Chamber and committees

In order to reduce the death rate of care-experienced young people, it is vital to address inequalities in their life chances and wellbeing. The Scottish Government is committed to improving outcomes for all care-experienced young people in Scotland and to making Scotland the best place to grow up. The Getting it Right for Looked After Children and Young People Strategy (published in 2015), outlines our priorities of early engagement, early permanence, and improving the quality of care. This approach ensures that looked after young people will receive the support they need when they need it, that they receive support services which meet their needs, and that they are provided with safe, stable settings which allow them to thrive.

Specifically, we have a range of work underway to reduce trauma and to support some of our most vulnerable children and young people. The Mental Health Strategy 2017-2027 outlines the importance of responding appropriately to the emotional distress linked to both the circumstances that led to a child becoming looked after, and the experience of being looked after in any setting. The Strategy also emphasises that professionals working with looked after children and young people should have the necessary knowledge and skills around issues such as trauma and attachment. Scottish Government officials are working towards setting up a system in Scotland to ensure that all child deaths, whether those children are looked after or not, are reviewed and to learn lessons to prevent avoidable deaths.

The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 introduced Continuing Care, extended Aftercare support and put Corporate Parenting on a statutory footing. These provisions support a more graduated transition out of care settings and encourage a focus on maintaining supportive relationships.

It is important to emphasise that GIRFEC – Getting it Right for Every Child – underpins all work by the Scottish Government to reduce inequalities experienced by looked after children and young people. GIRFEC puts the rights and wellbeing of children and young people at the heart of the services that support them to ensure the right help is offered at the right time from the right people.

The Scottish Government has no current plans to review the funding allocation process.

I refer to the answer to question S5W-11399 on 2 October 2017. The Scottish Government has paid £4.2 million to Scottish local authorities in 2015-16 to support costs of implementing Continuing Care and this funding commitment rises to £9.3 million by 2019/20 at which point, we expect the net total cost each year to stabilise.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The Scottish Government funds CELCIS (almost £5 million in 2017-18), to provide capacity building in the sector to improve the care and support provided to care-experienced young people on the basis of what is known about what works and how improvements can become sustainable in the long run.

We also fund the Realigning Children’s Services programme (approximately £450k per annum). This provides support to community planning partnerships to improve local collaborative decision making, to ensure the total available resource meets the needs of - and improves outcomes for – vulnerable children and families.

As corporate parents, local authorities have duties under the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 to ensure they safeguard and promote the wellbeing of Scotland's looked after children and care leavers. The Scottish Government committed to support these, and other, measures in the 2014 Act.

Scottish Local Government Finance Statistics show that overall gross revenue expenditure on Children and Families Social Work by Local Authorities in 2015-16 was £923 million, an increase of £39 million compared to 2014-15 (3.7 per cent increase after adjusting for inflation).

The Scottish Government is committed to keeping as many young people as possible out of the criminal justice system.

Substantial progress has been made over the last 10 years in keeping young people, including care-experienced young people, out of the criminal justice system:

• The number of young people (12-17) prosecuted in Scotland’s courts has fallen by 78% from 9813 in 2006-07 to 2203 in 2015-16;

• The average number of under 18s in custody has decreased by 77% from 223 in 2006 to 51 in 2016;

However, we know that care-experienced young people are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system, and in custody. The Scottish Prison Service 2015 Prisoner Survey found that of the 327 young men under 21 in HMYOI Polmont who responded, 33% reported being in care as a child, while around 2% of all Scotland’s children are looked after.

Our priority is to improve life chances for children and young people involved, or at risk of becoming involved, in offending. Implementation of the youth justice strategy Preventing Offending: Getting It Right For Children and Young People will secure further progress for vulnerable groups. It includes a strong focus on supporting young people with complex needs - many of whom are looked after children.

The Independent Care Review will help shape further improvements as we continue to drive a preventative, whole system approach to offending to improve life chances and help keep communities and young people safe from crime and disorder.

