Good morning. I welcome members to the Education and Culture Committee’s 23rd meeting in 2012. I remind members and people in the public gallery that electronic devices should be switched off at all times. No apologies have been received; we have a full turn-out of committee members.
Yes, I do. I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak on kinship care. As you said, convener, I am joined by Leona Solley and David Blair from the Scottish Government.
Thank you, minister. I appreciate that helpful statement. I ask members to indicate when they want to ask a question.
I want to ask you about the petition that we will consider later. We have tried to get as full a picture as possible of the situation that faces kinship carers, as compared with that for foster carers. How many kinship carers currently get the same allowance as foster carers? How many local authorities pay the same allowance to foster carers and kinship carers?
I think that you have been provided with the same table that we have on what individual local authorities pay for kinship care allowance and what they pay for foster carers. If you do not have that table, I am happy to provide it.
We have it.
We have it, convener, and it gives us details about 20 local authorities, which obviously means that 12 are not included in the table. Does the Scottish Government have such a list for all 32 local authorities?
We do not have that information, but if that is something that you feel you need, I can pursue the matter with COSLA. I am always engaging with COSLA and have a meeting with it today. However, the illustrative figures in the table that you have give a snapshot—albeit that it is not of all 32 local authorities—of what local authorities are doing on those payments.
The table shows that of the 20 authorities that were surveyed, five pay the same allowance rate for kinship care and for foster care. Given what was agreed in the concordat in 2008, do you think that that is progress and that those five councils should be congratulated for achieving that?
As I said in my opening remarks, we fully recognise that the picture for kinship carers is not consistent across the country. We need to do more to understand that, which is why we are commissioning a review of the financial support that local authorities provide to kinship carers. I hope that that will give us more clarity about the picture, because we need to ensure that there is more consistency across the country. The spirit of the concordat is that local decision making is required; local authorities have made the decision to provide support, although its scale varies. However, since 2007 this Administration has made far more progress than was made previously by formally recognising kinship carers in a way that was never done before. Progress has been made and most—not all, however—local authorities are making efforts to help their kinship carers.
Do you welcome the fact that five authorities pay the kinship carers and foster carers the same rate?
Yes. Whatever support local authorities give to their kinship carers is to be welcomed. There might always be room for providing more help, but that does not always necessarily equate to giving financial support. That is why, as well as local government giving financial commitments to their kinship carers, the Scottish Government has been working hard with other partners, not least the third sector and Children 1st, to ensure that other, more holistic support is given. However, I welcome the support that local authorities provide for their kinship carers.
Do you think that kinship carers should be paid the same as foster carers?
We need better understanding. We have listened to kinship carers through our engagement with Children 1st. We want to ensure that there is more consistency across the country, which is why we are reviewing the financial support. We want to tailor the assistance and improve consistency. I think that all parties in Parliament agree that that needs to be looked at. We will aim to have the review done within the timescale for the proposed children and young people bill. We need to ensure that we do not stop and rest on our laurels. Progress has been made, but more needs to be done, and we would like to work with local authorities to achieve that.
For clarification, are you saying that kinship carers should be paid the same as foster carers?
We need to ensure that there is consistency throughout the country, and we are working hard with local authorities and others—not least Children 1st—to ensure that we get that. That is why we are undertaking a review.
We will move on, as a lot of folk want to come in, but we will no doubt come back to that question.
Following on from the minister’s response on financial services, I will raise another issue. In our evidence session in January, we were presented with the scenario of an emergency situation in which a child is removed from their family to a foster carer in the middle of the night. It seems that all the services would kick in, whether to provide cots, blankets, feeding bottles or whatever. In comparison, a child that was staying within the family—in other words, going into kinship care—would be provided with none of those services. Do we have some more evidence on that? There is an interesting table in paper 2 that shows the financial situation in local authorities, but I wonder whether that is a given, as those services should now be in place for children who are going into kinship care.
