Children and Young People (Services)
Good morning. Our first item of business is a debate on motion S1M-3698, in the name of Irene McGugan, on children's and young people's services in Scotland. I invite members who want to take part in the debate to indicate that now.
I start with a quotation that is at the heart of the Executive's programme:
"Ensuring every young person gets the best possible start in life."
I am sure no one in the chamber disagrees with that worthy aspiration. However, we are concerned that too many of Scotland's vulnerable young people are being failed. We consider it to be such a serious issue that we have committed the entire morning to debating services for children and young people.
Huge numbers of children are in need of such services. Last year, 310,000 of Scotland's children were living in poverty—an increase of 2 per cent on the previous year. The most recent report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, "Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Scotland", was published this month. It concluded that, during the seven years from 1994 to 2001,
"the overall sense is one of little change".
There are many more children in need: the number of referrals to the children's hearings system on the ground of care and protection increased by 93 per cent between 1995 and 2001. There are still more children in need: the number of looked-after children increased by 3 per cent from the previous year, to 11,200 in 2001-02. There are even more children in need: the latest figures show that 1,942 children were in residential accommodation as of 31 March last year—only 14 fewer children than in the previous year.
Contrary to the Executive's plan, for the past three years there has been a net, year-on-year increase in the number of looked-after children in some local authorities. The majority of those authorities report severe difficulties finding and paying for placements for children who require substitute family care. Indeed, the fostering network estimates that we need about 650 more placements if we are to provide suitable families for all looked-after children.
We know that tackling the underlying social problems that face many families, of which poverty is the most significant, would immediately improve the life chances of those children. Poverty and disadvantage are common features in the family histories of most children who are referred to the children's hearings system. We know the proportion of looked-after children in the population varies considerably between local authority areas. East Renfrewshire has the fewest and Glasgow City has the most—the figures are, respectively, 3.2 and 21.5 per 1,000 of the population aged 0 to 17. That is another clear link to poverty, which denies children in Scotland their basic rights as citizens and often means physical, emotional or intellectual impairment and a lifetime of lost opportunity.
I remind members of some Labour promises. Chancellor Gordon Brown promised on 26 March 1999 that there would be a £500 million strategy to reduce the number of children in poverty in Scotland by 60,000. Also in 1999, the Prime Minister committed the United Kingdom Government to halving child poverty over the next 10 years and abolishing it within a generation. The following year, the Scottish Executive asserted in its "Programme for Government" that it would reduce the number of children in poverty by 100,000. We have had a promise, a commitment and an assertion—but that is all we have had.
Poverty on such a scale in this country is no less than a scandal. Eradication of poverty is not only a moral imperative; it should be a practical and affordable possibility for a modern Scotland that values its young people.
The continuing problems of youth crime and the expanding need for child protection services that I will go on to discuss are also symptomatic of the wider social justice issues of rising poverty and the growing opportunity gap.
If Irene McGugan accepts that there is a link between poverty and children in need, would she care to comment on the difference between absolute poverty, which is reducing in Scotland, and relative poverty, the figures for which she has been using? During the years between the wars, crime figures were lower, although poverty levels were obviously much higher than they are now. Will she also comment on the difference between those figures and the figures for the post-war world generally? The issue may be more complex than she suggests.
Robert Brown should be aware that redefining poverty does not make the least bit of difference. All those children are in poverty in Scotland today and little has been done to alleviate the situation.
It seemed appropriate to focus on youth justice and child protection in the debate, following the publication of three recent reports—the child protection review, the youth justice audit and the report into children's hearings. Those are well-researched, evidence-based documents, and I am pleased that the Executive's amendment seems to indicate that it will take on board the recommendations that have been made. That is perhaps a more gracious and considered response than that of the First Minister to the child protection review.
Both of the substantial reports that deal with youth offending call for a specific commitment of resources to supply services to tackle offending behaviour—we have been calling for that since 1997. Less than 40 per cent of youth justice spend is directed at tackling offending behaviour; the remainder is spent on prosecution and the decision-making process. I agree with the recommendation that the Executive should review whether there should be a shift in that balance. As with poverty, the Scottish Executive has promised much but delivered little. We have had an advisory group report on youth crime, but we never got the promised national strategy on youth crime. We now have an action plan on youth crime, but there has not been much action so far.
Some of my colleagues will discuss youth justice further, but I want to move on to mention child protection services, where there is clear evidence of increased need and pressure on diminished resources. Ever-increasing numbers of children are being placed on child protection registers. Last year, about 7,000 cases were referred to social workers, resulting in 2,018 children being placed on child protection registers—an increase on the previous year. The findings of the child protection audit and review confirmed that some children were indeed falling through the net. Half of all children at risk of abuse or neglect were not properly protected, and of the 188 cases examined, 40 children were not protected and a further 62 were only partially protected. Children's needs were judged to have been met well in just 24 cases. No one can be satisfied with that.
I welcome the reports' recommendations and hope that the Executive will move speedily to implement them. Although a number of the recommendations refer to child protection committees and make various suggestions for improvement, I would like to add one more suggestion for the minister's consideration. I suggest that those committees should have a statutory basis. That would instantly award them increased status and would be much more reflective of the important role that they play in child protection. It would also mean that they would be better resourced and would deliver a uniformly high-quality service throughout the country. That is something that we all want, and I would be interested to hear the minister's views on that.
At the launch of the child protection review, the First Minister decided to act tough—not tough on the causes of the crisis, but tough only on child protection social workers. The review offers substantial evidence that good and effective work is being done by the agencies involved. However, rather than acknowledge their achievement and encourage them to build on and improve it, the First Minister attempted to shift the blame for the acute crisis in children's services on to the services. At a time when professionals urgently need support from the Government, his response was to pass the buck, deride the front-line professionals and undermine his Executive's recruitment campaign.
I will briefly consider that recruitment campaign, which was called "care in Scotland" and billed as a major investment by the Executive to raise the profile of social care and attract people into the sector. The campaign lasted for four weeks and probably passed unnoticed by most MSPs. Four weeks is a short time to turn round a situation that has been developing for the best part of a decade, during which staffing has collapsed from 40,000 to 34,000 and many have opted to leave the sector entirely or to switch to work in the voluntary sector to escape bureaucracy and crushing work loads. The advertisements focused on social care in general, although the pressing need is to attract people into front-line children's services. Perhaps resources could have been better targeted.
Tackling the poor public image of social work goes only part of the way to solving the problems. The British Association of Social Workers has said that many potential recruits are deterred by the lack of an attractive career structure, enormous work loads and a lack of financial recognition for demanding work. As yet, there has been no action to tackle those issues.
Regardless of the success or otherwise of the campaign—even with those flaws—the First Minister's derisory and threatening comments to those in child protection damaged the campaign and further demoralised those who are trying to protect children in increasingly difficult circumstances. Such an approach completely negates the serious staffing and resource issues that exist. The child protection review found that outcomes for children were highly dependent on social work doing well and maintained that social work plays the most instrumental role in child protection. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the recommendations of the child protection audit and review that will tackle head-on, or even indirectly, the appalling lack of resources—particularly staffing—that departments are experiencing.
I want to consider funding. While the Executive increases ring-fenced spending on the changing children's services fund, for example, to promote better integration of services—a perfectly commendable aim that the SNP supports—core funding for children and families services is grossly neglected. The Association of Directors of Social Work undertook an analysis of the budget spend on children's services in social work in Scotland for 1999-2000, which indicated that local authorities planned to spend £324 million on children's services. That was more than a third more—36 per cent, in fact, or £85 million—than the total provided in grant-aided expenditure. Average spend above GAE on children's services by local authorities in 2001-02 was 45 per cent, with 10 local authorities spending more than 100 per cent above GAE. That issue was also mentioned in the Audit Scotland report, which recommended that the Executive should address the inconsistencies between GAE and budgets.
I now turn to recruitment and retention. The latest Executive statistics show that an average of 10.7 per cent of children and families social work posts throughout Scotland are vacant. In the year 2000-01, when Jack McConnell was in charge of children's issues, there was an 8 per cent rise in the number of children referred to local authorities for child protection. At the same time, the number of vacancies for field social workers working with children more than doubled.
An SNP survey of local authorities in the summer of 2001 highlighted the recruitment issues and called for a McCrone-style review of pay and conditions. We carried out a quick update of the situation for this debate and received 18 responses within days. The minister will be interested to know that 17 of the 18 local authorities that responded think that the situation has worsened in the past 15 to 18 months. Current vacancies within child care teams are as high as 50 per cent in some areas; in many cases, no applications are received for advertised vacant posts. Teams that have achieved their full staffing complement think that doing so is a short-term solution at the expense of other local authorities. All are forced into a bidding war for graduates. One local authority stated that
"any council's success is another council's deepening problem."
Many authorities think that the move to integrated services, although welcome, resulted in staff leaving the front line, as pay and conditions are better in initiatives such as the community schools initiative and sure start. The Executive needs to appreciate that it is relatively easy to put resources into children's services, but that staff are needed if services are to continue to be delivered. In some local authority areas, there are hundreds of unallocated cases.
Most local authorities think that the introduction of the four-year degree would exacerbate the staffing problem in the medium term and would reduce options for mature students who wish to enter the profession. Many local authorities call for Executive-funded training places for existing staff. Most important, there are calls for a clear national strategy and for better recognition from the Executive.
I will quote some comments that we received. One local authority said:
"in the absence of a national strategy, the current problems are being exacerbated by local authorities competing against each other for scarce resources".
Another noted:
"I feel the Executive missed an opportunity to begin to address this at the publication of the recent child protection review. Instead it emphasised the failings of the system and in effect was a catalogue of reasons why childcare"
social work
"is a job you would not recommend".
Another said:
"we know from speaking to students and graduates that the final remuneration for"
social workers,
"the perceived lack of status and media criticism of the work, make it an unattractive option compared with other professions".
Finally, one authority said:
"the lengthy time-scale taken to provide new opportunities for training in social work has caused major confusion and a lack of confidence in the profession".
It should be remembered that those are not the SNP's criticisms of the Executive and the lack of progress, although plenty of grounds for such criticism exist. Those are comments from the workers who are most affected.
It is patent that the roll-out of the Executive's action plan for social services must step up a gear and be more targeted if it is to begin to address the severe recruitment and retention problems in child care and in social work as a whole. One of the plan's flaws is that it does not address pay and conditions. Hardly anybody wants to do front-line child protection work. We must make it more attractive, and conditions of service are key to achieving that.
It is interesting that both youth justice reports confirm the staffing crisis in criminal justice and children's services social work and note a lack of staff to deal with young offenders. Many children are not allocated a social worker and do not receive the supervision that they need to stop them offending. That is the issue. I am not just making a plea for better wages for social workers; every one of the hundreds of unallocated cases means that a vulnerable child is not receiving the support that he or she needs when he or she is most in need.
We need more urgent action and supportive leadership from the Executive to help to solve the acute crisis in the recruitment and retention of social workers for children and families. We suggest a review of pay and conditions and proper resourcing of integrated children's services to halt the drain of workers from the front line of child protection to the other initiatives that have more funding or better conditions.
The BASW recommends a career structure that keeps good-quality, front-line staff at the front line; strategic planning in the short and long term following the introduction of the new degree; and political and economic backing for a work force that is asked to work on some of society's most difficult issues.
The question for the Executive is whether enough has been done to prevent people from leaving the work force early and to attract young people into a rewarding and challenging career. To achieve a confident and competent work force, more is needed than tinkering, golden hellos and career grades that are linked to greater work loads. Staff need to feel valued and rewarded for their work.
I turn to the two amendments to the motion. The Executive does not like to take on board ideas and suggestions from other parties, but simply rewording the SNP's motion and presenting that as the Executive's amendment is a bit of a discredit to the Parliament. It is much to be regretted that the Tories cannot rise above the hang-'em-and-flog-'em mentality that lost them much ground when they were last in power and which will continue to lose them friends and voters now.
Services for children and young people are struggling to cope, so they are not meeting their young clients' needs. The common features are a failure to deal with poverty and disadvantage and a shortage of resources—particularly staffing. Until those matters are adequately addressed, services will remain unsatisfactory.
The First Minister said recently:
"If, in the twenty-first century, government in Scotland cannot protect children who are in the most vulnerable of circumstances then government in Scotland does not deserve to exist."
If he meant that, he ought to recognise his own and his Government's abject failure and step down.
I move,
That the Parliament commends the recent reports into children's services of the Child Protection Audit and Review, It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright, Audit Scotland, Dealing with offending by young people and the Scottish Committee of the Council on Tribunals, Special Report on the Children's Hearings System; notes in particular the references to the need to address urgently the crisis in the recruitment and retention of social workers; urges the Scottish Executive to give serious consideration to this matter and to the other recommendations in the reports and to act upon them; agrees that, when implemented, the recommendations would offer substantial improvements to the services for our most vulnerable children and young people; recommends bringing forward legislation to provide a statutory basis for child protection committees thereby ensuring increased status and resources and uniformly high quality services across the country, and recognises the need for the Scottish Executive to tackle once and for all the underlying social problems which disfigure our nation by limiting the chances of Scottish children, too many of whom continue to live in poverty.
I acknowledge that, although the Scottish National Party motion and our amendment are not identical, they cover a lot of the same ground. That was meant to highlight the fact that no one party or individual has a monopoly on caring about children and young people. Indeed, there were many points in Irene McGugan's speech with which I could agree.
I wish to concentrate on one main theme: focusing on the needs of the child, not those of the services involved. As is highlighted in the various reports that have been referred to—both in the motion and in our amendment—we need to spend less time satisfying the needs of bureaucracy and more time working with the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children, their families and communities. We need to continue to work to close the opportunity gap.
I have no difficulty with the fact that the SNP motion and Irene McGugan's speech commented on child poverty. Children living in poverty and disadvantage risk missing out on the opportunities and the quality of life that they deserve and they might achieve less as they grow up and later in life, which sustains cycles of poverty.
