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Good morning, and welcome to the eighth meeting in 2009 of the Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee. We have received apologies from Margaret Smith, who is unable to join us.
Thank you very much, convener, and good morning, colleagues. I thank the committee for the opportunity to come here to talk about social work and social care. In particular, I welcome the committee's support for the people who undertake that work, who are often heard of, certainly in the media, only when things go wrong.
Thank you very much for those comments. The committee would like to question you on a number of areas. I will begin by asking about child protection. In your opening statement, you touched on the Brandon Muir case. I do not want to stray into the specifics of that case, so I will concentrate on child protection in general. Who in the Scottish Government has ministerial responsibility for child protection matters?
I am the Minister for Children and Early Years, so I take day-to-day responsibility for those matters, but I am part of a team, the leader of which is Fiona Hyslop, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning. Fiona and I talk about such matters regularly, and she represents the Government's view in Cabinet discussions.
This is not a reflection on your abilities, but given that child protection is such a serious issue, do you not think that it would be more appropriate for day-to-day child protection issues to be managed by someone who sits at the Cabinet table, who takes the decisions about where and how resources will be spent, and who can argue that case with Cabinet colleagues?
As I indicated, we work as a team. Fiona Hyslop is the team leader. The set-up whereby she can discuss such matters in Cabinet as and when appropriate is perfectly reasonable. She can also speak about them in public as and when appropriate. However, I have day-to-day responsibility for the child protection system. The arrangements are perfectly appropriate.
I am sure that you are aware that in the previous Government, the First Minister had responsibility for child protection, but there was a cross-cutting agenda that involved education and health. Does the current Administration take the same view?
Over the past week or two, I have made a number of visits to local authorities around the country, in particular to follow up on child protection inspections. Universally, I have been met with an appreciation on the part of the professionals in the field for the support of the First Minister, who has made it very clear where this Government stands on child protection. The issue is right at the top of our priority list.
How many children in Scotland live with a parent who is a substance misuser or a drug misuser or who is alcohol dependent?
As you know, we do not have 100 per cent accurate figures on that—we are dealing with estimates. Given that drug abuse is an illegal activity, not many people broadcast the fact that they engage in it. It is estimated that between 50,000 and 60,000 children have substance or drug-abusing parents, of whom between 10,000 and 20,000 live with those parents. The figures relating to alcohol dependency are probably higher.
Do you agree that we can offer genuine support to the most vulnerable young people and those who are most likely to be the victims of abuse only if we have a much more accurate picture of the scale of the problem?
It would certainly be useful to have more accurate figures on the prevalence of such problems, not least because we want to measure the performance of our policies and programmes. We can do that accurately only if we can identify the prevalence levels before and after, to assess the impact of the work that we are doing.
What work has the Scottish Government undertaken in the past 18 months to accurately map the picture?
We have a number of work streams, particularly on the health side and in my colleague Fergus Ewing's department, which deal with drug abuse. Work is in progress across Government to try to increase accuracy about the prevalence of such problems.
What exactly are you doing?
That is what we are doing—we are conducting appropriate research to come up with figures on the prevalence of drug misuse and alcohol abuse in the country.
You told me in response to earlier questions that you are the minister with overall responsibility for child protection matters.
Yes.
Yet you cannot tell me what work the Scottish Government is doing to accurately account for the number of children living with parents who are either substance misusers or alcohol dependent.
Work is in progress in the Scottish Government to analyse and produce more accurate prevalence figures, which were what you were asking for.
What exactly is that work? You said that Fergus Ewing was doing something and that something was happening in health, but you did not give me the details. As you are the minister with overall responsibility for child protection, I thought that your level of knowledge would have been more detailed.
You probably recall that we launched a new approach to our drugs and substance misuse strategy last year, which was published in "The Road to Recovery: A New Approach to Tackling Scotland's Drug Problem". As you will see in that document, a significant review of drugs policy has been undertaken by the Scottish Government and we are developing a new approach. As I said, the work that is being done includes work to establish the scope and scale of the problem and the prevalence of drugs misuse in our society. I do not know what further detail you are looking for in that regard.
Perhaps you might want to write to the committee after today's meeting to tell us exactly when that work began, when it will be completed and what its remit is, so that we know what you are attempting to do.
A project board has been set up to engage Scottish Government officials, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, third sector organisations and those who are particularly involved in child protection. The board is to be the backdrop and driver of the action plan in "The Road to Recovery", which was published last summer. A section in that document is dedicated to children who are affected by substance-misusing families. It focuses initially on drug misusing, but it opens up to consider those who are affected by alcohol misuse.
