Chamber and committees

My amendments 314 and 315 seek to place responsibilities on community planning partnerships to have regard to the need to prevent homelessness and to any relevant guidance that is issued by Scottish ministers. That was a recommendation from the prevention review group, of which I was a member, as there was a recognition of the important strategic role that CPPs play in their localities across all sectors.

The amendments are intended to support the bill’s intention for prevention of homelessness to become a shared public responsibility by requiring the key local strategic planning body to consider the need to prevent homelessness as part of its functions. That would be on top of the requirements on relevant bodies, many of which might be community planning partners, to ask individual service users about their housing situation and to act in line with their own functions.

Through its consultation work, which included consultations with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, the homelessness prevention review group identified the strategic importance of CPPs in homelessness prevention. The amendments build on public bodies’ responsibilities under the fairer Scotland public sector equality duty to reduce inequalities of outcome as a result of socioeconomic disadvantage, and they help to join up homelessness prevention with related strategic local priorities, such as tackling child poverty, delivering community justice, improving mental health, identifying employment opportunities and addressing violence against women and girls.

By including community planning partnerships as a listed relevant body, Sarah Boyack’s amendment 319 seeks to achieve a similar purpose. The difference between my amendments and Sarah Boyack’s amendment is that mine do not subject CPPs to the operational duties that are set out in proposed new sections 36A to 36C of the Housing (Scotland) Act 1987, which are not relevant to CPPS’ strategic planning functions. I understand that CPPs are not considered to be legal entities, but they are the linchpin of local strategy setting.

I hope that the cabinet secretary can say something about how CPPs can be involved in any guidance that is issued, to ensure that their role in prevention is given due regard.

I will spend some time exploring issues for the youngest children—those under 11. The youngest category in the CAS programme is the under-11s. How confident are you that development centres have sufficient protections and support in place for the youngest players? Are there any specific rules and regulations that apply to that group of kids?

There is a club that starts working with children at the age of five, which is quite young—you imagine that, at that age, they will be running around their local pitches with small local teams. To what extent do you think that young children are mentally and physically ready to engage in the CAS programme? From what you said, I understand that dual engagements happen with their local club and the CAS programme at the same time. Also, are there any specific safeguards or protections in place to protect children from overenthusiastic parental influence? You already touched on that in terms of what happens on the sidelines, but I think that a lot of pressure can be placed on wee kids at that stage.

Do they have due regard to the needs of those youngest kids? If someone is hothoused from a very young age with the aim of them progressing from there, that can be quite an intensive setting.

It might be quite helpful if you could give the committee a bit more information about what understanding the clubs’ wellbeing and safeguarding officers have of the youngest children. The position of a five-year-old or an eight-year-old is different from that of a teenager in terms of their agency.

Leah Duncan-Karrim, how can we reduce the need for child payments? It seems that the only way that we could do that is by increasing parents’ employability options. How tricky is that?

The committee has previously done an inquiry into employability for parents across Scotland, and the picture is very patchy. How do we ensure that support is in place to reduce demand? How do we ensure that parents do not face a cliff edge when they move into work, particularly when they lose Scottish child payment eligibility?

Good morning. In its reply to SCOSS, the Scottish Government said that it would prefer the DWP and Social Security Scotland to share data about clients moving between Scotland and the rest of the UK. Why has that not been possible and what will the impact of that be on disabled people and carers?

It helps to have on record the structural barriers that are in place across the country. That is why what is available in local areas is such a patchy picture. That gets to the heart of what Adam Stachura and others have said about the decisions on where to prioritise the spend. Do you look at the Scottish child payment as scaffolding infrastructure that is in place to help families at any point? Should we not look at that? How do we reduce spend in that area?

I wonder whether Fiona Collie has anything to add from a carer’s perspective. Leah, you touched on carers already, but I want to hear Carers Scotland’s perspective.

Will you continue to press for change in a continued quest for the data transfer to happen automatically, or will this be a fait accompli, if we approve the regulations?