Hansard

Today’s debate comes soon after the stage 1 debate on the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. That discussion demonstrated strong cross-party support for the bill’s broad aims of effective early intervention and better support for our children and young people. Several members also stressed their commitment to making the bill even stronger and to ensuring that the legislation delivers real improvements in people’s lives.

I want today’s debate to build on those sentiments and aspirations, and for us all to consider how we can improve outcomes for looked-after children and young people in particular. To be blunt, that might not be too difficult. Our inquiry confirmed again that many young people who have been in care have worse education outcomes than other children. Many also have poorer health and are more likely to become homeless or to become involved in the criminal justice system.

Although the committee is united in its view that further improvement is necessary, it is encouraging that so much activity is under way to improve outcomes for young people. The Minister for Children and Young People will no doubt wish to highlight the various measures that the Scottish Government is taking, as set out in its response to our report. We welcome such measures, but I will use this debate to push the Government for more detail on some of our recommendations. I also hope that the debate will inspire other members and committees to consider their role in improving outcomes.

However, before I get into the detail of our recommendations, I will provide Parliament with some background on what was a complex and relatively long-running inquiry. Our remit was to consider the decision-making processes that are involved in determining whether a child should be removed from the family home and taken into care. More important is that we also asked whether those processes are delivering the best outcomes for children and their families.

We took an enormous amount of evidence across a wide range of decision-making processes, including social work, the children’s hearings system and the child protection system, and I wish to thank everybody who submitted evidence to us. We took evidence about and from children who have been in care, who were looked after at home or who may be at risk of becoming looked after.

Our remit developed throughout as we continually sought to focus on areas where we considered that the need for improvement was strongest. Although we are debating the committee’s final report, we also published an interim report to ensure that none of the many concerns that were raised with us were lost.

In order to frame our debate, I make it clear that nobody who contributed told us that the current system of child protection and welfare should be abolished and that a completely new system should be established instead. That said, there were suggestions for improvement across virtually every area that we looked at. To put it starkly, we consider that current decision-making processes are not always delivering the best outcomes for children and their families. That view was heavily shaped by the children and young people to whom we spoke, many of whom had harrowing stories to tell.

In Scotland, we talk a lot about putting children and young people at the centre of decision making. However, according to the young people whom we met, we do not always deliver on that promise, which is why we were determined to place the views and real-life experiences of young people right at the heart of our report. When teenagers who have been in care tell elected politicians that they were left too long at home when they should have been taken into care, there is a considerable responsibility on us all to listen and to respond. The problem that those teenagers described is easy to repeat to Parliament, but it is by no means easy to solve. Their concerns are at the heart of highly contentious issues such as the right of the state to intervene in family life, and how professionals make decisions about them.

Another aim of our inquiry was to encourage a public and media discussion of issues around care. We hear very little about child welfare and protection until something goes wrong, so we wanted to encourage a debate on questions including why some children are taken into care but others are looked after at home, whether general assumptions can ever be made about someone’s fitness to be a parent, and whether there is consistent decision-making across the country. Those questions can be hugely controversial, sensitive and difficult, but rational public discussion can make them less so.

I will provide a brief example of how our current approach to children who are at risk of coming into care is of considerable public interest. Without commenting on the merits of that development, I note that earlier decision making is resulting in more children coming into care at a younger age—something that the Scottish Government considers to be a “positive development”. We need to be aware of and to debate such changes, and we need to be alive to how they may impact on society.

Having provided the background, I will highlight some of our main conclusions and recommendations. I will focus on vision, resources, early interventions and the respective roles of the Scottish Government and local government. Above all, I will focus on outcomes.

No one could question the amount of activity that is under way to improve the position of looked-after children. Apart from the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill, the Scottish Government’s response mentions a forthcoming care and permanence strategy, efforts to map the processes and bodies that are involved in decision making, a review of statistics on looked-after children, and several other pieces of work. We appreciate the efforts that are being made across the public and third sectors to reform the child protection and welfare systems, and we acknowledge that some improvements will take time to manifest themselves. However, our report highlighted the danger that the sheer volume of on-going work could give the impression that deep-rooted problems are being addressed incrementally. The committee also wanted a reassurance that all the reforms are being co-ordinated, that key findings will be acted upon and that they will result in better outcomes.

In seeking to improve looked-after children’s outcomes, we must know their current outcomes and the outcomes that are expected. The minister quite correctly considered that it is too crude to judge success for looked-after children in terms of the number of children who are being taken into care. She called for a

“better, more rounded picture of a looked-after child’s well-being”

to gauge whether an intervention has been successful. The Scottish Government’s response to our report stated that

“There are some encouraging signs that outcomes are improving gradually across almost all indicators.”

I would welcome further detail from the minister about which outcomes are improving and the ways in which life chances will continue to get better as a result of the current reforms.

