Continuing Care (Scotland) Order 2015 (SSI 2015/158)
Aftercare (Eligible Needs) (Scotland) Order 2015 (SSI 2015/156)
We move on to item 3 on our agenda, which is to receive an update from the Scottish Government on issues arising from the Continuing Care (Scotland) Order 2015 and the Aftercare (Eligible Needs) (Scotland) Order 2015. As committee members will remember, we considered those affirmative instruments at our meeting on 24 March this year, when the Minister for Children and Young People committed to providing further information.
I welcome Fiona McLeod, the acting Minister for Children and Young People, and David Blair, who is head of the looked-after children unit at the Scottish Government. I believe that the minister wishes to make a statement.
It is a short statement compared with the last time, convener.
I offered to return to update the committee on the draft guidance on parts 10 and 11 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and to report on progress towards setting up the expert working group that will consider specific policies on aftercare and return to care. I will be happy to take any questions after this brief statement.
On the consultation on the draft guidance, from January to April this year, there has been a series of meetings, workshops and conferences involving local authorities, the third sector, practitioners, elected members and—perhaps most importantly—care-experienced young people, as we outlined to the committee in March. So far, there have been 22 such events, which have been attended by about 250 people. They will continue over the next few months and will reach a further 200 people. The workshops were jointly facilitated with the Scottish Throughcare & Aftercare Forum.
For our next steps in producing the draft guidance, we will be incorporating feedback from those events. In fact, that is now almost complete. The next step is therefore for both the draft guidance documents to be circulated to key stakeholders ahead of the next series of consultation events, which begin on 7 May.
The draft guidance will be accompanied by a set of companion questions to help focus feedback specifically on content and usefulness. We will of course invite and welcome written and verbal feedback on those questions as a crucial part of us all working together to inform the final phase of the guidance development.
I hope that the committee feels reassured about the level of discussion and consultation that has been undertaken—and which continues—towards framing the documents in a way that makes them worthy of more detailed and targeted discussion during the next phase of the consultation.
On the matter of the expert working group, I am happy to confirm that we have sent out invitations. The working group will look at describing additional cohorts of young people who could be made eligible for aftercare under the ministerial powers in section 66 of the 2014 act. That is in addition to the return to care commitment that was made by Aileen Campbell when the bill was going through the Parliament.
I can confirm that a wide range of key stakeholders, including local authority children and family and housing teams, third sector organisations including the continuing care coalition members, the centre for excellence for looked after children in Scotland—CELCIS—COSLA, the Scottish Throughcare & Aftercare Forum, and Social Work Scotland have been invited to be members of the working group. Subject to diaries, availability and capacity within those organisations, I hope that the working group will meet for the first time in May to agree the terms of reference and the membership of a wider consultative group to support the working group in the work that it will be doing.
I am asking the working group to support the Scottish Government in mapping the resource and operational requirements of any proposed extension of aftercare eligibility and to help us describe a brand-new policy on return to care. As you will appreciate, and as we discussed in March, developing those policies will be a massive undertaking, as they require flexibility and consideration of capacity in the system and of the current financial climate.
I will task the working group with reporting to me—or to whoever is the minister—by the end of this year, but I will expect it to inform me if that is an unrealistic timetable, given the enormity of the task that we are undertaking. The committee is aware that the timeframe was set out by the Scottish ministers on 14 January 2014. The minister at the time announced
“a number of measures to support care leavers over the next 10 to 12 years.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 14 January 2014; c 3319.]
Therefore, we will work with the working group, which as I said will, we hope, meet in May. We will task the group with setting a framework and reporting by the end of the year, but I want it to tell me if that is unrealistic. Finally, I must remind committee members that we want to put the plan in place over the next 10 to 12 years.
I am sure that we are all aiming for the same positive outcomes for our care leavers, and I look forward to continuing productive and collaborative working on the issues with stakeholders, with young people and with the committee.
Thank you very much for that update, minister. The committee clearly had some concerns on 24 March about some of the evidence that we received then and some of the comments that we received from outside organisations, particularly from members of the continuing care coalition.
We will now have questions from members, beginning with Liam McArthur.
Good afternoon, minister. Towards the end of your opening comments, you referred to the fact that you want members of the working group to advise you in early course if they feel that the timeframe that they are asked to work to is unrealistic.
