Chamber and committees

I will briefly add to that, Mr MacGregor. The children’s hearings system cannot operate after a child’s 18th birthday other than by exception, so there will continue to be a need for young offenders institutions. Again, at the discretion of the governor, young people can remain in a YOI until they are 23, before being transferred to an adult prison.

Given the view of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland on the inappropriate nature of young offenders institutions for children, if children are no longer committed to YOIs, that will give us opportunities to look at the care and support that is provided in them. I am also aware of the review on mental health services in YOIs.

Improvements can be made in various custodial establishments, but there are no plans to remove young offenders institutions because secure care—other than with the exceptions that the minister has outlined—applies for children up to the age of 18.

I will draw parallels with some of the innovations and changes that have been made in the women’s estate, because that probably provides a better comparator. In the women’s estate, there have been significant moves towards trauma-informed practice in custodial settings. The new women’s national facility will open in the summer, and two smaller units for women—one in Dundee, which I visited recently, and one in Glasgow—have already been established.

I am conscious of the questions about resources that members have raised, but there is an opportunity to think about the type of care, support and rehabilitation that we provide and how we better address reoffending in the context of a custodial environment.

With regard to the gravest of offences, the Crown Office and the Lord Advocate will, as with any case, have prosecutorial independence. In those gravest of cases, where the young person is progressed through the criminal justice system and, as can happen, a hefty custodial sentence is handed down, what happens in practice is that, if the young person is 16, they will spend the first few years of their sentence in secure accommodation, progress to a young offenders institution and then go to prison. What I would want to convey is that secure accommodation, with its levels of security, the intensive nature of supervision and other inputs, is an appropriate place for all child offenders who require such accommodation. That does not mean that they will not go on to serve the remainder of their sentence in the adult sector.

Under the Promise and the UNCRC commitments that the Government has made—there is, of course, cross-party support for implementing the Promise and for meeting our obligations under the UNCRC—all children who have offended and for whom a custodial disposal is required will, if they are under 18, go to secure accommodation in the first instance.

Secure accommodation is, of course, about providing support and interventions on the broadest range of matters. It is about providing age-appropriate, holistic support, and that should be provided for children who are being prepared to be reintegrated into the community post a secure placement. It is also very important that the proper aftercare arrangements are in situ. In addition, it is worth bearing in mind that a number of children go to secure for quite a short period. For children who are not spending two or three years in secure accommodation as part of a longer sentence, it is really important that the planning for their return to the community commences on admission.

That is a very live issue. Irrespective of where a young person is placed, if they are deprived of their liberty and are destined to be released, we need to set them up for success, not failure, on liberation. That also applies to adult prisoners.

Does the minister have anything to add to that?

Convener, the minister will make an opening statement.

A longer-term trend is the reduction in the number of 16 and 17-year-olds being incarcerated. Notwithstanding that, though, the fact is that, last year, nearly 1,000 under-25s were still imprisoned.

On your specific question, some profile work is being carried out on the under-25 population so that we can plan things as much as possible and try to anticipate future demand and expectation. Some work is also going on with Scotland Excel, which manages the current secure care contract, and that is a change from what was going on when I first became aware from a Government perspective of some of the issues in and around this policy area—

Convener, I will start on your question around children entering the criminal justice system. Given my justice portfolio, I am the lead cabinet secretary for the bill, while the minister is coming from the children and care perspective. The bill that is before the committee is very much about that intersection between how we meet the care needs and uphold the rights of children, and the context of the demands and expectations in and around our justice system.

If we—as a Government and, indeed, a country—are absolutely focused on reducing risk and reoffending among young people, it is imperative that we start by addressing their care needs because, unless their individual needs are addressed, that will be a barrier to addressing and managing risk. If we do not address and manage risk, we will not reduce reoffending. Therefore, it is imperative that the children’s hearings system and, in particular, the courts system have the widest range of disposals available to them.

With regard to barriers—which you specifically mentioned, convener—right now, children below the age of 18 can be placed in secure accommodation if they have been convicted of an offence, but there are existing legal barriers. For the purposes of the bill, and in accordance with the Promise and the UNCRC, the definition of a child is a person who is under the age of 18. The purpose of the bill is to ensure that all children, irrespective of their deeds, should be able to be placed in secure accommodation, notwithstanding that, when those children come of age, they can transfer to a young offenders institute and, depending on the length of their sentence, progress into the adult system.

Ms McNeill raised important pragmatic issues. After having put £10 million into the implementation of MAT standards, we have closely monitored recruitment. It is a mixed picture—some areas have done very well with recruitment and others have struggled more.

We have always provided continuity of funding and I have continuity in my budget. People can apply for multiyear funds through the Corra Foundation. Some of that resource has been accessed by services as well as by the third sector. We give alcohol and drug partnerships clarity and continuity.

I understand the argument for simplifying funding routes. We may get to that point if we have a simpler, whole-system approach. However, I wrestle with the need to ensure that investment that has been earmarked and allocated to support families has gone to support families, or that money that I have earmarked and allocated to improve access to residential rehabilitation is being spent on residential rehabilitation and after care.

I am not unsympathetic to that point about a simpler process, but the position that I have arrived at is that, in order to tackle the drug deaths crisis here and now, I have to follow the money and ensure that resources get to where they are needed. I appreciate that that will require a level of monitoring and that we will need some bureaucracy to scrutinise that. We may be able to change that when we get to wider reforms, perhaps of the ways in which alcohol and drug partnerships, or wider drug and alcohol services, function. At the moment, I am absolutely following the money and will not apologise for that.

With regard to the whole-family approach, there very much is a presumption in the MAT standards that family involvement is, by and large, a good thing. Of course, individuals will have different circumstances in which that might not be appropriate, or it might not be what the individual who is in treatment or recovery desires.

However, even in cases such as, for argument’s sake, that of a son who does not want his mother fully informed, there are actually reasons for some involvement, and some residential establishments do that very well. The Lothians and Edinburgh abstinence programme, which is led by Dr David McCartney in Edinburgh, has a families group. On a week-by-week basis, the staff do not necessarily go into the care of individual loved-ones but they will say, “This is the shape of the programme—this is what we are doing this week and this is what you might expect.” There are always ways to engage and be helpful and support a family member, even if consent has been withdrawn to share private medical information. Scottish Families Affected by Alcohol and Drugs is also doing some work just now, which is much more focused on models of care and service delivery and standards in and around that. I think that that will be very important moving forward.

As I indicated in my last update to Parliament on MAT standards, we are on a journey to really bear down on people to get the standards, as they stand, implemented. However, at some point, we need to come to the question of how MAT standards evolve. MAT standards will need to be more explicit about treatment in and around different substances, and they could be more explicit around things such as leadership, how we better support women and how we work better with families, because working with families is core. It should be core not only to what we do in drug policy but to what we do in the early years, education and housing support. That is not a nice extra—it has to be our core business, and we have to get the core and the foundations right.