Education Committee, 04 Oct 2006

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 4, 2006

Official Report 235KB pdf

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Subordinate Legislation

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Social Work Inspections (Scotland) Regulations (Draft)

Good morning, colleagues, and welcome to the 20th meeting of the Education Committee in 2006. Before we commence, I should point out that there are major problems on the railways between Edinburgh and Glasgow. Apparently, there has been a power failure and all signals are out. Half of the committee are scattered at various points between Haymarket and Glasgow.

As we have a quorum, I intend to deal first with items 1 and 2, on subordinate legislation, and then review the situation before moving on to the Adoption and Fostering (Scotland) Bill. We may have to suspend for a bit if the trains are moving and there is a possibility that our colleagues will still arrive at a reasonable time. We will see how it goes, but at the least we can get the subordinate legislation out of the way.

I welcome the Deputy Minister for Education and Young People, Robert Brown, along with Bill Ellis from the social work services policy division of the Scottish Executive. As is our normal practice when dealing with affirmative resolutions, there will be an opportunity for the minister briefly to introduce the draft Social Work Inspections (Scotland) Regulations and for members to ask questions before we move on to the formal motion. I ask the minister to make a few opening remarks.

By the sounds of things, it is just as well that I stayed in Edinburgh last night instead of trusting the trains.

Social work inspections will be familiar territory to the committee. The Social Work Inspection Agency has to be provided with the powers to deliver robust inspections of social work services. The powers are also required to enable it to report with confidence on whether social work services are working effectively. The objective is to ensure that the users of the services are safe and protected and that their needs are being met.

Under the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968—the main legislation—SWIA's statutory powers were restricted to specific areas of social work, such as some residential establishments, and a broad power of inquiry. There were no formal inspection powers beyond that. To date, its inspection of the three main areas of social work services—children's services, community care and criminal justice—has been on the basis of consent.

The draft regulations set out the powers that SWIA will be able to use in the conduct of inspections. They also have the benefit of aligning the agency's powers of inspection with the powers for the joint inspection of children's services, in which SWIA plays a significant part.

In conclusion, the draft regulations provide the clarification and reassurance necessary to allow the robust inspection of social work services and empower SWIA to carry out such inspections.

I want to ask just one question. Would I be correct in thinking that the draft regulations are a commonsense provision to safeguard children and to allow for all eventualities so that the necessary action can be taken?

We might say that everything that the Executive does is based on common sense, but the draft regulations are specifically so. As you will be aware from earlier debates on joint powers, there were some deficiencies in powers that had to be provided for to ensure that services could be properly and effectively inspected by all agencies—in this instance, by SWIA.

The minister mentioned that we have joint inspections. Does he suggest that the draft regulations are necessary as a consequence of the introduction of joint inspections? Do they regularise that process, or are they stand-alone provisions?

They are a bit of both. The joint inspection arrangements were introduced by consent, so there was not a technical problem, but it emerged during consideration of their beginning, if you like, that there were some deficiencies in the powers available, primarily from the point of view of joint inspections and particularly in the social work inspection provisions. The powers come from different acts, as the committee will appreciate. The problems have been dealt with in primary legislation, and the draft regulations are the subordinate legislation under that primary legislation. They are designed to flesh out the system, as we dealt with the principles in primary legislation.

My other question is about the outcomes of inspections and the information that is generated. There will shortly be a bill flowing from the Bichard report under which information sharing will be key. Am I right that inspection outcomes will form part of the body of information that can be shared with other agencies?

We are not talking about quite that context. The information concerned is really for the purposes of inspection, which is slightly different from information for the purposes of protection. Issues might arise or be discovered during an inspection. Certain duties in relation to that will be implied in professional duties, on which clarity will be given in the forthcoming legislation. The draft regulations are about the inspection end rather than about the sharing of information for more general duties.

As there are no further questions, we move on to item 2. I ask the minister to speak to and move motion S2M-4886, in the name of Peter Peacock.

I do not want to add anything to the substance of my comments on the draft regulations, which were explored in the questions.

I move,

That the Education Committee recommends that the draft Social Work Inspections (Scotland) Regulations 2006 be approved.

Motion agreed to.

Thank you, minister.

I suggest that we suspend the meeting until 10.15, so that we can check the likely progress of trains from the west.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—