Chamber and committees

The Government has said to the finance committee that, at each stage as we move forward, we will publish the business case for each aspect of delivery. That will give the Parliament the transparency and openness to enable it to scrutinise everything.

Well, I would dispute that, convener, but I think that we had probably better not go into the machinations of that today.

I would dispute that figure. Beyond that, as I highlighted earlier, we cannot afford to stand still on the national care service. We know that we need to build services that are fit for the future. We have to build services that are sustainable and meet the needs of the changing demographics of our population. That is required, so there can be no standing still.

What I cannot do here today is give the committee the annual budgeting for each aspect of service delivery, because that is dealt with annually. However, I assure the committee that I have reiterated to the finance committee that, as we move forward, we will publish all the financial and business cases for our decisions.

Again, Mr Greer will be well aware, from what I said to the Finance and Public Administration Committee, that the work that we are doing at the moment, including the review work, will look at all of that as we move forward. As we propose and seek to make changes, we will bring all the elements of the business cases for those changes to committees and to Parliament so that they can be scrutinised. I imagine that a huge number of other stakeholders will scrutinise us on that front, too.

There are difficulties with some of those calculations. As the committee is well aware, it is often quite difficult for us to get certain aspects of data. The work that we are doing on the national care service creates a good opportunity to improve data collection as we move forward so that we know about the spend that goes on out there, some of which we are not quite sure about at the moment.

I go back to Mr Dey’s point about carers. We know that the Government provides £84 million or £85 million—if that is not the right figure, I will correct it—to local authorities to ensure that the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 is implemented, but we are not absolutely certain that all that money is spent on that particular service, as Mr Greer and others will know.

Ms Maguire is absolutely right to concentrate on implementation gaps. The committee has talked—and, more important, listened—to a number of young people. In some respects, far too much resource has been put in at points of crisis and not enough has been put into prevention. When people concentrate on prevention and have linked-up services, they spend much less on crisis. We need to recognise that, at the moment, much of the system—not just children’s services, but adult services—is focused on crisis spend. That costs a lot of money, and we also need to consider the human cost of not getting those preventative services right.

Ms Haughey is absolutely right to highlight the opportunity that we have in that respect. No matter whether children’s services will be in or out of the national care service, the work that we are doing now means that we can look at where things are not working and see how we can improve them. That will be easier with the national standards in the NCS, but that does not mean that we should not be aspiring to bring up standards across the board for all services, whether they be out or in.

I am quite sure that we can provide you with many examples from the evidence that we have gathered. I do not know whether Iona Colvin has anything to hand just now.

Ministers will not impose on any of those things. We are going to build a system that allows folks the opportunity to get redress—the right redress—for their complaints. We are talking about improving the complaints system, and what you have highlighted is certainly not how I would describe things. We want to get complaints and redress absolutely right. That is a major issue for the public at large, and it is one of the areas that we are absolutely adamant that we will get right.

Convener, I am sure that the committee has some of this information already, but we can provide more of it. There are 31 integration authorities in Scotland at the moment. Some operate with fully delegated powers for community children’s health services, children’s social care services and justice social work services. We can provide a breakdown to the committee of where those things are currently happening—where those delegations are complete—if you do not have it.

The Government stood on a manifesto commitment of creating—

In all of this, we will have to look at the national social work agency proposals and come up with a co-design in that respect. I will bring in Ms Colvin in a minute, but I must make the following points.

At the moment, there is no single national body that is tasked with oversight of or with leading on social workers’ professional development, education or improvement. We have disparate pay and conditions across the country, which is leading to difficulties with recruitment and retention in many areas. Those issues have been highlighted by social workers over the piece, and we have to ensure that we get those things right.

Moreover, there is at the moment no mechanism for securing the placements that are required for future social work planning. Although several organisations advocate, deliver and advise on social work education, it has not been possible to scale up best practice. As a result, for there to be improvement in all of this, we need to look at change, and a lot of people believe that the right thing to do is to establish a national organisation for the training, development, recruitment and retention of adult social care support, including a specific social work agency for oversight of professional development.

I get the point that some organisations want a pause. However, if you asked them, I think that they would say that they want to be at the heart of co-designing the elements of a national social work agency and how we get that right.

I will maybe pass over to Ms Colvin, convener.