Chamber and committees

Good morning, Jasmin and Laura. It is good to see you again. Thank you for taking part in last night’s discussion. As has been indicated, it was a very robust session, at which we got a strong flavour of the issues.

You have spoken about having to navigate barriers. It is clear from last night’s discussion with people with lived experience that that was one of the big issues that they had. You have identified that there does not seem to be a joined-up approach across some of the agencies that are involved. What needs to change? If things are to improve, change is needed. Last night, we got a flavour of how people had found it difficult to navigate the system. Jasmin has identified that some people found that so stressful and so problematic that they ended up going down a different route. For some people, that was a final route. We do not want anyone to experience that. It would be useful to hear what changes you think that we need to see in relation to navigating the barriers.

However, we should not be relying on the third sector to fulfil those needs. That is where the gap that you have identified exists..

In your opening statement, you talked about capacity. I think that we all acknowledge the capacity issue that you have had to endure. However, managing that capacity involves dealing with the staffing and resources that you have. You have identified that, to do the job, you will try to manage within those resources. Do you have an objective of looking at whether more are required? You are aware of where you have been, but achieving where you want to be might not be possible without more staff and resource. Your casework and the backlog have been identified, and you are managing that, but you are probably being asked to do more with less, and you might need a little more to achieve what you want to achieve. Is that where you think you will go?

You have identified the pinch points, which is good, because that will give you a flavour as to where you might be.

The other issue that I want to touch on is awareness—that is, your ability to make sure that people are aware of what services you offer and how you will deal with matters. The situation with regard to information is more acute than ever, so it would be interesting to get a flavour of what your approach to awareness is and whether you have plans for communication. You have mentioned your website, but are there other aspects that you can encapsulate that will support you to increase awareness of what you do, which will make it much easier for the public to understand FOI and also make it easier for you, as a management organisation, to cope with the work?

You have just identified that, if you had a wish list, you would do certain things. At the same time, you do not want to be curtailed in what you are trying to achieve as an organisation, which is ensuring that information is transmitted.

I still think that there might well be a requirement for you to seek support to achieve some of the goals that you have set yourself. Otherwise, you might be setting yourself up to fail. I appreciate that you want to make progress, but, at the same time, we do not want you to come back in a year and say, “Okay, we tried, but it didn’t quite work, and we’ve now found ourselves in a slightly bigger situation.” It would be good to get a flavour of how you will try to manage that, because that could—potentially but not necessarily—happen, depending on where you find yourselves.

Once again, I think that the petition has probably gone as far as we can take it in the process. It would be appropriate to close it under rule 15.7 of standing orders, on the basis that the Scottish Recovery Network is continuing to develop a peer support training resource, Peer2Peer, about which we have had information from the Scottish Government and others, and it can be adapted to support the needs of different organisations. Given that, I propose that we close the petition.

I agree with that. In the past, Audit Scotland published its “Maintaining Scotland’s roads” report. It would be useful to follow up on any recommendations in the report and to get an indication as to what action is planned in future to try to tackle the issue.

I agree, convener. There is definitely a gap in the bursary provision. Trying to encourage someone to go into that sector is, in reality, tough enough, but putting extra obstacles in front of individuals will make it much more challenging for them to fulfil the course. As Carol Mochan suggested, it would be useful to get some of that information so that we can identify much more clearly what happens with bursaries for placements in the third and fourth year of social work practice. The petition requires more information to be captured. The minister may have captured that, but we need to capture some information as well to make sure that we are fulfilling our role and getting the full information that is required.

There is no doubt that there is an opportunity to deal with the petition and seek some clarity as to what is taking place. You touched on the consultation that is anticipated. It would be useful for the committee to write to Food Standards Scotland to ask it to update us on its plans for the consultation that is to take place with reference to the labelling of food products that are sold in Scotland having mandatory Braille labelling, and the timescale for that consultation to be carried out.

We should also write to the Food and Drink Federation Scotland to seek its views on the issues that the petitioners have raised, and specifically on the anticipated additional costs of adding Braille to labelling on food products. That will also give us an indication as to where this is going. In addition, it would be useful to find out from the Scottish Government what its views and feelings are on the process, because it has a role to play as well.

Some work has been done on that already. We note that Police Scotland has had support. Universities have done a lot of work themselves to support any student in that situation. I note from the report that the Scottish Government has had round-table discussions. Those are all good. It would, however, be useful to get a summary from SPICe about what happened at the Education, Children and Young People Committee’s evidence session on drink and needle spiking, because it has done a lot of work on that already. We could capture some of that information and use it to our benefit, because what Carol Mochan and Fergus Ewing have said is very valid, but we could maybe—I am going to use the word again—capture some more clarity.