Chamber and committees

That is helpful—thank you.

Thank you for being here this morning. I have a couple of short questions. First, do you monitor whether you are getting repeat calls on distress brief intervention? Secondly, if a child or young person or their parent or carer calls you and they are in a great deal of distress, are they told to hang up and call another number?

It was about not providing direct support to children and young people. If a call comes in from a child or young person—they are not always bordering the 16 age group; they can be quite a lot younger now—or their parent or carer, and that child or young person is in real distress, are they told to hang up and call another number? How is that handled?

Fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all for coming today. It has been a really interesting and wide-ranging conversation. I want to talk about bullying in schools—children harming other children. Yes, the behaviour of children with additional support needs is an issue, but they are also often on the receiving end. The Morgan report has already been mentioned and we know that the strategies for additional support needs work for all children and young people. That is something to consider down the line. A lot has been said.

I am interested in a couple of wee points—you do not all have to answer all of them. I am interested in Covid, poverty and mental health. Are there wider approaches? Should we be looking to teach strategies to all our young people to enable them to cope better with the challenges that they face just now?

Secondly, I am interested in accountability. Accountability is part of the issue, because it is about relationships and supporting young people whose behaviour is not what we would hope it to be. There are sometimes situations where young people get away with it and are not held accountable, which is also not good.

My third question is about infrastructure. Are our schools just really big? I would be interested to hear from Joan Mowat, Nick Smiley, Colin Morrison and Cheryl Burnett in particular.

Do parents feel that there is enough focus on what we can do to support and protect young people who are being bullied? I hear quite a bit, especially from neurodiverse groups, that things are changed around the child who is being bullied while the bully goes through school in the normal way. The child who is being bullied might not be going to classes, physical education or extracurricular activities. Is that what you hear, too?

I want to go back to something else that you said. We have restorative practice and work on relationships, but bullying is still happening and it is a massive issue for parents.

The question was to Cheryl Burnett.

Yes, it was about having a wider approach that teaches our young people strategies to promote their own wellbeing and mental health and to deal with anxiety.