Meeting of the Parliament 06 November 2024
It has been a good debate—it has been a challenging debate for us all, but it has certainly been a good one.
I absolutely agree with the minister that we need to ensure that care-experienced people feel that we are committed to change and that, as a Parliament, we are committed to making the system better for all care-experienced people. It is so important that we take a proactive approach to keeping families together, to alleviating poverty and, ultimately, to making those families feel supported and valued.
I echo the minister’s thank you to all those who have given their time and effort to make things better. In my contributions today, I have referred to many stories and personal experiences that people have given me to make things better for those who come after them. The sharing of those stories is selfless. Often, we cannot change that experience, but the people who share those experiences often want to make sure that it will not happen to anyone else.
The definition of care experience is important, but there has to be a balance. It is important that we ensure that it is specific enough to have meaning and to inform, but not so specific that it excludes some people’s experience. I am very glad that it is being developed with people with lived experience, to ensure that that becomes a reality.
I found Oliver Mundell’s contribution very interesting; I often feel that same sense of déjà vu in health debates. I think that that links to Roz McCall’s comments on the pace of change. We can never take comfort in the pace at which we are achieving change for care-experienced people. Martin Whitfield made a point about how long it takes for change to happen and what that time looks like in terms of the lives of young people.
I met the same young people as Willie Rennie met, and I think that the frustration of those young people is absolutely reflective of how long it takes for tangible change to be achieved. Some of the things that we have talked about this afternoon take time, and there is no way around that. Although it is true that we could certainly have gone quicker on some things and achieved more by now, we need to consider whether we are managing expectations and giving timelines to care-experienced children and young people as a whole, so that they can feel in control of the whole journey, too.
Kevin Stewart mentioned the need to listen and the small issues that we can help to resolve. We should never underestimate the extent to which things that we see as relatively simple can become all-consuming for people. At the same time as focusing on the large systemic change that needs to happen, we also need to solve the practical issues.
That is especially true for those young people who are moving on from care. On one of the first occasions on which I met Who Cares? Scotland, young people told me about all the things that they had found challenging on leaving care and moving into their own place, which involved having to deal with being adults long before many of the rest of us would have had to. Advice on the little things that I took for granted, which my parents gave me when I first moved out, was often never given to those young people. That should lead us to always stop and not make assumptions about anyone else’s experience. Crucially, we should listen to those who have already had to navigate that situation alone.
Clare Haughey mentioned the need to track change and progress, and no one will be surprised to hear me say how crucial data is.
It is hugely important, yet Willie Rennie highlighted how patchy data collection is in local authorities. It is simply not good enough that we do not know how, where or why some things happen. How will we know if the initiatives are having the effect that we want without effective data collection? We will not even know if something is a problem without having accurate standardised data from across the country that is collected and challenged at a national level.
Local variability also needs addressing, and tracking what is going on well—or not going well—in certain in areas is vital to ensuring that we keep the Promise everywhere.
Foysol Choudhury’s remarks about those from racial minorities and how people can be multiply disadvantaged are really important. We need to ensure that intersectional issues are taken into account for those young people and that we tackle all the barriers that they face.
Katy Clark talked about the arbitrary limits for support for care-experienced people. Many people do not understand why the age limits have been picked. For many of their peers, support from families does not just end at a certain date or age. We need to look at how we can support people throughout their lives. Giving them that value is hugely important to make them feel loved, as Rona Mackay and others mentioned.
Another issue that has been highlighted with me is health inequalities for care-experienced people. Again, that is about access and structural inequalities, but often stigma and cultural issues can be just as painful. I have previously spoken to care leavers who have become parents. Their perception of judgment and extra monitoring, because of their background of care experience, made difficult what should have been a positive and joyful time. They felt a level of suspicion and monitoring that others did not receive. They felt that people were concerned about how they were looking after their baby and that, as a first-time parent, they were under a huge amount of scrutiny and were concerned that it was implied that they might not know what they were doing.
That illustrates that it cannot be the responsibility of only one minister to ensure that the Promise fulfils its objectives. Many pieces cross into many other portfolios, so we must ensure that everyone is focused on this. We also must ensure that whatever systems we design are accessible for care-experienced people.
Nicola Sturgeon paid tribute to all those who have given their time, experience and lived experience. We would not be at this point without all those who have put their efforts into supporting all of us to be able to deliver on the Promise. We must live up to the expectation that they have so rightly placed on us to achieve the Promise, and the Scottish Greens look forward to continuing our work with the Government on the bill and on the issue going forward.
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