Regardless of the situation that a child faces—whether they are fostered or adopted, for example—getting it right for every child truly is about getting it right for every child. We need to ensure that the services are in place to help the child to get the outcomes that they deserve, and that their needs are met and their wellbeing is at the heart of the services. That must happen regardless of the parenting structure that is supporting that child.
To return to the point that Neil Bibby raised, the concordat, under the heading “Specified set of commitments”, states:
As I said in my answer to Neil Bibby, part of the issue involves working with local government. I am to have an introductory meeting with Douglas Chapman, and I will raise that issue with him so that he knows about the questions that committee members have raised today.
Minister, it was a fairly simple question. Do you believe that kinship carers should be paid the same as foster carers?
We believe that kinship carers are closer to being parents; they have a parenting role. We understand from kinship carers themselves that they believe that they need to be recognised for the parenting role that they carry out. That is why local government needs to tailor its support to individual needs to make sure that the outcomes for the child are the best that they can be. That is why we need to work closely with local government to ensure consistency across the country.
I find it difficult to understand why you will not give us a straight answer, minister, when the concordat clearly states that they should be treated,
As I have said, we believe that kinship carers should be treated as parents. When the concordat was written, it was felt that that was a good way to move forward, and we should not forget that substantial progress has been made since 2007. The current Administration has recognised kinship carers in a way in which previous Administrations never did. More kinship carers are getting financial support and we are making sure that the voices of kinship carers who want to be recognised for their parenting role are heard and that that is not impinged upon by other areas of government such as the UK benefits system.
I will frame my question differently to try and get an answer. Will you put a proposal in the children and young people’s bill to ensure that kinship carers are treated in exactly the same way as foster carers?
I have said that the bill will provide for a kinship care order. If you would like to contribute to the bill, the consultation closes on 25 September.
I was led to believe that ministers came to committees to answer questions, but that is obviously not the case.
That is a bit strong, Mr Findlay. The minister has answered the question. You might not like the answer that you have been given, but that is not the same thing at all.
In your opening remarks, minister, you rightly said that payments for kinship carers vary widely across the country. In your discussions with COSLA, will you ask for details from local authorities about the arithmetical models that they use to make the payments so that we can better understand why there is such variance?
As I said, I will meet COSLA today. It will be an introductory meeting because personnel have changed since the elections. I have outlined my intention to review the financial support that kinship carers receive and the inconsistency in that support. We can certainly factor that question into any review and make sure that Liz Smith’s point about local government modelling is more fully understood.
Do you agree that that might help us to better understand the criteria by which payments are made and whether councils are genuinely trying to provide support or have been forced into other circumstances because of cutbacks in other areas that mean that they have had to cut what they offer?
It is necessary to review what is going on because of the inconsistencies. We need to make sure that councils support families so that the outcomes for the child who is in a kinship carer’s care are the best that they can be. We need to make sure that packages are tailored to the individual so that the support the carers receive is the best that it can be. That might require us to be a bit more sophisticated about understanding the modelling that councils do. If it will answer your question, we can include that as part of the review.
That would be helpful.
Such things need to be on the table in a wholesale review. We need to use the opportunity that is presented by the proposed children and young people bill to ensure that we have a close look at what is going on around the country. It is worth exploring the point that Liz Smith has made.
I am pleased with that answer. How soon might the information be available? When we consider the bill, it will be useful to have information that relates to factual points—
There are points that you need to explore. Our intention is to work within the timescale that applies to the bill’s preparation. We can get back to you with more clarity on the timescale for the review, which is independent of the bill, but will certainly inform it.
When might you do that?
The legislative programme has been laid out, and we need to prepare a financial memorandum for the bill, as I said. The review on particular issues to do with kinship care is not part of the bill but will inform the bill, so we will get information and clarity on the dates for you later on. Broadly speaking, we want the information at about the same time.
That would be helpful. Thank you.
