Chamber and committees

I thank the minister for taking the intervention. Does she recognise that the second-largest council in Scotland, the City of Edinburgh Council, provides outdoor education to our young people? That brings huge benefits, but it is not a foreign concept. It is about trying to get all schools in Scotland to deliver it.

If there is time in hand.

I begin by paying tribute to Christina McKelvie. We were all shocked when we heard the news, and I want to send my condolences at this difficult time to fellow member of the Education, Children and Young People Committee Keith Brown, to all Christina’s family and friends, and to members across the chamber.

I pay tribute to my friend and colleague Liz Smith, not only for the power of work that she and her parliamentary office have put into her Schools (Residential Outdoor Education) (Scotland) Bill, but for her lifelong advocacy—as a teacher and as a member of this Parliament—of the benefits of outdoor education for our young people.

As a member of the committee, I had the pleasure of taking part in its evidence taking on the proposal and of meeting and hearing from the fantastic and passionate people who work in the outdoor education sector across our great country. I have probably now heard too many stories from my colleague John Mason about seeing his teachers in their nightwear during his childhood outdoor educational experiences, but I am sure that we will have the pleasure of hearing more of that later.

We all agree that it is unquestionably the case that young people receive positive educational, personal, character and mental health benefits as a result of undertaking residential outdoor education, and the bill will make a positive difference to the outcomes of all our young people.

As I said in my intervention on the minister, as an Edinburgh MSP, I have first-hand knowledge of how incredibly lucky parents and guardians in the capital are in still being able to access residential outdoor education experiences for our young people. I pay tribute to the City of Edinburgh Council for continuing to value and deliver residential outdoor education, given the huge financial pressures that the council faces. If the lowest-funded council in Scotland can deliver residential outdoor education, I am sure that we can get every other council in Scotland to deliver the policy and the benefits that it will bring.

I am sorry in that case—I cannot.

In the light of the lessons from that study, I believe that, as a Parliament, we need to understand that the proposed expenditure on the bill can be regarded as preventative spend that will help to build the resilience in our young people that is missing.

The most recent significant piece of legislation to have been passed on outdoor education is the Education Act 1944, which is known as the Butler act. After the second world war, the nation wanted to give its children and young people—who had come through the traumatic and life-changing experiences of the war and were disconnected from society—hope and a positive outlook in life. Fast forward to today, and we know that many children are disconnected from their learning, having just come through the traumatic and life-changing experience of a global pandemic.

As Liz Smith has stated, the bill is about what is in the best interests of our young people in the post-Covid age, when so many indicators tell us that they are facing more challenges than ever before. As we continue to assess the negative impacts of the educational disruption that was caused by the pandemic and the consequences that that has had for our young people, especially those from lower-income backgrounds, I believe that the bill represents an opportunity to again give our young people hope and a positive outlook in their lives.

If we are to do that, we must do it as a country and Parliament must send our young people, parents, guardians and teachers the message that we will invest in and value them.

I have time to take the intervention from Brian Whittle now.

I absolutely agree.

All of us in this chamber are guilty of wanting to measure absolutely everything. Politicians always want to put benchmarks in place or to know which targets have been met, but some of the learning experiences found in outdoor education cannot be quantified, although many can. It is life changing for so many young people and the relationships that they build with their fellow pupils and with teachers sustain them in education. That is the value of outdoor education that we heard about in committee.

I support the motion and I support the bill in my colleague Liz Smith’s name.

Absolutely. The visits that the committee undertook showed that it is not the case that there is one facility for each council—we are talking about shared facilities. The economic potential that exists for such facilities to benefit from visits by university students and team-building exercises is such that we can make the proposal work and put in place some fantastic new facilities across our country.

Throughout my time in Parliament, I have always championed the need to invest in mental wellbeing. If we truly want to bring about greater resilience and more positive mental health in the next generation, we need to invest in that at school. I have always been struck by the findings of the 2016 report on scout and guide participation, which is now almost a decade old. It found that people who were scouts and guides in childhood had better mental health in later life. That report, which was put together by researchers at Edinburgh and Glasgow universities, looked at data from a lifelong study of more than 10,000 people who had had outdoor education experiences as scouts and guides, and it found that, as adults, they were 15 per cent less likely to suffer from anxiety or to have mental health complications or mood disorders.

The approach to the national care service has been a disaster, and that is the reason why we do not have a national social work service up and running and carrying out the reforms that we all want. If we are being honest, surely that is why the Government has failed to progress what should have been progressed much earlier in this session of the Parliament. I am not saying that the minister is responsible for that, but the reforms that we are talking about sat with the national care service, which the Government has failed to deliver. Is that not a clear account of why the reforms have not been made?

I will follow up on the line of questioning on the differences between kinship care and fostering, and opportunities in that regard. We are seeing a loss of foster carers, with an 8 per cent drop last year. There is a lack of foster carers coming forward in Edinburgh specifically. A University of Stirling report that was published in September last year points to the stark implications of that. Concerningly, we are told that

“one in ten of children had five or more placements, and ten years after becoming looked after more than one in ten children were still, or again, in impermanent placements.”

What work has been undertaken to assess the impact of the different payments and support that are available for foster care and kinship care? Say, for argument’s sake, that I fostered someone today in Edinburgh: I would be entitled to £25,000 in support. However, if I were to take in a family member under kinship care arrangements, support would drop to £8,752. Clearly, there is a very different system in place. What work is being undertaken to look at putting at the heart of the Promise the provision of support to the extended family to look after someone? Why has the support for that not, to date, been matched with other support that is available?

I know that that is a long question, but I wanted to set that out.

The timing of the delivery of the national social work agency has been put back years, because the agency sat in the national care service bill. I know that different ministers are responsible for those things, but the delays have had an impact. We are now at the midpoint at which the Promise should have been delivered, but all the hard work on social work is just starting. Given the problems that we face in my region, especially in the capital, social workers tell me that they have been waiting for that. I do not think that it is satisfactory that progress is being made only at the end of this session of the Parliament. The Government needs to be honest with the sector and with the people we meet that the Promise might not be delivered by 2030 because the Government has not done the work.

I would like to see the detail of that, once we get the bill.

A number of witnesses have told the committee that children and families social work has a negative public perception; indeed, a number of kinship carers have expressed similar concerns to me. A lot of that is about stigma, suspicion of reports and a concern about children in a kinship care setting being taken into care. Has the Government captured that suspicion of social work in the bill? Moreover, it was suggested to us that that might be putting off people from going into social work. Might measures such as a recruitment campaign be used to address some of those concerns?