That is why we have nailed our colours to the mast on this issue. We are committed to tackling child poverty and its effects. To end child poverty in a generation was indeed an ambitious and courageous target for any Government to set, but I would rather that we had that aspiration than that we just sit back and do nothing.
The social justice annual report shows how we are working towards our long-term targets and milestones. In 1997, 34 per cent, or one in three of the population, was in poverty. That proportion has been reduced to 21 per cent in 2002, which is one in five—a 40 per cent reduction. That may be an achievement, but it is still one in five too many, and we have a long way to go.
Every Executive minister, in every portfolio, is contributing to closing that opportunity gap through the Scottish budget. The best route out of poverty, as those of us who have lived and worked in disadvantaged areas all our lives know very well, is through education and getting into employment. The new deal is helping lone parents to work if they want to do so. Through the child care tax credit, families on low incomes are now getting financial support for their child care costs, which helps parents to get into employment or training. By 2006 we will be providing £54.9 million through the child care strategy and sure start Scotland. We are expanding on existing provision, building on our commitment to pre-school places, and supporting out-of-school care.
Much of what is in the recently published reports echoes what was contained in "For Scotland's children: Better integrated children's services", including the need to join up services and work across departments and agencies. That is why I want there to be better integration of children's services among local authorities, national health service boards and the voluntary sector. We have set a target to be achieved by 2006: 15,000 vulnerable children under the age of five, every looked-after child, every pupil with special educational needs and every child on the child protection register will have an integrated package of health, care and education support that meets their needs. That is another challenging target, but it is absolutely the right aspiration to have.
I take the minister back to the issue of child poverty. Given what she has said, the minister presumably rebuts entirely the report of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, "Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Scotland", which concludes that, over the seven years from 1994 to 2000-01,
"the overall sense is one of little change".
She is therefore setting herself against the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on that matter. And before the minister starts on about absolute and relative poverty, she should perhaps also note the point made by the Scottish poverty information unit:
"Debates about poverty should not obscure the fact that the distinctions between ‘absolute' and ‘relative' poverty are largely irrelevant".
I will not set myself against the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. As Michael Russell will know, another report was published by the foundation this morning, which examines the picture across the United Kingdom. I am sure that during the debate and in summing up we will consider that in more detail.
Let us remember some of the other initiatives that are going on. There are the new community schools, free fruit schemes and breakfast clubs, which are all delivering for the children who most need our support. The educational maintenance allowance, which is to be rolled out, will allow more young people from low-income families to stay on at school and get the qualifications that they need for a better chance in life. Our children, particularly the most disadvantaged children, need a better start in life in their early years. They need better opportunities as they enter school and throughout adolescence, and they need better futures as they enter adulthood.
I do not accept that we are not making any progress; we are making progress, but we know that there is still more to do. I recognise that and do not shy away from it. However uncomfortable that is for us as politicians, it is critical for the children and families who have been failed in the past.
The recent child protection review and the recent reports by Audit Scotland and the Scottish Committee of the Council on Tribunals into youth justice and children's hearings highlight some clear lessons. They emphasise the impact of child poverty; the need to continue to focus on the most disadvantaged children; the need for services to work better together; the need for services to focus on what children really need; the importance of listening to children; and the need to concentrate on face-to-face work with children and families, rather than processes and the needs of the bureaucracy.
The Executive is trying to practise what it preaches. We have set up a new Cabinet sub-committee to oversee children's services. We have established the changing children's services fund—not to add to what is already being done, but to help to reform fundamentally services at local level. Following the most recent spending review, we will double the resources that are available to the fund.
We have brought together social work, schools, police inspectorates and others to work on the interagency audit and review of child protection. We will ensure they continue to work together. Irene McGugan spoke about placing child protection committees on a statutory basis. We should consider that proposal seriously and examine how it may best be done in the future. I want to explore a number of issues related to that.
The child protection review made painful reading. As a former social worker, I felt a sense of déjà vu. We have taken immediate action. We have introduced a three-year reform programme for child protection services. The First Minister has not attacked child protection services, as has been suggested. He has sent out the clear message that every agency—not just social work—has a role to play and must deliver. An expert team will oversee reform and tackle poor performance. If people are not improving services, it is right that we should tackle that problem, because children's lives are at risk. There will be a tough new inspection system to ensure that reform is delivered and a children's charter that sets out the support that every child has the right to expect. There will be additional investment in helplines such as ChildLine Scotland and ParentLine Scotland to allow them to reach more people.
I want to say something about social workers and, in particular, about the number of social work vacancies. I emphasise that this debate is not solely about social work services—it is about every service and agency. Everyone must find solutions, rather than assuming that child protection is a problem only for social work or for someone else.
In several authorities the level of social work vacancies is unacceptable. However, let us remember the facts. In 1999, there were 1,552 qualified social workers in local authorities working with children and families, but in 2001 there were 1,749 such workers. That represents an increase of about 13 per cent. Between 1999 and 2001, the number of fieldwork staff for children and families rose. Many people have moved from area teams to specialised projects, sometimes in the voluntary sector. It is ironic that additional funding that has been invested to expand services has not been matched by the necessary work-force planning. I want to address that problem.
Each year since 1999, the number of people entering social work training in Scotland has risen. In 2002 there were more than 200 more new students than in 1998. Between 1998 and 2002, the number of students completing courses has increased by 35 per cent—from 339 to 518. The number of people applying for social work training has also increased each year.
The early response to the recruitment campaign has been promising. Some people will say that the campaign is too little, too late. However, like many social workers—a number of members of the Parliament have worked in front-line social work—I believe that, when we face a problem, it is better to find a solution, to draw up a plan and to do something, rather than simply to complain. That is what we have done.
Does the minister agree that, although in some local authorities the number of vacancies for social work is unacceptably high, there was never a golden era of social work? Problems of recruitment and retention have been a recurring theme in social work in Scotland for the past 20 years. After I obtained my certificate of qualification in social work, I took a placement in West Lothian, under the Tory-controlled Lothian Regional Council. At that time there were vacancies and unallocated case loads.
A number of other members worked in the same area of social work in which I worked. None of us would recall that time as a golden age of social work. We recall the same kind of hard work, dilemmas and decisions that social workers face today. We had to work very hard to ensure that the quality of life of the people with whom we were working was improved. None of that has changed.
I want to return briefly to the recruitment campaign. The care in Scotland website has already attracted more than 21,000 visits. Early results from the System 3 surveys before and after the campaign show that we are beginning to get across the message that social care workers do a worthwhile job. Perhaps we are getting across the message that social work is life-changing work, but we still have to do more. We will build on the success of the first phase of the campaign. We will run something else early in the new year and we will re-examine what needs to be done in the future. I know that there is no short-term fix. We have to have a sustained programme of activity.
We are also giving £225,000 over three years to the ADSW to help to develop its supporting front-line staff programme. I am confident that that will make a difference in ensuring that the needs of front-line staff and care professionals are addressed.
I accept all of what the minister said about the number of people on courses increasing and the number of social workers increasing, but why then did 17 of the 18 local authorities that responded to us this week say that the situation is still getting worse?
In a sense, Irene McGugan answered that question in her speech. She will know that the situation has not arisen overnight. There has been a lack of work-force planning over a number of years and there have been additional legislative requirements. We are now putting in place a programme that begins to address the situation.
I turn to one of the things that I hope will address the problem. Earlier this year, I announced an additional £400,000 for postgraduate bursaries to enable an immediate increase in the number of social work students. That enabled 45 additional places to be taken up. We will double that funding for next year to £800,000 to support 45 additional postgraduate students on social work courses. There is no instant solution. If anyone had a magic wand they would have waved it before now. We need a sustained programme to ensure that, over time, we get people trained and into the jobs.
I want to talk about youth justice for a couple of minutes. Of course social workers have a crucial role to play in youth justice. It is in the interests of everyone that the small proportion of young people who get caught up in persistent offending behaviour stop offending and do so quickly.
We know that for many young offenders the shock and intervention of getting caught the first time are enough to make a change. Let us be clear that for many referred to hearings, the support will be available. The Audit Scotland and Scottish Committee of the Council on Tribunals reports acknowledged that. We also know that we need to do more to tackle effectively the persistent offenders who cause misery for many communities. The programmes need to be in place to deal with them, and those programmes must be effective.
We have done a lot of work on trying to reduce the length of time to disposal in the children's hearings system. We know that we have to do more to reduce that. The Audit Scotland report highlighted the matter, and we are still some way off our targets. However, we also know that the intervention needs to tackle the particular needs and behaviour of the young person.
We have listened to those who have asked for a greater range of programmes to support the supervision requirement at children's hearings. That is why we have invested in setting up youth justice teams in every local authority area. More than £25 million is provided to support targeted intervention aimed at doing exactly what the Audit Scotland report wants to see—less process, more delivery on the ground.
The programmes will challenge young people's behaviour, provide intensive community support and set up the mediation and reparation schemes to ensure that young offenders face up to the effect of their actions on their victims.
We are also moving to implement quickly the action plan on youth crime. I do not accept that nothing has happened. We have a feasibility group to examine youth courts, which is due to report later this month. We have a commitment to an increase in secure provision—the right kind in the right place—and we are now considering proposals put forward by potential providers. That is a big step forward from where we were a few months ago. Three pilot areas already have fast-track children's hearings. They will be supported with funding and work is due to start early in 2003.
The rate of progress over the past few months has been rapid and it has involved a lot of work by partners throughout the youth justice system. I have made it very clear that that pace must continue. I will bring forward national standards in the very near future to ensure that we continue the progress. I acknowledge that we need to improve the services that we offer our children. Second best is not good enough for anybody's child.
We need to focus on the whole child. I hope that this morning's debate is constructive and that we do not resort to soundbites and slogans. We should seek to continue the work to integrate and improve services and to deliver for children.
I want to end on a positive note. I look forward to continuing to work with members on the Commissioner for Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill, which was introduced last week and on which Jackie Baillie, Irene McGugan and others have worked so hard. I hope that that bill will also bring us closer to the goal of delivering quality services for every child in Scotland.
I move amendment S1M-3698.2, to leave out from "commends" to end and insert:
"welcomes the constructive recommendation of the recent reports into children's services, the Child Protection Review, It's Everyone's Job to make Sure I'm Alright, the Audit Scotland report, Dealing with Offending by Young People and the Scottish Committee of the Council on Tribunals' report into Children's Hearings; notes the need to address recruitment and retention of social workers and welcomes progress in the Executive's Action Plan for Social Services; notes that the reports highlight a need to continue to focus on delivery which improves outcomes for Scotland's children, and agrees that the Executive should continue to address the problems of poverty and exclusion and close the opportunity gap."
In many respects, the Executive is failing Scotland's children and the Scottish National Party has suggested few reasoned or reasonable alternatives.
In a thoughtful speech, Irene McGugan dealt with child poverty. She narrated the increase in the number of care and protection orders that are being issued and indicated that residential care for an increased number of children was a significant problem.
Will the member take an intervention?
Give me a minute. In an intervention, Mr Russell highlighted the content of some of the reports that have been produced. It might have been advantageous for Ms McGugan and the minister to examine the reports in a little more detail.
"Poverty in Scotland 2002: People, places and policies", which was published by the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, indicated that one in five Scots of working age receives benefit. That impinges on children. The social justice annual report to which the minister referred shows
"data moving in the wrong direction"
in relation to 13 of the Scottish Government's 29 milestones. The report entitled "Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Scotland", which was published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, stated that 1.2 million Scots live in poverty, which is defined as living on below 60 per cent of the median income after housing costs.
What are the answers to the difficulties of child poverty? I acknowledge that there is no shortage of care and compassion among members of the Scottish Parliament. I have no doubt that the minister wants to make things better and I have no doubt that the SNP spokesperson has similar ambitions. However, the fact of the matter is that things are not getting better and that, where progress is being made, it is being made at a snail's pace.
The minister must realise that she and her colleagues have governed this country, in different guises, for well nigh six years and that progress is not being made. To some extent, she was honest in recognising that the level of progress is not satisfactory from her perspective. I acknowledge her recognition of the situation.
To assess how we can make life better for Scottish children, we must look under a number of headings. The left-wing alliance of the Scottish Government and the SNP is running out of excuses. There has to be a radical rethink.
I do not know in which parallel universe the member is living. Although we hope and expect to be in government, we are not in alliance at the moment. The Labour party and the Liberal Democrats are in alliance. Although I like the idea of being in government, I am not responsible. Cathy Jamieson is responsible.
Mr Russell might not be responsible, but I assure him that I do not live in another universe. The fact that I live in the real world is sometimes a disadvantage in the Parliament. Nevertheless, I attempt to get on with things.
What is Mr Russell's solution to child poverty? Let us consider some of his recent utterances as the SNP's education spokesman. He believes in reducing class sizes. That is a proper and sensible approach. However, in all his speeches on the subject, he has religiously avoided saying how he intends to achieve that. On the basis of Mr Russell's position—
Will the member give way?
I will finish this point before I again give way.
The only way in which Mr Russell would be able to achieve a reduction in class sizes would be by filling the schools that are at present half-empty because parents have absolutely no wish to send their children to them.
I am sorry that Bill Aitken did not accept my intervention earlier because I frankly do not understand that last point, which was nonsensical. I am happy to refer—[Interruption.] There appear to be noises off. One would want them to remain off, so to speak, but I will go no further down that line of thinking.
I would be happy to send to Mr Aitken voluminous copies of speeches that I have made even in this chamber on that matter. Those speeches give chapter and verse. I see that Mr Brown is indicating that he does not want them, but I know that Mr Aitken, being of a more inquiring mind, is sure to read them.
I assure Mr Russell that I will read with considerable interest whatever he sends me. Of course, I suffer from insomnia but I am sure that such reading will significantly improve that condition.
The SNP's answer to any problem is to say basically that things would get better in an independent Scotland. Frankly, if the thought process that is so manifest on the SNP benches is indicative of what is likely to happen, things will not get better. The SNP shares the Labour party's belief that things can be improved only by throwing money at the problem. It is demonstrable that over many years that approach has simply not worked. For example, the Labour party has spent record sums on the national health service, but is the NHS getting better? Of course it is not.
