Chamber and committees

Oh, were they?

Right.

Okay—that is fine.

I welcome the minister to her new position. Do you have an estimate of how many additional places in secure units we will require as a result of the change?

When we visited a secure unit, we saw that good relationships had been built with local health providers as a result of the good efforts of staff. However, there were sometimes issues when individuals came from health boards outside the area. Continuity of care was an issue. The connections, the good service and the integration were mainly down to the good will of staff, and there is no guarantee that that will always be the case. Will you consider the possibility of the NHS providing direct support to ensure that things are more co-ordinated and seamless in the future?

Quite a lot of young people from outside Scotland are placed in the secure units, and there have been reports that some authorities are paying higher rates than the funding that is provided through the Scottish system. Are we dependent on those places to keep the secure units adequately funded? Are you comfortable with those differential rates?

Can I just go back—

When we went to Polmont, we saw that the national health service was integrated with the young offenders institution and was providing care directly. It seemed that people were able to get everything that they needed, when they needed it, because of that dedicated specialist support. We did not get independent verification that the service was provided to the standard that we would like it to be, but, nevertheless, the service was provided directly. That is not the case with secure units. Have you any plans to change that?

That issue was certainly raised, so you are more up to date than you think.

Secure care has been considered to be the last resort, but some people expressed the view that, in some cases, we go round the houses on every other option and eventually end up choosing secure care when secure care should have been the first option. Are we getting the balance right in relation to secure care being the option of last resort? Does that make sense?