Social Justice and Social Security Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, November 9, 2023

Official Report 619KB pdf

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Kinship Care

Agenda item 4 is an evidence session on kinship care. It follows on from the committee’s short inquiry into kinship care in 2022.

I welcome to the meeting Natalie Don, Minister for Children, Young People and Keeping the Promise. I also welcome her officials from the Scottish Government: Dawn Abell, unit head for caregivers, and Louisa Brown, family care team leader, improving lives for people with care experience. Thank you for joining us today.

There are a few points to mention about the format of the meeting before we start. Members who are online should please allow our broadcasting colleagues a few seconds to turn their microphones on before they start to speak. I ask everyone to keep questions and answers as concise as possible.

I invite the minister to make a short opening statement.

Good morning. I am very grateful to the committee for inviting me along to give evidence. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the new Scottish recommended allowance for foster and kinship carers and, of course, the wider work that the Scottish Government is undertaking to support kinship carers.

Kinship care has evolved over many decades. During that time, there has come an increased recognition of, and value for, the role that kinship carers play in providing secure, stable and loving homes for children and young people when they are no longer able to live with their birth parents.

At the outset, I put on record my sincere thanks to kinship carers for stepping in to provide children with a home, often at very short notice and within complicated family dynamics. I know that giving that care can be multifaceted, which is why the Scottish Government is committed to providing both financial and practical support for kinship carers, so that they are best equipped to love and nurture the children they look after.

On 30 March last year, we published our implementation plan, setting out the actions that we would take to keep the Promise by 2030. In the plan, we restated our intention to introduce a Scottish recommended allowance for kinship and foster carers in order to end the inequality and ensure consistency across Scotland.

As the committee knows, that has been a Scottish Government commitment since 2018, and I know that the time that it has taken to deliver on that has been a source of frustration to both caregivers and stakeholders. That is why, in August this year, I was really delighted to announce that we had reached agreement with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities about a new national weekly allowance that all local authorities must pay to their foster and kinship carers.

We estimate that the new Scottish recommended allowance will benefit more than 9,000 children. It is being funded by an additional £16 million from the Scottish Government. That funding enables the allowance to be backdated to 1 April this year. It is, of course, up to local authorities to decide how best to do that and to ensure that there are no unintended consequences for families.

We know, from some initial feedback, that some local authorities have already implemented the new allowance and have made the back payments; others are expecting to do so at the end of November or soon afterwards. We will use our existing forums, groups and networks as feedback loops to identify any obstacles to implementation and, importantly, to help local authorities to overcome any obstacles and to share good practice. Once the Scottish recommended allowance has bedded down, we will review it more formally and identify any areas where improvements could be made.

When I announced the new allowance, I committed to maintaining the 2023-24 levels of support for the allowances and to reviewing the funding implications for future years from 2024-25. Like all of you, I am acutely aware of the cost of living pressures on families and I am currently considering what we might do for future years, given our fixed budget and the significant financial challenges that we are facing. I will be able to say more on that after the Scottish budget has been set out in Parliament in December.

We recently had care experience week, which was an opportunity for everyone to celebrate the care experience community. I visited Siblings Reunited, known as STAR, and met staff and a small group of volunteer supporters. STAR provides a safe environment in which to bring together sibling groups who have been separated in care to form positive experiences and relationships. What that visit reiterated to me was that, although funding is important, it is only one part of how we can improve the experiences of those in care and of their carers. That is one of the reasons why, along with partners, we established the kinship care collaborative in 2020.

As you will know from your previous inquiry, the collaborative is working hard to deliver improvements in support for kinship carers, children and professionals working with kinship families across Scotland. Following recommendations in last year’s Social Justice and Social Security Committee report on kinship care, the collaborative established a rewrite group to refresh the existing kinship care guidance for practitioners. The rewrite group has been examining the guidance with a view to updating it so that it reflects updated legislation and growing knowledge and experience of what works in kinship care.

The refreshed guidance will also clarify many of the issues that the committee and stakeholders have told us are open to interpretation. Those include the meaning of “at risk of being looked after” and “placed with the involvement of the local authority”. Our aim is to publish the guidance by the end of the year. Alongside that, a group of practitioners are helping us to develop a new national kinship assessment framework, which will complement the refreshed guidance and help to improve the consistency of approach and practice.