You will recall from our previous exchange that there were concerns that local authorities have put up obstacles that they believe exist to delivering what we thought as a committee and Parliament we had helped to put in place in the passage of the 2014 act.
Can you be a bit clearer about the hurdle that those who suggest that the proposed timeframe is unrealistic would have to get over for you to be persuaded that putting in place or coming forward with firm proposals for extending the coverage of the provisions by the end of the year is not to be achieved?
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I am not aware of anybody saying that the timescale is unrealistic, but I am very aware of the huge task that we will ask the working group to take on.
I just want to put a marker down now: I do not want to say to the working group that it must have completed everything by the end of the year if, in trying to meet an end-of-the-year timetable, it does not take the time and care to ensure that the timescale is realistic and deliverable and that everybody has the capacity to do what we want to do. It should also be remembered that that is within the timeframe of extending eligibility over a 10 to 12-year period, as the minister and Parliament accepted last year.
I think that we would all accept that it will always be more important to get it right rather than necessarily get it done by a particular deadline, but we recognise that there will be different opinions in the working group. Therefore, I would not want the message from you as the minister and the Government to the working group to be that you expect the timetable to be very stretching and that what you are asking is possibly undeliverable by the end of the year so that those who would quite happily put things off for a bit longer feel emboldened to make that case. There will be those on the group who are very keen to keep everybody’s feet to the fire in delivering that extension of eligibility.
Absolutely—and that is not the message that I am sending out. I listed all the different organisations that will be part of the working group. It is a very balanced group that will work as a group, which is what I want to see.
I will move on to my other questions.
Obviously, during the exchanges at our meeting in March, reference was made to the non-statutory guidance. It came as something of a surprise that that had not been shared with members of the coalition for continuing care at that stage. I think that you gave an undertaking at that committee meeting at the end of March that that would be remedied and rectified as a matter of urgency.
I was therefore slightly confused and a bit concerned to note what was said in Mark Ballard’s email to committee members last night. He welcomed the establishment of the working group and the invitation to form part of it among others, but he said:
“we hope that the first meeting of this group will also give us an opportunity to view and discuss the non-statutory guidance that was also mentioned by the Minister at the Education and Culture Committee meeting on the 24th March.”
Following our exchange on 24 March, I rather assumed that that non-statutory guidance would have been passed on to members of the coalition and others within the week—certainly before the end of that month—but that does not appear to have been the case.
We seem to be conflating two issues. From January to April this year, there have been 22 events, including workshops, conferences and one-to-ones with organisations. The next event will be on 7 May. Each of those events has been part of the process of producing the draft guidance. Therefore, it is live guidance and it is an iterative process. For the next meeting, on 7 May, the latest iteration of the draft guidance will go out to everybody.
My recollection is that the first iteration or draft of that guidance was produced around September last year; I may be wrong, but it was produced around that time. However, Mark Ballard, on behalf of the coalition, suggested that it is looking forward to
“an opportunity to view and discuss the non-statutory guidance that was ... mentioned by the Minister at the ... meeting”.
That suggests to me that, although the coalition may be part of the iterative process, it clearly has not been presented with the latest iteration during the course of the many meetings that you suggest have taken place.
There have been 22 events over a couple of months, and everything that we have learned at each event has been fed in. The latest iteration of the draft guidance, which will go out to everyone who is going to the meeting on 7 May, was being worked on even up to this weekend, when I was yet again reading through it, asking questions and making comments.
This is very much a live process, and everyone has been involved all along the line. In fact, I have just scanned a piece of paper that I have with me, and I see dates in March and April as we work towards the meeting on 7 May.
You are saying that the latest iteration of the guidance will have been presented to participants at those meetings to allow them to feed in comments and suggest amendments.
Yes.
So the next meeting will not be the first time that they will have seen the raft of non-statutory guidance that was referred to at the 24 March meeting.
Every time we have these meetings, the guidance comes back, and then we send it out again.
I am not necessarily talking about the full draft guidance, but in the latest meetings people have raised questions, have thought of other ideas and have wondered whether their suggestions can be put in the mix for the next meeting. We have been getting CELCIS to go through all the feedback that we have received from each of the meetings to inform the questions that we ask at the next meeting but, after four months of work and all the questions that have been received, those participating in the 7 May meeting will get the latest iteration of the draft guidance and its many pages beforehand.