Would you be willing to provide the committee with an update in writing?
Certainly.
The e-brief that you issued this week, which tells your constituents in Ayrshire what you have been doing on their behalf, suggested that one way forward might be to get an accurate picture. That strikes me as somewhat odd. If the Government were truly committed to getting the right picture, you might have said that you were doing something about the issue, rather than that getting an accurate picture might be an idea.
That is a cheap shot, convener. I do not appreciate such sourcing of material. When I speak to my constituents, I take a broad-brush approach. Rather than going into detail with them, I indicate what we need to do to address the root causes of the problems in our society. Gathering figures is important, but it is not the fundamental reason for the position in which we find ourselves. That is the issue on which we need to concentrate.
Gathering figures may not be the root cause of the problem that we face, but if we have no real understanding of the extent and prevalence of the problem, we cannot commit to it the correct level of resources and attention, so that we can deal with it effectively. That is the point that I am trying to make to you.
You are not making it terribly well. We are well aware of the scale of the problem—professionals are dealing with it day in, day out. As I indicated, we are undertaking research that will enable us to gather more accurate information. We recognise the deep-rooted nature and scale of the problem and the impact that it is having on services across the country. It is right at the top of our list of priorities.
Those are fine words, but they do nothing to reassure people and demonstrate to them that you are taking real action.
I dispute that.
If you could evidence the position, you might be able to explain it better.
I am well aware of the good work that nurture groups do. During previous sessions, I helped the Nurture Group Network to make presentations to MSPs and encouraged Peter Peacock to take up the initiative.
Because you believe in that approach, I am sure you will agree that it can be quite costly. Does the Scottish Government have any plans to give local authorities the money to develop that type of service?
Local authorities have the money to develop that type of service if they choose to do so. As you are well aware, with the ring-fenced money that we have handed over, we have adopted a different approach to the top-down one. Indeed, a large part of the education budget that was previously under the control of ministers has been passed to local authorities. Local authorities have extra leeway to introduce such an approach if it suits their local circumstances.
You would have no objection if a local authority thought that it was more appropriate to develop a network of nurture services than to provide free school meals for children in primary 1, 2 and 3.
It is not an either/or situation—they can do both.
But if local authorities say that they cannot do both, you would have no problem with them using local need as the driver for the delivery of their services.
Local authorities have signed up to a commitment, under the concordat with the Scottish Government, that they will deliver certain commitments, including the introduction of free schools meals. They have done that of their own accord. I am afraid that I would not agree with any local authority that turned round now and said, "We can't do other things because of that." Local authorities have increased flexibility in their funding, and the two initiatives are certainly not mutually exclusive.
Obviously, local authorities such as mine have a slightly different view on that.
You have seen our plans in the shape of the early years framework that we published prior to Christmas. There was also a parliamentary debate earlier this year. The early years framework calls for a range of actions to be taken at local authority and community planning partnership level to move towards prevention and early intervention measures, and, over time, away from the sort of system that we have now, which is defined by crisis intervention.
Is the Government committed to any programme of investment or training, particularly for midwives and health visitors, to help them identify those mothers and to be confident that they are signposting women to the appropriate services and that they are following things up if the women do not take their advice first time round?
There is a wide range of training opportunities. I welcome the move to interagency training. In essence, we have an early years workforce with the same vision and values. Those workers can communicate meaningfully with each other across professional boundaries. I saw a good example of that when I visited Renfrewshire yesterday and met a team that was composed of a health visitor, a drugs outreach worker and a social worker who work together effectively to deal with extremely difficult cases. It is about reaching out to the people who are not accessing services in the way that we want them to and encouraging and supporting them to do so. That is vital work and the Government supports it absolutely.
If there is no duty to identify these children, is there a possibility that, despite the best efforts of the professionals who are committed to doing the job, some children will fall through the net and will not be picked up early enough? Therefore, in addition to all the commitments and support, might it be appropriate to place a duty on agencies to identify these children when they engage with them?
The fundamental raison d'être of these services is to identify these children. I do not think that they need to have a duty placed on them to reach out to vulnerable groups. As I said, there are many statutory obligations on service providers; there are a host of laws and regulations. I do not think that we need any more burdens in that regard. It is more about the practical steps forward and the development of services. We have to break down some of the barriers around organisational culture and the like. That is where we have to make progress.
