Chamber and committees

We are doing budget scrutiny. Before Christmas, I met the principal of Glasgow Kelvin College to look at the really challenging realities of the then budget allocation for the college sector. I also met the Educational Institute of Scotland locally. I am in no doubt that those absolute challenges will mean fewer staff and fewer classes. I grant that those meetings took place before the welcome addition of £26 million to the budget, which provides a small real-terms uplift, but I understand that there will still be fewer staff and fewer classes, which will be reflected across the sector.

I do not have a pot of cash to make things better, but we must be realistic about the reality out there. Has any analysis been done of the impact on the sector of the position before and after the £26 million was allocated?

It is really important, though, convener.

We should note that, in 2017-18, 26 per cent of university entrants came through a further education route, as did 40 per cent of undergraduates from the 20 per cent most deprived areas under the Scottish index of multiple deprivation who started university in the past year. What we invest in colleges matters for our universities; so, surely, moving towards parity of funding is incredibly important.

Deputy First Minister, I welcome what you said in your answers to Graeme Dey and the deputy convener that we have gone from 26 applications being considered each month to 66, and that figure might go up with the additional caseworkers. I hate the expression “throughput” but that is what it is, if you like. However, the individual experience is the length of wait for each individual, so what is the average length of time that someone has to wait to have a determination made, and what do you anticipate the average length of wait will become as the new caseworkers get up to speed? That will allow us to monitor the individual experience rather the number of cases going through the system, and that would be helpful to the committee.

I accept all of that, Deputy First Minister, because there are such individualised cases. Is there any way in which that could be monitored? I accept that each individual case has to be looked at empathetically and that applications can be at different stages when they are made, but it would still be good to have some form of monitoring of the efficacy of the case handling system for those individuals as they go through the process. I know that raw data might not be relevant, but will you keep that under scrutiny, anyway?

I have a particular interest in this cross-party group—that does not always happen when members come here to seek approval for CPGs—because it makes me think about the most obvious ice sports club in Glasgow: the Glasgow Clan. I have not yet been able to go and see it, which is probably my loss. Ahead of today’s meeting, I thought I would check what it is doing, and I saw that it has “kids for a quid” offers to encourage young people to watch the sport. Anyone who has visited Braehead cannot help but be enthused by the number of families who go to see ice hockey as a spectator sport. It is a really family-friendly occasion.

This proposal for a cross-party group has got me thinking about the link between spectator sports, entertainment and participation. I am wondering whether that is something that the group might consider, as we often talk about sporting pathways, and the first way to get young people involved is to get them watching a real spectacle, because they then want a go themselves.

I am conscious that the aims of the proposed cross-party group include debating the accessibility of existing infrastructure and promoting existing clubs. I would imagine that there are geographical inequalities in relation to some of the assets, so I wonder about the relationship between growing the spectator sport, the sporting pathways for participation and affordability. I do not expect to get answers on that from you, Mr Kerr, but I am interested in that connectivity, and the proposal has made me think about the situation in north Glasgow in particular. I know that lots of people I represent there go to watch Glasgow Clan, but I have never asked myself the question: what is the sporting pathway there for young people? Is that something that the cross-party group might investigate?

I will give a couple of specific examples, which is important, because the idea of what a national care service might look like for children can appear a bit vague.

I have been campaigning for a number of years on kinship care to ensure that children and young people who would otherwise be looked after in a residential setting get the support with family members and loved ones that they require. There are currently 4,456 young people in formal kinship relationships in Scotland who get kinship care allowances, but those allowances vary dramatically across Scotland. For example, for children between five and 10, a kinship carer might get £96 a week or £200 a week, or anything in between, across 32 local authorities.

Is the expectation that that would be standardised under a national care service? If so, can you give an assurance that it would be standardised at the higher end and not the bottom end of the scale? Where there is a financial gap in relation to what local authorities are currently putting into the system, who will fund that gap?

My substantive question is on palliative care, but I have a comment about specialist facilities and the commissioning of complex services and trauma-informed care for young people in kinship environments, who are quite often very vulnerable. A specialist facility in my constituency is looking for money from the integration joint board, the local authority and the NHS. A number of local authorities are a bit uncertain about long-term funding for specialist facilities in those situations. I hope that the national care service will improve that kind of situation. That is not my substantive question, but I wanted to put that on the record.

I chair the cross-party group on palliative care in the Scottish Parliament, and I have to say that the engagement with the Government has been fantastic. I know that palliative and end-of-life care will form part of the new national care service. There is also a new national palliative care strategy pending. Based on 2020 figures, 16,700 babies, children and young people would benefit from palliative and end-of-life care because of life-shortening conditions. Tragically, three die every week. There is good support out there, but it is sometimes inconsistent. I know that there has been good investment in the children’s hospice network, but there is a feeling that integration joint boards and others perhaps still do not have a coherent strategy across the country to provide meaningful access to palliative care for babies, children and young people.

Can either minister say anything about how you will work with the sector to make that happen and ensure that the national care board drives forward improvements in that area?

The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities would probably say that there will be negotiations between local authorities and the national care board about who picks up the tab. If a local authority is paying £100 a week and the national figure is £200 a week, there is a financial consequence to that. It would be helpful if you could say more about that.

There are 32 different local authorities. I think that Social Work Scotland has said that there is a lack of clarity. I know that there is clarity in law, but there is a lack of clarity about the criteria for kinship care and about when financial assistance is given. I have consistently given the committee the example of a grandmum who takes a child into her home after the death of the child’s mum. Quite often, kinship care allowance is not granted in that situation but, if social workers turned up at the door with that child and said, “I’m really sorry your daughter has been lost—will you look after the grandchildren?”, kinship care payments would be paid.

That is deeply unfair. There are 32 ways in which that is interpreted across Scotland and, at local level, different social work service officers may interpret it differently on the ground. Will that be addressed by the national care service? I am trying to get to the reality of what that will look like on the ground, rather than looking at the abstract in a framework bill.

I want to mention palliative care. Do I have time to do that?

I just want to follow up on that exchange with Mr Marra about funding. I get the impression that we cannot quite decide whether, if the national care service happens and children’s services are part of it, it will be launched with a big bang and we will have a big shiny new service overnight or whether there will be a strategic evolution of the service over a number of years.

As for kinship care and the costings in that regard, is it the expectation that, in the first instance, there will be a standardised national kinship care allowance across 32 local care boards, or will the national commitment to that, which will be implemented over a number of years, have specific budgetary implications, both nationally and locally, on which there will have to be negotiations involving COSLA and the Scottish Government?

Having listened to today’s discussion, I feel as though people are talking about a big bang, whereby—if it happens—we will have a national care service and everything will be fixed. However, it is clear that that is not going to happen. Minister, can you say a bit more about how resourcing will be allocated so that we do not oversell what we are trying to do and can get a better understanding of that process?