Committee
Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee, 03 Nov 1999
03 Nov 1999 · S1 · Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee
Item of business
Evidence
Joy Barlow:
Watch on SPTV
What a surprise. I will try to answer those questions.On strategic responses, convener, you will see in the report our suggestion that youth services should come together at local level under the umbrella of a youth partnership, if you like. In fact, I will use the word partnership, as I know that our colleagues in the making it happen team are saying important things about partnership. I accept your point, but I still think that while one could have local meetings, local partnership and local responses, a strategic youth inclusion programme for Scotland is also required. I expect that perhaps I was looking at the issue from the point of view of strategic developments in the area of drug misuse, for example. We have a national strategy that we hope will be devolved to and examined at local level. We accepted that there will be local responses—and rightly so. One problem was that a lot of good work was going on at local level, with individual youth workers talking to each other, but no one took responsibility locally for what happened. Rozanne Foyer will agree with that, as she visited some of the projects. That is why we recommended that senior local authority officials should take some responsibility and be accountable.On the question of unique gender issues, we admit that in only very few places did we see many young women. Where we did see young women, it became obvious that they had unique issues. Rozanne went to Cornton Vale and examined closely the issues for young women in the remand wing. We believe that gender, disability, sexual orientation and ethnic minority background should come into all our deliberations, so they are threads that run through the recommendations. Therefore, I could not agree with you more—there is a good deal of work to be done specifically with young women and that should be examined both at the local level and within organisations. It seems to me that there is a need for the youth advocacy function as, in a lot of projects, young women do not get the assistance with advocacy that, perhaps, some young men do. Regarding resource implications—wow, that is a good question. I think the view was that there would not be much new money. I hope that what we recommended is not a wish list for millions of pounds. Our priorities should be at the hard end of social exclusion in terms of homelessness, offending and drug misuse.
In the same item of business
The Convener:
Lab
Agenda item 2 covers the social inclusion action team reports. I give a warm welcome to the members of the action teams: Joy Barlow, chair of the excluded yo...
Joy Barlow (Scottish Social Inclusion Network):
I thank the committee for asking us to come along to talk about our reports. I believe that committee members have received a copy of the report of the exclu...
The Convener:
Lab
Thank you for your presentation and report, which was substantial. Members are desperate to talk to you: I can sense it in the body language. I will begin by...
Joy Barlow:
What a surprise. I will try to answer those questions.On strategic responses, convener, you will see in the report our suggestion that youth services should ...
The Convener:
Lab
Can we move on, as I am conscious that other members wish to get in.
Mr Raffan:
LD
I would like to follow on from that last point, because resource implications are important. There are two or three other points that I would like to raise q...
The Convener:
Lab
Keith, will you ask all your questions now as that will speed us up a bit?
Mr Raffan:
LD
The second thing I want to mention is the involvement of the private sector. To what extent have you examined what happens in other countries, particularly t...
Joy Barlow:
I will try to answer the first question. Rozanne Foyer will, I hope, answer the others.We discovered that it is currently impossible to determine how resourc...
Rozanne Foyer (Scottish Social Inclusion Network):
We looked at mentoring, but we called it advocacy. We think that it is important for people to build personal links with others that will build their self-es...
Mr Raffan:
LD
What about drugs?
Rozanne Foyer:
We feel strongly that drugs are at the root of many things, but that they are not the cause of social exclusion. Serious drug abuse is a symptom of social ex...
The Convener:
Lab
Thank you. I hope that we will be able to look at that again.
Bill Aitken:
Con
I am interested in a number of aspects of the report. First, it highlights the point—with which I agree—that the benefits system prejudices people in this ag...
Joy Barlow:
One of the reasons we suggest that it is appropriate to retain young people in the children's hearing system up to the age of 18 is that we have seen that it...
Alex Neil:
SNP
The report contains a lot of useful information and it is helpful to bring the whole issue of youth inclusion into perspective in one report. If I may say so...
Rozanne Foyer:
I will start with your last question. We were concerned about how benefit support has been stripped from young people. However, it was not our place to make ...
Joy Barlow:
When our group met, we were expecting the Beattie committee's report, which is mentioned in our report. We would obviously follow that committee's vision and...
Rozanne Foyer:
On the last question, about funding and resources, page 7 of our report refers specifically to the complete lack of resources in Glasgow in particular. The r...
Alex Neil:
SNP
So you agree with me.
Rozanne Foyer:
Absolutely.
Fiona Hyslop:
SNP
You paint a picture of Scotland's youth being wasted and forgotten. You acknowledge that poverty and unemployment are the key issues affecting young people. ...
Joy Barlow:
If we do not put money into prevention, we will be in the same situation in 20 years' time. I recommend that we look not just at the hard-and-sharp end, but ...
The Convener:
Lab
At the end of this discussion, once we have heard the second report, we will return to the question of how we should pursue some of these issues and incorpor...
Gill Stewart (Scottish Social Inclusion Network):
Thank you, convener—Interruption.
The Convener:
Lab
I am sorry. If there are questions—Interruption. I did not see you indicate that you wanted to speak, Lloyd. We will come back to questions later. I have to ...
Mr Quinan:
SNP
You were looking at my face.
The Convener:
Lab
No, I did not see you indicate that you wanted to speak. We have business to pursue. Robert indicated to me earlier that he wanted to speak, and I made clear...
Gill Stewart:
Thank you, convener. Like Joy, I am grateful that we have been given the opportunity to speak to the committee about our report on local action to tackle pov...
The Convener:
Lab
Can I interrupt? Perhaps we could explore the recommendations in the questions, as I think that members have seen them and are getting anxious to move on to ...