We have been saying that for quite some time, but we still do not make enough progress.
We are making progress. I am very encouraged by the getting it right for every child approach, to which people are signing up. Nearly a quarter of local authorities have, off their own bat, followed up on the getting it right for every child pathfinders. The Government is spending something like £2 million a year on that piloting work. We are certainly seeing an increase in momentum throughout the country to move towards integrated children's services in the application of getting it right for every child. We are doing everything in our power to ensure that that trend quickens and that we make progress. I am highly encouraged by the enthusiasm of front-line professionals up and down the country for that agenda and by their commitment to it.
Like you, I do not doubt the commitment of front-line workers; I am just not entirely convinced that the level of priority that the issue deserves is being attached to it.
I will follow up briefly on the convener's 10 or 15 minutes of questions. What, if any, detailed figures or methods of assessing and analysing the number of vulnerable children that we have in our society were in place when you came into post?
None.
None. Thank you.
Good morning, minister. I would like to turn our attention to qualitative improvements. You rightly stated in your opening address that there is a need to ensure that we value social workers. It came through strongly in an evidence session with key stakeholders that they sometimes feel that they are in a difficult position because of the media whirlwind that surrounds social work, particularly given some of the recent cases to have hit Scotland and south of the border.
We should not have knee-jerk reactions to situations in which things have gone wrong and immediately blame the professionals who have dealt with difficult cases. We must recognise that the nature of our society has not been determined by the professionals who have to deal with the problems that arise from a highly significant sub-culture, in which drug misuse, alcohol abuse and domestic abuse and violence are endemic. Those professionals are the people on the front line who are trying to prevent the same damage from being done to the next generation.
Do you agree with the witness who said that one of the difficulties is the contracts culture in local authorities? If short-term help needs to be given to vulnerable families, doing so on a contract basis is sometimes not the most efficient way of going about it. Do you agree that that is a problem?
A lot of good creative and innovative work is done by voluntary organisations. One of the obvious frustrations is in their having to renegotiate contracts every two to three years. We need to devise better mechanisms that will allow people to work consistently over the long term without being sidetracked by that problem.
The situation is exactly as you said: some of the voluntary sector's representations have said that although contractors often do good work, the work does not always continue for the time that is required and it does not always target the right problem because of the way in which recompense can be made. When you say that you are reviewing the matter, will you clarify whether you are looking at specific alternatives to contracts?
The work is not terribly well-developed yet, but we are looking at a public-social partnership approach between the third sector and local authorities' community planning partnerships. I am not in a position to develop the detail of that for you, but I can certainly follow—
Without going into the detail, do you see that happening in the context of the concordat with local authorities or would it happen outside that context, thereby allowing more freedom to examine other outcomes?
I see it being done in the context of the community planning partnership areas, which would provide guidance to community planning partners on developing such an approach.
Would that mean continuation of the current funding basis so that local authorities would largely be in charge of funding?
We are hoping that the community planning partnerships will progress to using shared budgets and the like in the longer run. That is perhaps ambitious, but it is the direction of travel that we want to take.
I am pleased to hear it, because that is one way of raising the necessary money. I share the concern of other committee members that short-term help to vulnerable families might get cut by local authorities because it is sometimes not seen as a priority. In the light of the sadness of recent events, a great difficulty for people is that contracting is not always particularly efficient and that is not fair to the people who are working in social services. An alternative approach might ensure just that bit more accountability in the system, which would be very encouraging.
I agree with you up to a point, in so far as that has been the case historically. The funding of early years services, for example, has been sketchy down the years. It is my intention and purpose to raise awareness that prevention through early intervention is the key to tackling the kinds of social problems that are all too evident around us. It is my intention to push implementation of the early years framework right to the top of the agenda for community planning partners, so that in the future those services get funding that will pay off enormously in the long run by reducing pressure on the health service, on the criminal justice system and the like. We really must take such a leap.
What is the rough timescale for looking at this alternative of better partnerships?
We are currently engaged in that across the Government. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, John Swinney, is looking at a number of initiatives on the relationship with the third sector. That work is on-going. Perhaps I could write to you with further information.
It would be helpful to know the timescale.
I want to pick up on a few things that my colleague Liz Smith raised in her questions. I have always been interested in the awareness-raising campaigns that we have had. We recently had the one that reminded us that the child needs us to speak up for them. What does the Government have planned in terms of running further awareness-raising campaigns or funding those that are being run now?