We are also taking action to promote the work of the collaborative—which I know is an issue that the committee raised previously—and to ensure that it is open, transparent and accessible to all stakeholders, kinship care families and others with care experience.

More broadly, there is work across Government to support kinship carers. For example, we are working with partners and caregivers to develop a plan to deliver trauma training for kinship and foster carers as well as for adoptive parents. We have also made it easier for kinship carers to apply for the Scottish social security benefits that they are eligible for, working in consultation with those who have lived experience to expand the definition of kinship carer to make it as inclusive as possible.

I believe that the totality of the work happening across Government, specifically to target kinship carers but also to help families more generally, should help us to achieve our ambition to keep the Promise by 2030.

I welcome the committee’s continued interest in kinship care and the Scottish recommended allowance, and I am happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, minister. We now move to questions, which will be directed to you. You are, of course, welcome to invite any of your officials to respond, should you wish to do so.

I will kick off. How well is work progressing on providing clear, accessible information for kinship carers about the legal arrangements around kinship care and about how they can access their rights and get support and advice?

I touched on that in my opening statement because it is obviously really important. We must ensure that kinship carers can access their rights and the support and advice that they are entitled to.

The kinship care collaborative established a communications sub-group, which gave a clear steer that the first step towards that would be to ensure that local authority websites contained up-to-date information about their kinship care policies. The sub-group has written to the office of the chief social worker, requesting assistance in contacting all local authority chief social work officers to highlight the importance of ensuring that that relevant information is published, that it is regularly updated and that it is made available to carers and practitioners, which is a legal requirement under the Kinship Care Assistance (Scotland) Order 2016.

The letter to the office of the chief social worker also asks that local authority websites provide links to the website of the Kinship Care Advice Service for Scotland, which is funded by the Scottish Government. That website contains a wide range of information that will assist kinship carers, including information about financial support and welfare benefits and about legal orders. The advice service also runs a helpline, which offers a call-back service outside normal operating hours, and provides a range of free training packages.

Work is going on. As I said at the start, we understand that that is extremely important, and I am confident that the on-going work will help to improve matters.

My question builds on that. As you have outlined, minister, information and advice are available. I am keen to understand how people are made aware of that. That applies particularly to kinship carers who are entering into a kinship arrangement for the first time and are navigating a new landscape. What action has been taken by the Government and its agencies to ensure that that information is getting out to people?

Although it is the responsibility of local authorities to ensure that that information is available, we appreciate its importance, as I said at the beginning, and we want to ensure that people have the information and support that they need.

The launch of the refreshed guidance will provide a really good opportunity for everyone in the care sector to promote kinship care as an option for children and young people. We will ensure that the information on the Scottish Government website, as well as that from the Kinship Care Advice Service, is regularly updated.

There is a lot of work going on. As I said, that is down to local authorities, but the Scottish Government is providing support to ensure that the information is available and accessible, and we will continue monitoring that to look for ways in which we can improve.

Can you also give us an update about the work of the guidance rewrite group? How will updated guidance be communicated to local authorities? You spoke about local authorities having a key role in disseminating information, so how do we ensure that implementation is smooth for local authorities?

09:15  

I appreciate that there has been a slight delay in the publication of the guidance, which was because we wanted to ensure that we engaged widely. As I believe I mentioned in my opening remarks, however, we are on schedule to publish that guidance by the end of the year. The rewrite group is currently refining the document and, once it is content with it, it will be reviewed by members of the reference group, which includes the Child Poverty Action Group, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and the Kinship Care Advice Service for Scotland. We intend to engage with kinship carers in the last week in November, and that will be included, too.

It is worth highlighting that the collaborative agreed to form a working group to develop a new national assessment framework for kinship care. That framework reflects the point that the kinship assessment is unique in that it assesses a carer for the needs of a specific child, unlike a foster care assessment. It also considers what extra support might be required within the family. The framework has been developed as a companion to the refreshed guidance, so it will be published at the same time. There are also plans to put in place a programme of awareness raising and training for practitioners, managers and local authorities to support the roll-out and implementation of the guidance and the assessment framework. That is all being done with the aim of improving practice in Scotland.

