Chamber and committees

Iona Colvin wants to come in first.

We could provide many examples of where services have not delivered well for people. Again, I hearken back to what I said earlier: some of the areas in which there are real difficulties for folks are the transition stages from children’s services to adult services.

Members have probably had correspondence in their mailbags and inboxes about some young person who leaves school and is then left with nothing in terms of care and support. That will obviously have a major impact on somebody with a disability or a learning disability. There are a lot of examples of where that transition has not worked. We could probably provide the committee with some very good examples, but I am always a bit feart of giving examples, because we could end up with a situation in which an individual can be identified, given that some of the circumstances are so complicated.

I think that we need to improve on the here and now as well, and we, as a Government, will continue to do that across services, even in these tough financial times. However, what we actually require is a service that is fit for the future, and which is built with people at its very heart.

At the moment, a huge amount of folks out there receive care and support in order to survive. We need to turn that around so that folks can thrive. That is the ambition for our approach, which is person centred with human rights at its heart. It is about closing those implementation gaps by actually getting those folks who are currently receiving services, and those folks who are on the front line, to help us in shaping the service.

We have a huge opportunity here to change the culture. At present, in many parts of the country, we find that, where front-line staff have more autonomy and independence, that means better delivery for people. If the committee were minded to go out and about and speak to front-line staff in certain places, it would find, without a doubt, that that freedom and autonomy for the front line, which in many places has been restricted and clawed back over the piece, is the right way forward. By doing that, we will improve services for people across the board.

The committee can be assured that this will not become a bureaucratic nightmare. This is about improving services for people across the country. As we have already said, we are doing the groundwork that Ms Haughey outlined, to look at whether it is right to include children’s services in the national care service.

I know that some people are not in favour of that change. However, during the discussions that we have had over the past 18 months, the voices of lived experience have highlighted to us some of the difficulties that they experience in accessing care and support.

One example of things that are key for people is transition phases. The movement from children’s services to adult services is not smooth for a lot of people in our country at this moment. The scenarios are much better in some parts of the country than in other parts. Again, if you talk to the voices of lived experience, they will make quite clear their views about where that works best. In my opinion, things work best in areas where greater integration has occurred, and the scenario is one in which integration joint boards have been delegated various functions, including children’s social work, social care services and children’s health services. I would say that, without doubt, that is the view of many folks.

We are lucky enough to have Iona Colvin as our chief social work adviser. Before she came to work in Government, she had a vast range of experiences in life. She was the chief officer of North Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnership, where there is a greater degree of integration. It might be an idea, convener, to hear from Ms Colvin about her previous experiences in that.

I will start off with national collective bargaining, which Mr Marra has highlighted. The social work and social care profession has had difficulties with pay and conditions for many years now, because of the disparate amount of employers in social care—there are 1,200 in Scotland—and because of the competition, even between local authorities, in trying to attract folks into social work.

Having talked and listened to younger folk in social work and social care, I can say that, although pay and conditions are extremely important—pay is way up there, without a doubt—they want more of a ladder for career progression. They do not think that is there at the moment, and it is something that I think we can build on in the national care service.

As for resourcing, there is undoubtedly a job of work to do in looking at what the co-design process will come up with and what the costings will be. As I have said, I am not here to talk about the totting up of annual budgets—that is a matter for Parliament. As we move forward with co-design and all the elements of the national care service, we will come up with the costs—and, indeed, the benefits. After all, some of the things that have been proposed or that will be proposed during the co-design phase might well have benefits as well as costs.

That work will continue. As I have said to the committee, to other committees and to Parliament as a whole, we will come back with the analysis and the business cases setting out our intentions with regard to any change that comes out of our co-design work.

We are in listening mode. Co-design is not lip service.

Of course I do; after all, Parliament has a job of scrutiny to do. What I would say to Mr Dey, however, is that this framework—or enabling—bill is not unusual. In fact, it is the way in which the national health service was formed.

I gave Mr Dey a kind of answer earlier about the reasoning behind the approach. Having the ability to make changes through secondary legislation gives flexibility, because that sort of thing is not so easy to do in primary legislation. I have already given the committee the very good example of self-directed support. Parliament, with the best of intentions, wrote a piece of legislation that had some flaws; folk have since dug into those and hivna stuck to the spirit of that act. We want some flexibility so that we can adapt as we go along, in order to get service delivery absolutely right.

I have not talked this morning about anybody being resistant to change—I want to put that on record. However, we sometimes have to take folk on a journey to see the benefits of the change on which we are embarking.

To answer Mr Rennie, in the previous session of the Parliament, the Government, under the then Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, Jeane Freeman, asked Derek Feeley to look at adult social care, and that independent review took place. I will not go through all the elements of that because I am quite sure that the committee is well aware of Mr Feeley’s recommendations.

After that, we, as a Government, went and talked to the voices of lived experience about the recommendations. That included folks from the likes of the social covenant steering group with real experience of where the service works for them and where it does not.

What became very apparent from those discussions with not only the voices of lived experience but stakeholders, too, was that folks thought that there could, and should, be a widening out of the proposed service and that we should look at that. That is why, in our consultation, we included questions to enable us to look at whether there was an appetite for moving beyond adult social care. From the responses that we have had, we see that there is such an appetite.

However, Mr Rennie asks a pertinent question about the work that we are doing in relation to not only children’s services but criminal justice and other areas. If we are going to do this, we have to have the evidence and the reasoning for doing it. That is why we are currently carrying out the review work, which I am sure Ms Haughey will tell us much more about.

It stood on a manifesto commitment of creating a national care service to cover adult social care. Since then, we have listened to people who have said that we should make other considerations as well, which we are looking at and which we included in questions in the consultation. As the committee is well aware, we are carrying out work to examine and review all the suggestions.

I canna reiterate this enough: no matter what is out or in the national care service, we have to ensure that the linkages are there, and that work is valuable, no matter what, in order to get things right for delivery for people. To get things right for delivery for people, people should be at the heart of co-designing that with us.

The financial memorandum, as it stands, includes everything that is covered off by the bill. I have said to the Finance and Public Administration Committee—