Chamber and committees

That is obviously a key aspect, including in further and higher education. The Scottish Funding Council, in particular, has developed a national equality outcomes framework to address some of the most persistent inequalities, especially in further and higher education institutions. Those institutions were asked to consider and report on that as part of the 2021 to 2025 public sector equality duty reporting cycle; we have asked them to do that piece of work and come back to us.

Disability is a protected characteristic, so whatever organisation or public authority someone is liaising or working with, it should be ensuring that that work is being done. The protected characteristics duty should always be included in that work, so that, rather than it being a tick-box exercise at the end of a process, it is an intrinsic part of the process. That is where the national equality outcomes come into play, particularly around disabled students.

Institutions need to give us some indication of both intention and success in terms of how they are improving mental health outcomes and general conditions, as well as other aspects. That is one key area for a young person transitioning into the adult world, whether into further or higher education, where there is a specific duty in place and a reporting cycle on which institutions have to report back to us. We use all of that data to look at where the key inequalities are in order to tackle those directly.

We would be happy to look at that.

Many of the issues that Ruth Maguire raised in her question are ones that are recognisable to us. That is the reason why we have taken forward the work that we are doing on the national strategy.

The evidence that the committee has heard so far echoes the issues that we have. The committee will know that we have commissioned a literature review of United Kingdom and Scottish evidence, which we hope to publish soon. All the issues mentioned are common challenges that have emerged from that. Some of the key concerns relate to stress and uncertainty for young people—particularly when they leave friends, environments, teachers and carers that they know—and the difficulty of transferring into the adult world and to the services that are available at that point.

We are mindful of all those issues. We have recognised them and echo the concerns. The principles of good transitions and the principles into practice work is working specifically on all those areas to ensure that we make a difference when it comes to putting all that into practice as we move forward.

The principles into practice pathfinder work is finishing in March, which is a few short weeks away, and we should also be in a position to publish the analysis of the literature review that we have done in the coming weeks. You will see much more detail around this pretty soon.

I am just finding the most up-to-date information on that for you.

The fund has been used since December 2017, and around £10 million has been awarded to 5,300 grant recipients, so we can see the depth and spread of its reach. Single-year grants are up to £4,000 right now, and young people can apply for whatever activity or equipment they need to support and achieve the outcomes that are important to them.

That ties in to my previous response to Ross Greer about how individualised the plans need to be. In some cases, the opportunity for funding comes along with that. I have seen young people using the grants for driving lessons, music lessons and equipment that they need, for education courses or for other things that enrich people’s lives that may not otherwise be available to some young people.

We are already doing that. We have already recognised that issue and have taken forward a number of pieces of work including the literature review analysis, which will be published in the next few weeks. We have recognised some of the issues that have arisen from the bill and have picked them up. We have decided to do some work on what a good transition looks like, because some people have good transitions and we are using their experience to create a standard. We are working closely with ARC, which you heard from this morning, on the work that it is doing.

We understand that there are challenges and issues, but we also know that there is excellent practice out there and we want to know how to make that much more consistent. That is where we are.

We recognise all the challenges and are not shying away from them. The key part of working on them is working with organisations such as ARC and key stakeholders, because, if the process is not informed by lived experience, we might be back here soon.

Absolutely, and that is the toughest part of it. In my life before politics, I had the job of supporting young people from child services into adult services and, in particular, into employment, volunteering opportunities and work experience. It has always been a tough landscape to work in because it is governed by the Equality Act 2010, which is a separate piece of legislation.

However, there are a number of areas in which we support many organisations to create opportunities, especially around supported employment. Like any other young person, those young people do not necessarily set their mind to something and then follow that path. They might change their mind and decide that they want to do something different or be involved in something else, which is where organisations such as Remploy and others come into play, with the superb work that they do. Through developing the young workforce, we work very closely with some of the specialist organisations to create better outcomes.

You heard from representatives of ARC earlier this morning, and, no doubt, they expressed to you some of the key achievements that they feel have been made along the way. One key aspect of that is the development of a framework that can be used by all sectors. One of the key issues that we need to tackle is the requirement for something that works across sectors, despite the fact that different sectors have different assessments and different plans. That is really important, and we need to be able to adapt to specific local situations and needs. As has been said, no young people’s sets of needs and characteristics are the same. We cannae just have a blanket policy here.

ARC spoke about improved engagement with young people, and another key achievement would be to assess the outcomes both for those young people, parents and carers who have experienced good transitions and for those who have not experienced such good transitions. That bit of work is on-going.

A further key aspect is improved communication and partnership; another one is continuing to develop the data collection and sharing function within Compass. That is a key piece of work and, through each of its iterations, it has demonstrated how that function has become more important.

On top of that, we have the equality data improvement project, a piece of work done by the chief statistician that has led to consultation on data improvement plans for every part of government. The collecting, understanding, disaggregation and use of data to target key issues are really important. I know that that sounds quite dry, but we need that information to ensure that the first piece of work, the framework, works in local and specific need settings.

I view that as key progress, and there is perhaps a way to articulate that a bit more. We will have a think about that when we leave today, but I think that we have made progress. We can see that—we are being enshrined in the on-going work. We can see it, but perhaps there is a bit of work that we need to do to demonstrate that progress.

That is a great question. The initiative that you mention relates to the long-term issue of the information that follows a young person as they move through the stages of their life. I am aware of your constituent—I believe that she lodged a petition on this piece of work. Actually, there are quite a few of these sorts of passports being used: there is the MyCommPass one that you have mentioned; PAMIS has a digital passport; and, of course, there is the ARC Scotland one. Again, if you make an application to the ILF, that provides access to other services, just by dint of having the funds to do that.

We have looked at all those great opportunities and developments across various organisations. ARC Scotland has been pulling all of that together—that is where MyCommPass comes in. The information in those passports is a bit more detailed than just what the young person needs and what should be the next steps; it is actually well informed by the young person, the people around them, their parents and their carers, which is important. There could be a blanket approach to the issue, resulting in a bit of a tick-box exercise, but that is definitely not what any of these young people need. The new MyCommPass passport that your constituent is involved with is an excellent example of the right approach, as is the PAMIS one. We need to give people a choice so that they can find the one that works for them and we need to think about how informed it is, how practical and helpful it is at various stages of transition, and whether it makes the process seamless—or, at least, easier, although we would prefer it to be seamless—and enables the next group of people who are surrounding the young person to pick up that information and carry on.

For some young people, the issue of familiarity is incredibly important, and all those passports take that into account.

The Scottish Government funded the development of the communication passport scheme so that it could be available on Education Scotland’s resource hub—it is there for anybody to have a look at. It aligns with the additional support for learning duties and places duties on individualised support into the plan. That relates to the equality duty minimum, whereby people should have such supports in place.

The scheme also sits in the context of learning and support plans, co-ordinated support plans, individualised education programmes and child plans. It brings much of that together. The duties underpin all of that.

We do not have a huge amount of information about how widely the passport model is used. How it is used is a piece of work that will come out of the pathfinder.

I am also involved in the review of the public sector equality duty, how it will work alongside the new human rights bill for Scotland and how it underpins the rights of all people in Scotland, particularly young people in the settings that we have talked about, to ensure that they get what they deserve.