Chamber and committees

I go back to conversations that I had when speaking to people at judo last night. I spoke to an amazing mum who is a teacher and plays competitive rugby. She was talking about Stuart Hogg getting his 100th cap for Scotland. When it is being highlighted that only five people have reached that number, the other three guys, who have between 105 and 110 caps, are mentioned first in any news articles. However, she told me about Donna Kennedy, who, with 115 caps, has more than any of the men. From 2004 to 2016—for more than 10 years—she was the world’s most capped woman player. That is an amazing achievement. I guess that what I am about to ask is a rhetorical question. Do you agree that we should be highlighting such things? It would be amazing to hear Stuart Hogg and others in the media talk about how amazing Donna Kennedy’s achievement is.

Can I just pause you there? My biggest concern is about the fact that it often takes a long time to get diagnosed with endometriosis or heavy periods—I know that there is a correct name for that, but I do not know it off pat—and there is a big issue about women and girls being trusted if they do not have a diagnosis. For example, they might go and speak to a teacher—it can take a huge amount of courage to have that conversation—and be fobbed off by the teacher saying, “Stop trying to get out of PE and get on with it.” That is the issue that I want to get at.

So we will be evaluating and monitoring what is going on and seeing what the needs are as we move forward. Is that right?

Maybe we need to collect richer data on that.

The Make Space for Girls website talks about how parks and play equipment in public spaces for older children and teenagers are currently designed around the default male, and how we need to start making spaces for girls.

Girls can feel quite intimidated going into a multi-use games area, especially if it has high fences and a narrow entrance and things like that. What are your views on that, and are there any examples of that kind of design working for girls and girls being involved in it?

It is good to know that there is co-design and that people are talking about trust and agency and girls being understood.

—for patients who are referred to Glasgow hospitals, so there is a wider issue. What steps can be taken to ensure that hospital consultants are issuing fit notes to patients to reduce the unnecessary pressure on GPs?

To ask the Scottish Government when it last engaged with NHS Lanarkshire. (S6O-01992)

The Lanarkshire local medical committee represents general practices across Lanarkshire. It tells me that it has significant concerns around the vast increase in the number of patients seeking fit notes from their general practitioner when the fit note should have been issued by the patient’s hospital consultant at the time of treatment. Our consultants do an amazing job, but that issue needs to be ironed out. The LMC tells me that thousands of unnecessary GP appointments are taken up by those patients each year as a consequence. My constituency office is aware of similar cases—

I thank Roz McCall for bringing the motion to the chamber. I also thank her for allowing those children to enrich her life, and for really enriching those children’s lives. I applaud her for that.

As we have heard, Scotland is home to 13,500 looked-after children. We should never take for granted the essential role of carers in our society. In what can be highly challenging circumstances, they provide care to children who face significant vulnerabilities, grounding them with the love that they require to start a new chapter.

A long-time friend of mine who I have known since school—I will call her Eve—has experience of both fostering and adoption. I thank her for having a chat with me and sharing her experiences before today’s debate. Eve welcomed the recent progress that Scotland has made, particularly the emphasis on and the value of the Promise, which is founded on an understanding of the fact that children need loving and stable relationships to grow, learn and reach their full potential. Although I strongly agree, there is so much more to do. We have heard a lot about that already today, too. We need to face those challenges head on.

“The Adoption Barometer” for 2022 highlights the gap that remains in the provision of and access to adequate support for carers, with 75 per cent of respondents facing continual struggles to access support. What is more, the support that they do access is said to be inconsistent and unaligned to the needs of the child and the family. Eve described access to vital financial support for foster carers as a postcode lottery, pointing out that it can range from anywhere between £77 and £266 per week. She also emphasised the need to roll out a national minimum allowance across Scotland that covers carers’ full costs, because carers often have to dip into their own pockets, which is not okay.

Eve initially fostered her wee girl. It will come as no surprise to members when I say that her child’s history and needs did not disappear when she decided to adopt. However, her access to support did—it became a lot more limited. In 2021, 199 Scottish children joined their new adoptive families. However, 37 of those adoptions broke down—that is just under a fifth of those who were newly placed. That is devastating for children and for their families, and I ask the minister to consider what additional support can be provided for new adoptions.

Peer support and online groups are a critical support network for Eve and others, and we must recognise their value. However, the burden of supporting our carers must not fall solely on those networks, as it sometimes feels like it does. Policies surrounding the provision of support services need to be tightened to ensure that families can maintain safe and loving relationships, whether they choose to foster or to adopt.

The Promise highlights the need to recognise trauma, and that must also apply to newborn adoptions. Eve spoke of the common misconception that babies who are adopted at a very young age will not have any problems. That is far from the truth: they come with baggage. She also told me about the development of the Lanarkshire infant mental health observational indicator set, and she put me in touch with the consultant Graham Shulman. That work is allowing health professionals to identify early warning signs of mental health difficulties in infants who are aged from zero to three. We know that early intervention promotes better mental health through childhood and adolescence and into adulthood. That work is a fine exemplar of perinatal and infant mental health support.

Every child deserves to grow up loved and understood, with not one single soul left behind, so that we can truly deliver on our promise to ensure the best present and future outcomes for every child in Scotland.

I asked Eve why she chose to adopt a daughter. She said:

“to secure her life forever, so she has a sense of belonging, and to anchor her. I love seeing her wee name on her passport, it still gives me a buzz and we’ve added her middle name after my maternal gran, which is the same as the rest of my kids”.

That lies at the core of the Promise.