Hansard

I welcome the debate and thank George Adam for bringing such an important topic to the chamber for discussion.

At the heart of the motion is getting it right for every child, and GIRFEC is built on partnership. That is how services can work together to better support children and young people and it is the foundation on which professionals should work with families.

Joan McAlpine made the important point that we need to be mindful of jargon and realise what GIRFEC stands for: it is about ensuring that we have an approach that works well for every child every time. The cornerstone of GIRFEC is our belief that we should put our children and young people at the centre of all that we do. As David Torrance highlighted, it is our national approach to ensuring that children and young people get the services that they deserve. It embeds partnership and—importantly—early intervention and prevention to ensure that we avoid crises escalating and secure the best possible outcomes for our children and young people.

The national third sector GIRFEC project was launched in early 2013. It aims to support community planning partnerships to recognise and embed the role of the third sector in implementing GIRFEC, thereby maximising the contribution that the sector can make to enhancing outcomes for children and young people, and to draw together the principles in policy and in good practice.

Partnership is the reason why the project has been so successful at this critical stage, as we prepare for the new duties under the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. Partnership is a word that recurs throughout the positive evaluation of the project, which has been an important model of the partnership that should underlie the planning and delivery of all services in future. Along with George Adam and other members in the chamber, I celebrate its value and success, and I look forward to getting the opportunity to do so again later this evening in Parliament.

The role of the third sector is a key plank of the 2014 act, which aims to ensure that we are effective in our planning of children’s services. The 2014 act includes new duties on local authorities and health boards to ensure that third sector organisations have a key role in the planning process.

At the same time, we are introducing a new programme to improve partnership to deliver better services for children and young people in each local area. Public, third sector and private organisations must work more effectively in partnership with communities and with each other to design and deliver excellent public services for local people. [Interruption.] Sorry, Presiding Officer—I thought that Iain Gray was trying to intervene.

The realigning children’s services programme will add value to what is already taking place across community planning partnerships. The programme will support local partners to accelerate the implementation of GIRFEC to help to meet the needs of our vulnerable children much sooner than we currently do as a nation.

Last night in Parliament we celebrated Action for Children’s 60th anniversary, which gave us the chance to recognise the charity’s unstinting determination to do the best for the children in its care. The event also provided a wider opportunity to recognise the fantastic work that has been undertaken by the third sector more generally.

The value of the third sector rests on the fact that organisations are often deeply embedded in the community; understand completely the people that they are trying to help; and are fleet of foot and nimble in adapting to emerging challenges and opportunities to provide the help that people and communities need. They do not expect people to fit around them; instead, they recognise the strengths and assets within a community and build on those to find lasting and sustainable solutions to the challenges that they face.

In the words of our former chief medical officer, Harry Burns, they are moving people from being passive recipients of care to becoming active agents of change in their own lives. That approach, and the value of the third sector in it, has been articulated by members in the debate today. George Adam mentioned the threads project, which builds the confidence of parents by revealing to them what they can do. He also mentioned Barnardo’s outside in project, which highlights why we should be embedding early intervention and prevention. Young men and women are getting help too late, often in the prison service. If we had managed to find earlier solutions for them, they could have avoided trauma or imprisonment. At the violence reduction unit’s 10th anniversary celebration, I heard from a young man who encapsulated beautifully what we need to do to help those young men and women. He said that, if they have to look beyond the end of their kitchen table for a positive role model, they are already disadvantaged. We need to ensure that we can step in to help those people, and the third sector is well placed to do that.

Iain Gray spoke about the importance of the Strive programme in East Lothian in building resilience in the communities that he represents. Likewise, Cara Hilton mentioned the south west Fife family nurture hub, which focuses on vulnerable families, attachment and language development.

George Adam and other members were right to recognise the challenges that the third sector often faces. The third sector is often at the coalface of trying to help families, especially in the face of the harsh welfare reforms from the United Kingdom Government. Sanctions and cuts are hitting the most vulnerable the hardest and the use of food banks is increasing, which is completely and utterly unacceptable in our rich nation.

The challenge is also therefore to the third sector. Partnership sounds easy, but it is absolutely challenging. The third sector is not homogeneous but richly varied, which means that a lot of careful work must be put into ensuring that we have trust, open relationships and positive dialogue between each and every part of the third sector in a community. Cara Hilton was right to acknowledge the challenge of finding a truly representative voice for the third sector at CPP level.

We want to support the third sector, which is why we have committed substantial support through the children, young people and families early intervention fund. More widely, the 2015-16 Scottish Government budget has enabled us to continue investing in the third sector as a key social partner with £24.5 million of funding. We are working closely with the sector to consider what approach might be taken in the period ahead to continue to secure a buoyant and sustainable third sector.

I acknowledge the great work that is being done by the national third sector GIRFEC project and by the third sector more widely. I again thank George Adam as well as the Scottish National Party and Labour Party members who have today united to recognise the fantastic work of the third sector. We are in challenging times, but the sector is nonetheless delivering fantastic results and outcomes for the most vulnerable in our communities.