To what extent has the social work profession been engaged in all that work, either through Social Work Scotland or through the representative bodies?

There has been engagement with Social Work Scotland. I will bring in officials to give a bit more clarity on that.

The kinship care collaborative is co-chaired by me and Ben Farrugia from Social Work Scotland, and it has been involved from the very beginning. The rewrite groups and the other sub-groups that operate as part of the collaborative include members from local authorities. The assessment framework group includes service managers, who advise on what an assessment framework for kinship care would look like. Members of the collaborative are fully involved from start to finish.

To what extent have they raised concerns about capacity and resource in local authorities to deliver an updated and refreshed framework and to implement the changes that we are talking about on the front line?

Louisa Brown may wish to comment on that. My understanding from working with Social Work Scotland across the piece on a range of issues is that there is a general capacity issue, as you are aware. However, Social Work Scotland has not expressed any significant concerns about being able to implement the updated guidance or, indeed, the assessment framework. There is no national tool for the assessment framework at the moment, and local authorities are using different forms. They have told us that they would welcome something from the Government that they could use that would help them to improve practice and consistency, rather than scraping about for bits and bobs and adapting the frameworks that are in place at the moment.

That is very helpful.

Good morning, minister and officials. I am aware of the work on kinship care that has been carried out in both of the health and social care partnerships in my constituency, and I know that they have started to issue back payments. I am interested to know when local authorities will receive the £16 million that was announced by the Scottish Government. Are you confident that the money will be sufficient?

Yes, absolutely. I am absolutely confident that there is sufficient funding there to support the roll-out of the recommended allowance. The £16 million figure for the funding was based on the difference between the cost of paying the Scottish recommended allowance or higher and the current local authority expenditure on foster and kinship care allowances, and it was worked out through negotiations with COSLA. It was modelled using current local authority expenditure on children in foster and kinship care, including informal kinship care, and the most up-to-date data from the children’s social work statistics.

In relation to when they will receive that funding, on 18 October, the Scottish Government issued a letter to local authority directors of finance detailing how much funding they were receiving. The letter would enable local authorities to implement the allowance knowing the level of funding that they will receive. The actual money will be transferred from the Scottish Government at the end of the financial year through the local government settlement funding mechanism. As the committee will be aware, that is standard practice.

The £16 million of funding is being distributed on the same basis as the existing kinship care allocation. The distribution has recently been changed to—I have the figures here—35 per cent of children aged zero to 18 in low-income families, 35 per cent of children in receipt of Scottish child payments and 30 per cent of the zero-to-18 general population. That is for the full 2023-24 financial year.

I thank the minister for that information.

What information do you have on how many local authorities are delivering the minimum rate so far?

I touched on that a little in my opening statement. The Scottish Government does not hold information on which local authorities have already backdated the payments, because it is up to local authorities to decide how best to implement that according to their systems.

I am aware that, for some local authorities, implementing the allowance might require changes to their financial systems, as well as calculating those backdated amounts and contacting carers. The time that is needed to undertake that might therefore be different for each local authority. However, we have received the positive feedback that some local authorities have already implemented the new allowance and have made those back payments. Others are expecting to do so by the end of November or soon afterwards.

I want to be clear that there is a legal requirement, set out in the Kinship Care Assistance (Scotland) Order 2016, for local authorities to publish information about kinship care assistance. That includes the rate at which allowances are payable. As part of the grant letter that went out in October, the Scottish Government also asked local authorities to publish their kinship and fostering allowances and to take the necessary actions to ensure that all current kinship and foster carers are aware of the rates.

As I said, we are absolutely positive that it will be carried out in good time, based on how the local authority needs to carry it out. We will also monitor that.

I have no further questions, convener.

I will bring in Jeremy Balfour, who joins us online, for a quick supplementary. I will then invite Roz McCall in.

Good morning to you, minister, and to your civil servants. I will follow up on the last point that you made. As a committee, we are clearly keen for what you have outlined to happen across all 32 local authorities. My understanding is that COSLA does not keep that information either. Is it your intention to write to local authorities at the end of this financial year to make sure that they have done that? If you do so, would it be possible to share the information that you receive with the committee?

