Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government provides around £2.2 million in funding through the equality and human rights fund and the children, young people and families early intervention fund to third sector projects that work with deaf people.We also provide funding of £600,000 per year to Contact Scotland BSL, an online video relay service enabling deaf and deafblind British Sign Language users to make phone calls. We also fund the Scottish Sensory Centre and CALL Scotland to provide advice and training to school staff on support, including the use of assistive technology for children and young people with specific communication and sensory needs.

The Scottish Government is committed to promoting the use and understanding of BSL as a fully recognised language across the Scottish public sector. BSL users can contact businesses using the Contact Scotland BSL online video relay interpreting service, and businesses can contact their deaf customers in the same way. Contact Scotland BSL is widely promoted to deaf BSL users and to service providers through a series of free online webinars and visits to deaf clubs.

The responsibility for national health service audiology lies with my health colleagues, some of whom are in the chamber today. I am sure that they will respond appropriately to Mr Whitfield.

The debate has been valuable. It has allowed the Parliament to consider some of the challenges that adopted children and young people in education face, and it has highlighted the important topic of foster care allowances.

Importantly, it has also demonstrated the continued strength of cross-party support for keeping the Promise. It is absolutely vital that we continue to work collectively to ensure that all care-experienced children and young people are supported to grow up loved, safe and respected. That includes crucial activity to support children and young people who are adopted or fostered.

As the Scottish Government, it is right that we lead from the front, and we set out our commitment to do that in the Promise implementation plan that was published last year. In that plan, we outlined our vision for delivering a good childhood and ensuring that every child lives in a safe and loving home where families are given support to overcome difficulties and stay together.

Where that is not possible, the focus first and foremost must be on what a child wants and needs, underpinned by nurturing relationships, to enable them to have happy childhood experiences and live their life to the full.

I will talk about our work to deliver on that vision, but before I do, Presiding Officer, please allow me to put on record my thanks to all caregivers, including adoptive families and foster carers, and practitioners working in these sectors.

I am about to come on to education, and I hope that what I have to say will answer the member’s question.

Getting it right for every child—or GIRFEC, as it is known—is the Scottish Government’s commitment to ensuring that all children and young people and their families are offered the right support at the right time from the right people.

We know that children who are adopted may require distinct support for a variety of reasons. GIRFEC supports professionals to assess and design that support, including through multidisciplinary working, to meet individual children’s needs, and to make sure that the level of support is reviewed regularly.

Education is an important part of every child’s upbringing. Children have the right to learn and achieve, and for their educational needs to be supported. The Adoption Barometer report showed that adoptive parents from Scotland were more positive overall about their family’s experience of navigating the education system than those in the rest of the UK. Scottish respondents were also more positive about how well their child’s school was working with them to support their child. That is testimony to the progress that we have made in our schools and other educational settings.

That said, we know that children with care experience are less likely to achieve qualifications than other children. That is why, since 2018, we have invested over £50 million in the care-experienced children and young people fund. Money is provided to all local authorities in Scotland to fund initiatives that are designed to provide additional support for care-experienced children and young people, including adopted children.

It is clear that that money is making a difference. We have seen mentoring programmes that have had a positive impact on attendance and attainment, and the introduction of the virtual headteachers networks, in which good practice and learning can be shared. That has increased the strategic focus on improving educational experiences and outcomes for care-experienced children in their local authority areas. Importantly, the fund has been used to establish teams to provide direct trauma-informed support to young people who have experienced previous trauma.

We are continuing work through the national trauma training programme to ensure that our education workforce is trauma informed, recognises the impact of adverse experiences on children, and provides the right support to ensure that no further harm is done.

More broadly, the whole family wellbeing funding, with an investment of £500 million over the parliamentary session, will transform services to ensure that families, including adoptive families, can access the support that they need when they need it. We have allocated £50 million in this year’s budget, including £32 million provided directly to children’s services planning partnerships, to enable work at the local level. There is also a statutory duty on all local authorities to provide assistance to adoptive families in their localities.

