Education, Children and Young People Committee 10 September 2025
I think that it will address some of them. It is striking that many responses from the organisations that work alongside care-experienced children, young people and families welcome a lot of the provisions in the bill, such as those on aftercare and a right to independent advocacy.
As you know better than I do, really important things are being done in this place, particularly in relation to access to housing through things such as the Housing (Scotland) Bill. The idea of giving the virtual headteacher approach in education, from which we see real benefit, a legislative basis has been discussed. That group of virtual headteachers is facilitated by CELCIS, and you will hear from Claire Burns later. Although there is a debate to be had about whether that is the right approach, it is not in the bill and there is no doubt that it is really important that the Government, in particular, is able to articulate how all the things that are not in the bill are being progressed and whether they are being progressed through other routes. For example, Daniel Johnson’s Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill might be one vehicle in relation to restraint, but we think that the issue of restraint needs to be considered more widely than only in schools. As I have said, there might be non-legislative approaches to change, and that is certainly the case in some of the hearings system work.
In the absence of a really clear articulation of what the bill will deliver and how the other things are progressing, it is quite hard for people to judge the package in the round. We can help with some of that, but it is incumbent on the Government to set out what the bill will do and how it is progressing everything else.