Is Bill Aitken saying that we should not invest £700 million in Glasgow's acute services?
I do not suggest that for a moment. We need to spend the money in a much more efficient and effective manner so as to improve patient care.
Will the member explain how?
This is not a health debate. If members want to debate health, I will be delighted to do so on a suitable occasion.
Bill Aitken said that today's debate is not on health, but I am sure that he would recognise that the health of our children is important. Does he recognise that the substantial investment in sure start Scotland and in the changing children's services fund is about fundamentally changing the way in which we deliver services. Is that not money well spent?
I agree with the minister that the health of our children is a vital issue that should be addressed cogently and seriously. Where I take issue with the Executive is that, by any reasonable and objective standard, so much money has been spent to such little benefit. That is the issue.
However, children suffer in other areas also. They suffer from poverty of education. Some of the figures released recently were very depressing, especially those on the number of youngsters leaving school without any formal qualification. The comprehensive system, over which the minister and I have previously argued, has demonstrably failed. The system has failed because so many parents are in some respects having to opt out.
Why then did so many of those who contributed to both the national debate on education and the Education, Culture and Sport Committee's inquiry into education feel that the comprehensive system was one that worked?
The usual suspects of course came up with that result. We must realise that the comprehensive education system needs to be looked at carefully. That realisation, which has taken place down south, should eventually permeate up here.
Children are also victims in other ways. On crime, the minister was quite right to point out that only a small proportion of children get into trouble, but there is a difficulty with that small proportion. In fairness, that issue has been recognised, but I am sure that the minister would accept that young people are themselves the victims of crime, as they are the ones who are assaulted and who have their property stolen.
In that respect, it is essential that if the children's hearings system is to continue—as I personally hope that it will—it must be beefed up so that it can cope with the hard core of offending. I recognise that the number of secure places for the tiny minority who need to be locked up has increased. At one stage the minister resisted the provision of that number of secure places. We also have to consider the disposals that are available to the children's hearings system so that they can work more effectively. We are not talking about the hanging and flogging that Irene McGugan referred to in her intemperate contribution. We do not want to do anything to those children, but we do want them to stop committing crimes and offences. That is only likely to happen if there is an increased degree of realism around.
It might well be that, in the fullness of time, the minister will accept the suggestions that she and others are mocking at the moment. The Executive has followed up some of our other ideas. There was the nonsense proposal to send 16 and 17-year-olds to the children's hearings system that was dropped when wiser counsel—not exclusively Conservative, I acknowledge—prevailed.
There will have to be a close and rigorous appraisal of the children's hearings system in due course because at the moment it is simply not working. In some respects, there is a lack of resources. In Glasgow, for example, very few cases actually go before a children's hearing. The depressing aspect of that is that the children's hearings system in Glasgow is overloaded because it has to deal with the obviously more important issue of children at risk. There is obviously a difficulty with resources in Glasgow; I think the minister recognises that and I hope that she will address it.
With respect to criminality, we have to show the degree of realism that I seek to introduce through my amendment.
I go back to the member's first point about the rise in the number of young people who are looked after in residential accommodation. Does the member recognise that the number of looked-after children takes account of young people on supervision orders and that, in some cases, that suggests that appropriate action is being taken?
Yes, I freely concede that point. Nevertheless, it is depressing that there are so many looked-after youngsters in residential accommodation and that must be addressed in a wider sense.
It must be recognised that we need more realism. The Executive's economic policies have to be examined to see where we can reduce child poverty in Scotland. As for the SNP, believe it or not, with that party's current attitude, things can only get worse.
I move amendment S1M-3698.1, to leave out from "in particular" to end and insert:
"the concern expressed within reports about the pressures facing children's hearings and the inadequate nature of the resources and disposals available; acknowledges that the problems of youth disorder must be given high priority if the right to peace and security at home and in the community is to be protected; calls upon the Scottish Executive to introduce an increased range of disposals for children's hearings, including weekend and evening detention, restriction of liberty orders and expansion of supervised attendance orders and community service orders along with an increase in secure accommodation and a substantial increase in police officers visible in our communities, and recognises that, while much material poverty has been alleviated, 21st Century forms of vulnerability require policies that create wealth and provide economic opportunity and security for all, which can only happen within a framework of public order in which people have the security of strong families, communities and high quality public services."
I welcome today's debate. The subject is important and I welcome the terms of the motion and of the amendment, which seem to cover important ground.
I contend that the Parliament has placed children high on its agenda and that no one who considers the Parliament's work of the past four years could say that we have neglected children and young people and their services in any way. I pay tribute to the contributions of Fiona McLeod and Irene McGugan on listening to children. The Executive has a good record in working for children.
I am interested in the member's remark that he agrees with the motion and the amendment. With a sweep of his hand, he has indicated that there is unity on the matter. Which will the member support? Irene McGugan has indicated very strongly that the Executive amendment is simply a rewording of what I think is a better statement of the situation. Will the member support the motion or the Executive's amendment?
I will support the Executive's amendment.
So the member does not agree with them both.
The Executive's record includes such things as the Standards in Scotland's Schools etc Act 2000, the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001, and the debates that the Parliament has had on adoption and fostering and children who are looked after by local authorities.
The Protection of Children (Scotland) Bill is going through Parliament now, and has a lot of cross-party support. The Commissioner for Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill is also going through, and I might talk about that later.
The Parliament has debated reports about children with special educational needs and members' debates have covered issues such as autism spectrum disorder, with all its implications for children and their interests.
There is not only talking in the Parliament; on the ground, we have the sure start initiative which, as Cathy Jamieson said, is working well and is helping young mothers to give their youngsters the best start in life. Cathy Jamieson mentioned poverty-reduction measures. Pre-school education has been expanded for three and four-year-olds in a way that was not possible before, which will have benefits for children. We also have early intervention and clubs before and after school—out-of-school clubs. All those measures mean that the authorities have a better chance of recognising the needs of children and catering for them.
We have classroom assistants in primary schools. I was in a primary school yesterday and the headmistress spoke warmly about the difference that classroom assistants have made to the school's ability to deal with youngsters and their individual problems early on. As Cathy Jamieson said, we have the changing children's services fund, which tries to ensure that health, education and other agencies can work together. In every way, we are doing a great deal for children.
We now come to the three reports that are mentioned in the motion: the child protection audit and review report, the Audit Scotland paper on "Dealing with offending by young people", and the report on the children's hearings system. Taken together, those important documents give us a benchmark and a clearer picture of how things stand in those areas. They outline good practice in child social work, and they make recommendations on youth justice and so on.
Irene McGugan's motion refers to the problems of recruitment and retention in social work. Indeed, all three reports recognise the importance and value of qualified and well-resourced social workers and declare them to be central to the progress that the documents hope to promote. We must recognise that there is a problem. We cannot blink away that fact. Only a few days ago, a lady came into my constituency surgery who is a worker in children's services. She came not because of her own difficulties, but because she was worried about the situation that she saw developing in the service to which she belongs. She spoke of extensive vacancies and of workers who are over-stressed and overstretched, with case loads that are too big to allow them to do the job properly. She spoke of colleagues who take their jobs seriously, but who find it hard to live with the knowledge that they are in a position in which they can scarcely do their job properly. The problem is that there is a downward spiral, as people who are in post have to cover for the case loads of absent or unappointed workers.
We must do something urgently to tackle the problem. We put tremendous responsibility on our children's social workers. They find themselves in no-win situations, in which action can be interpreted as unwarranted interference and lack of action can be construed as negligence. Children's safety can be at risk. If mistakes or misjudgments are made, the press are ready to pounce and to allocate blame. It is little wonder that serious-minded people think twice or more before exposing themselves to such difficulties. Somehow, we must give a higher profile and more respect to the life-saving work that those workers do—day in, day out. They go into tense family situations where they can encounter everything from ineffectual fecklessness in families to hostility, lack of co-operation and even violence.
I welcome the member's comments about the reality of social workers' jobs. Does he associate himself with the First Minister's remarks, when he blamed
"professional defensiveness, professional jealousies and barriers between different agencies"
for the system's failings?
I am sure that such tensions exist, but I would not blame them for the system's failings. I am pleased that, in her remarks, the Minister for Education and Young People showed that the figures are not all gloom and doom and that there are areas where increased recruitment is taking place. I welcome her announcement about the postgraduate bursary. Things are moving positively in some ways.
The situation that I was outlining before Irene McGugan intervened is put into less emotive language in a paper issued by the Association of Directors of Social Work, which says:
"Vacancy levels for children's services are running in some places at levels of 25% and above. For a number of years, social workers working in child protection have been leaving this emotionally demanding, highly complex … area of social work."
That has led to the existing work force relying on what it describes as
"inexperienced yet overloaded social workers".
The briefing talks about people moving out of child protection into intervention and other projects, which were mentioned by Irene McGugan. The situation is not good, and vacancies and the image of social work need to be addressed. I know that the minister wants to do that. The advertising campaign is a start, and I hope that it goes on to address the issues.
Members throughout the chamber recognise that there are not easy solutions to the problems. If other people were in government, I think that it would be a case of, "There but for the grace of God go you". The problems will not be solved easily.
I hope that we can recognise the problems that face us, including anti-social behaviour among our young people, problems with drugs and alcohol and other aspects of youth crime. The Audit Scotland report makes it clear that we must make our youth justice system more nimble, agile and responsive to individual needs. The reports show that the children's hearings system is essentially a good one. However, we must help it to work more effectively, through a wider variety of disposals that help to divert young people from anti-social behaviour and better resources to support the treatment of those who come before the hearings.
I also welcome the pilots on fast tracking, which the minister mentioned. They aim to address the problems of repeat offenders more efficiently and ensure that youngsters are dealt with earlier.
I will return briefly to the briefing from the Association of Directors of Social Work and Irene McGugan's motion. It seems clear that the child protection committees do good work, but there is concern about the evenness of performance across the local authority spectrum. Whether or not we need to go as far as Irene McGugan suggests, it seems sensible to examine ways of levelling out the protection committees' performance. I would be perfectly happy if that led to their embodiment in statute.
The Parliament has done much good work on behalf of children, but much of our work has been groundwork. As I said, the reports to which the motion refers give us good material on which to base further policies. I know that the Executive is committed to further improvement and is in no way complacent, and I know that the Parliament will keep children's interests high on the agenda.
The children's commissioner was mentioned at the beginning. The establishment of such a post will be an important element in our future planning, because a commissioner who is independent of the Parliament and without party-political baggage will be a strong voice for the interests and rights of children. That will ensure that there is moral pressure on the Parliament to deliver positive policies for the children of Scotland. The commissioner will not allow the reports to be put on a shelf to gather dust. We will have to pay attention to the issues and to their implications; and we will not be able to ignore Opposition complaints just because we think that the Opposition exists only to complain. The children's commissioner, who will be outside the Parliament and the party-political system, will have a moral authority that we will have given him or her. I hope that that will be an agent for good.
We move now to the open debate. We have some time in hand this morning, so I will allow the first four members up to six minutes plus time for interventions.
I say at the outset that nobody in this debate is asserting that nothing has been done. Of course things are being done, but the tremendously authoritative and knowledgeable speech by my colleague Irene McGugan described the situation accurately. There has been serial failure on the key indicators, the areas that matter and how we measure what has been done. No matter what the minister says, things are not getting better. Indeed, the survey of social work departments that Irene McGugan and her colleagues undertook proves that.
Let us focus on the reality of the situation. I am quite certain that in the best of all possible worlds, Mr Jenkins, the minister and many of their colleagues would want to wish things better. However, it is not enough to do that, nor is it enough simply to make announcements about making another bit of money available here or there. Those who are elected to govern and who are appointed with responsibility for certain areas must achieve what they set out to achieve, or they should not be in their posts.
Since 1997, the Labour Government has had responsibility for taking on this task. Indeed, it even welcomed that responsibility; it saw it as one of the big aims that it had to achieve. However, the stark reality is that the Government has failed. As a result, we should be debating the ways in which we can succeed. Again and again, the minister used the word "challenging" in her speech. She said that she was setting a particular target, but it was challenging. Of course it is challenging, but it has to be achieved or we need to know why it has not been achieved. We do not want people simply to say, "Well, we did our best; we'll go on doing our best; and we all believe the same things anyway." Scotland's children deserve achievement in this area. Frankly, if the minister cannot achieve in this area, she should move out of her post and let someone else do it.
Will the member give way?
I am not giving way to Mr Fitzpatrick. Some hard things need to be said about the reality of the situation.
The minister's speech contained promises, commitments and assertions, and references to reports and action plans. What we did not get—and must get at the very least—is an acknowledgement that things have not happened and targets have not been met. Instead, the reality lies in Irene McGugan's comments. As a result, whether to do or go needs to be determined.
What lies at the heart of the difficulty of realising this important aim is the Executive's obsession with getting headlines and not actually telling us the reality of the situation. I will refer to one set of statistics—although almost any set of Government statistics would do—that indicates the problem with speaking the truth about what is happening.
Last week, the Executive issued statistics on truancy in schools with a press release entitled, "Minister welcomes improvement in attendance". The figures are important in this debate because, as the minister knows, issues such as failure to attend school and unauthorised absence are often symptomatic of considerable problems. Indeed, they are at the heart of some of the problems that are faced by the children we are talking about.
The Executive press release goes on to state that things are getting better, but things are not getting better. If we break down the figures and analyse them without spinning them or changing the base year for measuring purposes, it becomes clear that between 1998-99—the base year set by the Executive—and 2001-02, the average unauthorised absence in primary schools has risen from 0.91 to 1.22 half-days per pupil, which is a 34 per cent increase. In secondary schools, the increase is 24 per cent. How can the minister welcome an "improvement in attendance" when there has been no such improvement?