We currently fund a national child protection helpline. You might recall the campaign featuring the child in the telephone box, which I thought was extremely effective. We are currently evaluating the campaign and how effective the helpline is. The local child protection committees have funding to raise awareness of where one should go if one has concerns about child protection—they provide local contact numbers and that work is on-going. The ADSW and the national social work services forum are working to raise awareness of social work services across the board. We are pushing forward the agenda in a number of areas.
I think that you are going to speak at an event on 1 April, which I am hosting. I have a personal commitment to the issue, given my professional background.
Surely. I think the Scottish Government is spending something like £35 million a year on college courses for social workers and social care staff. As you know, social care staff and social workers in particular are required to register with the Scottish Social Services Council. As part of that process, social workers are required to do something like 15 days—90 hours—of training in the three-year period before they are required to re-register. Included in that is five days training on child protection procedures.
We have also launched the continuous learning framework, which is about considering what skills professionals need to do different tasks and participate in different teams. They can also plan, or contribute to, their own development through the framework, which we continue to roll out.
That is really positive.
I will ask some questions on personalisation. I note that the final meeting of the work group on personalisation is tomorrow and that a paper is due in April. How will that agenda be taken forward?
That is part of the changing lives agenda that fits well with our approach of trying to improve outcomes for individuals, families and communities, which involves marshalling resources around the individual and his or her needs and allowing them to determine what kind of service they can acquire for their particular circumstances. It is also in line with other agendas, such as getting it right for every child.
I have another question, which follows on from what you said about the pace at which personalisation is being delivered. At the round-table evidence session that we held, the comment was made that personalisation can mean all things to all people. We reckon that different authorities are moving at different paces. Do you envisage personalisation being heavily locally led, or do you think that service users should have an understanding of what they can expect from personalisation?
It is a bit of both. Two or three elements are necessary. First, we need leadership to push the agenda forward. The quality of leadership and management of social work services at local level is important, but local engagement is necessary, too. For me, another encouraging feature of the changing lives agenda is how practitioners at local level are coming together in local practitioner fora to discuss the way forward that has been set for the service.
I have a wee bit of information to add on the work of the service development group which is, as Claire Baker said, having its final meeting tomorrow. It is made up of representatives from the voluntary sector, private providers, social work and the inspectorates. Its members have been agonising over the personalisation agenda for the past 18 months or so.
The working group has its final meeting tomorrow. The minister said that there has been fairly slow progress in delivering personalisation, although we accept that some authorities are further ahead than others. Is there a timescale for when you would like all authorities to be taking that approach? Will the working group monitor the situation or provide evaluation?
Part of the discussion tomorrow will be about the group's on-going role in keeping the agenda alive. The group will not necessarily meet formally, other than perhaps on an ad-hoc basis. There will be a discussion about what role the group might take back at the ranch and what role it will have in keeping the issue out there by speaking at seminars or local practitioner fora.
At the round-table discussion, it was suggested that the Government should review the national care standards to ensure that they are up-to-date and that they take account of personalisation.
We are about to start that process.
The other issue that came up was around direct payments and how people could be better supported. There is quite a low uptake of direct payments, so that process could be improved.
That is part of the process that Catherine Rainey described. It is clear that we need to push that forward. It is very much part of the self-directed support agenda.
Work is going on around self-directed support. There has been research on issues around the uptake of direct payments and what is causing people problems. We will examine that when all the details are available. That sits primarily in the health agenda, so we are working with health officials. They have identified test sites and are checking out various feedback that they have received. One aspect that is being examined is leadership and management issues. Is it the case that self-directed support work—direct payments work—is not being presented properly, so that clients want to take up such support, or do clients feel that they do not have the capacity to run with that? Do they need more support and help? The test sites are being committed to for two years in order to bring together some learning around the issue and—with ad-hoc work—to help paint the picture.
Somebody in the room has a BlackBerry or a mobile phone switched on. I remind everyone that all such devices should be switched off for the duration of the meeting because they interfere with the sound system.
"Changing Lives" recommended improvements to the commissioning of services from the voluntary and private sectors. One of the major themes that came out of our round-table session was the concern that commissioning from the voluntary sector was perhaps not working as well as was envisaged and that it had been driven by procurement regulations rather than partnership working. What steps is the Scottish Government taking to ensure that procurement regulations do not get in the way of the delivery of better care?
I refer that question to my colleague Catherine Rainey.