I turn to the topic of foster care allowances, which several members have raised. I absolutely acknowledge that the introduction of a Scottish recommended allowance for foster and kinship carers has taken far longer than originally anticipated, and I totally recognise the frustrations of care givers and stakeholders. However, I reassure Parliament that that is an absolute priority for me. I remain committed to working constructively with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to deliver that as quickly as possible, and we are exploring all available options to do that.

I began by focusing on the importance of working collaboratively to keep the Promise. In closing the debate, I restate the Scottish Government’s absolute commitment and my commitment, as the Minister for Children and Young People, to do just that. We will continue to work tirelessly with partners across Scotland to ensure that all care-experienced children and young people are supported to grow up loved, safe and respected.

Thank you, convener, and good morning to the committee. The amending order will increase from 1 April the income thresholds for families with a two-year-old who is eligible for funded early learning and childcare because a parent receives a joint working tax credit and child tax credit or a universal credit award.

The Provision of Early Learning and Childcare (Specified Children) (Scotland) Order 2014 specifies that a two-year-old is eligible for funded ELC if their parent is in receipt of child tax credit and working tax credit with an annual income that does not exceed £7,920 or if their parent is in receipt of universal credit with a monthly income that does not exceed £660 per month. The amending order increases from 1 April the income threshold to £8,717 per year for households that are in receipt of child tax credit and working tax credit, and the universal credit income threshold will increase to £726 per month, which is the equivalent of £8,717 per year.

We are making this change to reflect changes at a United Kingdom level. From April, the UK Government will increase the national living wage from £9.50 to £10.42 per hour, so household income would exceed the current thresholds if they remained the same. The order’s purpose is to protect eligibility for two-year-olds whom we would expect to be eligible for funded ELC as a result of their parents or carers being in receipt of the affected qualifying benefits. If we chose to make no changes to the income thresholds, we estimate that about 1,000 eligible two-year-olds would no longer be eligible, despite there being no significant difference in their families’ household circumstances.

It is important to be clear that no two-year-old who currently receives funded ELC will be affected by the changes. Once a child has met the eligibility criteria, they will remain eligible, despite any subsequent change in circumstances.

As the amendment’s purpose is to maintain eligibility, we do not expect a significant increase in the number of two-year-olds who become newly eligible for provision. We do not expect a significant impact on local authorities’ ability to fund such provision within the current financial settlement. As such, there is no evidence that additional funding will be required to support implementation of the amendment.

The impact on uptake will be closely monitored by the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities through the appropriate mechanism, which is the ELC finance working group. Appropriate arrangements will be made if uptake is significantly above the expected level and if local authorities’ costs increase as a result.

As I said on my previous visits to the committee to discuss amending the thresholds, we will continue to monitor future increases to the national living wage, and we will uprate thresholds when that is required to keep pace with changes. COSLA agrees with that approach and agrees that it is necessary in order to maintain a similar profile of eligible children.

I am happy to respond to any specific questions from the committee.

Certainly. I can write to the committee with that information, if that would be helpful, so that all committee members can access that.

The data sharing arrangements are not yet in place, so they have not had an impact that would show a change. We still expect those arrangements to be in place for the end of this financial year and we are on track for that. We have been progressing work on the data sharing arrangements with the DWP, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and local authorities. As soon as we have all those data sharing agreements in place, the information will then be able to be shared with local authorities, so that they can access it and write to the parents of eligible children. With COSLA and local authorities, we will look at how that uptake goes. On current figures, we anticipate that around 25 per cent of children in Scotland will be eligible. We have to remember that England and Wales already have those data sharing arrangements, but Scotland does not.

We will monitor that, and I am sure that the committee will be interested in the figures. I can commit to writing to the committee to let you know when the data sharing arrangements are in place and how many families we anticipate are eligible. However, we need to remember that families have choice and that not every parent of an eligible child will decide that they want to access that provision.

I will pass over to Kirstie McKerron, the lawyer, who I hope can answer that.

Yes.