Official Report 155KB pdf
The first item on the agenda is our inquiry into community care, focusing particularly on care of the elderly and those with mental health problems.
It is important that we know exactly what the Executive plans to do. I found what Iain Gray said last week a wee bit vague. He picked up on Sutherland's idea of a commission, but we need to know what more the Executive plans to do. There is no point in us duplicating other work, but I think you said that he will send us a work plan by tomorrow.
That is right. You may recall that, because we had only a short time to consider the Adults with Incapacity (Scotland) Bill, which came to us late, we were unable to meet Susan Deacon and Iain Gray when we had hoped to. Rather than inviting them back to another meeting, we suggested that they send us their work plan for the coming year by tomorrow. That should give us a big-brush picture of what they will be doing. In approaching the inquiry, I am anxious to avoid duplication of effort and to make best use of our time. Fruitful use of our time will add value to the Executive's work.
To conduct the inquiry over a period of nine months to a year is the best approach. We do not want to feel rushed and, as is evident from the number of submissions that we have received, community care is an issue of great concern throughout Scotland. We should take our time about this and get it right. I am sure that there is not a member here who has not had letters from constituents about community care problems. A half-day briefing is also a good idea and an adviser or advisers may emerge from that briefing.
The inquiry is our opportunity to set our own agenda and our own time frame. Until now, we have been unable to do that because most of our work has been done to the Executive's or the Parliament's timetable. Doing justice to the community care issue will require time.
I agree that we must do a detailed report, and that will take a long time. My first reaction to your suggested time scale was that it was too long. I was thinking along the lines of producing something before the summer recess, but I am open to persuasion. A long study has two advantages—the result should be better, and we would be able to do other things simultaneously. I would not like the inquiry to block our timetable like some new variant of bedblocking. With the proviso that we can continue to do other things, the suggested period would be acceptable.
There is nothing to stop us publishing an interim report. My two main reasons for a longer time scale are that the issue demands full consideration and that similar reports on community care have been conducted over a long period. The 1996-97 Scottish Affairs Select Committee report on community care, which is still quoted, took around a year to produce. We are a hybrid committee and have other things to do besides considering a particular inquiry.
As we go along, our work may break down into two or three smaller reports. We may produce a report on mental health, another on the Sutherland commission, or whatever. We cannot predict what will come up.
When we have the informal briefing day we will be able to ask what other people consider to be the key issues—issues that may not have been worked on. We will also be able to use our expert advisers or adviser to focus our minds on ways of working as constructively and timeously as we can, to do the subject justice.
There will be some difficulty in breaking down our work, because almost all the potential witnesses cross over, for example between young and older people's issues. I am trying to puzzle out how we could break our work down in order to produce an interim report.
If members are happy for us to go ahead and have the informal briefing, some of these points will be resolved once we focus on the issues. There have been 68 submissions already; I have not had them put on your desks today, because they will require careful study that will take up the best part of your Christmas break. That reading, together with any independent reading that members want to do, and the information that we gather during the informal briefing day, will help us to decide how to approach our inquiry and whether we want to split the work into sections.
Two Accounts Commission reports were published in 1997, and it seems appropriate for the committee, in principle, to establish a system of looking at such reports two years after publication to see what effect they have had.
I have a suggestion that picks up on that point. We have identified the Accounts Commission as possible witnesses to the inquiry, but no one on our suggested list for the briefing day is specifically considering resource issues. It would be a good idea to have the Accounts Commission in as early as possible.
That is exactly what I was about to suggest—that would be excellent.
When we get round to the witnesses, we will have agreed how to deal with them. I assume that we will not simply ask them about the pros and cons of what they are doing at the moment, but look for positive ideas for the future. We should also ask the witnesses about their shopping or wish lists—how much more would they need for X, Y and Z? We will have to get down to specifics.
This is the initial stage; as we do more reading and gather more information, we will form a much better idea of the questions that we will want to ask. As I said at the start of the meeting, Dorothy-Grace, we all know the anecdotal evidence of where community care falls down, because that is when people come to us. However, we do not want to go simply on anecdotes: the difficult thing will be to get a more balanced view of what is happening. Part of that balanced view will be finding out which local authorities and health boards are getting things right and, if their peers think that they are getting things right, whether their ideas can be used elsewhere. That will form an important part of any committee report into community care.
It has come to light that community care delivery varies a great deal, depending on where you live. Resource transfer also varies. We will have to hear all sides of those arguments and discover why things go well in some parts of the country and poorly in others.
That is a very valid point.
May I also request that Help the Aged is—
I am sorry, Dorothy-Grace—I had indicated to Hugh Henry that he could speak.
Thank you, convener. There are a number of principles in the researchers' report that need to be looked at. I am not sure about the value of spending such a huge amount of time on one specific issue. We are talking about meeting fortnightly for between nine months and a year; that would limit the committee's ability to consider other issues during that time.
