Chamber and committees

I am pleased to hear that the things that were put in place were positive and I hope that they will continue, because it shows that we can do things differently and be very fleet of foot when we need to be. It is encouraging to hear that.

The question that I have is specifically on the resilience fund, the local authorities that were initially able to access it and the additional 10 local authorities that were able to access it subsequently. Kaja Czuchnicka, are you aware of how they were chosen? Did the funding go to the areas where it was needed the most? When the additional 10 local authorities were added, did that come with additional funding or was it a case of spreading the initial funding slightly differently?

Sorry. I mean the communities recovery fund.

Does anyone else on the panel want to comment?

Thank you for joining us and for providing your submissions in advance—the submissions are incredibly helpful. I also put on record my thanks to the third sector for everything that those involved in it have done—this year in particular, but also beforehand. Having spent a number of years of my working life in the third sector, I know how hard those in it work and how important it is.

It is clear to me from some of the evidence that we have received that the impact of the past year on not just the services that you deliver but jobs in the sector, including those that you are able to create, has been significant. You note that some organisations have been struggling and have had to make some painful operating decisions. Could you tell us a little bit about that and about redundancies and how many jobs you think could have been affected by the pandemic over the past year and a half?

My questions are for Myles Fitt and Ian Bruce. You will be aware that a number of citizens advice bureaux in Glasgow faced funding difficulties in the past year or so. Can you tell us about the impact of that and about the importance of resourcing such organisations? Given the UK Government’s changing approach to a three-year funding settlement, do you have any indication from local or central Government in Scotland that they will seek to transfer that approach to your organisations, notwithstanding the fact that three years is good but more would be better?

It is important that we get right under the skin of the issue not only because what you have said about the UN’s warning about women’s equality, but because of the impact that the situation is having on women, as we all see in our constituencies every day. We need to get ahead of the issue, so thanks for helping us to do that.

My questions are around the impact on unpaid care. I have spoken to a number of unpaid carers, before the pandemic and since, and their stories are bleak and can be pretty grim. Will you tell us a bit about your assessment of the impact of the pandemic on unpaid carers? Can you also cover the impact that the reduction in health and social care services has had on people’s expectation that women will do unpaid care? Are there any particular groups of women—for example, younger women, disabled women and lone parents—who have, in your experience, ended up doing more of that unpaid care as a result of services shutting down and so on?

Thank you for your answer to the previous question. It was very helpful and I look forward to seeing your written submission.

How are you ensuring that the ethos of eligibility will change from the current system of personal independence payment to the new system of adult disability payment? What are you doing with your workforce to make sure that it is a different type of process?

How long do you expect to be spending money on the agency agreements? If you were delivering those benefits through Social Security Scotland directly, would your spend on the agency agreements be like-for-like in terms of your administrative costs, would you be able to deliver slightly more cheaply, or would it be more expensive?

Yes, thank you.

Yes, I am asking mainly about how you will work with people. We have heard a lot about eligibility—I presume that the adequacy of payments will come further down the line, and that will be a whole other session I am sure. In the meantime, how are you making sure that the process, whether through application or transfer, and in particular around the child disability payment and the adult disability payment, when that happens, is better than it currently is with the DWP?