Absolutely. Obviously, I hope that it does not get to that stage. As I said, we have already had positive feedback from local authorities that have already implemented the new system, and I hope that, by the end of the financial year, we will have positive feedback that shows that it has been implemented across the board. However, I am happy to share information with the committee if required.

Thank you.

Good morning, minister. Thank you very much for your opening statement, which was very informative.

Stakeholder groups have called for the Scottish Government to clarify which kinship carers are eligible for the Scottish recommended allowance. Can you provide clarity on that, please?

Absolutely. I appreciate that clarity is required. To be clear, there has been no change in legislation. The eligibility of kinship carers for the allowance remains the same, as outlined in the kinship care guidance for practitioners. In essence, kinship carers who hold a kinship care order and receive an allowance under the Kinship Care Assistance (Scotland) Order 2016 remain eligible for the allowance. However, as I mentioned, we are refreshing the guidance on kinship care to make that clearer, and my expectation is that that guidance will be published by the end of the year, because I know that stakeholders and carers are calling for that.

Kinship carers who are looking after children under sections 7 or 25 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 or under section 83 of the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011 are also eligible for the allowance. I know that the landscape is a bit muddled, so I hope that the refreshed guidance will provide a bit of clarity.

It would be very good to read that guidance.

I do not think that there is anyone who cannot identify the difference between the needs of a five-year-old and those of a 15-year-old, but the allowance for five to 11-year-olds is exactly the same as that for 11 to 15-year-olds. The Kinship Care Advice Service for Scotland has said that that is “challenging to understand”. Will you tell us the reasoning behind that?

Absolutely. I have heard some of the commentary about that. The group that undertook the 2018 national review of care allowances, which was informed by consultation with stakeholders, caregivers and children and young people, decided that the allowance payment rate should be broken into three age groups: 0 to 4, 5 to 15 and 16-plus. Those age bands are comparable with those used in Wales for its allowance.

It is fair to say that the evidence is limited and rather mixed. Some people think that young children—babies and toddlers—are more costly to look after, while others think that older children are more costly to look after. The most recent research that we have seen, which was conducted by Moneyfarm, suggests that, in 2023, it is more costly to support a six to 11-year-old than it is to support a 12 to 14-year-old, and it attributes that to the cost of age-appropriate toys for younger children and the rate at which clothes—including school uniforms—and other such things need to be replaced.

The allowance has only just been introduced. It is a hugely positive move, but we are open to feedback from kinship carers and stakeholders. We will continue to gather that feedback and will consider the issue when we formally review the system’s implementation in the future, as I said.

How will uplifts be calculated to take into account increases in the cost of living? Will increases be in line with inflation, or will another formula be used?

We are very switched on to cost of living pressures, and work is on-going to consider the funding implications for 2024-25 and future years in the context of inflation, our fixed budget and the significant financial challenges that the Scottish Government currently faces, as I am sure all members are aware.

I will probably be able to say more about that after the Scottish budget has been set out in December. Discussions with COSLA on uprating will be picked up in due course, but, as I said in my opening statement, the Scottish Government made a commitment to maintaining the 2023-24 levels of support and to reviewing the funding implications in the future.

As I said, I will probably be able to say more after the budget process.

That is fine. It would be very helpful if the minister could keep the committee updated on that.

Of course.

Have you given thought to what more can be done for kinship carers who will not be eligible for the support?

Absolutely. As I mentioned in my opening statement, although financial support is extremely valuable and required, kinship carers might also need other forms of support. Support can be practical and emotional as well as financial. For example, a kinship carer could seek advice and support from their local authority at any point.

The Scottish Government provides funding to Adoption UK in Scotland and to the Association of Fostering, Kinship and Adoption Scotland for the Kinship Care Advice Service for Scotland, with the aim of delivering a wide range of support, advice and information to help kinship care families.

We have also awarded, over the past three years, £989,000 of whole-family wellbeing funding to Adoption UK in Scotland to pilot a new approach to ensure that kinship care families can get the range of holistic support that they need. That focuses on education and community support, including peer support.

Will you give us an update on the recommendations of the English independent review of children’s social care and whether progress can be made towards the introduction of paid leave for new kinship carers?

