denied it. Local authority standards are an issue; it would be helpful to examine those.

An adviser would help us to see the scope of the issue and to draw it together. I agree with everything that has been said. We should not hesitate to appoint an adviser.

I will make two suggestions. First, we should ask for a letter from the minister and we could ask him to come to the committee—after 31 March, when he has received the responses from local authorities—to give us an update on where we are on the learning with care agenda. Secondly, I suggest that we seek approval from the Parliamentary Bureau for the appointment of an adviser.

The committee should consider the matter and produce some ideas on how we think the report should be focused. Perhaps Irene McGugan and Cathy Peattie could liaise on that in the first instance. Any other members who want to contribute can give them some input; they could then come back to the committee with a series of recommendations on which we can move forward. Do members agree to that course of action?

Members indicated agreement.