If anyone is trying to spin, it has to be Mike Russell. My comments were made in the context of the overall figures for authorised and unauthorised absence that were published. I have made it clear that I do not think that the improvement is good enough and that we need to take action, particularly on truancy. It is not helpful that some headlines have misreported the situation by suggesting that 50,000 pupils are playing truant each day. That is simply not the case. The figures that have been published relate to all forms of absence. As Mike Russell well knows, I have put on record that we need to do more to ensure that people who are playing truant attend school and to reduce the number of school exclusions.
The reality is that the improvement has not been good enough because there has been no improvement. The minister cannot get round the facts. The situation has got worse. Cathy Jamieson said in her speech that when we face a problem, it is better to face up to it—I thought the remark was a good one. It is better to say, "This is getting worse. We must do something about it," than to issue releases that state, "Minister welcomes improvement in attendance", when there has not been an improvement. The reality of the situation that faces the chamber and the Executive is that, in the key areas in which the Executive wanted to attain things—pupil attainment, eradicating poverty, youth justice and truancy—it has failed.
Rubbish.
Mr McNulty is sitting in the front row as a minister for one of the first times. We look forward keenly to his summing up of the debate. However, he has already fallen into the trap, because he is shouting out, "Rubbish." The figures prove what the situation is. I want to see honest Government in Scotland. I want to see Government that lives up to its responsibilities and which, when it has failed, accepts that it has failed and comes forward with ideas to overcome that failure. What none of us should tolerate in Scotland is dishonesty, because the victims of that are the children whom Irene McGugan talked about.
Although, as usual, Mike Russell gave a barnstorming oppositional speech, it was disappointing that, even though he got an extra two minutes—
As Mr Barrie will.
It is disappointing that he congratulated Irene McGugan on her speech and said nothing about children's services in Scotland, which we are supposed to be discussing.
When the minister spoke, she talked about one of the things that we have got wrong, which is that we are much more process driven than outcome driven—a mismatch exists in our current provision. If we could turn that round, that would be a step in the right direction, in particular in respect of some of the retention difficulties in social work. I do not think that there is a difficulty in recruitment in social work, but there is a difficulty in retaining front-line social work child and family staff. We must give those staff the opportunity to see as their goal improved outcomes rather than the need to satisfy the bureaucratic system that we have had to put in place.
The minister said that there was a sense of déjà vu about the recent report by the child protection audit and review. I certainly got a sense of déjà vu when I read it. It could have been written 10 or 15 years ago, because the same issues existed then as we have now.
Does Scott Barrie agree that something that has changed over the past 10 to 15 years—for well-intentioned reasons—is the amount of bureaucracy that surrounds child protection and adoption? As he said, that has meant that, increasingly, social workers are serving the system rather than the children.
I whole-heartedly agree with Alasdair Morgan. I know his wife very well and know that that is probably also her view. We must change the situation if we are serious about making the job of key front-line social workers satisfying and if we want to give them purpose.
The report of the child protection audit and review states:
"Outcomes for children were found to be highly dependent on social work doing well. Where social work performed well outcomes were generally good and when they performed less well outcomes were generally poor."
That says to me that social workers are still the main people who are expected to carry out what is, in all honesty, a joint child protection plan, which is agreed by a case conference.
I do not want to blame other agencies unnecessarily, but, in difficult and complex cases, it is sometimes too easy for other agencies to say, "Social work can always deal with it." The statistics in the report about who attends case conferences show that the list is depressingly familiar: general practitioners or paediatricians hardly ever attend; the police attend occasionally; a representative of the school will often attend; the health visitor will almost always attend; and, of course, the social worker will have to be there because it is their case conference and, at the end of the day, everyone else can walk away and they will be left to carry out the child protection plan. If we are serious about protecting children, we must see the process as being much more jointly owned.
One of Irene McGugan's points that I endorse and ask the minister to consider was about changing the statutory basis of child protection committees. I served on Fife's child protection committee for around five years and I found it incredibly frustrating that, although Fife Council and I paid a great deal of attention to the committee, other agencies did not see it in quite the same way.
For the record, I repeat the assurance that I gave to Irene McGugan that I am interested in the notion of putting child protection committees on a statutory basis. I assure the member that the idea will be considered.
I thank the minister for clarifying that.
I will turn briefly from child protection to Audit Scotland's report on youth justice. Bill Aitken suggested that the children's hearings system in Glasgow does not deal with anyone who commits offences and that the system is totally overloaded and over-burdened. I do not pretend to be an expert on the situation in Glasgow—other members are more qualified than I am to discuss that—but from what I have heard Bill Aitken and others say at the Justice 2 Committee, it seems that the courts in Glasgow are also over-burdened and overworked. We must consider both those issues. It is unfair to single out children's hearings in Glasgow without acknowledging the issues in the rest of the criminal justice system.
Over the years, members have called for an increase in secure accommodation places and there is good evidence to suggest that we should consider the matter. However, there has always been a shortage of secure accommodation places. When I was a basic-grade social worker in the late 1980s, I had to phone Plymouth to try to find secure accommodation places. The phenomenon is not new. I am not sure whether this still applies, but when I was a practising social worker, some of the young people in secure accommodation should never have been there and took up places that could have been used more valuably by someone else. We must be careful not to treat the issue as a numbers game by simply continuing to increase the number of places. As with adult prisons, the solution is not always to create more places.
Another day, another SNP debate, although thankfully today's motion does not proclaim that everything will be better in that land of milk and honey that is the SNP's independent Scotland. It is a relief not to debate constitutional questions.
I support Bill Aitken's amendment because there is no doubt that chaos abounds in social work services and the youth justice system. That situation serves neither justice nor children and young people. Time and again, the Executive parties have heard from their back benchers about the havoc that is created in communities up and down the country, be they urban or rural, and about the fact that youth disorder has become a problem of such proportions that something must be done. The Scottish Government's response has been a variety of reviews, projects and campaigns with woolly objectives that the back benchers have derided. I pay tribute to those souls who have been brave enough to vote with my colleague on the Justice 2 Committee and to tell the Government how it is, not what it wants to hear.
Youth issues cropped up at a recent Scottish Parliament education service visit that I attended. Members from throughout the chamber will bear witness to the fact that law-abiding youngsters—the weel daein folk who would be described as a credit to their families and schools—are becoming vocal about the services that are provided for them. The minister will be less than pleased to hear about youngsters complaining that children who have behavioural problems and who are so disruptive in class that special arrangements must be made appear to be depriving them of resources and opportunities. The youngsters genuinely feel aggrieved.
Many of us are familiar with the difficulties that are caused in schools by disruptive children and others. I hope that the member is not suggesting that, in some sense, expending resources on ensuring the future of those children is a waste of money that should be spent on other young people. If the member went down that road, she would be going back to a time when children were put up chimneys.
I certainly am not. I am merely reporting what a back-bench SNP member and Mr Gorrie, who will speak next, heard from the children themselves.
Given that Bill Aitken has recognised the disadvantage that exists, surely Lyndsay McIntosh accepts that to deal with that, it is appropriate that resources be targeted to change the behaviours of some young people and to support the most vulnerable.
I am not suggesting otherwise; I am merely telling members what the children themselves told us last Thursday at an education service visit.
We have reached a stage at which the child is deemed to know better than the adult. We must hope that early intervention will be effective; otherwise we will simply maintain the number of hard-core repeat offenders who regularly attend the children's hearings panels. In 1997-98, 732 children committed 10 or more offences. In 1999-2000, that figure jumped to 890, although thankfully, it fell to 785 in 2000-01. Let us leave aside the mini-crime wave youngsters, who have a considerably longer history of coming to the attention of the local constabulary, for they are a minority.
Those who must decide the appropriate disposals for challenging—Mr Russell's favourite word—youngsters should be equipped with a better armoury. It is simply not good enough that an older generation feels that the children's panel can give nothing more than a slap on the wrist. A more varied range of options should be available to those who sit in judgment on the next generation—disposals that would be meaningful to the youngsters and address society's need to see justice being done. What is wrong with weekend or evening detention, community services orders and supervised attendance orders? I do not mean children going along and playing with one of those Sega mega-box things or whatever they are called—my own children are past that stage and I do not know the terminology. It seems entirely sensible that, if youngsters do not learn from their mistakes, a more realistic lesson could be learned from a wider range of disposals.
Does the member accept that the children's hearings system currently has the power to attach any condition that it likes to a supervision requirement order, to enable young people to attend programmes? Does she accept that the Executive has taken action in setting up a new intensive support fund to deliver exactly those kinds of programmes?
Yes. I fully accept what the minister says; however, my experience and my reading on the matter lead me to believe that the policy is not being followed through.
In her opening remarks, the minister highlighted the fact that the child should be the centre of our attention. No one would disagree with that. To that end, the Executive has to tackle the critical problems in social work, some of which Irene McGugan mentioned in detail. We always hear about the disasters and never get to celebrate the triumphs. Those looked-after children who are at risk and who do not have a stable family background—the victims of cruelty and neglect—are our collective responsibility. We owe them our best effort to give them the opportunities that so many others take for granted.
Irene McGugan has a strong personal commitment to this issue and knows a lot about it. She deserves great commendation. Because she is slightly less strident than some of her colleagues, she is far more effective. Cathy Jamieson has also had a strong personal commitment to the subject for a long time, and I am sure that she struggles womanfully with a system that, over many years, has failed to deliver. She has made some definite improvements but, as she acknowledges, there is a lot more to do.
Bill Aitken has a talent for proposing some extraordinarily unacceptable views in quite a pleasant and acceptable fashion.
Ian Jenkins was particularly strong on the problems of social workers and the blame culture that they face. That is a big problem, which we cannot turn around immediately, but it is a big minus for the public services that employees are blamed if anything goes wrong. That must deter people from going into those services. The problem must be addressed in the context of keeping social workers and recruiting more of them.
As a part-time pedant, I point out that it is wrong for a Government document—especially one that relates to education—to spell "all right" as one word and not as two words.
Mike Russell accidentally raised an important point when he discussed with Ian Jenkins whether he would vote for the motion or the amendment. The way in which we deal with such matters is often wrong and it would be much better if we just had a debate on children's services and did not have such wordy motions and amendments. Members could say what they felt and not feel obligated to defend the wording of their line and rubbish the other line. I do not mean that there should be a cosy, uniform consensus, but such a debate would make it possible for supporters of the governing parties to make constructive criticisms and for the Opposition parties to admit occasionally that the Government was getting something right.
We are erring in one way. It is as if we are dealing with a group of children who have breathing problems. We try earnestly to improve their breathing through medicine, but the problem is that they are living in a bad atmosphere, which causes them to have those breathing problems. Although excellent measures are detailed in the reports and the Executive is trying to do good things, we must investigate more widely how to create better communities for our young people to grow up in.
We must give people hope, which is an essential human ingredient. Most of us are here in the chamber because of hope. We got involved in politics because we hoped to improve life in some way. We hoped to become a councillor or a trade union official, then we hoped to become a member of this establishment or the Westminster establishment. Mike Russell hopes to become First Minister or, at least, leader of the Opposition. We all have our hopes. If we have no hope, we are in serious trouble.
The question of helping families to deal with their children better at an earlier stage is not dealt with adequately. Many public and voluntary organisations try to help parents to deal with children when they have serious problems. We must give far more support to the organisations that try to prevent families from breaking up. There is a question about how well local councils support some of those organisations. We must support local councils' independence to pursue their wishes and policies, but if a national policy exists, it should be funded nationally. It is not acceptable for the two Lanarkshire councils together to give less than £2,000 to couple counselling when their services frequently send people to such counselling for support. We must also support, with national funding, the youth organisations that create a better society for our young people.
We must develop communities in ways that we are not doing. The social inclusion partnerships do not work as well as they should do. We should consider ways of beefing up credit unions and other local organisations that will help to build up small local businesses.
We have to address the fact that there is a serious shortage in the building industry of plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen. We are not progressing as well as we should be because of that and we are not putting enough money into training. We must attract people and show them that there is hope for them to have a really good career.
When Cathy Jamieson was appointed Minister for Education and Young People, her appointment was much welcomed by social workers in Scotland. At last we had a minister with first-hand knowledge of the problems of delivering social work services. Most of all, we had a minister who understood that those problems resulted in needs being unmet and cases being unallocated. The minister has demonstrated that understanding in her speeches to the Parliament, and not least in her concern over our failure as a society to fulfil our obligations to looked-after children. However, in spite of the minister's obvious understanding of what needs to be done, the irony is that she is presiding over the biggest crisis to affect social work in at least 20 years, and that is just as far as I can go back. That irony is not lost on many of the minister's former colleagues.
We are 500 social workers short all over Scotland. Child protection services in particular are straining at the seams, unable to adequately provide protection for our most vulnerable and disadvantaged children. The shortage of qualified social workers is most acute in child protection, and the reasons are obvious. Quite simply, those workers feel undervalued and under pressure and, most of all, they themselves feel unprotected. Why should professional qualified child care workers worry themselves sick over the children in their case loads, and worry even more about those cases that they know remain unallocated? Those workers are very much aware that, should something go wrong, which is often due to constraints on resources, they are the ones who will be thrown to the wolves. For that risk and constant worry they are likely to have a take-home pay of around £1,100 a month.
Let us make no mistake: child care workers are deserting in their droves. Some stay within local authority social work, but more and more are leaving to work on specific projects, where the conditions, and often the salaries, are more rewarding than in local authorities. The answer obviously lies in recruitment and retention. Irene McGugan mentioned the media campaign, which was a somewhat half-hearted attempt to recruit social workers. I would like to be able to tell the minister that the campaign is being welcomed by her former colleagues, but it is not. It is simply damaging morale further. The advertisements were seen as patronising and belittling to the professionalism of highly qualified social workers. Their message to me, loud and clear, which I pass on to the minister, was that social work is not a vocation but a profession.
Does Kay Ullrich accept that people who are involved in the social care and social work professions were consulted on and involved in drawing up that campaign? Despite the fact that the SNP has chosen to criticise the advertisements, does she recognise that they were the first step in the campaign, and that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the ADSW, Unison and a range of other people called for such a campaign and welcomed it?
Cathy Jamieson obviously mixes in more exalted circles than I do. The people who I am hearing from are the very front-line workers whom we are trying to retain in that important service.
