Chamber and committees

I touched on that in my opening statement because it is obviously really important. We must ensure that kinship carers can access their rights and the support and advice that they are entitled to.

The kinship care collaborative established a communications sub-group, which gave a clear steer that the first step towards that would be to ensure that local authority websites contained up-to-date information about their kinship care policies. The sub-group has written to the office of the chief social worker, requesting assistance in contacting all local authority chief social work officers to highlight the importance of ensuring that that relevant information is published, that it is regularly updated and that it is made available to carers and practitioners, which is a legal requirement under the Kinship Care Assistance (Scotland) Order 2016.

The letter to the office of the chief social worker also asks that local authority websites provide links to the website of the Kinship Care Advice Service for Scotland, which is funded by the Scottish Government. That website contains a wide range of information that will assist kinship carers, including information about financial support and welfare benefits and about legal orders. The advice service also runs a helpline, which offers a call-back service outside normal operating hours, and provides a range of free training packages.

Work is going on. As I said at the start, we understand that that is extremely important, and I am confident that the on-going work will help to improve matters.

There has been engagement with Social Work Scotland. I will bring in officials to give a bit more clarity on that.

Absolutely. I appreciate that clarity is required. To be clear, there has been no change in legislation. The eligibility of kinship carers for the allowance remains the same, as outlined in the kinship care guidance for practitioners. In essence, kinship carers who hold a kinship care order and receive an allowance under the Kinship Care Assistance (Scotland) Order 2016 remain eligible for the allowance. However, as I mentioned, we are refreshing the guidance on kinship care to make that clearer, and my expectation is that that guidance will be published by the end of the year, because I know that stakeholders and carers are calling for that.

Kinship carers who are looking after children under sections 7 or 25 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 or under section 83 of the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011 are also eligible for the allowance. I know that the landscape is a bit muddled, so I hope that the refreshed guidance will provide a bit of clarity.

Absolutely. As I mentioned in my opening statement, although financial support is extremely valuable and required, kinship carers might also need other forms of support. Support can be practical and emotional as well as financial. For example, a kinship carer could seek advice and support from their local authority at any point.

The Scottish Government provides funding to Adoption UK in Scotland and to the Association of Fostering, Kinship and Adoption Scotland for the Kinship Care Advice Service for Scotland, with the aim of delivering a wide range of support, advice and information to help kinship care families.

We have also awarded, over the past three years, £989,000 of whole-family wellbeing funding to Adoption UK in Scotland to pilot a new approach to ensure that kinship care families can get the range of holistic support that they need. That focuses on education and community support, including peer support.

On our overall values and aims, good practice and the Promise tell us that the best place for a child to live when they are not able to live with their birth parents is with their wider family. That is absolutely in the best interests of the child, including in relation to safety. No kinship carer should ever feel isolated and unable to approach their local authority for support should they require it, but I have touched on some forms of support that they could access if they felt that way.

On the specific concerns about kinship carers not being able to keep children, the decision to remove a child from their kinship family would be taken only after a full assessment of the situation. Any decision to do so would not be taken lightly. It would be done only if there was evidence to suggest that it would be detrimental to the wellbeing of the child or young person to stay with that family, and efforts would be made to ensure that the family could stay together.

The roll-out of the guidance and the assessment framework that I alluded to will provide a further opportunity to underline the support that might be required for kinship families who have those thoughts or feel that way.

In our journey towards keeping the Promise and in everything that the Scottish Government is working on—its aims and priorities—it is useful to learn from and understand such things and to assess how we can ensure that such situations do not happen or that, as I said in my previous answer, disruption to the child is kept at a minimal level. That involves on-going processes, which we will consider as we go forward.

I appreciate that there has been a slight delay in the publication of the guidance, which was because we wanted to ensure that we engaged widely. As I believe I mentioned in my opening remarks, however, we are on schedule to publish that guidance by the end of the year. The rewrite group is currently refining the document and, once it is content with it, it will be reviewed by members of the reference group, which includes the Child Poverty Action Group, the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman and the Kinship Care Advice Service for Scotland. We intend to engage with kinship carers in the last week in November, and that will be included, too.

It is worth highlighting that the collaborative agreed to form a working group to develop a new national assessment framework for kinship care. That framework reflects the point that the kinship assessment is unique in that it assesses a carer for the needs of a specific child, unlike a foster care assessment. It also considers what extra support might be required within the family. The framework has been developed as a companion to the refreshed guidance, so it will be published at the same time. There are also plans to put in place a programme of awareness raising and training for practitioners, managers and local authorities to support the roll-out and implementation of the guidance and the assessment framework. That is all being done with the aim of improving practice in Scotland.

I touched on that a little in my opening statement. The Scottish Government does not hold information on which local authorities have already backdated the payments, because it is up to local authorities to decide how best to implement that according to their systems.

I am aware that, for some local authorities, implementing the allowance might require changes to their financial systems, as well as calculating those backdated amounts and contacting carers. The time that is needed to undertake that might therefore be different for each local authority. However, we have received the positive feedback that some local authorities have already implemented the new allowance and have made those back payments. Others are expecting to do so by the end of November or soon afterwards.

I want to be clear that there is a legal requirement, set out in the Kinship Care Assistance (Scotland) Order 2016, for local authorities to publish information about kinship care assistance. That includes the rate at which allowances are payable. As part of the grant letter that went out in October, the Scottish Government also asked local authorities to publish their kinship and fostering allowances and to take the necessary actions to ensure that all current kinship and foster carers are aware of the rates.

As I said, we are absolutely positive that it will be carried out in good time, based on how the local authority needs to carry it out. We will also monitor that.

First of all, I give my thanks to the members of the collaborative for their very hard work and their commitment to delivering change.

As committee members will be aware, the collaborative was formed in late 2020. Many people volunteered to give up what has been a considerable amount of their time to attend meetings. Throughout that time, participants have shared expertise and understanding of the issues in kinship care, many of which we have discussed this morning. That has helped to inform and drive the work of the collaborative.

The publication of the refreshed guidance and the new assessment framework that we have been discussing this morning will be key milestones. We should then perhaps sit back for a second to take stock, in collaboration with the collaborative—that is quite a tongue-twister—about what the future might look like. I am very happy to keep the committee informed of decisions on that.

I would not want any kinship carer to feel that they are stuck in a situation and cannot come forward to seek the advice, guidance or support that they require. I will hand over to officials to go into a little more detail on that.