09:30  

Absolutely. My officials are in regular contact with their counterparts in the UK Government. As I understand it, although paid leave has been introduced by some organisations, such as Tesco, the matter is still being considered by the UK Government. I am very happy to write to my counterpart, the Secretary of State for Education, to request an update on that.

That would be great. It would be helpful if you could share the response with the committee.

Of course.

Kinship carers might need other support as well as financial support. The committee has received evidence that some kinship carers are nervous that barriers might be raised by their local authority and that they might not be able to keep the children. Housing is an obvious issue—for example, an elderly couple who do not have a large house could suddenly have their grandchildren living with them. Can you say anything about how we deal with that?

On our overall values and aims, good practice and the Promise tell us that the best place for a child to live when they are not able to live with their birth parents is with their wider family. That is absolutely in the best interests of the child, including in relation to safety. No kinship carer should ever feel isolated and unable to approach their local authority for support should they require it, but I have touched on some forms of support that they could access if they felt that way.

On the specific concerns about kinship carers not being able to keep children, the decision to remove a child from their kinship family would be taken only after a full assessment of the situation. Any decision to do so would not be taken lightly. It would be done only if there was evidence to suggest that it would be detrimental to the wellbeing of the child or young person to stay with that family, and efforts would be made to ensure that the family could stay together.

The roll-out of the guidance and the assessment framework that I alluded to will provide a further opportunity to underline the support that might be required for kinship families who have those thoughts or feel that way.

I will press you a bit further. Could a council take the children away because the grandparents’ home was overcrowded and did not have enough bedrooms?

Based on what I have said, I do not believe so, because, if it was simply down to a housing situation, removing the child would not be in line with ensuring what was best for the child. Obviously, it is for local authorities to deal with their housing stock, but I imagine that best efforts would be made to ensure that that family could stay together. I do not think that that would be an acceptable reason for a child to be removed.

But Glasgow City Council does not have any housing stock.

As I said, it would be down to the local authority, but I am sure that efforts would be made to ensure that children could stay with their family.

I accept that a lot of it is down to the local authority, and I hope that a reasonable approach would be taken, but some local authority officials take a very legalistic approach—for example, if a house was technically overcrowded, they would not move on that. I hope that your words are reassuring and will encourage people, but there is still genuine fear.

I will broaden things out a bit. What other support is there? Children preferably not moving schools is important, but kinship carers might be further away. Can you say anything about that?

Absolutely. Best efforts would be made to ensure that the child faced as little disruption as possible. I will bring in my officials to elaborate on that.

I will say a little more about the assessment framework and then say something about how we support children in schools. The assessment framework that I mentioned earlier would consider the appropriateness of carers and what support was needed for the whole family so that the child could stay with that kinship carer. That might involve education, housing and so on.

On education, the Scottish Government introduced in 2018-19 care-experienced children and young people funding, which forms part of the wider Scottish attainment challenge funding. That funding goes to local authorities so that they can put in place initiatives to support care-experienced children, including those in kinship care, to get the best educational outcomes that they can. Additional money was also given to CELCIS—which you will be aware of—to facilitate a virtual network of headteachers so that they can swap good practice on support for care-experienced children and young people.

It was some time ago, but I had a case in which, I think, the grandparents lived some distance away from the parents. The preference was for the kids to go to the local school of the grandparents, because that would make things a lot easier, but that local school was full. In such cases, is it entirely up to local authorities how they prioritise places for kids? Does the Government have any thoughts on how such situations can be addressed?

I do not have any further detail on that. As I mentioned earlier, the assessment framework sets out the types of things that local authorities will want to consider when thinking about how they can best support kinship care families and their children.

In our journey towards keeping the Promise and in everything that the Scottish Government is working on—its aims and priorities—it is useful to learn from and understand such things and to assess how we can ensure that such situations do not happen or that, as I said in my previous answer, disruption to the child is kept at a minimal level. That involves on-going processes, which we will consider as we go forward.

I invite Roz McCall to ask a supplementary question, then I will bring in Bob Doris.

