Committee
Justice 1 Committee, 21 Feb 2007
21 Feb 2007 · S2 · Justice 1 Committee
Item of business
Family Support Services
First, I want to make two or three points on the Executive's response to my report on the provision of family support services in Scotland.I agree with the Executive that the best funding arrangement is one that is given through the local authorities and is, therefore, able to respond to local needs and pressures. I think that a local authority working in partnership with the voluntary sector is the ideal in terms of the provision of these services. However, the Executive's response does not make clear how it is intended that that arrangement will work when that situation comes about. We have seen good examples of local authorities such as Dundee City Council and South Lanarkshire Council, which clearly have partnership at the forefront of their thoughts and are delivering accordingly. However, other local authorities have found that to be more challenging. Where there are gaps, how will experience be brought forward to fill those gaps and respond to local need? The Executive's response is not clear on that point.As the report says, funding is inconsistent and unstable; I do not think that the Executive disagreed with that. However, I am not sure how the Executive envisages ensuring that funding becomes more stable than it is at the moment. Other members will pick up specific details with regard to funding, but issues around how the £300,000 is being used and how the unified voluntary sector fund moneys will be divided between the various regional groups must be addressed. When we speak about the voluntary sector, we are generally referring to the not-for-profit organisations. However, in this circumstance, we are very much speaking about volunteers. We have volunteers offering counselling and mediation and staffing our contact centres. Although I feel quite uncomfortable about reducing the provision of family services to an issue of funding, it is obvious that, without funding commitments from the Executive and local authorities, the volunteers will step back because they will feel that there is no encouragement to get involved. Funding is crucial.The issue of contact centres is slightly different, because sheriffs make directives that contact centres should be used. Unlike mediation and counselling services, which people attend voluntarily, the majority of people who use contact centres—I know that some people self-refer—are directed to them by the Scottish Court Service. For that reason, it is particularly important that we recognise the value of the contact centres and ensure that their funding is secure. The Executive's response says that the funding of the pilot scheme and the research for the contact officers will be on-going. I should say that the pilots will take about two years and that, during that period, we will be reliant on the contact centres to provide the service that is necessary, particularly for non-resident parents. Therefore, it is important that we ensure that the centres are properly funded and, indeed, are provided—I say that because we came across local authority areas in which they were not being provided. The Executive's response is positive as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough in telling us how the services will continue to be delivered after the Executive has passed the responsibilities—particularly the responsibility for funding—to local authorities. I do not want to upset my local authority colleagues by saying that there needs to be direction in that regard. However, we must be fairly forceful in saying that those services need to be provided if we are serious about fulfilling the commitments that we gave during our lengthy consideration of the Family Law (Scotland) Bill the year before last. The Executive has said that it will not take on further mapping of services; it expects local authorities to do that and to consider what services are being provided. There is a bit of a conundrum in that, however. If the local authorities do not provide the services, people will not be able to access them; therefore, the local authorities will not think that there is a demand for them. There is a need for more of a lead from the Executive on what services should be provided, so that local authorities can map what is being provided and where the gaps are. Do you agree with that? How do you expect the Executive to go about promoting that?
In the same item of business
The Convener:
Lab
Item 2 is our family support services inquiry. I welcome Robert Brown, the Deputy Minister for Education and Young People, and his officials—Rod Burns from t...
Mrs Mary Mulligan (Linlithgow) (Lab):
Lab
First, I want to make two or three points on the Executive's response to my report on the provision of family support services in Scotland.I agree with the E...
The Deputy Minister for Education and Young People (Robert Brown):
LD
There was quite a lot in that question, so I will take a little while to respond. I welcome the report that Mary Mulligan produced, which is a solid and comp...
The Convener:
Lab
Is that additional funding the additional £300,000 that Hugh Henry announced at stage 3 of the Family Law (Scotland) Bill?
Robert Brown:
LD
No. The funding to which you refer was one-off change funding, on which Mary Mulligan touches in her report. It was designed to help national and local bodie...
Mrs Mulligan:
Lab
I suspect that some of them may require a more detailed response. Colleagues will ask about other funding issues, so I will steer away from that area at the ...
Robert Brown:
LD
I very much hope that they will, and it is very much our intention that they should. Local authorities provide a number of services as a result of statutory ...
Mr Bruce McFee (West of Scotland) (SNP):
SNP
Page 3 of the Executive's response to the reporter's report states:"We agree that engagement with local authorities by both the Executive and the family supp...
Robert Brown:
LD
I will ask Rod Burns to speak about that in a moment. I have had some engagement with the sector, but the matter has only recently come formally to the Educa...
Rod Burns (Scottish Executive Education Department):
There are no formalised plans yet from the perspective of officials, and there is no formal business plan for how we are going to set things out. However, as...
Mr McFee:
SNP
Would it be fair to say that your plans are embryonic, particularly in relation to local authorities and COSLA?
Rod Burns:
"Embryonic" is an interesting choice of word. So far, we have engaged unofficially with COSLA. We would not have been able to propose the three-stage move in...
Robert Brown:
LD
We are heading towards the beginning of a three-year transition period: one year of continued funding and two years of ring-fenced GAE. The announcement of t...
Mr McFee:
SNP
We are in the post-embryonic stage, and I realise that a number of issues are still to be resolved or even discussed.How successful will the Executive be in ...
Robert Brown:
LD
There will be continued engagement with the local authorities, as there is across the board in a number of areas. I have no doubt that the Executive has a fe...
Mr McFee:
SNP
Family support services would not be the first services for which there had been ring-fenced funding and, when the ring-fenced funding ended, the service had...
Robert Brown:
LD
It should be borne in mind that local authorities are locally elected bodies and that they have a mandate from their electorates. There is a difficult but in...
Mr McFee:
SNP
I am interested in that answer in relation to what the Executive wrote to the local authorities in 2001, although I realise that writing is not everything. I...
Robert Brown:
LD
I think that you are talking about a different sort of process. I was not involved in the 2001 scenario, so I cannot speak from detailed knowledge of it. Fro...
Mr McFee:
SNP
I do not think that anybody here would disagree with that, although some of us may have issues about there being little or no provision of services in some a...
Robert Brown:
LD
That will come after a year of continued central funding.
Mr McFee:
SNP
Indeed. I presume that you expect that ring fencing to encourage growth of services, as opposed to simply maintaining what is currently in place.
Robert Brown:
LD
Yes.
Mr McFee:
SNP
You do not want to micromanage the local services, but is it fair to say that the Executive's intention is to take a closer interest than it does in other se...
Robert Brown:
LD
That is a fair summary. I would not disagree with that.
The Convener:
Lab
I will continue the same line of questioning. Are you confident that COSLA is as committed to the provision of family support services as the Executive is? Y...
Robert Brown:
LD
The answer is undoubtedly that it does feel as strongly. Officials have had detailed contact with COSLA. As we all know, COSLA is an intermediary body that r...
The Convener:
Lab
I am not sure that I agree with the Executive's position—I remain to be convinced about whether it should be for local authorities to determine provision. I ...
Robert Brown:
LD
I take your point. We are responsible for the family support strategy but, as in most areas of Government activity, a good part of service provision is deter...
The Convener:
Lab
I hear what you say about the local bodies being an important dynamic, but I do not necessarily agree that they are best placed to decide on where the gaps a...