Chamber and committees

It would be absolutely immense if you could give examples of employers.

Thanks for that answer, Ashley. I recognise what you are saying about smaller local authorities maybe not having the resource. Are there any good examples of local authorities co-operating with one another to make sure that the right resource is there? I know from my home patch that there are some collaborations between Aberdeen City Council and Aberdeenshire Council, for example. Is there good practice out there with collaboration between local authorities on this front?

Are there any good examples out there of where services have adapted to help young folk with that? Maybe you cannot think of any off the top of your head.

Ashley Ryan, you mentioned a diverse workforce. I asked the previous witnesses about the diverse jobs that we now have, which require a diverse workforce. What would you do to persuade employers that employing disabled people, learning-disabled people and people who are neurodiverse is the right thing for them to do? What would be your message to them?

So, you are saying that we should get rid of the tick-box approach and make sure that folk are living up to what they claim they are doing.

I have a wee supplementary on that, convener. The young folk from Dumfries and Galloway whom we talked to last week definitely had a difficulty with school. You talked about further and higher education, and one of the things that all those young folk that Mr Smyth and I talked to last week said was that they felt that, as far as the college was concerned, they were a bit of a tick-box exercise and they were not listened to. How do you work with FE and HE partners to make sure that young folk are listened to and that they are able to fulfil their hopes and aspirations? The folk whom we spoke to last week were very articulate and they had a strength of feeling that they put across very well about not being listened to in higher education.

You obviously have a job to do in helping folk move on, hopefully into work. How often do you and other partners actually ask for those folk’s opinions about how they have been served and how they have been treated on that journey?

Grand—I agree with that. That seems to happen in the Aberdeen scenario anyway. There was a great video of folks who had been through Project Search who gave their opinions about it, and it was fantastic to hear their experiences.

I want to move on to diversity, because we are living in a world with a huge amount of diverse jobs and we need a diverse workforce. We need employers to have not only a level of understanding of people, but flexibility. How can we ensure that employers become more flexible when it comes to employing neurodivergent people? What do you think could push them further?

I will leave it at that. I hope that we will get that paper from Mr McCallum.

I am a carer positive employer. Would it be wise to establish a scheme—not a tick-box scheme, because I canna abide them—to award employers who have a positive approach to employing diverse people?