I apologise for labouring this point, but the question is not just whether people have been informed of the issues that they and other stakeholders have raised at the meetings but whether, since 24 March, they have been provided with a copy of the latest consolidated non-statutory guidance in a single format—even if that version is not the final one—which will be subject to the working group’s consideration in due course.
What I was looking at over the weekend was the final, many-paged version of the draft guidance that will be sent out for the 7 May meeting. We did not produce that document for each of the meetings; instead, we set out questions to feed into what went into the final version.
I have to say that I find that slightly disappointing. My expectation from the meeting at the end of March was that the non-statutory guidance that had been produced around September of last year would be presented to not just the coalition but perhaps other stakeholders to inform their input into the discussions and meetings.
Although I very much welcome those meetings and discussions, you are asking a series of questions of people who will not have had the benefit of seeing where the guidance stands at a certain point, even if the expectation is that it might either change radically or not change greatly before it is finally agreed. I think that that is against the spirit of what I understood to be the undertaking that you gave when you appeared before us in March.
The timetable for the 22 events held between January and March was already in place; those meetings started in January and continued through February and March and into April. When we are in an iterative process in which we have different meetings that include practitioners, providing authorities and everyone else, there is no point at which we can produce a whole set of guidance and say, “This is what has been decided in all the meetings.” What we are doing throughout that process is saying, “These are the questions that have been raised in the meetings.” The process leads towards what I was looking at over the weekend—the draft guidance, which is based on what we have been working on for more than six months now. That is what we will be looking at on 7 May.
But people need to have sight of where the guidance stands at any one time. Yes, they will be able to respond to the questions that are asked but—as you will know yourself, minister—they can question only the information that is in front of them. They cannot question information that is not in front of them. Only by looking at the non-statutory guidance as it stands, even if it is only in draft form, can someone answer the questions that have been asked of them and comment on those matters that, for whatever reason, they have not been asked about but on which they might have very strong views.
When the invites go out to each of the meetings, it is clear what the meeting is for. There is an opportunity to learn from what has gone on at previous meetings and for people to prepare their own thoughts to feed in, so that their input into that meeting on that particular date feeds forward into the next meetings.
The way that we are doing this is very much based on the way that we worked in the run-up to the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014—we went out and consulted with and involved as many people as possible. My understanding from the back benches was that the way that the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill came to Parliament was one of the best examples of working as much as possible with all stakeholders to inform what was finally printed in the bill.
That is what we have done in this process as well: it is the process by which we are now producing the guidelines, based on the experience that we have gained from preparing guidelines over many years. It is not being done in a vacuum; it is part of a live process that has been working for many years, in which everybody comes together, works together and feeds forward constantly.
You will be aware that, when we were discussing the issue last time, on 24 March, what the 2014 act said and what was proposed and then agreed to in the orders were not seen to be in alignment. Actually seeing the detail of what the non-statutory guidance says is therefore vitally important.
The process leading up to the introduction of the bill and the consideration of that bill was seen as fairly exemplary. There were opportunities for us, in consultation with the continuing care coalition and others, to make amendments and changes, but we had the full text in front of us—we were able to comment not only on things that the ministers wanted our views on, but on any issues that we thought were relevant.
What I cannot understand is how you can have this consultation process going on unless the stakeholders have a copy of the consolidated non-statutory guidance. I am sure that the meetings are very valuable, but you will get answers only to the questions that you ask, rather than comments from the stakeholders on the breadth of issues that may arise through the non-statutory guidance.
I do not think that that is an accurate representation of what is happening. The guidance that we are working on comes from a history of guidance in this area. When the sectors come together at all these 22-odd events, they arrive very well informed about what they want to see the guidance becoming. The stakeholders have already used guidance on support for these care leavers—guidance that we already have and which those stakeholders contributed towards producing.
I am not going to apologise for the way in which we have carried out the process. It has really involved everybody—all stakeholders—and given them every opportunity possible. I was out at Who Cares? Scotland last week, and none of these concerns was raised with me. We had a very strong discussion about where we can go forward, based on experience of where we have been, where we are now and where we want to get to.
To be fair, minister, you are accurate about the process that led up to the 2014 act—everybody on this committee and others outside Parliament felt that. The problem that we faced as a committee was that the evidence that we received from your officials on 24 March was somewhat confusing. That has left us with some doubts, and I would like some clarity.