Those last answers were very interesting. I will add a question on blending of informal and formal care. Everything that we have been talking about is formal kinship care, which comes through the process, but what about the support needs of people who might be nervous about coming forward for additional support, because they have an informal arrangement and would not want to move into what would be considered a very formal arrangement? Is there any blending? Where do you envisage the crossover line that always exists at the outside of any policy being?

I would not want any kinship carer to feel that they are stuck in a situation and cannot come forward to seek the advice, guidance or support that they require. I will hand over to officials to go into a little more detail on that.

It should not really matter whether someone is formally looked after or in some sort of informal kinship care. Families should be able to approach their local authority, seek help and get an assessment of need and support without going through the formal route of the child becoming looked after. They should get all the support that children who are looked after receive. As the minister said, families should not feel reticent about doing that, and it should not feel as if they are formalising their arrangements. As with getting it right for any child, the family of any child should be able to approach the local authority for the support that they need. That is the intention. We hope that the guidance clarifies that further for families and practitioners, who should know about the support that is available.

I just want to follow up on that. The guidance will do that, but we are talking about families who are not getting support. There needs to be a little bit of promotion, so that people who are not currently in the social work process or the council process can understand that assistance exists. Will such promotion be done?

Yes. When we launch the guidance we will want to get the message further out there, through our virtual headteacher networks, in education settings and in other places. We would like to highlight kinship care and the support that is available to all families.

Thank you for that.

I will quickly come in with a question that relates to the informal setting in kinship care, particularly for children and families who are in temporary arrangements, perhaps because the parent or carer is going through the criminal justice system or addiction services. How much is awareness being raised about, and financial support being given for, informal arrangements?

Awareness of kinship care more generally is being raised as we deliver on the Promise. Perhaps there is more to be done in specific settings, such as the justice system.

Children who are in a wholly private kinship care arrangement are still recognised as being in kinship placements and should be able to dip into the support if and when they need it. A family’s having stepped in to support and look after children and that arrangement being private and not involving statutory services does not mean that there is a difference. Circumstances can change so that they no longer need that support.

I would certainly welcome people coming forward if they need support. Perhaps, as we launch the guidance, we can do more to get that message out to all settings where families might come into contact with services and to raise awareness of kinship care. Certainly, we can look at that further.

I could not get involved in an evidence session on kinship care without putting on record my thanks to campaigners whom I first met in 2006, ahead of the 2007 election, at a hustings in the constituency that I now serve, and to Adam Ingram for his challenging work on kinship care payments as Minister for Children and Early Years. I also record my thanks to Glasgow City Council, which I met back in those early days and which, after meeting me, agreed to a £50-a-week kinship care allowance. That seems tiny now, but at the time it was groundbreaking. That shows how far we have come, although we obviously need to go further.

I am sorry, convener, for putting that on the record. Institutional memory is sometimes important in sessions such as this.

I have a supplementary to Mr Mason’s question, which I will ask before my substantive question. Mr Mason asked about the wider support that kinship carers receive. The wider support that they want is often for the young people whom they are looking after. Many of those young people have emotional and mental health and wellbeing issues, have experienced significant trauma and have to wait for child and adolescent mental health services and other services, which are often delivered by the national health service rather than by local authorities.

In my constituency, there is the Notre Dame Centre, which is a centre of excellence for dealing with such situations. It takes specific referrals on kinship care. It has a very delicate funding framework to ensure that it can continue to do that. To what extent, minister, do you assure yourself that the wider support for the emotional wellbeing of young people in kinship care and for the trauma that they have experienced is adequate and consistent across Scotland?

That is a work in progress that spans much further than the matter that we are discussing. We continue to listen to the voices of people with care experience to find out what they require. We are seeing improvements in CAMHS and other services and we are putting a lot of work into improving those for young people.

You mentioned trauma. I appreciate what you say about the support for young people, but carers also need support to be able to deal with that appropriately. As I said in answer to Ms McCall, we are working to develop a plan to provide trauma training for kinship, foster and adoptive parents.

I am positive about the work that is going on to support care-experienced young people, but there is still more to do: that will continue to be led by the voices of those with care experience.

I am sure that the Notre Dame Centre would love to see you if your busy diary ever permits you to go along, minister. I would love to take you to show you what excellent work it does.