I suggest that, to recruit a professional work force, the minister should start by looking at the wage structure. Many social workers take on additional responsibilities for no extra reward or recognition. I am talking of people such as mental health officers or student supervisors. Financial recognition of the intensive training that is involved would go some way towards assisting with the retention of those particularly highly motivated workers. Money is being put into social services to tackle drugs and youth crime, for example, and I am happy that it is. However, there is no point in throwing money at projects that can be staffed only from the already diminishing pool of social workers.
I mentioned that the minister's former social work colleagues were delighted when one of their own finally achieved a position in which, with her full knowledge of the profession's needs, she would have the power to make a difference not just to social workers, but—more important—to all those whom we seek to serve. That delight has turned to despair. Much needs to be done, but the minister has done little. She should hang her head in shame.
It is clear that a joined-up, holistic approach to children's services is needed. In the short time that is available to me, I cannot do justice to all the policy initiatives that are contributing to improvements in those services, but I will concentrate on some education issues.
Education is, in many ways, a key component of our strategy. Education helps children to realise their potential. It must fit the child, rather than the other way round. We welcome new ways of supporting children staying at school when they have problems and we recognise that, for some kids, such support needs to be done on a one-to-one basis. I welcome the excellent partnerships between local authorities and voluntary organisations such as Save the Children and Barnardo's. A Barnardo's project in my area works closely and on a one-to-one basis with youngsters who have been excluded from school. The project brings them back to school, tries to get them back into their studies and has been very successful.
The new community school approach brings together services for children and families. Education, health and social work services, the police, the voluntary sector and others can work together to break down the old professional barriers and provide joined-up services for children and their families. Over the next five years, the approach is being extended to all schools, which we all welcome.
We are committed to closing the opportunity gap and have introduced reforms to facilitate that. Nearly £500,000 is being invested in our pre-school education child care strategy. Between 2001 and 2004, there will be guaranteed places for all three and four-year-olds—I have campaigned for that for at least the past 20 years and we must welcome it. Some 38,000 children have been provided with out-of-school places, using new opportunities fund support. A further £24 million has been spent on child care, which helps lone parents in full-time education. Some £8 million is being spent on access and curriculum support for special educational needs pupils.
Our approach to children's services recognises the particular needs of the most vulnerable children. The Protection of Children (Scotland) Bill introduces a raft of measures to safeguard our children and is backed up by our commitment to children's rights, which is embodied in the establishment of a commissioner for children and young people. The commissioner will work to ensure recognition and enhancement of the rights of all children. Clearly, that work will benefit the most vulnerable young people, because they are the young people whose rights are most abused.
It is sad that, for too many of our children and young people, life is full of barriers that we can only imagine. It is our task to ensure that we put in place the support that is necessary to ensure that every young person reaches his or her potential and that we find ways of breaking down the barriers that they face.
Resources and not rhetoric are at the heart of the debate—that will be realised if one considers the children's panel system, which is much maligned, although I believe in it. The Scottish Committee of the Council on Tribunals has focused on that issue and indicated that resourcing, rather than structures, is the problem.
The Tory amendment highlights youth disorder. I do not seek to make light of youth disorder—all members accept that it is a serious problem—but the amendment does not mention the other equally valid and important aspect of child welfare. What is involved is not just retribution, but reform, and not just punishment, but pastoral care. The children's panel system is strong and is to be valued because it is holistic, not a glorified youth court. We should never forget that the children who are involved are in the majority; offenders are the small minority. The children whom we are discussing might be less demanding, but we ignore them at our peril.
The debate is all about resources. There is consensus in the chamber about the system and the structures that we need and about what needs to be done, but what matters is not the rhetoric, but the reality. It is universally accepted in the chamber that the issue needs to be raised up the league of political priorities. That is part of politics, which is the art of the possible and involves balancing needs, whether conflicting or otherwise.
I accept the argument that "It's the economy, stupid." No one owes us a living. No economic growth equals no funds for services, whether they are for children or for anyone else. Less national income would mean that the Parliament, its committees and the Executive were presiding over the diminishing stock and balancing cuts, rather than spreading the bounties. However, what is important is interlinking social and economic matters—we must all get that across. We live in a knowledge age. The economic driver and dynamo of our society is not ownership of the means of production, but the knowledge that individuals generate. Andrew Carnegie's steel mills could have been nationalised, but Bill Gates's brain or inventions could not be.
Scotland faces demographic time bombs, a shrinking labour force and immigration arguments. At the same time, we preside over tens of thousands of youngsters who are marginalised, alienated or excluded—or whatever adjective we care to use—from our society economically, socially and in other ways. Those youngsters leave school lacking not only qualifications in basic matters, but social skills. We must address that collectively.
Some youngsters are born to fail and to a life of delinquency, drug dependency and early pregnancy. The cycle will continue generation after generation into the millennium. That is a loss not only to those individuals, who fail to achieve their potential, but to the nation, as we fail to realise our potential. We badly need those individuals' skills and talents. We must address that matter. Those people come from the same stock that left Scotland's shores generations ago, often in penal servitude. They were branded surplus to our nation's needs and wants, but the old world's loss was the new world's gain.
We need to build the consensus that we require to bring on board all the marginalised children. That is not about being preoccupied—although that is appropriate at the moment—with dealing with the small minority who are involved in a considerable amount of crime and delinquency. We must deal with the greater number of children who are being marginalised and alienated, but who have much to offer. Their loss is our loss. We must have consensus on that.
I do not consider that a partisan matter, but I differ from the Tories, who fail to acknowledge that the children's panel system is intended not simply to dispense punishment, but to address the individual child's needs and wants. That is why we need consensus. The consensus is being built, but the rhetoric must be matched by the resources. We must get that across not to members who are in the chamber now, whose participation in the debate shows that they accept the social necessity, but to society, which must be shown the economic benefits.
The present situation cannot continue, because it is a drain on resources in policing, prisons and elsewhere. The benefit of extending and supporting the existing structures and of resourcing them properly is that we would gain and make substantial savings in other aspects of our lives. The chamber must get the message across that we are not balancing social needs with economic drive. It must be recognised that the two matters are fundamentally interlinked and that we must harmonise and unite them.
I was troubled by Kenny MacAskill's comments on consensus. I was even more troubled by the fact that I found myself agreeing with virtually everything that he said, which is possibly a first—and possibly a last.
Like others, I wish to concentrate on concerns over the children's hearings system, in particular on the problems facing social work services in their work with children and families. Comments in the newspapers about children's panels veer between two extremes. There are those who talk about a system that is widely admired, and which has been copied in many other countries; and there are those who focus on the difficulties of dealing with young persistent offenders and the criticism that the hearings system represents a soft option.
I am in the former camp: I think that we are fortunate to have in place a process that focuses on young people's needs as well as on their deeds. For the most part, the system succeeds in keeping children out of the courts and the criminal justice system. The Executive has made it a political priority to tackle the way in which we deal with young people at the serious and persistent offending end of the spectrum. However, the system as a whole is in danger of being undermined by a lack of support services for some of the most needy and vulnerable members of our community.
Children's panels exist to deal with care and protection issues as well as with offending behaviour. In fact, protecting children from abuse and neglect occupies more of their time. Whether it is in relation to social work or to education, we know that the younger the age at which we can identify need and intervene to offer support, the more we can help children. Even some pre-school cases, however, do not get the help and support that they need.
I should state for the record that my wife sits on a children's panel in Glasgow. I know that there is wide variation between the experiences of and difficulties faced by the panel and social work services in east Glasgow, compared with East Renfrewshire. However, I praise the report of the Auditor General for Scotland and the Accounts Commission for Scotland, "Dealing with offending by young people", for the evidence and analysis that it provides and as a basis for improving current services.
It is clear that many of the problems that are experienced in east Glasgow stem from the fact that there are not enough social workers to fill the available posts. The positions exist because there is a job to be done, but no one wants to do that job. That is not really surprising. In every second case, the family has a drug or alcohol problem, and the job is not safe or easy. The impact on the children's hearings system and on young people is clear. Young people have been put on supervision orders only to come back a year later not having been seen by anybody.
Panel members, who are volunteers, mainly drawn from local communities, and who devote a huge amount of time and effort to running the hearings, are resigning because they feel that their time is being wasted. Panels have been cancelled at the last minute because of social work reports not being drawn up, and because no one knows what is going on in the child's family.
I am glad that we are tackling those problems in a range of ways. Drugs and the misery that they bring are at the root of many family difficulties, and significant amounts of extra resources are being provided to tackle cases in which there are drug problems, which represent the front line. As with the high-priority cases that come before children's panels, social work departments allocate staff to tackle such cases. The children who are involved in low-priority cases—children who have not attended school or who have been reported to social services because the neighbours are worried about them—are those to whom we are not giving sufficient help and support. They are today's worry, but they could be tomorrow's Victoria Climbié or Kennedy McFarlane.
The Auditor General's summary report identifies a problem. Paragraph 56 states:
"The consistent message from those we spoke to during the study was that there is a need for more and better services in community settings so that children and young adults could be diverted from the repeated and serious offending which can lead eventually to custodial sentences."
Young offenders need adult supervision, because they are not getting that at home. They need some direction to give some meaning to their lives. They do not need to be locked up and told at the age of 14 that they are bad people. I know that the Minister for Education and Young People is acutely aware of those issues, and takes a personal interest in making progress in improving social work services.
The answer does not lie in demonising social workers, as so often happens when cases go badly wrong, but in the steps that the Government is already taking. We are recruiting more social workers; we are improving training; and we are providing more resources to local authorities. I welcome in particular this morning's announcement of the doubling of the number of postgraduate bursaries for social work students.
The minister is absolutely right to say that this is about far more than social work. However, it is social work services, particularly those that serve children and families, that most need our attention and support. I commend the amendment in the name of the Minister for Education and Young People.
We are all roughly on the same side in this debate, in that we agree that every child whose life is wasted and every child who does not grow up to have a fulfilled life is a loss to every one of us. Poverty lies at the heart of the matter, and as long as poverty is unaddressed, it will be very difficult to address the rest of the problem.
Mention has been made of the number of looked-after children, which has increased by 3 per cent over the past couple of years. That 3 per cent represents more than 4,000 children becoming looked-after children. None of us would want that fate for our children.
The link between looked-after children and poverty has been proved statistically. Irene McGugan noted the difference between the number of children in East Renfrewshire and the number of children in Glasgow who are looked after. All those who have worked at the coalface in education or social work know perfectly well that statistics are not required to prove the issues that have been raised—many of them are staring us in the face.
Individuals carry their childhood experiences into adult life. When youngsters cease to be looked after, their situation does not improve. "A Study of Throughcare and Aftercare Services in Scotland" by Dixon and Stein, published in 2002, suggests that between 20 per cent and 50 per cent of young homeless persons have been in the care of local authorities. That is a wide-ranging statistic, but the figure of 20 per cent is bad enough. Forty-five per cent of young offenders held in custody have been in residential care at some point. Only 25 per cent of looked-after children will obtain educational qualifications, compared with 96 per cent of children as a whole. Those are dreadful statistics and we must face up to them. I am sure that the minister is doing so. However, the statistics that I have cited are an appalling comment on life for many youngsters in 21st century Scotland.
Together, poverty, social disruption and being a cared-for child are a recipe for failure. Further proof of that is the 8 per cent rise in the number of kids who left school last year without achieving any standard grades. The gap between the best 80 per cent and the worst-performing 20 per cent of pupils is widening. That is a sad message.
Truancy has been mentioned. I recall the police rounding up from Woolworths truants from a school in Paisley at which I was teaching. The pupils came in the front door, were processed and probably disappeared again shortly afterwards. We were not running a prison camp, but a school. Children had the mindset that they would not come to school, because they found it challenging or difficult or did not like individuals in the school. Every truant is a potential criminal.
Education is part of the process that we are discussing. Alarmingly, the incidence of violence against school staff has risen by 137 per cent since 1998-99. The number of temporary exclusions has risen by 4 per cent. Every year 20,000 pupils are excluded, and about 30 per cent of those are excluded more than once. I do not have the statistics for that group, but from my previous existence I know that a number of pupils are excluded almost perpetually while people struggle to come to terms with them.
Does the member welcome the work that was done by the discipline task group and the additional resources that have been made available to ensure that there are pupil support bases and home link teachers to help to keep disadvantaged young people in school?
Absolutely. I have no problem with resources being invested to keep children in school and to expose them to the benefits that education can give them daily. I refer not only to formal education, but to the social education that pupils receive from being in the school milieu.
The problem of ill-discipline in schools has not yet been solved. Last night I phoned a teacher—who will remain nameless—who gave me a vivid impression of the difficulties that are being experienced. That teacher described how two part-time teachers who were covering 0.3 of a timetable had fled the school within a fortnight because they could not stand the disciplinary strains to which they were subjected. The pupils in question were nine-year-olds, rather than difficult teenagers. Inclusion comes at a price. The price is smaller class sizes—a point to which the SNP always returns but one that I can justify—and better professional back-up.
I have good professional experience of case conferences in which all agencies are brought together to address the problems of particular children in particular situations. I look back with affection on the education social workers who worked in some of the schools where I worked, who did a great job for us. I hope that enough people will be recruited to allow such specialists to be put back in post.
Cathy Peattie mentioned new community schools, in which interagency activity will be available to support children, but as yet there are very few such schools. The problem is that while we plan such things, children are slipping through the net and have slipped through the net. That is a terrible legacy left by all Administrations to date.
In some ways I was slightly surprised by the choice of the SNP debate today. That was not because we are debating a motion on children and young people because, as Ian Jenkins said, we have done so in the past and it is right and proper that we continue to do so. Part of the SNP motion asks the Parliament to note
"in particular the references to the need to address urgently the crisis in the recruitment and retention of social workers"
and
"urges the Scottish Executive to give serious consideration to this matter".
I remember that we had this debate in April or May this year; indeed, the minister moved a motion on recruitment and retraining. If the Executive had done nothing, as some allege, it would be right to have a debate today and to challenge the Executive. However, I believe that the Executive has moved considerably.
