Chamber and committees

I recognise Ross Greer’s point and some of the concern about renaming the bill. I have heard the flip side of that, too. I have met many care-experienced people—for example, through the cross-party group on care leavers—who have referred to the bill in shorthand as “the Promise bill”.

We need to strike a balance. We could perhaps refer to the “Promise 1 bill” and the “Promise 2 bill”. I do not want to get into the weeds of all that, but to focus minds and attention, we should call the bill what it is, because it is an opportunity. There is still mileage in the bill being an opportunity to begin to fix some of the challenges that Mr Greer referred to. However, I fully accept—as he knows, I said this at stage 1—that the bill will not do everything that we need it to, and it needs to go further and faster. I maintain that renaming the bill would be helpful, but I acknowledge the caveats that Mr Greer pointed out, which are very fair.

The challenge to the Government and to everyone here today is that, if we are serious about keeping the Promise and want the legislation to be part of that, we should, although recognising that the bill is not the full solution, call a spade a spade. If we are unwilling to do that and to call it “the Promise bill” because we simply accept that, as drafted, it will be another missed opportunity, it will set us back and we will not be able to meet the aspiration that we all share.

Amendment 139 would place duties on corporate parents

“to provide pathways and support”

for care leavers

“to find employment and training”.

That includes the provision of careers guidance and support by dedicated officers, as well as the provision of dedicated work experience and traineeship opportunities.

In addition, the Scottish ministers would be required,

“as soon as reasonably practicable,”

to introduce guidance for local authorities on supporting care-experienced young people into work. That guidance would include information on

“the role of employment officers”

and how local authorities should implement employment pathways such as work experience opportunities and apprenticeships for care leavers.

The effect of amendment 139 is to require corporate parents to have dedicated employment officers who are responsible for supporting care-experienced individuals into work, and it follows examples of good practice from local authorities in Wales. In 2017, the Children’s Commissioner for Wales produced the “Hidden Ambitions” report, which involved commitments from the Welsh Government to act like a large family business by providing pathways into employment for care-experienced young people who are not in education, employment or training.

As I think that we will acknowledge, one of the roles that most parents play for their children is to help them through the transitions to adulthood. That will include their entering the workplace and moving beyond the world of formal education, and I think that that is also relevant to the duties that we place on corporate parents. If we want to do right by Scotland’s cared-for and care-experienced young people, we need to ensure that people and entities are charged with acting out their corporate parenting responsibilities in all their functions, not just to care for them in the moment, but to show care by providing future and positive pathways and on-going support.

I move amendment 139.

My amendments in this group would strengthen the duty placed on public authorities by ensuring that they must have “due regard” to guidance. Those amendments were called for by many stakeholders, including The Promise Scotland, in recognition of the well established and understood meaning of “due regard” in law.

Amendment 157 would have the effect of ensuring that people can self-identify as being care experienced, rather than being subject to a top-down definition of care experience, and of ensuring that they can access the support that they need and are entitled to. The effect is self-explanatory.

I acknowledge the on-going work to progress a universal definition of care experience, but without a clear timeline for that work, and without knowing the expansiveness and inclusiveness of the final definition, it is important for us to talk about an inclusive approach to ensure that the definition gets to where it is needed as quickly as possible. I am open to hearing the minister’s update on those efforts, which I am sure she will provide shortly.

I also acknowledge the concerns that self-identification is an open process that may be abused and that people might wrongly identify themselves as care experienced. I acknowledge the risk of those unintended consequences, but I think that risk is far lower than the risks that would be caused by not having a definition as quickly as possible to allow people to access the support that they require.

Amendment 157 probes those issues and I am willing to engage in debate.

I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, which shows that my husband is a service manager in children and families social work and is a registered social worker.

I do not intend to speak for too long on amendment 225, because it is fairly straightforward and self-explanatory. However, I think that everyone in the room and more widely will be familiar with the words of the Oversight Board’s third report, which was published a year ago tomorrow. It said:

“2025 marks the midway point since the promise was made to when it must be kept. But Scotland is not halfway towards keeping its promise. There have been unexpected events, delays, and unnecessary barriers. This means there are children and young people not receiving the care and support they need. That means for some in the care community the promise has already been broken.”

That report was a wake-up call for everyone, and I hope especially for the Government, which has long hung its hat on the promise that there would be a bill in this parliamentary session to advance the goal that we all share and to make up for lost time and missed opportunities, many of which the board referred to in the quote that I just read.

Perhaps more pertinent to the amendment is something else that the Oversight Board said in its report:

“The upcoming Promise Bill to be lodged in Parliament represents an opportunity and a risk.”

The “upcoming Promise Bill” is how it referred to the legislation that is before us. We should talk about what we are talking about, which is why amendment 225 would rename the short title of the bill The Promise (Scotland) Bill.

Okay. You said that there was a mixture of financial and governance issues and that those two things were interlinked. Are the solutions to that interlinked? This morning, we have had a lot of discussion about how those with oversight are appointed or elected, but the sense is that there is no clarity on whether amending that would fix the problem. The view, I think, is that anyone who is dealing with billion-pound budgets must have some financial training or expertise.

It would not be fair to ask you for the one thing that would make the difference, so instead I will ask what the principal governance change would be that could make the difference at your institution.

Even taking into account this morning’s discussion about whether having an elected chair worked or made the difference—or generally makes the difference—your view is still that having a more democratic structure would fix some of the problems.

We have heard quite a lot of back and forth this morning. I will try to pull things back to one of the principal issues that we have discussed, which is the situation at the University of Dundee, the Gillies review and the learning that came out of that. What are the key lessons learned, and have they been taken cognisance of? First, I will ask the question about Dundee in particular to Melissa, then I am interested in the wider lessons for the sector.

That is interesting.

That is interesting.

I will widen out the discussion and ask what we can learn from the Dundee example. I think that when she was at committee, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills referred to Dundee as a fairly isolated case, or was trying to present it that way. Is your view that this could happen in other institutions? What is your key takeaway? What must be learned from the Dundee example in order to fix things?

If you are returned to government, are you going to preside over what the SFC has outlined? I accept what you say in relation to the one-year budget that we are discussing, but it is the future planning that I am interested in.