We are all aware that there are inconsistencies, as the minister said, and the details that 20 councils supplied about what they provide bears that out, although we do not have a full list of what councils provide. The concordat is explicit about
Given what I said about the concordat and the Administration’s work around the regulations to recognise kinship carers, and given that since 2007 there are far more kinship carers and far more local authorities providing support, I think that a lot of progress has been made. The Government realises that there are inconsistencies across the country, which is why we are reviewing financial support for kinship carers.
Does that illustrate the tension between various aspects of the commitment? We had an agreement between the Scottish Government and COSLA back in 2007 and we are now in the realms of a review and an order on kinship care is pending. It strikes me that all that suggests that the concordat has not done what it was meant to do and that you have not been able to deliver—
The concordat has helped a number of families across the country, and far more progress has been made than at any time since the previous Administration, of which your party was part.
The amount of inconsistency that you admit exists, the fact that you are having a review and the fact that legislation is required and an order is pending all tend to suggest that you concede that the commitment in the concordat was undeliverable through that mechanism and that you must take a different route.
We are listening to kinship carers and responding to what they tell us about the areas in which they need support. We are responding in a way that gives them and their children the best outcomes that we can help them to achieve. That is the right thing to do. Kinship carers tell us that they want to be recognised for their parenting role and we want to help them with that. That is why we need to introduce an order to help make kinship carers’ interaction with the UK benefits system much easier.
I have to beg to differ, not least given the petition to which we will turn later in this evidence session. You say that you are listening to kinship carers and you talk about the parenting role that they perform—clearly, that is a message that the committee has also received. It suggests that the approach taken by local authorities is that if people go down the route of the parenting role, it is likely that some of the support that is currently available through local authority means would dry up. Support is not being augmented through the benefits system. We have received evidence that there is a trade-off between them. Both positions are legitimate, but to suggest that the inconsistencies—
Again, the Scottish Government has worked to bring about benefits to kinship carers by interacting with the UK Government to make sure that some of the clawed-back benefits are no longer clawed back. That has shown that the Scottish Government can work with the UK Government to make sure that kinship carers are properly financially supported.
Clearly, there has been progress in certain areas under the welfare reform proposals, but that does not explain the inconsistencies. It would be much appreciated if COSLA and, in particular, Douglas Chapman, turned up to the committee and answered questions. We have received from COSLA a litany of all the difficulties that local authorities face in this area. None of that explains the inconsistencies between local authorities. All of the difficulties will be faced equally by each local authority. The inconsistency has resulted in kinship carers understandably asking why it is possible for one council to deliver in a certain way and provide a greater degree of consistency and parity, yet their own council does not, when both councils are under the same budgetary constraints and are facing the same benefits system requirements.
I have talked about the review of financial support, which we are commissioning to make sure that we have a better understanding of what exactly is going on. That will shed greater light for us on some of the points that Liz Smith raised, and it will help us to tailor packages of support for individual kinship carers in a far better way than has maybe been achieved before.
Would it not have been better to have had a review before a concordat about providing
The concordat was signed in a spirit of agreement to work together. Let us not forget that an enormous amount of progress has been made since 2007 because of that joint working between national Government and local government and the concordat to ensure progress for kinship carers.
Prior to 2007 there was no support for kinship carers. Support was introduced by the Scottish National Party in 2007, through the concordat. Would the minister care to comment on the effect of the financial downturn on the demand for kinship care allowance and how that has been skewed across the country’s areas of deprivation, such as Glasgow?
In areas such as Glasgow there is always higher demand—for want of a better word—for kinship carers. That goes back to the point that each local authority has its own particular needs. Glasgow is a case in point, where the demand for kinship carers is higher. Given that we are talking about parents, families and children in a broad sense, every family has been affected by the economic downturn and there will be impacts because of that. Although I am not able to tell you at the moment whether there is any statistical evidence to show whether the economic downturn has caused any further detriment to kinship carers, we know that it has had a hugely negative impact on families that are living in poverty.