I forgot to mention that I asked the researchers—at the meeting I had with them last week—to come back to us with efficient ways of going out and meeting people, and to find out whether it would be better to do that in sub-groups. We will get that information.
I can see the benefit of our going to an area and taking evidence from a group of people that includes, for example, the local health board and the local social work department, instead of organisations coming here to give evidence formally. We could take evidence during discussion sessions; I think that that would give us a better picture of where the problems are.
That is the sort of idea that I had in mind, and I think that that could be productive, especially on the issue of community care. Issues of joint working and partnership might come up in a round-the-table discussion.
Have any of the submissions that we have received been grouped geographically?
I have asked the researchers to let us know about that. Having set things in motion with the briefing day and an agreement that we should have advisers, we will be able to consider in January how to proceed. I am not wedded to the suggested time frame. As I said, that will depend on the work that other people are doing. We do not yet have information on that to hand, and we cannot second-guess it. However, we should take cognisance of what the Executive and people at our informal briefing say. If they say that the Executive or some academics at the University of Aberdeen are already doing a particular piece of work, there would be no point in our duplicating it. We have to be sensitive to what others are doing to ensure that we spend our time as productively as we can. That might affect our time frame.
The time frame is sensible. It will enable the clerk and others to plan ahead and will allow the committee to do witnesses the courtesy of letting them know well in advance that they will be giving evidence. I would further suggest that we try to give witnesses a longer period in which to give evidence.
We should also ensure that we hear a witness who can discuss rural community care services.
It would be helpful to take evidence in a village hall.
I cannot be 100 per cent certain, but I think that the time frame mirrors the one that the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee has for the study of economic development agencies. That committee is taking a similar approach.
I will go back to what Hugh Henry said. I support the fact that the inquiry will last for six months, but we should not have haphazard, ad hoc meetings. We should set a time frame for what we are doing that ensures that we do not focus only on the elderly, the mentally ill or the disabled.
That is what I said earlier in the meeting. We must try to dovetail with the Executive as much as possible. We expect a response by tomorrow from the Executive regarding its work plan and work load for the coming year. That is why our timetable must be fluid. There is no point in the committee completing a report two months after the Executive has finished consultation.
I will make one suggestion. We should try to organise our work and where we will go to take evidence. We could be running all over the place.
I made a statement about that at the start of the meeting.
That continues to concern me. When I look at the list of possible witnesses I think, "Oh, no", because many of those organisations represent only one of the four groups that I mentioned. It might be helpful if we start by considering what the users want. Mary Scanlon is right to emphasise that we must be careful not to focus on one group. A range of people must be considered. There is, for example, no organisation that represents young people on the list. We should put people into sections—for example, service users and service planners. Some organisations will straddle those categories, so they should be offered the opportunity to indicate whether they want to be consulted as planners or as providers.
As the report on the process for carrying out the inquiry says, the list of potential witnesses is not exhaustive. Members can e-mail me to suggest other groups that should be consulted.
That is important. We must consider the different needs of the mentally ill and the elderly. I probably talk more about the care of the elderly because that tends to be top of the agenda. The mentally ill are very much the Cinderella part of the health service. They have not had the care and attention that they deserve for many decades. I would not like the mentally ill to be lumped in with other groups, as their needs are specific.
Mary Scanlon is right—many of the issues that will come out in examining mental illness and the elderly will transcend the differences between organisations, individuals and service users, whether those service users are people who have learning difficulties, HIV/AIDS or disabilities of other kinds.
I could not agree more with what Margaret Jamieson said about people coming at this issue from a different perspective. We should consider separating people into users, planners and deliverers.
Whenever we go out to have meetings or to ask people questions, the bottom line is that we must ask ourselves what the value is and whether we are doing it as a public relations stunt. Is there a way in which we can get access to information by going to speak informally to people in Lanarkshire, for example, about how their system works on the ground? In that way, will we get better quality information from people than if we ask them to come to the committee? If we can say, "Yes, we will"—and I think that we probably could—we should take that option. We should not go to Lanarkshire because it would be a good PR stunt.
We want to indicate openness. A lot of people would find it a formidable challenge to come to this chamber to give testimony. We should encourage people to participate and let them see that we are accessible locally, in the schemes and village halls. If we go to Aberdeen or Glasgow, what is the point of going to some organisation's elegant headquarters? That would be patronising.
I do not accept that. Dorothy-Grace Elder is demeaning what we are trying to do. If we are examining delivery of community care, we should use the local authority boundary and the health board boundary. What we should find—and I do not know whether we will find it everywhere—is equity of treatment.
We are getting too complicated.
By wanting to take the committee's consideration down into individual communities, Dorothy-Grace detracts from what we are trying to achieve. In one community there could be almost nobody receiving community care; in another a vast majority of the population might receive it or want it. We will not get balance in small communities. If we use the local authority boundary and consider the health board area, that will make our consideration a lot easier.
