Chamber and committees

That is great. Thank you.

I will leave it at that, convener.

I do not think I have anything relevant to declare.

My colleagues will probably have more questions, but that was helpful. It certainly helped me to understand a bit better what is going on.

I turn to Dr Simpson. It seems to be a complicated landscape, and we have just heard that one of the bodies has a pretty wide remit anyway. Do we need all these bodies? Are all their remits clear? You can obviously speak for your own organisation.

Kinship carers might need other support as well as financial support. The committee has received evidence that some kinship carers are nervous that barriers might be raised by their local authority and that they might not be able to keep the children. Housing is an obvious issue—for example, an elderly couple who do not have a large house could suddenly have their grandchildren living with them. Can you say anything about how we deal with that?

I accept that a lot of it is down to the local authority, and I hope that a reasonable approach would be taken, but some local authority officials take a very legalistic approach—for example, if a house was technically overcrowded, they would not move on that. I hope that your words are reassuring and will encourage people, but there is still genuine fear.

I will broaden things out a bit. What other support is there? Children preferably not moving schools is important, but kinship carers might be further away. Can you say anything about that?

I am new to the committee, so this is a completely new subject to me. My questions might be a little simplistic, but I hope that that will help others who are also less familiar with the subject.

As I understand it, we currently have several bodies. We have the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council, the Scottish Commission on Social Security and the disability and carer benefit expert advisory group, and we are now talking about establishing the Scottish employment injuries advisory council.

I will start with Dr Rushton. Can you give a brief summary of how all those bodies relate to each other and how that would change if we had this new body?

I will press you a bit further. Could a council take the children away because the grandparents’ home was overcrowded and did not have enough bedrooms?

But Glasgow City Council does not have any housing stock.

It was some time ago, but I had a case in which, I think, the grandparents lived some distance away from the parents. The preference was for the kids to go to the local school of the grandparents, because that would make things a lot easier, but that local school was full. In such cases, is it entirely up to local authorities how they prioritise places for kids? Does the Government have any thoughts on how such situations can be addressed?

What would a longer-term holistic approach mean for the finances?