I would like to understand the problem with the UK benefits system better. It is referred to in the written submission from COSLA, which says that, following representations, kinship care payments to recipients of housing benefit are now disregarded as income but other benefits are still clawed back. What benefits are those and what problem does that pose to the typical kinship care household?
The work that the Scottish Government has done to ensure that council tax benefit is no longer clawed back means that some families are now £50 better off. Our aim with the proposed kinship care order is also to ensure that interaction with the UK benefits system is much better.
As the minister said, we managed to secure some changes that insulated kinship care payments from council tax and housing benefit clawbacks. However, it remains the case that the ability of a kinship carer of a looked-after child in particular to claim some other, fairly fundamental benefits that are part of the family environment is often frustrated.
Yes, it does. It sounds to me like a horrifically complex system and it sounds like the burden of navigating it is being placed on people of whom many other things are also asked.
As I said in reply to a previous question, I met one of the UK Government ministers—who did not have responsibility for kinship carers but had an interest in the policy area. That minister recently moved post. We made the point that kinship carers face considerable challenges when interacting with the benefits system—on top of all the other challenges that you mention, Marco—and said that we would like to engage further on that issue. Perhaps because of the change of ministers—to be kind—we need to pursue the issues a wee bit further, because we know that we need to help kinship carers out on that issue. We have made the offer to the UK Government to allow it to engage with kinship carers in Scotland and hear first hand how they have felt about dealing with the UK benefits system. That offer has yet to be taken up, but it was made because we felt that we needed to ensure that UK ministers understand the real challenges that kinship carers face.
My final question follows on from that quite well. Has the devolution of council tax benefit perhaps made it easier for the UK Government, in the sense that if it did not change it, we would when the power came to the Scottish Parliament?
Unlike Liam McArthur, who made an assertion about the spirit of the concordat and whether it has brought about closer working between local government and the Scottish Government, I think that the work that has been done between the Scottish Government and local government in trying to mitigate the worst impact of welfare reforms, particularly around council tax benefit, shows exactly what can be achieved. There can be positive benefits for people.
Marco Biagi has covered my question.
Minister, you say that, with independence, we would have clarity on how the welfare system would be structured. I have sat through at least a couple of debates in which I have heard much about being simpler and fairer but very little detail about that.
It would certainly be within our gift to allow that clarity to be brought.
I certainly do not underestimate the challenges in applying for child benefit, child tax credit and so on, but will you clarify whether foster carers are eligible for those benefits, as we are looking at the discrepancies or inconsistencies between provision for foster carers and provision for kinship carers?
Foster carers are not eligible, as they are not seen as having the parenting role that kinship carers have.
So that does not really have a bearing in terms of the consistency—
What would have a bearing is changing the eligibility criteria for child benefit, which we could do if we had the powers to achieve that.
But that does not explain the inconsistency that currently exists, which you are trying to resolve through child benefit and child tax credit, which do not apply to foster carers.
Forgive me, but would you repeat your question? I am not sure that I entirely understand your point.
We are looking at the inconsistency between the provision for foster carers and the provision for kinship carers. You have talked about an area in which there is clawback, but if foster carers are not entitled to any of those benefits, I am struggling to see how that has a bearing on the inconsistency between the provision for both of those groups, which you have admitted exists.
As I have said and as kinship carers have told us, kinship carers want their parenting role, which they carry out very well, to be recognised. Therefore, we need to ensure that they are fully supported by the UK benefits system, which currently is not always the case. That is where the differences lie.
What steps that are within the direct responsibility of the Scottish Government have you taken to provide financial support to kinship carers?
We provide the block grant to local authorities.
The Scottish Government suggests that the level of the kinship care allowance is a matter for individual local authorities, but you also suggest a national minimum allowance for foster carers. Why are you perpetuating the difference between kinship and non-kinship care?
I am not sure what you mean. On how the block grant works, there is no ring fencing. We give a block grant to the local authorities, which are entitled to make decisions at a local level on how they will support their kinship carers financially.