The child protection audit and review identified that the shortage of social workers was endemic. The 12-point action plan for social services included £13.3 million for social work training and child protection measures. There is an additional £3.5 million for local authorities for training and support of social work in their areas. That was a good decision by the minister, because training was always a soft budget line and it could be removed if there were problems with the budget with regard to local authorities. The plan also included pump priming for the Association of Directors of Social Work to develop additional support for front-line staff.
The first phase of the recruitment and awareness campaign was called, "care in Scotland, life changing work". There have been 21,000 visits to the website and 1,000 calls to the two helplines. Just as important, colleges and universities are reporting increases in inquiries about social work courses. We all agree that there is still a need for more social workers; indeed, last night there was a report in the Evening Times that Glasgow is considering the possibility of training social work assistants. In my team, some social work assistants were much better social workers than were the qualified social workers.
I am interested in the response from the colleges and universities and I ask the minister to consider the course on which I qualified, which was a change-of-career course at Jordanhill College of Education. At the time, I was a wages clerk. I had seen an advert in the paper, but I had no qualifications at all, having left school at 15. At that point I had considerable life experience—I will not take an intervention on what that was. Do not get me wrong; I believe that young people have much to contribute to social work and we see that clearly when young people deal with youngsters who are misusing drugs and alcohol and kids who are having difficulty with school. However, I believe that life experience plays a large part in social work. The oldest person on my course was 50 and she contributed extremely well both to the course and to her job when she qualified.
As I said, the course was advertised in local and national papers and no qualifications were necessary for entry to it. Many people nowadays lose their jobs in their late 40s or early 50s—or even before that—or have been in a job for 20 years and think, "I want to do something totally different." There should be an opportunity for them at least to be assessed to see whether they could do the job.
As the minister said, the Executive has responded to the child protection review and audit report, "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright". Among other things, it has provided extra support for helplines that provide counselling and support for children. I launched one last week in Inverclyde that covers my constituency and Duncan McNeil's constituency.
Social work is fundamental to the delivery of social justice and the anti-poverty strategies of the Executive; indeed, the Deputy Minister for Social Justice will sum up for the Executive. It is very clear that there are difficulties and problems in recruitment for social work and we have heard about the difficulties that the children's hearings system faces. The welfare of our children should be paramount and every child, no matter what their background, should have the best possible start in life. That should be our goal and all our public services should link to contribute to it.
Of course we recognise that there is much more to do, but it is my honest belief that we have made an encouraging start. No one denies that we must continue to address recruitment and retention and the minister reiterated that point in her opening remarks. We must focus on delivery to improve outcomes for Scotland's children. No child should miss out on any opportunity to enhance their quality of life. As the minister said, second best is not good enough. I urge members to support amendment S1M-3698.2.
We will be able to have speeches of five minutes, plus interventions, right to the end of the debate. I encourage interventions.
The last sentence of the SNP motion notes that too many of our children continue to live in poverty. The most recent SNP debate in which I spoke focused directly on that fact. Therefore, I will not repeat all the stark statistics about poverty in this country; I will merely restate the findings of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report that was published this month, which concluded that there is an overall sense that there has, over seven years, been little change. That is set to continue under the devolved settlement, in spite of the Executive's decision to change the measurement of poverty from a relative to an absolute measure.
Will the member take an intervention?
No, it is too soon.
I want to make a plea for the children who live in Scotland who are the poorest by any measurement—the children of asylum seekers. Those children are very much a minority. We all know that the Scottish Parliament is denied control over asylum, immigration and nationality, and that the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which will soon be operative, will discriminate against the children of people who seek asylum in our country.
Does the member agree that the use of the term "asylum seeker" rather than "refugee" is pejorative and that we should therefore work hard to avoid it? The term "asylum seeker" implies that people who are so designated wish to be given something. That is in contrast to the historical perspective of refugees as people who need support and help.
I agree that it is sad that that terminology is used in a legal context. Some of the statements that have been made by members of the Government—who should know better—by the media and by the press simply exacerbate the problem.
The new act will set up accommodation centres for refugees and asylum seekers. Sections of the act will remove refugee children in accommodation centres from the application of key sections of the Scottish education service. We are talking about segregated education—possibly for a period of months. Surely that is both regressive and discriminatory; it could contravene not only the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, but also the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.
I will quote from section 36(1) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which states:
"a resident of an accommodation centre shall not be treated as part of the population of a local education authority's area."
It is sad that children in Scotland are already being educated outwith the mainstream education system in Dungavel detention centre in the East Kilbride constituency. In that regard, I have concerns about Scottish legislation. The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 lays out local authority duties towards children. A parliamentary answer about those duties, which I received in May 2002, states:
"The Home Office has taken responsibility for ensuring that the needs of the children are met and may work with local authorities to do so."—[Official Report, Written Answers, 13 May 2002; p 652.]
Surely it is not good enough that the Home Office "may work" with local authorities. We should insist that it is for Scotland to look after any children in this country. The fact that we have legislation that safeguards the rights of children and the responsibilities of our elected local authorities means that those rights and responsibilities should be respected and honoured.
We should not just lie down and accept what the Home Secretary is doing. He is prepared not only to discriminate against people who must already be at their lowest ebb, as they have had to flee their homelands, but to deny asylum seekers' children rights to the same basic services that our children can expect. As the minister said, second best is not good enough for anyone's child.
I do not think that the Scottish Executive's ministers who have responsibility in this area think like their London colleagues and I have faith that a good number of coalition members do not think like their London colleagues, either. I ask the ministers to give a commitment that they will fight to prevent asylum seeker children in Scotland from being treated in that way.
The Home Secretary is required to consult Scottish ministers before establishing accommodation centres in Scotland. I ask ministers please to use that consultation to insist on rights for refugee children. I guarantee that the SNP will join ministers in any campaign to stop or reverse the relentless rightward drift of policy on asylum seekers and refugees. As a Parliament, we should make it clear to anyone who will listen that Scotland is a nation that can and will play its part in helping to alleviate the problems that are faced by immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, but that we can do so only if we are allowed to.
I agree with Irene McGugan's opening remarks about the need to give children the best possible start in life. I only hope that the SNP offers some new ideas rather than more of the same failed policies that Labour has promoted. Those have not dealt with Scotland's social problems and have therefore not dealt with the problems that face our children and young people.
If the lot of children in the 21st century is to improve, that will be brought about only by policies that create wealth and opportunity and therefore security. Those things can be achieved only in an atmosphere of peaceful public order. Everyone agrees that there has been an explosion of youth crime, an increase in truancy and that there is among our youth apathy towards society that is dangerous for the future.
Our institutions are failing young people, but the SNP blames parents. In 2001, the SNP proposed that parents should be fined when their children commit crimes—I question whether that would be helpful. Individual families might be made up of badly behaved and well-behaved children, so it seems to me to be wrong that those who are well behaved should suffer because their parents would be made poorer by fines that result from the actions of their brothers and sisters.
Unfortunately, the Scottish Executive's 10-point plan to combat youth crime seems, as usual, to be spin rather than substance. It is devoted to creating good media coverage for the Executive rather than to addressing the causes of youth crime and tackling those causes head on. Why will the Executive's campaign of high-visibility policing end after December? That is like telling the horse when the stable door will be left open.
All the reviews and feasibility projects that we hear about from the Executive simply fill in time on Scottish television when there is no other news.
Does Jamie McGrigor accept that the feasibility study on youth courts is a positive thing, in that it will bring about one of the most radical changes in the way in which we deal with youth justice in Scotland? Does he accept that not only have we made significant progress on all the points in the action plan, but we have put in the resources to back that up?
That demonstrates the spectacular U-turn that the Executive has made.
Why does not the Executive do something about the causes of youth crime and the detection of such crime? We need more high-visibility community police officers who get to know local people and work with parents, schools and community groups to encourage good behaviour among children and young people. Police officers, social workers and, above all, parents must instil in children a sense of responsibility to members of their own family, because that in turn breeds responsibility among individuals for their respective communities. Those communities then feel a responsibility to the nation as a whole. That is how good civil society is achieved.
I welcome the developments in Tory thinking that the member has suggested. Mr McGrigor's heroine, Margaret Thatcher, said in this very assembly hall that there was no such thing as society. I welcome Mr McGrigor's recognition that there is such a thing and I hope that his thinking will continue to progress at least into the 20th century and possibly into the 21st.
I am glad that Michael Russell at least admits that child poverty was a lot better under Margaret Thatcher than it is now.
It is encouraging that the Executive has given up on its idea of sending 16 and 17-year-olds to children's panels. That was common sense, because such panels should deal with the vulnerable and those at risk.
Unfortunately, the Scottish Government's targets for eliminating child poverty within a generation are not being met. Although the SNP offers no alternative policies other than independence, it at least admits that child poverty is worse now than when the Conservatives were in power. That was reiterated in Michael Russell's words this morning.
It is left-wing socialist policies that have failed and are failing Scots children. One in five Scots of working age is on benefits. That is shameful. The figure has been brought about by years of a dependency culture. The way to end poverty is to allow wealth-creation policies that provide economic opportunity and security for all, and to find solutions that pull everyone up rather than pull more people down and which pull the vulnerable in our society backwards.
Will the member give way?
No.
It is essential that the causes of the 21st century poverty that affects children, which has been brought about by increased fragility of family and community, be identified, acknowledged and addressed urgently. We believe that every child's individuality is important and that a diverse education system will better suit the needs of all our country's children. The best way in which to achieve that is to provide real choice in education and to give head teachers the flexibility to cater for that choice.
I am at a loss as to how to follow that, Presiding Officer. In his usual fashion, Jamie McGrigor dismisses entirely his party's historical responsibility for where we are now. Let us be quite clear: child poverty was a driver of social policy for the Conservatives. I remind the member that there were 1.3 million more children in poverty under the Conservatives' regime than there are now.
Our vision is quite clear. Unlike under the Conservatives, every child should have the best possible start in life irrespective of their social and economic background. There is a clear relationship between a poor start in life and a life of poverty. People who experience that kind of disadvantage in childhood are often unable to overcome the obstacles to achievement of their potential that they face. That is particularly true for the most vulnerable children; for those who are most at risk of abuse or neglect. I therefore welcome the Executive's initiative in setting up the child protection review.
The child protection review report makes grim reading. Half of the children who are at risk of abuse or neglect are not being adequately protected or cared for. I stress that we are not talking about negligence on the part of workers; the problem is more to do with the strain that the child protection system is under. The net result is that children can get lost between the competing demands. There are myriad reasons why that happens and I do not have sufficient time to go into them all. Probably one of the most significant factors is the shortage of social workers. I am pleased that the minister has acted quickly in response to the review's recommendations. We need to provide support to social workers to ensure that children do not continue to slip through the net.
Although the main burden undoubtedly falls on social workers, there are many other professionals involved in child protection, such as health visitors, general practitioners, the police, voluntary organisations and teachers. We need to draw on all that expertise and better co-ordinate our efforts.
Will the member give way?
No, I do not have time.
The three-year programme of activity to reform child protection services will deliver much-needed change in the form of clear practice standards, development of the role of child protection committees and, above all, enhancement of the system's capacity to deliver better results. That, coupled with the interagency implementation team and a robust new inspection framework, will ensure that reform is delivered.
Capacity is probably the key constraint that we face. Despite an increase in the past decade of 20 per cent in the number of social workers, there is still a shortage of social workers throughout the country. That is due partly to the unprecedented—but welcome—scale of development of social care services. Services such as child care, community care and criminal justice have far outstripped the supply of professionals. The shortage of social workers is particularly evident in children's services where case loads can be huge and unmanageable and where the lives and circumstances of the children the services seek to protect can be harrowing and stressful.
We need a competent work force that is able to work to the highest possible standards, and we need sufficient numbers in that work force so that the work load is manageable, so that support is provided and so that decisions are appropriate. As Trish Godman does, I recognise that the Minister for Education and Young People has done much already and that she is committed to doing more: from the current recruitment campaign "care in Scotland, life changing work", which is a good start; to the £3 million of additional funding for local authorities to train and support existing social workers; to the £13 million of new resources for social work training and child-protection measures.
I know that the minister will continue to take concerted and sustained action to make necessary improvements, not just in the context of the child protection audit and review, but in child protection overall. I also know that she will not only ensure that there are a policy framework and resources, but will ensure that the legislative framework is right. The Protection of Children (Scotland) Bill has been extended to cover voluntary organisations as well as public authorities and will, for the first time, create a register of people who are unsuitable to work with children. The Commissioner for Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill, which was developed by the Education, Culture and Sport Committee, will promote awareness of children's rights and will ensure that we mainstream the consideration of children into what we do as a society.
In conclusion, I pick up on the theme that Ian Jenkins started, which is society's responsibilities. We need public education so that individuals feel that they are able to raise with public services their concerns about children and that they feel confident doing so, so that communities are in turn encouraged to play a much more active role. We need to improve public understanding of the role of social work and of those who are involved in child protection in order to remove the old negative perceptions about social workers, and to promote the much more positive work that is done to protect children from neglect and abuse.
The safety of children is everyone's responsibility. It is not just about Government or local government or voluntary organisations; it is about all of us. It is about people in communities and neighbourhoods throughout Scotland having the confidence to act where there are concerns about a child's safety. Society is judged by how it treats its young, its old and its most vulnerable. The children who we are talking about are some of the most vulnerable people in our communities today. Let our society not be judged to be found wanting.
The Scottish Executive has made the laudable pledge that every young person will get the best possible start in life but, without doubt, that is not being achieved for the vast majority of children and young people with autism or Asperger's syndrome. It is clear that there is a growing body of evidence that children with autism or Asperger's syndrome have specific needs that require a different focus and a different approach from what is appropriate for children who have other disabilities. Indeed, there is now a body of evidence that recognises that 50 per cent of children who have autistic spectrum disorder do not have a learning disability, therefore we require a complete rethink of service provision for those who have ASD.