Local authority and health board level is where community care must be done properly. That is the key level.
Margaret Jamieson was right to mention young people. Enable, and other organisations that deal with all age groups, are on the list.
I am happy for members to make suggestions by e-mail.
I suggest that we invite Caroline Gardner, head of health at the Accounts Commission, to the initial briefing. She has produced several reports on mental health.
It would be useful to have someone from the Accounts Commission.
Why have we listed the past president of the Association of Directors of Social Work, rather than the current one?
I do not know.
George Irving is currently the president of the ADSW. He is my former boss.
I believe that many members will suggest Crossroads, as it is a major care agency. It is an obvious omission, so we might as well save e-mailing time. Do members agree that we should invite it to give evidence?
Why?
It is a major care organisation.
We could go on all morning with members suggesting other groups and people. Members should e-mail their suggestions to Jennifer Smart. We can add suggestions to the list and bring it back to the committee for agreement.
That is all right, but the fact that "only" is underlined and written in bold in the recommendation—that may please some people—suggests that we will not consider much else next year. We have to create space for other subjects. We will do that either by meeting weekly or by sometimes using the fortnightly meeting for other subjects. I am concerned about blocking the committee for such a long time.
If we take out "only", is everyone happier with the recommendation?
In effect, you are saying that we will meet weekly. I do not think that that is a sensible proposition.
Weekly meetings have been the reality of the work load that has been requested of us. We have ended up meeting more frequently than was intended. Committees are meeting more frequently than the planners of the Parliament anticipated. It might be nice to return to meeting fortnightly, but do members think that that will really happen? I am a pragmatic person. We have to assume that our present work load is similar to what we will have to deal with. We will have to address the issue of adults with incapacity, and to review statutory instruments, which usually have time limits; do other members feel that we should move to a fortnightly cycle of meetings?
This is very difficult. I would like us to set out—this may be impossible—whom we will meet and what we will do every fortnight for the next six months. There should be a much better framework for planning. If we had that, we could cope better with the additional work load. Fortunately, I am a member only of this committee, but keeping up to date with its work is still challenging.
The recommended time scale is an attempt to do that, given that we have much more ownership of the agenda and time frame for this inquiry. [Interruption.] You are not leaving us already, Kay?
Can I ask the Executive to pay the heating bill so that we can get it back on?
Do you think it is trying to freeze us out?
I do not know.
Are there any other comments on timetabling?
We should start out as suggested, with weekly meetings, but be prepared to change as we go along, according to the wishes of members. There must be concern for people such as Mary Scanlon and Margaret Jamieson, who have a fair distance to travel.
Never mind the travel. I am on two committees—the other is the Audit Committee. Given the amount of reading and preparation that I have to do for both committees and the fact that the Audit Committee has decided to meet fortnightly and hold briefings in the weeks in between, if this committee meets weekly I may as well move through to Edinburgh. That is not what we planned for. We talked about having a family-friendly Parliament. We will not have families if we continue as we are.
I take those comments on board. We will revisit this issue.
Can I make a plea for meetings not to clash with one another? I have had a peculiar problem because I have been on three committees, but even being on two committees is difficult. This morning I was supposed to attend a Finance Committee meeting, which was of considerable importance. I find it hard to say no to either committee—it is an impossible position.
I will put on hold the decision on the timetable. The reason for planning to conduct the inquiry at alternate meetings was to create a structure for members. I will take on board what members have said. In reality, we have held meetings weekly, some of which have been dropped on us at short notice. I think that the short notice has contributed to many of the problems. Although everybody else is commenting on the issue, as convener, I am the only person who has had a 100 per cent attendance record during every single minute of every single meeting—obviously because there has been no alternative.
With respect, convener, although you have a family, you live in Edinburgh. Malcolm Chisholm also lives in Edinburgh, but for a number of members, such as Mary Scanlon, Margaret Jamieson and me, who have to travel to get here, meetings at short notice are a nightmare.
We have been under a lot of pressure due to stern deadlines and a major piece of work on the Arbuthnott report, so we cannot be blamed for meeting weekly so far. Although we will soon have work on adults with incapacity, the pressure may ease in two or three months' time.
I doubt it.
Do not hold your breath. Where we have power over our timetable, we should not push ourselves to do in three months what we should take nine months to do. We will put the timetable on hold and I will get further information from members and others.
Yes.
That will allow the clerks and researchers to make arrangements.
Yes.
It is important that we get an adviser on mental health. We have specified the areas of mental health and the elderly.
That is why the recommendation is for advisers. Does everyone agree?
Yes.
The submissions that we have received are available for collection at the back of the chamber. There are two folders, for which you will have to sign. Merry Christmas.
We have 68 submissions. Are there porters to carry them down the road?
If you cannot carry them, or you are going elsewhere after the meeting, we will deliver the submissions to your rooms.
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