You talk about a process that started in January and is on-going. On 24 March, your official said that it had been on-going since last autumn and would conclude by the end of April—I presume that that is not going to happen now. You said that everybody has been involved and there have been all these meetings.
The organisations that Liam McArthur and others referred to on 24 March took quite a different view about their involvement—or lack of involvement. The concern that the committee expressed on 24 March was, to be absolutely blunt about it, led by the confusion that was established in the minds of the committee members by your officials.
That left us with some questions about why organisations had not been involved, why there was a consultation but they were not included, what was going on with the statutory guidance and so on. That is why we asked you to come and give us an update—to clear up some of those questions. I think that it is entirely reasonable that we try to nail down some of the questions that were raised by the evidence on 24 March.
Can we be clear? Is the consultation that you are talking about, which started in January and is continuing, different from the consultation that your official Carolyn Younie talked about, which started last autumn, or is it the same consultation?
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It is in phases. Phase 1, from October to December 2014, was the public consultation on the draft orders that the committee looked at and agreed to when I was last here, in March. The consultation on that—and what we learned from it—fed into phase 2, which was the 22 events from January to April. I have a list of all the events and who was at them. I am happy to send a copy of that to the committee if that would reassure you.
That would be helpful.
There were 22 events with 250 people.
We absolutely believe you. We are just trying to clarify the position because there was some confusion on 24 March. Thank you for that.
I share the concerns of the convener and Liam McArthur, and I have two fairly short questions.
You have said several times that you had 22 events between January and today. That is pretty well an average of five per month. I would have thought that you would be making considerable progress, but in your opening statement you talked about more detailed, targeted discussions and about the enormity of the task. I thought that we would be making some progress and coming to some agreement. You then said that you would report by the end of the year, and I think that you used the word “unrealistic”. You also mentioned implementation over 10 to 12 years.
What are the main problems? There must be a few stumbling blocks. You have had 22 events attended by every man and his dog who is involved in the area, you are coming forward with different questions, you are feeding into this, and you have phase 1, phase 2 and phase 3. What is the main stumbling block? Why is it going to take until the end of the year or maybe even longer?
What can we expect by the end of the year? Is it possible that this could even be extended beyond the next Scottish Parliament election, when this committee will have totally changed? I will certainly not be here. What are the stumbling blocks? Obviously, no member of this committee is party to the discussions. I was not on the committee when it took evidence on the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill—it was my colleague Liz Smith who was here—but what is the big problem? What is the reason for the confusion between officials and the Government? Why have you had 22 events, with a whole load more planned? What is the stumbling block? What is it that cannot be agreed on?
We are conflating two different things. It is the guidance that we have had 22 events on, with 200-odd people. The end of the year is a target that we have set for the expert working group. The guidance is about implementing the statutory instruments that the committee and the Parliament agreed to in March. The expert working group is looking at whether we can extend continuing care and aftercare to an extra cohort of care leavers. Those are two completely different things.
So what is the problem? Why do you need so many more meetings and delays?
No—there are two things. We are working on the draft guidance to support the statutory instruments that were agreed to in March. That is what the 22 events have been about, and we will continue to work on that so that we get the guidance to support the statutory instruments for continuing care and aftercare for young people who are in care and can continue to be in care from their 16th birthday onwards, and who will perhaps be eligible up to their 26th birthday. That is the guidance to go with the statutory instruments.
The expert working group, which we hope will be able to come back with at least firm ideas by the end of the year, if that is realistic, is going to look at extending continuing care to extra cohorts of young people—not just those we have already agreed, who will get continuing care and aftercare after their 16th birthday. There are two completely different issues.
Is the end of the year realistic?
I said in my statement that I hope that that is realistic, but I do not want to put pressure on the expert working group to come forward with ideas about which extra cohorts of young people we could extend continuing care and aftercare to. I do not want the group to come back with that unless it is realistic that there is capacity in the sector to do it, that we can do it in the current financial climate and that it will fit within the commitment, which the minister gave more than a year ago, that extending the cohorts is a 10 to 12-year process.
As there are no further questions, I thank you for coming along and giving us the update, minister. No doubt we will follow the process with interest. I thank you once again for your commitment to come back to the committee and keep us informed and for coming along today.
Meeting closed at 12:50.Previous
Educational Attainment