Chamber and committees

This is a hard question, so it may not be an either/or and may be both. For the women who you are dealing with going through the judicial system, is it the conviction that is the most important thing or is it the sentence that the person gets afterwards, or are both equally as important? When you are dealing with people, are they saying, “If he is found guilty, I hope he will get X,” or, “I just want that person to be found guilty” or are they saying both?

I want to follow up a question with Carolyn Fox McKay. As males, we have to hold our hands up and say, “This is our issue; it is not a women’s issue.” As a father of two girls who are girl guides, I find what is happening in schools and in other settings to young girls growing up very disturbing.

I talked to colleagues around the table before the meeting and found that experiences of education and teaching on sexual harassment seem to be different depending on where you are in Scotland. Would you like to see a more uniform approach across the 32 local authorities, so that girls in Ayrshire, Inverness or Edinburgh get the same type of information and empowerment? Is that best done through schools, or are there other ways to do it?

That would be very helpful—thank you.

This next question is for Marsha Scott or Laura Tomson. It is on an issue that we could spend the next three hours discussing, so it would be good if you could limit your answers. As the convener said at the start, yesterday we had a very helpful meeting with the Lord Advocate on the issues around the criminal justice system. Obviously, there are massive issues there, some of which Marsha Scott has raised.

I realise that this is very simplistic, but if you could make one change to the system to make it more accessible and more accountable, what would it be? I know that that is a hard question to answer. I will start with Laura Tomson and Marsha Scott. If others have views, perhaps they could write to us.

At what stage should that happen—should it happen in primary schools or even earlier? Should it happen more than once? Should it happen every year in school? Is it one of those things that should be built into the curriculum, so that some teaching and guidance is given every year, and not just to girls but to boys, too?

Good morning. Thank you all very much for giving of your time. I have a couple of questions, which are for any of you, and anybody else who wants to can follow up.

Something that I found shocking in the submissions was the figure that 90 per cent of women with learning disabilities have been subject to sexual abuse or some other form of abuse, which is a horrendous figure. What can we do to strengthen the rights of women who are disabled who have been abused? Are we in any way able to give them extra support or to identify them more quickly? How do we tackle that issue?

Perhaps we could start with Eilidh Dickson. If you do not have any information, maybe you could pass the question on to one of your colleagues.

I want to come back to the point about a national agreed allowance. We are a country of approximately 5 million and we know each other quite well. Is it more sensible to pay such an allowance centrally rather than leaving local authorities with the discretion of how much they pay and what extra should be paid? Should the Scottish Government say that, if someone gives kinship care, this is what they will get, whether they live in Inverness or Dumfries or wherever?

Perhaps Kirsty Doull could go first, then Vivien Thomson, and if anyone else wants to jump in, that would be helpful.

This is a complex question, so a yes/no answer with a follow-up in writing might be helpful. We have talked a lot about having a nationally agreed allowance and how things are different across local authorities in Scotland compared with other parts of the United Kingdom. From your perspective—perhaps Alison Gillies and Gill Westwood could respond—would it be easier if the allowance was administrated across the whole of Scotland, such that everybody got the same amount of money, regardless of where in Scotland they lived?

What further support would make the biggest impact for kinship carers throughout Scotland? If there was one thing that you could do tomorrow, what would it be?

That has been helpful. If you want to tell the committee anything else about that, please do so in writing, as the deputy convener said. In particular, if you have any comments on passported benefits that people might or might not get depending on the definition, perhaps you could reflect that in a written statement. However, that has been very helpful, so thanks very much.

Good morning. I thank all the witnesses for attending the meeting. I have a couple of questions that are aimed at CELCIS to start us off. I was interested to read in your submission and in other submissions that there seems to be some confusion around the words “formal” and “informal” with regard to kinship care; the categories do not seem to be neatly defined. Can you help me out by saying whether that is simply the way that it will always be, or is there work that we can do to develop better definitions? Does that confusion make a difference in practice?