Autism and Asperger's are described as hidden disabilities. They are characterised by difficulty in communicating, difficulty in thinking and difficulty in interacting in a manner that we would term "normal". That makes the disorders difficult to recognise. However, ASD is a communication disorder and we have to understand it. That disability is not as obvious as learning disabilities or physical disabilities and that, in effect, makes it possible for authorities to ignore the condition. Also, as a result of the lack of up-to-date knowledge—I mean the lack that exists today—of diagnosis and treatment, children and young people with autism suffer greatly from social exclusion and they will continue to do so into their adulthood if there is not a quantum change in service provision. More important, an autism-specific strategy must be initiated at the earliest possible date.
I know that Lloyd Quinan takes a close interest in the matter, which I welcome. Does he agree that the proposals on additional support for learning on which we are currently consulting have the potential to cover some of the young people who he feels are not getting the services that they should, and that the proposals will help to change the way that conditions such as autism and ASD are viewed? Does he welcome the continuation of the consultation?
I welcome any consultation. As the minister knows, as well as the disabilities' being hidden, the parents and carers of children who have the conditions have been hidden away and not consulted. There have been consultations during the past couple of years, which have been effective and useful, but I see them only as introducing something into the marketplace that was not there previously. It would be niggardly of me not to welcome any initiatives, but I want to emphasise the necessity of the Executive's using consultation to move to somewhere else, which would be a quantum leap.
I want to talk specifically about misdiagnosis and, more important, mistreatment. That is a new concept—people with autism can be treated. Treatments are available and come in many forms: educational, medical interventions or simply a change in diet. Those are treatments, but they are not commonly seen as such. Misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment, particularly inappropriate use of drugs, is happening to this day throughout Scotland. In many cases, that can create grave circumstances in which young people, who do not know what is wrong with them or why they cannot communicate and appear to be different from everyone else, descend into severe depression and a sense of hopelessness.
The statistics for self-injury and attempted suicide among young people with ASD and Asperger's syndrome are horrific. Feelings, emotions and troubles clearly increase during times of transition, such as from primary to secondary school and from youth into adulthood. Those can be challenging times for anyone, never mind someone with Asperger's syndrome or ASD. Because there are so few opportunities for young people to become what we would term a "normal" adult—who can earn a living, get a home of their own and form relationships—those feelings of helplessness only increase. Moreover, the frustration and depression that that creates for parents and carers is exacerbated. There is an urgent need for more transitional services and for more research on outcomes for young people with autism. Because the services do not exist, many people do not enter the system and go missing completely.
Having a child with ASD has a major impact on a whole family. Emotional stress is extremely damaging and depression and marriage breakdowns can occur. Siblings leave home or are excluded from school, and they can exhibit erratic and violent behaviour. I have heard about such examples in stories that I have heard from parents in the past few days and it is important that each example provides grounds for legal action against local authorities, health boards and the Executive for their failure to provide appropriate services. If anyone wants a reminder, article 13 of the European convention on human rights covers the right to an effective remedy, article 14 prohibits discrimination and article 17 prohibits abuse of rights. There are also the rights to education and family life. The minister and local authorities should know that there is no shortage of parents in this country who are preparing to take action. It is not a situation in which those families want to find themselves, but they are preparing to take action and they will do so.
As many members know, ASD is a challenging and complex disorder. It is not recognised adequately by the statutory agencies that are responsible for providing diagnosis or services. Whether that is by ignorance or design, only history will tell us. Deteriorating mental health through non-diagnosis or misdiagnosis can lead to the need for acute services. Inappropriate drug treatments frequently result in creation of new problems and symptoms, which in turn create pressure on acute services.
Autism and Asperger's do not fit easily into the eligibility criteria that are operated by many of our local authorities, and many people are being discriminated against. They fall through the gaps in the system, which—
Order. You are well over time, and I would appreciate it if you drew to a conclusion.
Okay.
The matter is quite straightforward. We need to be aware that this is not simply a problem for health or for education, but that it requires an entirely new national strategy that combines those elements. Information is available in this country about treatment that will improve the situation and create less pressure on services. We have to put into practice the joined-up thinking that we keep talking about. The problem that we must address is not that ASD is a learning disability, but that we have an inability to allow people who have it to be educated.
I am grateful to the SNP for giving the Parliament the opportunity to debate this vital subject and for giving the debate the full three-hour slot. As the morning has progressed, the usual party-political bickering has died away a little and several members have made good and welcome speeches.
The future of Scotland's young people is hugely significant, given their enormous potential for contributing positively to our society and the dislocation that the failure to deal with some young people can cause to local communities. Indeed, Jackie Baillie highlighted the importance of the aspirational objective of giving every child the best start in life.
At the centre of the debate are the important reports from the child protection audit and review and from Audit Scotland, which identify the scale of the challenge and the shortcomings in the current provision. I will focus my comments on the youth justice system and begin by stating categorically that the children's panel system and its care and support approach remain—and should remain—the centrepiece of how we deal with children in trouble. Frankly, it is time that ill-informed people stopped knocking the children's panels.
I experienced a flash of light while Lyndsay McIntosh was outlining the Conservative approach to the issue. Although the Conservatives have been at pains to say frequently that they do not want to get rid of children's panels, they have also talked about ending the slap-on-the-wrist approach. It is quite clear that the Conservatives want to turn the children's panels, which they recognise are popular and respected, into something more like the youth courts that they want to be introduced. Given some of the comments that have been made this morning, Conservative members seem to be moving away from the policy of the need to protect children—the cuddly-child image and so on—towards the different approach that is apparently required to deal with teenage thugs.
However, in a sense, we are dealing with the same people. Almost every index of failure—greater homelessness, greater crime, greater mental health problems, poorer educational attainment and, crucially, the extent of the violence and abuse that is perpetrated against many children in early childhood—relates most particularly to looked-after children. Any social worker, youth worker or policeman will point out that they can spot children at the age of five or six who are likely to cause trouble and come before the panel or the courts in their teenage years, because those young people are the ones who have been abused and have been in trouble at that earlier stage of their lives. Several members have covered that central point.
There is an increasing consensus among those involved at the coalface that, although institutional provision is sometimes necessary for the protection of the public, it is the most expensive and often the most unsuccessful option. That observation applies right across the system, from residential provision for children through secure places to the prison system. It is trite but true to say that, despite the best intentions, such institutions can be universities for criminals.
The European Association for Research into Residential Child Care took a research sample of case studies across Scotland, Ireland, Finland and Spain and found that more than 60 per cent of the children who had been in care had clinically significant emotional and behavioural problems. It observed that the greater the number of changes of placement, the worse the psychological outcome would be, and it found that responding to the needs of traumatised children required multiprofessional teamwork.
Those observations are borne out by the Audit Scotland report, which recommends a shift from residential and custodial sentences to community-based services. By the way, that conclusion shoots down the contention so often voiced by the Conservatives and the SNP that the key thing is to increase the number of secure places and, as David McLetchie said, to
"get persistent offenders off the streets"
to
"have any chance of reforming their criminal behaviour".
That sounds good, but it does not work.
Audit Scotland acknowledges that the Scottish Executive has recognised and is acting on the issues that its report covers. Nevertheless, there is a massive challenge for us all. As Ian Jenkins said—in what I, perhaps partially, thought was an excellent and knowledgeable speech—there is a problem and we cannot ignore the facts. We have done the groundwork and we have put in place some of the necessary resources, but there is still a long way to go.
People are key. There is a 13 per cent shortfall in children's service social workers. The shortfall is much higher in Glasgow, where, as Irene McGugan said, needs are much greater. The child protection audit and review found that outcomes for children were
"highly dependent on social work doing well."
In Glasgow, panels are meeting again after three months to see whether anybody, anywhere has had any contact at all with the child in need. That is a bureaucratic nonsense and a damning indictment of the current situation.
It will take time to turn the social work crisis around, as it takes time to recruit social workers and social work assistants. However, there are some things that we can do. We must adopt a joined-up approach to make best use of professional social workers and greater use of social work assistants. Social workers could be better supported. The British Association of Social Workers briefing that members have received mentions transport support. I know from representations made to me that many social work staff get a mileage allowance if they use their own car—that is a loss leader for poorly paid staff. There should be a better career structure, proper tools—such as mobile phones and computers—payments for extra responsibilities and a thorough review of pay and conditions. Social workers need to feel valued, just as the damaged children in their care do.
We must speed up the system. It is not acceptable that it takes five and a half months for a case to reach a children's hearing. Systems that are under stress breed bureaucracy and lead to a rationing of resources. As Audit Scotland says, 60 per cent of resources are spent on prosecuting and reaching decisions on young offenders and there must be a shift towards providing services that tackle and prevent offending behaviour.
These complex issues arise from complex and deep-seated trends in our society. We all have a vital interest in tackling them. Let us build on the extensive work that is being done. I am sure that the minister will wish to act with increased urgency to take on board the full implications of the two important reports.
The debate has been enlightening, because we have heard how Labour and the Executive are failing Scotland's children. There is no shortage of rhetoric or glossy publications from the Executive, but delivery is sadly lacking. Anyone who listened to the members representing the Executive parties would not believe that Labour has been in power, at one level or another, for getting on for six years.
I am sorry to say that we have heard no new ideas from the SNP, either. All that it is offering is yet more of the same. As was recognised earlier in the debate, what the Executive amendment proposes is similar to what the SNP is saying. There is, once again, a left-of-centre consensus that has nothing new to offer.
In his opening remarks, Bill Aitken spoke about child poverty. According to some indicators, child poverty is on the increase in Scotland. The recent social justice annual report showed that there has been an increase in the percentage of children who live in low-income households. We take issue with many of the measures that are used but, on the Executive's own measures, the statistics are going in the wrong direction. That is despite all the Executive initiatives that we have heard about.
We cannot talk about poverty, or child poverty, without considering its root causes: lack of educational opportunities; lack of access to skills training; lack of employment; family breakdown; crime and disorder; and the effect of drugs. All those things impact much more on disadvantaged communities than they do on society as a whole. We must have an economy that spreads wealth and creates wealth. We must use that money to create high-quality public services that help the vulnerable. Too often, the current system acts against the most vulnerable and those living in disadvantaged communities.
We must work in partnership with voluntary groups. The state and its agents do not deliver everything. I have visited social projects that help the most vulnerable. The most successful are often those that are run by voluntary—perhaps faith-based—groups. We must consider removing barriers that affect the way in which those groups operate.
I turn to the issue of education, because it is through our schools that we can have the greatest impact on child poverty and the way in which children are treated. We have made the point before and it has been made again today—the present education system fails the most vulnerable in society. Colin Campbell, in a typically thoughtful speech, mentioned the widening gap between pupil performance in the best schools and that in the poorest schools. The increase in the past year in the number of pupils who leave school with no qualifications shows that the present system does not deliver.
Does the member accept that the new community school approach is one method of ensuring that the most disadvantaged areas receive extra resources? Does he agree that, to tackle the opportunity gap, it is right to continue to target resources at the most disadvantaged young people? Does he welcome the fact that we will introduce education maintenance allowances to ensure that young people from low-income families stay on at school and get the benefit of education?
We will judge community schools and the other initiatives that the minister mentioned on their results. It remains to be seen how successful they will be. I question whether the money is best spent in those ways. It would be better to give the money directly to schools and to let them decide how best to use it. Schools are best equipped to take local decisions.
We want high-quality education for everyone, not only for the favoured few whose parents are fortunate enough to own a house in the catchment area of one of the better schools. We also want those who become disengaged from the education process at 14 or 15 to have access to vocational training at further education colleges. We have talked about that issue before.
In the time remaining to me, I turn to the issue of justice. Again, those who live in the poorest communities—the most disadvantaged—suffer the most from crime and disorder. Bill Aitken mentioned youth justice, particularly in relation to anti-social behaviour among young people. All members know of communities of people whose lives are made miserable by youth offenders, especially persistent offenders. I agree with Kenny MacAskill's point that we need an holistic approach. The issue is not only about crime and punishment, but about encouraging diversionary activities such as youth clubs to give young people an interest so that they are not simply out on the streets. Jamie McGrigor referred to community police officers. In Tayside, there has been a welcome move towards getting police on the streets, rather than in cars. We will see what impact that measure has.
In speaking about young offenders, we always come back to children's panels. As Robert Brown said, there is a problem with children's panels. The Audit Scotland "Dealing with offending by young people" report strongly criticises the way in which the current system operates. Robert Brown referred to various delays. I am delighted that the Executive's ludicrous plan to send 16 and 17-year-olds to children's panels was defeated by the Justice 2 Committee. I commend Bill Aitken and the more sensible members of the other parties who supported the overturning of that measure.
Bill Aitken mentioned the moves to extend available disposals to include weekend and evening detentions, tagging, community service orders and supervised attendance orders. Those ideas are sensible, but other parties, including the SNP, voted against them. We have heard many fine words, but there has not been much about delivery.
We have heard that Labour is failing. Labour has had five and a half years to deal with the issues, but there has been a lack of delivery and a failure to take hard decisions. All that we heard from SNP members was yet more of the same. They say that they would spend more money, but they do not say where it would come from. Only the Conservative party challenges the failed consensus. The Executive and the SNP do not have a monopoly of care; the only monopoly that they have is on a poverty of ambition for the most vulnerable in Scotland. I support Bill Aitken's amendment.
There is a serious debate to be had on children's services and child poverty. Although there have been some excellent speeches, unfortunately, as Murdo Fraser demonstrated, we are sometimes far from having such a debate.
Irene McGugan mentioned the "Monitoring poverty and social exclusion in Scotland" report, which provides a good synopsis of some of the issues with which we are dealing. The report highlights the complexities involved in providing a better deal for children and in dealing with child poverty. It is not the case that government in general can simply get all its policy ducks in a line and automatically get a resolution of the problem through the sausage machine. Many of the causes of child poverty are deep seated and concern family behaviour, social circumstances and so on. It will take time to change those things.