You are saying that local authorities are responsible for their own budgets, that they can take their own decisions and that they can use the money as they see fit, but the Scottish Government could do the same. What direct financial support is the Scottish Government giving to kinship carers?
Again, I am sorry but—
I am also a bit confused, Neil. Can you clarify your question? I am not sure what you are asking either.
What financial support does the Scottish Government give to kinship carers?
It is provided through the block grant that we give to each local authority, which is agreed nationally with COSLA.
I will pick up on that issue. The point that is being made is that the block grant is provided, but it is subject to the concordat. The concordat means that there is an agreement that a council will get X if it does Y; the issue is that Y is not happening.
The statement is at the top of page 3 in COSLA’s submission.
It is the bottom two lines of the first paragraph on page 3.
One reason for bringing forward the kinship care order is to ensure that the system does not create a perverse situation in which, as you say, more children end up being looked after than we would ideally want. That maybe comes back to the point that I made about the review of the financial support, which will ensure that we have more statistics to evidence what is happening.
Do you regard COSLA’s statement as being true? Is there any evidence that what it suggests is taking place?
There is anecdotal evidence through Children 1st.
I have a brief question on the statistics that we have been provided with about family and friends placements by local authorities. I will exclude from consideration Orkney Islands Council—its figure, which is down at about 5 per cent, must be a statistical anomaly—and Glasgow City Council, which is quite understandably at the upper end. However, there seems to be quite a large discrepancy between, for example, South Lanarkshire Council, Moray Council and West Lothian Council, which have figures for family and friend placements of about 15 per cent, and a large bulk of councils that are up at 25 or almost 30 per cent. Is there a reason for that discrepancy? Do the approaches that councils take to placing looked-after children explain the difference? Perhaps that question is another one that is more for COSLA.
It could be one for COSLA or for the individual councils. It might just be that a council area is a culturally different place and that there has been a greater prevalence of using kinship carers.
I put on record again my earlier point that it would be helpful to have more quantitative evidence to back up some of the Government’s key points. Obviously, we are talking about a complex area and we all accept that the issues are not easy, but our opinions would be better informed if there was a greater wealth of statistical evidence out there. Some of the existing evidence is perhaps a little anecdotal and not sufficiently robust to inform our policy discussions.
That point is well made. I am sure that the Government shares some of the doubt.
Yes. That is why the review will be on-going. We will ensure that the committee gets more information, if members require it.
That would be helpful—thank you.
I put on record my confusion about the Liberal Democrats’ position. They spend a lot of time telling the Government that it is too centralising and that local authorities should have more decision-making powers, but in the case that we are considering, in which local authorities have decision-making powers to make the right decisions for people in their areas, they complain about inconsistency.
That point is made and is on the record. I am sure that Liam McArthur disagrees.
That was the usual fatuous and patronising remark from Joan McAlpine.
Let us not descend into name calling, as that would be unhelpful.
The kinship care order will be part of the children and young people bill, so the committee will be able to consider the issue much more rigorously when it considers the bill. The aim is to have kinship carers’ role clearly identified and defined in law without the need for the child to have looked-after status. We believe that the order will have a number of benefits. It will allow children not to be looked after. It will allow for quicker decision-making, without the lengthy court interaction that sometimes occurs at present. It will be possible to prepare an order before birth. The order is designed to give local authorities much more scope to help families to avoid the formal care route, if that is appropriate. So the kinship care order will have a number of benefits. It will allow kinship carers to be recognised formally in another way through legislation.
Mr Findlay referred to the COSLA evidence. In the same paragraph that he mentioned, at the top of page 3, the evidence refers to confusion surrounding the way in which kinship carers are defined. Is the kinship care order supposed to strike at that confusion?
Yes.
I am sure that we will consider the issue in detail when we deal with the bill.
Yes. The order is about trying to find another route to permanence for the child and to give kinship carers much more support without some of the needless bureaucracy that sometimes ensues.
We look forward to examining that in detail when the bill is introduced.
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