Chamber and committees

There is no specific statutory requirement for local authorities to report how many visits to welfare guardians they have carried out each year.

The local authority’s responsibilities to supervise welfare guardians are set out in The Adults with Incapacity (Supervision of Welfare Guardians etc. by Local Authorities)(Scotland) Regulations 2002 (SSI 2002/95) as amended.

Where a guardian is appointed for a year or more, the local authority must arrange for the adult and the guardian to be visited on behalf of the local authority within three months of the court making the guardianship order and then at least every six months. That rule does not apply where the guardian is the chief social work officer.

Where a guardian is appointed for less than one year, the local authority must arrange for the guardian to be visited on behalf of the local authority within fourteen days before or after the midpoint of the period of appointment; and within fourteen days before the end of that period.

The Care Inspectorate is responsible for regulating and inspecting social work services. The Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland (MWC) has a responsibility to exercise protective functions in respect of adults subject to welfare guardianship. To help the MWC carry out this responsibility, the MWC asks local authorities to provide it with relevant information.

The NHS has budgeted £50 million in relation to negligence claims in 2012-13 and in subsequent years of the current spending review period.

COSLA recently issued it’s National Strategy and Guidance for Charges applying to Non-residential Social Care Services 2012-13 to all local authorities. The guidance will be made public on the COSLA website early in March.

The provision of resettlement services (including assistance with furniture) for people moving into supported accommodation is a matter for the discretion of local authorities and landlords (as appropriate to the accommodation), taking account of the needs and wishes of individual service users.

No information is held centrally on the local provision of these services.

Provisional Outturns for 2011-12 and Budget Estimates for 2012-13 will be submitted shortly by councils in their POBE 2012 return. However, this statistical return only collects net expenditure, not projected income from service charges.

The only statistical collection of income from charges is through the Local Financial Returns. The earliest that information on social care service charges in 2012-13 will be available is 2014.

The Children Looked After Statistics collect information only on the number of children and young people in kinship care, reflecting the Scottish Government’s need to trace information about children and young people who require statutory intervention and care. Information on formal carers is held by local authorities, who are responsible for commissioning care.

There is no routine collection by the Scottish Government of children in informal looked after arrangements. An estimate of the total number of kinship carers will be possible from data provided by the 2011 census due later this year.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-05399 on 28 February 2012. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The vast majority of the funding provided to local government by the Scottish Government, including the funding for kinship care allowances, is provided by means of a block grant. It is the responsibility of each local authority to allocate the total financial resources available to it on the basis of local needs and priorities having first fulfilled its statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities including the Scottish Government’s key strategic objectives.

The Scottish Government has achieved significant progress with all local authorities now financially supporting kinship carers and we have won benefit concessions worth up to £50 a week.

We remain committed to working with local authorities to ensure that kinship carers receive the support they need.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-03690 on 18 November 2011. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

No staff were lost due to compulsory redundancy by the Care Inspectorate or its predecessors’ since April 2010.