I will move on to my substantive question, which was going to be about the progress that the collaborative has made in recent months. However, I have a specific question on the progress that still needs to be made.

I had written down that there is a guidance rewrite group and that a national kinship assessment framework is being developed to get national consistency. I do not have an active case at the moment, but over the years, one of the issues with consistency has related to kinship care and bereavement.

I explain that as what happens when there is a gran or an auntie at hospital when a loved one passes away and the kids are in very vulnerable circumstances. Often, gran steps in and says, “I’ll take those kids home.” If gran does not do that, social work services will say to gran, “Would you please look after these young people? They are very vulnerable.” The outcome is the same; it was always going to happen. However, one situation would be deemed to be an informal volunteer-led relationship between the children and the local authority, and the other would be the local authority placing the child with the kinship relative.

09:45  

I understand that some local authorities show good flexibility in acknowledging that the formal placement would have happened anyway, but others do not. The approach is inconsistent. That matter has been raised with me over many years.

In relation to the work of the collaborative, the guidance rewrite group, the national kinship assessment framework and, indeed, access to the Scottish recommended allowance, can the minister give me an assurance that such situations are being taken into account and that guidance and best practice will be rolled out, putting the onus on local authorities to do the right thing by kinship carers in bereavement situations?

Absolutely. I would already expect local authorities to do the right thing in circumstances such as those to which Mr Doris referred. However, as I have said, I expect that the refreshed guidance and the on-going work will make the situation much clearer for local authorities. We hope that the guidance will be published by the end of the year. I am very understanding of and switched on to that issue. I have dealt with my own such cases. As I said, we are trying to improve that and to provide more clarity for local authorities.

Will we get a case study within the guidance? Guidance can be dry and dusty, so I think that social work professionals would like to see a case study of a situation such as the one that I outlined to you that shows them—perhaps more eloquently than I did—what they should be doing rather than what they perhaps are doing. When finances underpin what is done and there is a budgetary impact on a local authority, we have to ensure that there is best practice and not budgetary practice, if I can put it—delicately—like that.

Absolutely. Making decisions based on budgetary practice would go against everything that we are aiming for with the Promise. The answer to Bob Doris’ question is, therefore, yes—absolutely.

That is really helpful. Thank you.

I will now, finally, bring in Jeremy Balfour, who joins us online.

Good morning again, minister. As you look forward, what are the next steps for the collaborative?

First of all, I give my thanks to the members of the collaborative for their very hard work and their commitment to delivering change.

As committee members will be aware, the collaborative was formed in late 2020. Many people volunteered to give up what has been a considerable amount of their time to attend meetings. Throughout that time, participants have shared expertise and understanding of the issues in kinship care, many of which we have discussed this morning. That has helped to inform and drive the work of the collaborative.

The publication of the refreshed guidance and the new assessment framework that we have been discussing this morning will be key milestones. We should then perhaps sit back for a second to take stock, in collaboration with the collaborative—that is quite a tongue-twister—about what the future might look like. I am very happy to keep the committee informed of decisions on that.

Some stakeholders have suggested that the kinship care collaborative could have a role in gathering information about roll-out of the Scottish recommended allowance, as we discussed previously. What consideration have you given to that? As you reflect on that, is there still a role that the collaborative could play?

Yes, absolutely. I agree that the kinship care collaborative, alongside others—including stakeholders that we have touched on this morning, such as the kinship carers advisory group, the Fostering Network and Social Work Scotland—could have a key role to play in feeding back about the allowance. As I have mentioned, its engagement to date has been extremely valuable and has helped to inform the development of the recommended allowance information page, which was published on the Scottish Government website this week.

The next meeting of the collaborative is on 27 November, and I have asked officials to discuss with its members how they might inform work on the allowance going forward, and how that might feed into the next steps for the collaborative. That will be vital. As I have said, we are committed to formally reviewing the allowance, so taking organisations and stakeholders with us will be vital.

I thank the minister and her officials. I have found the session to be very informative. At its heart, this is about our children and young people and their carers. My heart goes out to all the kinship carers in Scotland.

I briefly suspend the meeting to allow a panel change before we move on to the next item.

09:50 Meeting suspended.  

09:55 On resuming—