Meeting of the Parliament 02 December 2015
Mark McDonald will be aware that the conclusion of the pathfinder study was that there is no proof that those outcomes were due to the named person policy or to the getting it right for every child policy. There is no conclusive evidence of that whatsoever. That is exactly what the Education and Culture Committee said.
The police are not alone in raising concerns about workload. Greg Dempster of the Association of Heads and Deputes in Scotland said at the Education and Culture Committee only two weeks ago that the policy is probably the single biggest paperwork burden that is placed on headteachers in our schools, and here is why. When they assess children, teachers have to deal with no fewer than 306 different criteria in the safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included—or SHANARRI—indices. That is one of the essential problems with the policy.
When the Finance Committee scrutinised the financial burdens, it made it clear that despite Aileen Campbell’s assurances in a parliamentary answer on 27 June 2014 that the financial memorandum sets out the full costs of the policy, it did not believe that the policy had been properly costed. That is also clearly set out in the Scottish Parliament information centre’s briefing. My colleague Gavin Brown will say more about this, but the Finance Committee was not persuaded by the Scottish Government’s assertion that the £26 million cost to schools, local authorities and health boards for 2016-17 would diminish much year on year, given that there has to be on-going training and that there must be paperwork for every child in the system. That is exactly what yesterday’s guidance from the Scottish Government said, and what has been confirmed today by the Royal College of Nursing.
In recent months, the Scottish Government has gone on a major charm offensive to persuade parents that all is well and that the named person policy is really in the best interests of everyone. First, there was the Hampden initiative, at which parents could turn up for a family day out, with a £25 gift voucher thrown in, to persuade them of the policy’s merit and so that they could find out all that they wanted to know. Then we had the SHANARRI wheel of wellbeing diagrams, which were a vain exercise and an example of just exactly what is wrong with the named person policy. Now we have a Hopscotch Theatre Company play starring Mr SHANARRI and Miss GIRFEC being taken around primary schools.
Every time someone criticises the initiatives, the Scottish Government goes on the defensive and argues that there is actually no compulsion on parents to accept any advice from named persons—it says that despite its having persistently refused all amendments to the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill that would have permitted an opt-out. The Government knows full well, though, that the professionals are not permitted to opt out. Common sense tells us that if the professionals cannot opt out, neither can the parents because they are inextricably linked, when it comes to the adoption of a named person policy. That was admitted by an Inverness primary school headteacher who was asked on “The Kaye Adams Programme” on the BBC what she would do if parents said that they do not want a named person. She replied that it would be her job to persuade them otherwise.
The requirement for full co-operation and positive engagement with the professionals’ viewpoint is further illustrated with the inclusion in the risk indicators of whether a parent is resisting or limiting engagement, or whether a parent has a completely different perception of the problem. Clearly, parents can choose not to engage and not to accept the advice of a named person, but the consequences of doing that are that they will—let us be honest—be seen as endangering the wellbeing of their child, because they will be picked upon as being parents who are not worthy. [Interruption.]