Hansard

Robert Brown should be aware that redefining poverty does not make the least bit of difference. All those children are in poverty in Scotland today and little has been done to alleviate the situation.

It seemed appropriate to focus on youth justice and child protection in the debate, following the publication of three recent reports—the child protection review, the youth justice audit and the report into children's hearings. Those are well-researched, evidence-based documents, and I am pleased that the Executive's amendment seems to indicate that it will take on board the recommendations that have been made. That is perhaps a more gracious and considered response than that of the First Minister to the child protection review.

Both of the substantial reports that deal with youth offending call for a specific commitment of resources to supply services to tackle offending behaviour—we have been calling for that since 1997. Less than 40 per cent of youth justice spend is directed at tackling offending behaviour; the remainder is spent on prosecution and the decision-making process. I agree with the recommendation that the Executive should review whether there should be a shift in that balance. As with poverty, the Scottish Executive has promised much but delivered little. We have had an advisory group report on youth crime, but we never got the promised national strategy on youth crime. We now have an action plan on youth crime, but there has not been much action so far.

Some of my colleagues will discuss youth justice further, but I want to move on to mention child protection services, where there is clear evidence of increased need and pressure on diminished resources. Ever-increasing numbers of children are being placed on child protection registers. Last year, about 7,000 cases were referred to social workers, resulting in 2,018 children being placed on child protection registers—an increase on the previous year. The findings of the child protection audit and review confirmed that some children were indeed falling through the net. Half of all children at risk of abuse or neglect were not properly protected, and of the 188 cases examined, 40 children were not protected and a further 62 were only partially protected. Children's needs were judged to have been met well in just 24 cases. No one can be satisfied with that.

I welcome the reports' recommendations and hope that the Executive will move speedily to implement them. Although a number of the recommendations refer to child protection committees and make various suggestions for improvement, I would like to add one more suggestion for the minister's consideration. I suggest that those committees should have a statutory basis. That would instantly award them increased status and would be much more reflective of the important role that they play in child protection. It would also mean that they would be better resourced and would deliver a uniformly high-quality service throughout the country. That is something that we all want, and I would be interested to hear the minister's views on that.

At the launch of the child protection review, the First Minister decided to act tough—not tough on the causes of the crisis, but tough only on child protection social workers. The review offers substantial evidence that good and effective work is being done by the agencies involved. However, rather than acknowledge their achievement and encourage them to build on and improve it, the First Minister attempted to shift the blame for the acute crisis in children's services on to the services. At a time when professionals urgently need support from the Government, his response was to pass the buck, deride the front-line professionals and undermine his Executive's recruitment campaign.

I will briefly consider that recruitment campaign, which was called "care in Scotland" and billed as a major investment by the Executive to raise the profile of social care and attract people into the sector. The campaign lasted for four weeks and probably passed unnoticed by most MSPs. Four weeks is a short time to turn round a situation that has been developing for the best part of a decade, during which staffing has collapsed from 40,000 to 34,000 and many have opted to leave the sector entirely or to switch to work in the voluntary sector to escape bureaucracy and crushing work loads. The advertisements focused on social care in general, although the pressing need is to attract people into front-line children's services. Perhaps resources could have been better targeted.

Tackling the poor public image of social work goes only part of the way to solving the problems. The British Association of Social Workers has said that many potential recruits are deterred by the lack of an attractive career structure, enormous work loads and a lack of financial recognition for demanding work. As yet, there has been no action to tackle those issues.

Regardless of the success or otherwise of the campaign—even with those flaws—the First Minister's derisory and threatening comments to those in child protection damaged the campaign and further demoralised those who are trying to protect children in increasingly difficult circumstances. Such an approach completely negates the serious staffing and resource issues that exist. The child protection review found that outcomes for children were highly dependent on social work doing well and maintained that social work plays the most instrumental role in child protection. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the recommendations of the child protection audit and review that will tackle head-on, or even indirectly, the appalling lack of resources—particularly staffing—that departments are experiencing.

I want to consider funding. While the Executive increases ring-fenced spending on the changing children's services fund, for example, to promote better integration of services—a perfectly commendable aim that the SNP supports—core funding for children and families services is grossly neglected. The Association of Directors of Social Work undertook an analysis of the budget spend on children's services in social work in Scotland for 1999-2000, which indicated that local authorities planned to spend £324 million on children's services. That was more than a third more—36 per cent, in fact, or £85 million—than the total provided in grant-aided expenditure. Average spend above GAE on children's services by local authorities in 2001-02 was 45 per cent, with 10 local authorities spending more than 100 per cent above GAE. That issue was also mentioned in the Audit Scotland report, which recommended that the Executive should address the inconsistencies between GAE and budgets.

I now turn to recruitment and retention. The latest Executive statistics show that an average of 10.7 per cent of children and families social work posts throughout Scotland are vacant. In the year 2000-01, when Jack McConnell was in charge of children's issues, there was an 8 per cent rise in the number of children referred to local authorities for child protection. At the same time, the number of vacancies for field social workers working with children more than doubled.