Skill Development Scotland (SDS) Leadership and Management teams use a wide range of monitoring and performance information to track the quality and performance of the services and to support staff to improve and develop their practice, as well as sharing good practice around working with care experienced individuals.

Within the SDS national development and delivery team a Senior Executive is focused solely on care experienced individuals. This role is pivotal to progressing the Corporate Parenting Action Plan, managing stakeholder relationships, informing and influencing professional practice, leading on developments in relation to resources and staff learning and our engagement with young people. This role is a key interface internally with our Strategy, Policy and Performance team and Evaluation & Research team, maintaining a consistent focus on how our evidence base supports the continuous improvement of our services for care experienced individuals.

An SDS Community of Practice has been organised with a Corporate Parenting Champion from each local authority who meet to share good practice in working with care experienced young people. This includes identifying training and development needs to support staff to work more effectively with care experienced young people.

SDS’s refreshed school offer identifies care experienced pupils as being entitled to a maximum level of service to develop their career management skills. This intensive support continues beyond school to support care experienced young people to develop their career management skills. This ensures a cohesive approach to supporting care experienced young people to help them achieve and sustain a suitable positive outcome.

The duty to provide Continuing Care does not apply if the accommodation the person was in immediately before ceasing to be looked after was secure accommodation. Continuing Care placements are intended to entitle eligible care experienced young people to extend their care setting in order to maintain established relationships with trusted, supportive adults. For a number of reasons, secure accommodation is not an appropriate setting for Continuing Care. However, when external factors outwith the young person’s control make a Continuing Care placement unavailable local authorities will be expected to discuss and agree alternative support measures which meet the young person’s needs.

The Scottish Government commissioned resources for young people and promotes those developed by other organisations including the Children and Young People's Commissioner in Scotland and Who Cares? Scotland. These have been specifically developed for children and young people to help them understand their rights.

The Scottish Government has paid £4.2 million to Scottish local authorities in 2015-16 to support costs of implementing Continuing Care and this funding commitment rises to £9.3 million by 2019/20.

Taking into account the 2017-18 local government finance settlement, including the extra £160 million announced at Stage 1 of the Budget Bill, plus the other sources of income available to councils through reforms to council tax and funding for Health and Social Care Integration, the overall increase in spending power to support local authority services now amounts to over £383 million (or 3.7%).

The majority of funding to local authorities is provided by means of a block grant. It is the responsibility of each local authority to allocate resources on the basis of local needs and priorities.

Virtually no children are expelled from Scottish schools.

The Scottish Government recognises the important role of our education system and the need to provide a positive and inclusive learning experience for all school pupils. We have taken a number of steps to reduce the incidences of school exclusions and close the attainment gap to improve the health and wellbeing of our children and young people, and maximise their future opportunities. On 19 June 2017 we published our refreshed guidance on preventing and managing school exclusions. This focuses on the importance of early intervention measures to prevent the need for exclusion and it promotes the importance of positive relationships in schools, recognising that exclusion should only be used as a last resort. The guidance also highlights the importance of schools and education authorities recognising the impact that exclusion can have, particularly on disadvantaged children.

We recognise that excluded and disengaged learners need additional support which is why Education Scotland provides support and advice through a range of national networks and working parties for third sector groups who are working to improve educational outcomes for learners at risk of being excluded.

We have been working with our partners to prevent homelessness amongst care experienced young people in recent years and this will remain a priority as we develop the proposals around Programme for Government.

The Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group will focus on the actions needed to eradicate rough sleeping and transform the use of temporary accommodation. We know that there will be people with experience of the care system amongst those with more complex needs who may be rough sleeping, who will be the focus of immediate action.

An important part of the work of this Group will be ensuring the voice of people with direct, personal experience of homelessness informs its actions, including the voice of care experienced young people.

The national group for homelessness in Scotland in recent years has been the Scottish Government and COSLA’s Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group and this group will retain an important long term role going forwards in identifying priorities for tackling homelessness amongst young people, including care leavers.