Chamber and committees

We are very switched on to cost of living pressures, and work is on-going to consider the funding implications for 2024-25 and future years in the context of inflation, our fixed budget and the significant financial challenges that the Scottish Government currently faces, as I am sure all members are aware.

I will probably be able to say more about that after the Scottish budget has been set out in December. Discussions with COSLA on uprating will be picked up in due course, but, as I said in my opening statement, the Scottish Government made a commitment to maintaining the 2023-24 levels of support and to reviewing the funding implications in the future.

As I said, I will probably be able to say more after the budget process.

Of course.

Absolutely. My officials are in regular contact with their counterparts in the UK Government. As I understand it, although paid leave has been introduced by some organisations, such as Tesco, the matter is still being considered by the UK Government. I am very happy to write to my counterpart, the Secretary of State for Education, to request an update on that.

Of course.

Based on what I have said, I do not believe so, because, if it was simply down to a housing situation, removing the child would not be in line with ensuring what was best for the child. Obviously, it is for local authorities to deal with their housing stock, but I imagine that best efforts would be made to ensure that that family could stay together. I do not think that that would be an acceptable reason for a child to be removed.

As I said, it would be down to the local authority, but I am sure that efforts would be made to ensure that children could stay with their family.

Absolutely. Best efforts would be made to ensure that the child faced as little disruption as possible. I will bring in my officials to elaborate on that.

Yes, absolutely. I agree that the kinship care collaborative, alongside others—including stakeholders that we have touched on this morning, such as the kinship carers advisory group, the Fostering Network and Social Work Scotland—could have a key role to play in feeding back about the allowance. As I have mentioned, its engagement to date has been extremely valuable and has helped to inform the development of the recommended allowance information page, which was published on the Scottish Government website this week.

The next meeting of the collaborative is on 27 November, and I have asked officials to discuss with its members how they might inform work on the allowance going forward, and how that might feed into the next steps for the collaborative. That will be vital. As I have said, we are committed to formally reviewing the allowance, so taking organisations and stakeholders with us will be vital.

That is a work in progress that spans much further than the matter that we are discussing. We continue to listen to the voices of people with care experience to find out what they require. We are seeing improvements in CAMHS and other services and we are putting a lot of work into improving those for young people.

You mentioned trauma. I appreciate what you say about the support for young people, but carers also need support to be able to deal with that appropriately. As I said in answer to Ms McCall, we are working to develop a plan to provide trauma training for kinship, foster and adoptive parents.

I am positive about the work that is going on to support care-experienced young people, but there is still more to do: that will continue to be led by the voices of those with care experience.

Good morning. I am very grateful to the committee for inviting me along to give evidence. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the new Scottish recommended allowance for foster and kinship carers and, of course, the wider work that the Scottish Government is undertaking to support kinship carers.

Kinship care has evolved over many decades. During that time, there has come an increased recognition of, and value for, the role that kinship carers play in providing secure, stable and loving homes for children and young people when they are no longer able to live with their birth parents.

At the outset, I put on record my sincere thanks to kinship carers for stepping in to provide children with a home, often at very short notice and within complicated family dynamics. I know that giving that care can be multifaceted, which is why the Scottish Government is committed to providing both financial and practical support for kinship carers, so that they are best equipped to love and nurture the children they look after.

On 30 March last year, we published our implementation plan, setting out the actions that we would take to keep the Promise by 2030. In the plan, we restated our intention to introduce a Scottish recommended allowance for kinship and foster carers in order to end the inequality and ensure consistency across Scotland.

As the committee knows, that has been a Scottish Government commitment since 2018, and I know that the time that it has taken to deliver on that has been a source of frustration to both caregivers and stakeholders. That is why, in August this year, I was really delighted to announce that we had reached agreement with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities about a new national weekly allowance that all local authorities must pay to their foster and kinship carers.

We estimate that the new Scottish recommended allowance will benefit more than 9,000 children. It is being funded by an additional £16 million from the Scottish Government. That funding enables the allowance to be backdated to 1 April this year. It is, of course, up to local authorities to decide how best to do that and to ensure that there are no unintended consequences for families.

We know, from some initial feedback, that some local authorities have already implemented the new allowance and have made the back payments; others are expecting to do so at the end of November or soon afterwards. We will use our existing forums, groups and networks as feedback loops to identify any obstacles to implementation and, importantly, to help local authorities to overcome any obstacles and to share good practice. Once the Scottish recommended allowance has bedded down, we will review it more formally and identify any areas where improvements could be made.

When I announced the new allowance, I committed to maintaining the 2023-24 levels of support for the allowances and to reviewing the funding implications for future years from 2024-25. Like all of you, I am acutely aware of the cost of living pressures on families and I am currently considering what we might do for future years, given our fixed budget and the significant financial challenges that we are facing. I will be able to say more on that after the Scottish budget has been set out in Parliament in December.

We recently had care experience week, which was an opportunity for everyone to celebrate the care experience community. I visited Siblings Reunited, known as STAR, and met staff and a small group of volunteer supporters. STAR provides a safe environment in which to bring together sibling groups who have been separated in care to form positive experiences and relationships. What that visit reiterated to me was that, although funding is important, it is only one part of how we can improve the experiences of those in care and of their carers. That is one of the reasons why, along with partners, we established the kinship care collaborative in 2020.

As you will know from your previous inquiry, the collaborative is working hard to deliver improvements in support for kinship carers, children and professionals working with kinship families across Scotland. Following recommendations in last year’s Social Justice and Social Security Committee report on kinship care, the collaborative established a rewrite group to refresh the existing kinship care guidance for practitioners. The rewrite group has been examining the guidance with a view to updating it so that it reflects updated legislation and growing knowledge and experience of what works in kinship care.

The refreshed guidance will also clarify many of the issues that the committee and stakeholders have told us are open to interpretation. Those include the meaning of “at risk of being looked after” and “placed with the involvement of the local authority”. Our aim is to publish the guidance by the end of the year. Alongside that, a group of practitioners are helping us to develop a new national kinship assessment framework, which will complement the refreshed guidance and help to improve the consistency of approach and practice.

We are also taking action to promote the work of the collaborative—which I know is an issue that the committee raised previously—and to ensure that it is open, transparent and accessible to all stakeholders, kinship care families and others with care experience.

More broadly, there is work across Government to support kinship carers. For example, we are working with partners and caregivers to develop a plan to deliver trauma training for kinship and foster carers as well as for adoptive parents. We have also made it easier for kinship carers to apply for the Scottish social security benefits that they are eligible for, working in consultation with those who have lived experience to expand the definition of kinship carer to make it as inclusive as possible.

I believe that the totality of the work happening across Government, specifically to target kinship carers but also to help families more generally, should help us to achieve our ambition to keep the Promise by 2030.

I welcome the committee’s continued interest in kinship care and the Scottish recommended allowance, and I am happy to answer any questions.