An SNP survey of local authorities in the summer of 2001 highlighted the recruitment issues and called for a McCrone-style review of pay and conditions. We carried out a quick update of the situation for this debate and received 18 responses within days. The minister will be interested to know that 17 of the 18 local authorities that responded think that the situation has worsened in the past 15 to 18 months. Current vacancies within child care teams are as high as 50 per cent in some areas; in many cases, no applications are received for advertised vacant posts. Teams that have achieved their full staffing complement think that doing so is a short-term solution at the expense of other local authorities. All are forced into a bidding war for graduates. One local authority stated that

"any council's success is another council's deepening problem."

Many authorities think that the move to integrated services, although welcome, resulted in staff leaving the front line, as pay and conditions are better in initiatives such as the community schools initiative and sure start. The Executive needs to appreciate that it is relatively easy to put resources into children's services, but that staff are needed if services are to continue to be delivered. In some local authority areas, there are hundreds of unallocated cases.

Most local authorities think that the introduction of the four-year degree would exacerbate the staffing problem in the medium term and would reduce options for mature students who wish to enter the profession. Many local authorities call for Executive-funded training places for existing staff. Most important, there are calls for a clear national strategy and for better recognition from the Executive.

I will quote some comments that we received. One local authority said:

"in the absence of a national strategy, the current problems are being exacerbated by local authorities competing against each other for scarce resources".

Another noted:

"I feel the Executive missed an opportunity to begin to address this at the publication of the recent child protection review. Instead it emphasised the failings of the system and in effect was a catalogue of reasons why childcare"

social work

"is a job you would not recommend".

Another said:

"we know from speaking to students and graduates that the final remuneration for"

social workers,

"the perceived lack of status and media criticism of the work, make it an unattractive option compared with other professions".

Finally, one authority said:

"the lengthy time-scale taken to provide new opportunities for training in social work has caused major confusion and a lack of confidence in the profession".

It should be remembered that those are not the SNP's criticisms of the Executive and the lack of progress, although plenty of grounds for such criticism exist. Those are comments from the workers who are most affected.

It is patent that the roll-out of the Executive's action plan for social services must step up a gear and be more targeted if it is to begin to address the severe recruitment and retention problems in child care and in social work as a whole. One of the plan's flaws is that it does not address pay and conditions. Hardly anybody wants to do front-line child protection work. We must make it more attractive, and conditions of service are key to achieving that.

It is interesting that both youth justice reports confirm the staffing crisis in criminal justice and children's services social work and note a lack of staff to deal with young offenders. Many children are not allocated a social worker and do not receive the supervision that they need to stop them offending. That is the issue. I am not just making a plea for better wages for social workers; every one of the hundreds of unallocated cases means that a vulnerable child is not receiving the support that he or she needs when he or she is most in need.

We need more urgent action and supportive leadership from the Executive to help to solve the acute crisis in the recruitment and retention of social workers for children and families. We suggest a review of pay and conditions and proper resourcing of integrated children's services to halt the drain of workers from the front line of child protection to the other initiatives that have more funding or better conditions.

The BASW recommends a career structure that keeps good-quality, front-line staff at the front line; strategic planning in the short and long term following the introduction of the new degree; and political and economic backing for a work force that is asked to work on some of society's most difficult issues.

The question for the Executive is whether enough has been done to prevent people from leaving the work force early and to attract young people into a rewarding and challenging career. To achieve a confident and competent work force, more is needed than tinkering, golden hellos and career grades that are linked to greater work loads. Staff need to feel valued and rewarded for their work.

I turn to the two amendments to the motion. The Executive does not like to take on board ideas and suggestions from other parties, but simply rewording the SNP's motion and presenting that as the Executive's amendment is a bit of a discredit to the Parliament. It is much to be regretted that the Tories cannot rise above the hang-'em-and-flog-'em mentality that lost them much ground when they were last in power and which will continue to lose them friends and voters now.

Services for children and young people are struggling to cope, so they are not meeting their young clients' needs. The common features are a failure to deal with poverty and disadvantage and a shortage of resources—particularly staffing. Until those matters are adequately addressed, services will remain unsatisfactory.

The First Minister said recently:

"If, in the twenty-first century, government in Scotland cannot protect children who are in the most vulnerable of circumstances then government in Scotland does not deserve to exist."

If he meant that, he ought to recognise his own and his Government's abject failure and step down.

I move,

That the Parliament commends the recent reports into children's services of the Child Protection Audit and Review, It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright, Audit Scotland, Dealing with offending by young people and the Scottish Committee of the Council on Tribunals, Special Report on the Children's Hearings System; notes in particular the references to the need to address urgently the crisis in the recruitment and retention of social workers; urges the Scottish Executive to give serious consideration to this matter and to the other recommendations in the reports and to act upon them; agrees that, when implemented, the recommendations would offer substantial improvements to the services for our most vulnerable children and young people; recommends bringing forward legislation to provide a statutory basis for child protection committees thereby ensuring increased status and resources and uniformly high quality services across the country, and recognises the need for the Scottish Executive to tackle once and for all the underlying social problems which disfigure our nation by limiting the chances of Scottish children, too many of whom continue to live in poverty.