There have been concerns. I give Annie Gunner Logan a name check; I suspect that she was, quite rightly, at the forefront of that discussion. She is concerned that there is a tension between the personalisation approaches that we have talked about and the drive for value for money through the commissioning approaches.
Okay. What performance measures have been put in place to ensure integrated working across all policy areas?
SWIA always considers the commissioning process in its inspections. It has developed a self-evaluation guide, which was published in February this year, to help the scrutiny process and the move to taking a lighter touch, with more robust local systems. The guide is based very much on the EQFM model, which considers the impact on users, processes, leadership and management as well as measures of improvement. SWIA recognises that commissioning in particular has been a difficult area and the self-evaluation that it is working on will potentially be published some time over the summer.
Sorry, but what is the EQFM model? I am not familiar with the jargon in this area, nor am I convinced that all my colleagues are.
It is the European quality foundation model, which is all about quality organisations and how they look at their approach to services and delivery.
In my constituency, there are clear tensions in the relationship between the local authority social work department and the health board. I know that there are community health partnerships, community planning partnerships and so on, but there still seems to be an issue about how organisations work together in specific areas. Finance is clearly a major issue because although the organisations are theoretically willing to work with each other, when it comes to deciding who stumps up the money, the co-operation tends not to be as forthcoming as one would wish, shall we say. What role does the Scottish Government have in trying to smooth over such matters? Indeed, do you feel that you have a role? Do you think that matters are best resolved locally, if possible? My concern is that that is not happening.
We want the community planning partnership approach to develop, as I indicated to Elizabeth Smith, although that development is very much in the early stages. I referred to breaking down cross-organisational boundaries in the delivery of services, and particularly in the delivery of child protection services, through building teams and relationships at the local level.
Yes. I was on the social work committee of Glasgow City Council from 1995 to 1999, and that issue is as relevant now as it was then, although more than a decade has passed. Some progress has been made, but major issues still exist. There has been much talk about cross-cutting work and so on, but I am not convinced that that happens in the way that it should.
We have introduced a new dynamic into all that with the advent of the single outcome agreements. I agree that it is early days for any evidence of changed behaviour or cultures. However, I am hopeful that every area of the single outcome agreements will be negotiated and agreed between all the local community planning partners—there is an ownership that means that each agency and partner is for the whole agenda. That might help to break down some of the barriers about which you spoke, such as the important barriers to sharing budgets.
The interface with health was mentioned. Some 40 community health partnerships have been set up throughout Scotland. They have been configured in slightly different ways in different areas, and some have different management and financial structures. A review of those partnerships is due to report in spring 2010 and the hope is that we can draw some learning from it about how the partnerships have worked on the ground—where there have been successes and how we can use budgets more collaboratively, and whether the partnerships have pooled them formally. We hope that the review will give us some pointers as to which areas could benefit from strengthening.
I would like to shift the focus to leadership. We heard from the round-table witnesses that the "Changing Lives" report talked about leadership at all levels and that we should not concentrate solely on the role of the chief social worker. How do you intend to improve leadership across all levels of social work?
One of the major drivers of the changing lives agenda is the need for social work to take a leadership role, given the level of social fragmentation and the other problems that we have. Products in the changing lives programmes include those in the leadership framework, which I hope will help to deal with some of the issues in the profession to which you refer. Leadership is obviously of major importance—it is critical that people take responsibility for pulling people together.
There will be a conference at the end of March on leadership and management as they relate to the framework that the minister mentioned. A range of stakeholders have been invited, and they will talk about the best ways to help roll forward some of the learning and its practical application.
We also heard from witnesses that that quality of leadership was much more prevalent at all levels in other professions, such as nursing. Will other professions' practice be considered at the conference so that you can adapt and adopt it in social work?
Very much so. The whole public sector leadership agenda involves a set of commonalities across the piece. We are keen for people to be interchangeable. If someone moves from a health body to a social care body in a local authority, common values and common core areas should exist, so that that is not a relearning exercise. The approach should not differ, whether someone works in a local authority or in the health sector. At the high level, we want a common core and common values.
Another comment that was made at the round-table session was that leadership courses and development activities were seen as part of progression into management and as career stepping stones, and not so much as being about developing leadership in a team or in the workforce. Will that also be a common theme throughout the conference, if it is to be a place at which you can exchange ideas and take on board different views from the social work workforce?
That will certainly be covered at the conference. We mentioned the continuous learning framework, which has been published and which people are adopting. It provides a methodology for social workers to progress their careers. Leadership and how to lead are very much part of that process.