I was around when the first two versions of the report were produced. I used to trip over them regularly, because for about 10 years I shared an office with Gill Scott, who is the driving force behind the Scottish poverty information unit. Looking at the four versions of the report, I find it interesting to note that the Executive is now employing a much more systematic range of tools to tackle the range of issues surrounding child poverty and to improve children's services. Those mechanisms can be improved—I am not saying that they are perfect. Nonetheless, the Executive is systematically attempting to resolve the issue of child poverty, to deal with its underlying causes and to provide better-targeted services.
I accept that the Executive is undertaking a range of actions, as I acknowledged in my speech. However, according to the local authorities that Irene McGugan quoted, the situation is getting worse. That is the key issue. If all those mechanisms are in place and the work is being done, why are things getting worse?
Michael Russell is completely wrong in that assertion. The Executive's social justice annual report shows that, in respect of the 29 social justice milestones, the figures are moving in the reverse direction for only two, whereas the figures relating to more than half are getting better. That is the reality.
Let us go back to the early 1990s, as there is an important issue to address in the context of the Conservatives' position. As I have said, tackling child poverty and delivering effective children's services is not an easy task. Society is changing and a series of processes are going on that affect family structure and people's situations, which must be taken into account and which we, the local authorities and everybody else concerned must address. In the 1980s and 1990s, Strathclyde Regional Council tried to deal with some of those wider issues in the context of its social strategy. It sought to deal with the consequences of the almost deliberate impoverishment of hundreds of thousands of Scottish families through the de-industrialisation and scorch-and-burn policies of the Thatcher Government.
We are in a better situation now than Strathclyde was in the 1980s and 1990s to begin to roll back some of the effects of the economic circumstances of that time. We have a Parliament and we can legislate to change things. We have sound economic management and substantial additional resources, which are being dedicated, pushed and targeted to dealing with child poverty and children's services. Irene McGugan attacked the First Minister over his priorities. I respond by saying that the First Minister has repeatedly made it clear to Parliament that his priorities rest with improving things for Scotland's children. We see our task as being to deal with the underlying causes of child poverty and disadvantage. That is what we are trying to do and that is where the resources are being spent.
I contrast that with the SNP's perspective. Even if we were to accept for a minute, which I do not, the SNP's argument that somehow there would be economic improvement in Scotland following independence—an argument for which the SNP cannot find support from reputable people—there is virtually unanimous support among reputable commentators that the process of separation would be profoundly disruptive, not just to our economy, but to key public services. The issue is not just whether the current levels of spending on health, education and other services that are vital to families and children can be sustained; equally damaging would be the loss of focus on social justice priorities, which are our priorities and, I believe, Scotland's priorities.
If it is true that the situation is improving, can the minister tell me how many local authorities in Scotland have an integrated strategy to deal with children with autism or Asperger's syndrome? How many further or higher education colleges in Scotland run programmes for children with Asperger's syndrome and autistic spectrum disorder?
In his speech, Lloyd Quinan made some valid points about how we should deal with the situation. We want to address the issue that he mentions; indeed, the minister has already agreed to speak to the cross-party group on those matters.
Our vision is of a Scotland in which every child matters and where every child—regardless of their family background—has the best possible start in life. That means that we need to deliver better opportunities, a better start and a better future for Scotland's children. We can do that by providing appropriate and integrated services for families and children in health, education, housing and a range of other areas.
We need a detailed understanding of how best to target those services. That is what the focus of the debate should be. The issue is not necessarily whether things are getting generally better or worse; it is how policies are delivering improvements for the targeted groups. We must narrow the gap so that everyone can share in Scotland's prosperity. That is why the Scottish budget is investing in areas such as health, education, homelessness and regeneration, which are especially relevant to the needs of children and families; we are targeting resources to those in greatest need of a hand up the opportunity ladder.
The outcomes of the spending review and the "Closing the Opportunity Gap" document, which was published in October, show that the Executive is committed to that approach. The social justice annual report gives us a framework for advancing the objectives and it sets out milestones that will allow us to mark the progress that we make.
The role of Margaret Curran and me is to try to co-ordinate some of that work to ensure that all the ministerial portfolios contribute to eradicating child poverty and to the Executive's goal of closing the opportunity gap. In practice, that means working with colleagues to ensure that the mainstream programmes give priority to meeting the needs of children and families, especially the most disadvantaged. That cross-cutting role is also about identifying gaps in services, examining what works and helping to find new approaches where problems are identified. Jackie Baillie made a number of important points highlighting the different strands in the strategies that we are proposing.
Trish Godman and Kay Ullrich talked about the commitment to social work. The child protection review report demonstrates that good social workers make a unique contribution and change lives for the better. The efforts that have been made to address the image of social work, to recruit and retain people, are vital. The minister will respond to the COSLA task force's report on recruitment and retention.
On youth justice, the Scottish Executive will consider the recommendations that are being made in the "Dealing with offending by young people" report. We will consider whether there should be a shift in the balance of resources in the decision-making process towards services to tackle offending behaviour. We will consider whether the spend on residential and custodial services should be shifted in favour of community-based services. We will consider how places in secure care and residential schools are commissioned. We will consider the inconsistencies between grant-aided expenditure and budgets so that local authorities have a clearer idea of what expenditure should be targeted at children's services. Across the full range of activities, I believe that we are setting a framework for action.
But things are getting worse.
We will develop that action over the next period when we are returned to power and Mr Russell remains seated where he is.
It is a shame that Des McNulty chose to lower the tone of the debate. I suggest to him that his speech was nothing other than a carefully crafted waste of everybody's time. He might want to rethink his speeches in future.
The subject of today's debate crosses portfolios, as we have discovered only too graphically this morning. Obviously, we have talked mostly about social work and there were times when I thought that the debate was more like death by buzzword—when one is not accustomed to the jargon, it can be impenetrable. I will speak about youth justice, because that is what I am most concerned about. Some members touched on the issue, but only Ken Macintosh chose to highlight it as the main subject of his speech.
Although we recognise that only a minority of young people are involved in offending, youth crime and youth disorder rank extremely high on the list of things that people come to see me about in my surgeries. On Monday night, I was at a local meeting in Perth where the issue was raised. It is raised by communities right across my constituency and I know that that is the experience of other members in their constituencies.
Of nearly a million crimes and offences committed in Scotland, somewhere between 40 and 66 per cent are committed by under 21-year-olds. That is a huge percentage. In 2000, 34 per cent of young people owned up to having committed an offence in the previous year. That is up from 22 per cent in 1993 and 28 per cent in 1996. Even if we allow for some macho bravado, the figures are still way too high. The number of offenders under 16 who have committed 10 offences or more rose between 1998-99 and 2000-01. Vandalism is at a 25-year record level and 42 per cent of vandalism offences last year were committed by 16 to 20-year-olds. There is clearly a problem that needs to be tackled.
The motion refers to the Audit Scotland report, which was published only within the past week. The report shows that a problem has been identified but is not being tackled. Courtesy of Nicol Stephen and his leaked media plan, we already had a fair idea of what would be in the report. Nevertheless, it makes grim reading for the Executive. It highlights the failure so far to deal with offending by young people and reveals the system as being slow, uneven, lacking in proper monitoring and starved of resources.
Let us look at some of the report's findings. It takes too long for young people to proceed through the children's hearings system and the criminal justice system. We in the SNP have certainly asked about time intervals for persistent young offenders both in children's hearings and in the criminal justice system as a whole, but we cannot get the answers because there is no centrally held information that allows us even to assess what the problem is. There are significant variations in the decisions reached on young people accused of offences.
The report praises the quality of social inquiry reports in the criminal justice system and we should acknowledge that praise. However, that high quality now appears to be under threat from the lack of social workers. Just last Friday, Sheriff James Farrell was reported in The Herald to have spoken of the growing credibility gap between what the Scottish Executive is introducing and the ability of local authority social work departments to deliver on the ground. The day before, apparently, he was forced to continue six cases because social inquiry reports were unavailable. He was told in three instances that there would be a delay of two to three months in the implementation of community service orders.
We have spent a lot of time this morning talking about problems in social work, but that is the end result on the ground of the wider problems. Because of the difficulties, many young offenders do not get the services that they need to tackle their offending behaviour. There is a lack of specialist services and social workers to deal with young offenders, as we have been saying over the months as well as this morning. There are some good projects, such as Matrix and Freagarrach, which members from all parties support, but the minister must accept that delivery is patchy.
Will Roseanna Cunningham acknowledge that I made it clear in my response to the Audit Scotland report that that patchiness was not acceptable? Will she also acknowledge that we have ensured that local authorities get additional resources so that projects such as the ones that she referred to can be replicated?
Before Roseanna Cunningham answers, I suggest to other members that, as we are not going to have a vote in the next two or three minutes, some of their more exuberant conversations could take place outside.
I hear what the minister is saying, but we must recognise that we are a number of years down the line of a Labour Administration—since 1997 at Westminster and since 1999 here. We seem constantly to have the same debate and we constantly hear reassurances, but we do not see results.
Will Roseanna Cunningham confirm the truth of Sheriff Farrell's reported view? He directly blamed the lack of resources from the Executive for failures in the court system, which led to what happened last week. That answers the minister's point.
When a sheriff talks openly in court about a credibility gap, that is a serious matter and the Executive must take it on board.
The problem is that the Executive's main concern was how to spin its way out of the indictment that it knew was coming rather than how to implement the recommendations that were made in the report. Words are fine, but the problem is that they have not resulted in action that makes a difference.
The Scottish Committee of the Council on Tribunals report on the children's hearings system in Scotland has also highlighted poor resourcing of the system for dealing with young offenders. The report found that the shortage of resources led to poor accommodation—even new purpose-built accommodation was found to be cramped and there was not always suitable access to it—and to reports not being received until hearings took place, which led to delays and inconvenience to panel members and families. Sheriff James Farrell's comments may have arisen in the context of the sheriff court, but the same criticisms could equally apply in respect of children's panels.
The shortage of resources has led to the delayed allocation of social workers, which in turn has led to a lack of support for vulnerable families. Problems are still not addressed long after necessary support should have been in place. In addition, the shortage has led to a scarcity of locally available programmes or placements to provide early help for children and to a lack of secure residential places. There is real concern that, in certain circumstances, a hearing might have to tailor its decision to fit the resources that are available within the local authority rather than reaching a decision that might be in the best interests of the child. No member would agree that that is a satisfactory way of proceeding.
Both reports call for a specific commitment of resources, particularly to supply services to tackle offending behaviour. The Government has promised resources, but has so far failed to deliver, even by its own yardstick. As for progress on the so-called 10-point action plan that was announced in June, the Government scores nothing out of 10.
The Audit Scotland report specifically mentions the crisis in criminal justice social work. There has been much discussion of social work this morning. Alternatives to custody cannot be expanded without social workers to provide those alternatives. Social workers are an absolutely integral part of the entire system. According to last year's statistical bulletin, there were vacancies for 10 per cent of criminal justice social work jobs. Three years ago, the ADSW asked the Executive to upgrade training for social workers, but the Executive has only just promised to do so—whether it will get round to fulfilling that promise is another matter.
Another confession in the leaked spin document that I mentioned is that the extra secure accommodation places that the Executive announced will be nowhere near enough, even if we knew when and where they were to become available, which we do not. I am sure that we all agree that the priority for youth justice is to ensure that we address offending behaviour before it sets the pattern for a youngster's adult life. However, less than 40 per cent of youth justice spend is directed at tackling such behaviour.
At the start of the debate, the minister made a thoughtful speech and I accept much of what she said. However, she dodged a number of issues. She skirted around the issue of poverty by acknowledging that there were problems but pretending that the damning reports on poverty levels in Scotland did not apply in the way that they said they did. She did not address the collapse of social work morale, which was exacerbated by the First Minister's comments. Those comments are on the record and were widely reported, but he has not repudiated them.
Like her colleague Jackie Baillie, the minister is right to say that the problems in question are everyone's problems, but there is a difficulty with that line of argument. The problems must be someone's responsibility; something that is everyone's responsibility ends up being no one's responsibility. We must be careful not to fall into that big trap.
I listened with care to Bill Aitken. It was seven minutes and 35 seconds before he got anywhere near a substantive point, which was—in the context of this debate—a rather misplaced attack on comprehensive education. He then called for the children's hearings system to be beefed up—I suspect that the chamber is in unanimous agreement about that—and for more realism. After that, he sat down. He did not make much use of the 12 minutes that he was allocated. The best that can be said is that perhaps he was not quite as well prepared as he usually is. However, I listened carefully to Murdo Fraser's summing up, so perhaps all that the members did was confirm that the Tories have nothing to offer the debate.
Some members made interesting comments. I say to Donald Gorrie that my colleague Irene McGugan is still reeling from the damage that he did to her political career in the SNP. I do not doubt that she will need counselling to get over that.
The SNP would deal with the youth justice crisis by increasing police numbers, providing 100 new secure accommodation places and introducing parental compensation orders. I say to Jamie McGrigor that that idea was drawn from other jurisdictions that have far better youth justice records than Scotland's. However, I welcome the clarity that he gave to the Conservative party's opposition to the proposal. He can be sure that every voter to whom I speak will know of the Tories' opposition. I also mention the developing idea of family courts, which would deal with some of the issues that relate to the mid-teen range and which are beginning to cause concern.
Members have heard Irene McGugan's comments about child protection services. We want more urgent action and supportive leadership from the Executive to help to resolve the acute recruitment crisis; consideration of and action on the recommendations of the child protection audit and review as a minimum measure; and legislation to provide a statutory basis for child protection committees—I welcome the minister's positive response to that. The SNP supports more integrated children's services, provided that they are properly resourced and that we do not have another credibility gap of the sort that sheriffs on the bench are recognising.
Perhaps more generally, we should consider how to make Scotland more child friendly. We cannot escape the fact that child poverty is at a scandalous level. It is impacting on young people's physical, emotional and intellectual development and is clearly linked with youth crime. The Executive has failed to turn that around. Whether serious inroads will be made as long as the Parliament lacks the powers that it needs to tackle the core problem is a moot point. Perhaps the governing coalition could at least acknowledge that truth, but I will not hold my breath.