Given the complexity of current decision-making processes, the number of bodies involved and the on-going reforms, our report called on the Scottish Government to establish

“a shared vision of what success would look like for looked after children”,

and to

“ensure that resources and processes are built around that vision”.

The Scottish Government has been commendably clear in stating that the policy aim is early permanence, which it considers will help to reduce the number of children on long-term supervision requirements and increase the number of children who find secure legal permanence. I am sure that the minister will expand on that aim in her speech. When she does so, it would be helpful if she could discuss the bigger-picture outcomes that it will deliver. Will we see improved educational attainment and better health and employment prospects, for example?

I would also welcome an assurance from the minister that the on-going reforms will involve children and young people themselves, because no one can speak with more authority about what improvements are still required.

Not surprisingly, the issue of resources featured in both our interim and final report. For example, we questioned the Scottish Government on evidence that suggested that decisions about removing children from the family home are affected by availability of appropriate placements. Given changing demographic patterns and the strong policy emphasis on the early years and preventative spending, we also asked for projections of the balance of care; that is, the likely number of children who will require to be taken into care.

At a time of budgetary pressures, it is critical that we know the level of spending, what it is delivering, and whether that spending is achieving optimal results. We therefore asked the Scottish Government to calculate the total sum of money that all the relevant bodies spend on protecting children, and whether that spend is providing value for money. The minister made clear the difficulties of disentangling spending in that way, but said that the total possible spend on children’s services is about £2.5 billion.

In response to our requests on planning and resources, the Scottish Government emphasised its view that an understanding of spending and need is best determined at local level. That said, the Government set out how it supports local authorities to promote strategic commissioning. The minister may wish to expand on that approach in her speech.

Our report concluded, however, that we still do not know whether public spending on supporting and protecting children is delivering value for money. However, we consider that existing resources—people, finance and time—could be used more effectively. For example, several witnesses told us that too many people are involved in the decision-making processes. We also recommended that all the on-going reforms should take value for money fully into account, so we would welcome the minister’s reassurance on that point.

I will now highlight a specific aspect of the resources discussion. The Scottish Government’s focus on early intervention and preventative spending has been widely discussed inside and outside Parliament, and there is broad support for the principles. The Scottish Government considers that although early intervention may lead to an initial rise in children becoming looked after, it can also help to ensure that fewer children are looked after in the longer term. In the light of that trend and the strong emphasis on the financial benefits that are to be derived from early intervention, we asked for an analysis of the likely delivery and financial implications for service providers. I would welcome any further detail that the minister could provide on that.

In recognition of its leadership role, our recommendations were aimed primarily at the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government’s response makes clear its role in

“holding partners to account towards ensuring that we deliver excellence”

and in

“helping service providers to set the policy and resource framework”.

We are fully aware that improvements to decision making and outcomes will rely heavily on the input of the people who work at the local level. However, it would be helpful to have clarity around lines of responsibility and accountability, given that the Scottish Government has a leadership role and local authorities have a delivery role. To illustrate that matter, our report raised concerns about social workers; namely, threats to their post-graduate training and councils’ ability to retain experienced staff on the front line. We were concerned by the Scottish Association of Social Work’s claim that social work training departments have

“disappeared as a result of the cuts that have happened to local government”

and that

“Post-qualification training … is now disappearing.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 28 May 2013; c 2524-5.]

Given social workers’ fundamental role in bringing about improvements, we asked for detailed information on the impact of the local government settlement on their post-qualification training and career development. We also asked the Government to confirm the action it would take should the evidence substantiate the claims that have been made. We note the Scottish Government’s view that matters of social work delivery, training and support are for local authorities; however, it would be helpful if the minister could respond to those claims and that recommendation in her speech.

Children who have been in care do not simply need to do better at school. They need to enjoy better health, they need more stable and better quality accommodation, and they need to be far less likely to become involved in the criminal justice system. Those are hugely challenging problems, and it is to the credit of Parliament and our wider society that so many people are investing time and effort in trying to do better by some of our most disadvantaged fellow citizens.

Our inquiry was immensely challenging and, at times, very emotional; it also left the committee with somewhat mixed feelings. We welcome the widespread efforts across government, the public and third sectors to improve decision-making processes and outcomes for children and young people, but the rate of improvement is still too slow, considering the amount of effort and resources that have been committed over a long period.

As we concluded in our report, too many children have been left for too long in unsuitable home environments, and too few children move quickly enough into stable loving homes and go on to enjoy the same life chances as other children. The Education and Culture Committee will maintain its commitment to those children and young people. We will get updates from the Scottish Government on the outcomes that all the activity that is described in our report is helping to deliver. When we do so, we will speak again to those who are most directly affected by the reforms: the children and young people themselves.

I move,

That the Parliament notes the conclusions and recommendations contained in the Education and Culture Committee’s 10th Report, 2013 (Session 4): Report on decision making on whether to take children into care (SP Paper 386).

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