One leader that was identified in social work was the practice teacher. We heard that having too great a workload was one barrier to social workers taking on another student or learning to teach students about their job. However, we also heard that the workload issue was patchy and that providing practice learning was a part of every social worker's duty—it is a part of their job, regardless of their workload. Will you deal with the barriers to practice teaching, to encourage more of it and make it easier for social workers to balance their workload with giving a student a full, rounded and well-done learning experience?
In the first instance, organising the optimal arrangements for students is a management task in social work departments. I do not know whether we have other initiatives on the issue.
As Aileen Campbell said, the quality of practice learning placements and people's ability to connect well can be patchy. A group that morphed out of the workforce group is considering workforce issues that go wider than the changing lives agenda. We repopulated the group with people from social services, the health sector, the education sector and the funding council. The group is run by the SSSC, with our involvement. It has had only a preliminary meeting to think about the big issues. One big issue is children's services, but another that was picked up is practice learning, which the group might consider in the round, particularly as the funding council and higher education institutions are represented on it.
As has been said, concerns were raised in our evidence session last month about the clash between procurement regulations and the personalisation agenda, and about partnership working. From Ms Rainey's earlier answers, I got the impression that local authorities are trying to manage the tensions, but what is the Government doing about procurement regulations, which are Government documents?
I do not know precisely what we are doing in that regard, or whether Catherine Rainey can help, but I can come back to you with some detail.
I am not expecting chapter and verse. I would expect local authorities to respond to those concerns, but I hope that the Government can, too. If the Government is giving out two signals—one on procurement and one on personalisation—and if local authorities are being dominated by one rather than the other, the Government could address that.
Yes, but the question is how to do that.
Stephen Smellie from Unison told us that Unison had carried out a survey, on a range of issues, with the Scottish Personal Assistant Employers Network. He also said that he had sought a discussion with the civil service and the Government, but that no one had picked up the phone.
Oh dear.
Research in this area has been carried out by people who are directly involved in it. It seems that, rather than just leaving things to local authorities, the Government could take a lead. It should be a national initiative.
There was a timing issue—well, as a civil servant, I would say that. An inquiry came in, moved around, and then settled. Work will be taken forward. Colleagues in health, in particular, have the remit for self-directed support, and they have been working with SPAEN. They have been considering the research and will bring in elements of their own research. A project board will oversee the work. I hope that that addresses Stephen Smellie's concern. We have picked up on the issue; the problem was simply one of fitting it in with the work that was going to be done on self-directed support.
That is great.
Matters of pay and conditions are for those who are contracting—clearly, that does not include the Government. However, what you say concerns me. I want the rewards for and the status of the social care workforce to rise. One impetus for that is the registration requirements that we are pushing forward with most sections of the social care workforce through the SSSC. Post-registration training, and all the rest of it, goes along with that. Enhancing the skills and qualifications of a workforce should lead to an increase in the rewards for and the status of that workforce in due course. The problem is of long standing and we perhaps need to address it more systematically. I hope that putting these issues higher up the priority list for community planning partners and local agencies will help. I am afraid that I do not have any easy answers on that front.
I agree that we are talking about long-standing problems and difficulties. One issue that was raised with us was that if the training and qualifications of the workforce, particularly in private providers, are improved, the workers leave and join the local authority providers, because the pay is better and they get better pensions and so on. Is there a forum that is used to address or discuss that, or to keep it on the agenda? I believe that there is a body that negotiates care home payments, although I am not sure whether the Government is part of that. I know that that is not to do with staff pay and conditions, but, rather, the rate that is paid to care home providers. There is still a differential between the local authority rates and the rates of voluntary and private providers. Is the Government part of that forum? Is there an alternative body on which the Government sits, along with the private and voluntary sector providers, to discuss pay and conditions?
I cannot think of one.
I know that colleagues in the health area are particularly involved in the care home regulations and related issues, but I do not know whether they sit on bodies to discuss the issues that you are talking about. I would need to check whether there is full Government engagement or just oversight. Obviously, work is done with the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care, which provides evidence on what it finds, which is picked up by colleagues. I would need to check whether there is a formal forum on which the Government sits to talk about these things.
The body that negotiates care home rates is made up of COSLA and care home providers, not the Government.
I believe so.
You might sit on it as observers—or perhaps not even that—but that is it.
I would need to check.
I do not think so.
That concludes our questions today. Thank you very much for your attendance. The committee looks forward to receiving in due course the written information that you have said that you will provide.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—