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Official Report: search what was said in Parliament

The Official Report is a written record of public meetings of the Parliament and committees.  

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Dates of parliamentary sessions
  1. Session 1: 12 May 1999 to 31 March 2003
  2. Session 2: 7 May 2003 to 2 April 2007
  3. Session 3: 9 May 2007 to 22 March 2011
  4. Session 4: 11 May 2011 to 23 March 2016
  5. Session 5: 12 May 2016 to 4 May 2021
  6. Current session: 13 May 2021 to 24 October 2025
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Displaying 662 contributions

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Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Crisis in Ukraine

Meeting date: 21 April 2022

Sarah Boyack

The other issue is monitoring. There will be an initial wave of people, but on-going issues, such as PTSD, could emerge afterwards. Help for such issues might not be immediately available. Support might be needed for the host and for the family that has come to Scotland. Have you got systems in place to keep an eye on that?

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Crisis in Ukraine

Meeting date: 21 April 2022

Sarah Boyack

Thank you. That is really useful.

I have a final question for Elaine Ritchie and Hazel Chisholm about the challenge that you talked about of working on the ground—going to people’s houses or wherever. What translation support are you putting in place? I am guessing that going from zero to having the capacity to translate everything will be quite a challenge. How are you coping with that and what resources are being put in to make sure that people make a successful transition?

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Crisis in Ukraine

Meeting date: 21 April 2022

Sarah Boyack

That is very helpful.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Crisis in Ukraine

Meeting date: 21 April 2022

Sarah Boyack

Is a gendered analysis taking place to review that work? That is one of the suggestions that has been made by JustRight Scotland, given the particular experience that we are aware of in terms of trafficking and of sexual abuse that people might have experienced in-country before they leave.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Crisis in Ukraine

Meeting date: 21 April 2022

Sarah Boyack

I have a follow-up question for Pat Togher about supporting people once they have arrived. Again, it is using the experience of previous refugees—in particular, people from Afghanistan and Syria whom I met recently. They still have challenges in accessing national health service support.

It is not just about post-traumatic stress disorder or trauma from the experience of having to become a refugee. In particular, some of the Ukrainian refugees are older people or people with underlying health conditions that they had before they became refugees, so there is an issue about how to provide support in the short term through access to medicines and the immediate and on-going medical support that somebody needs. They might not have had that support for four weeks. How do we then get them fitted into our NHS system, which is already under pressure? Are the processes clear for that? People have expressed concerns that it is difficult for people, linguistically, to work out what they are meant to do and how to get that support once they have arrived.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Crisis in Ukraine

Meeting date: 21 April 2022

Sarah Boyack

Pat Togher made the point that, initially, people might not say exactly what their circumstances are, so this is about how we connect with them afterwards and having translation capacity. Hazel, how are you moving ahead with that? I presume that it will be quite a challenge.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Crisis in Ukraine

Meeting date: 21 April 2022

Sarah Boyack

It has been really good hearing the answers to the questions thus far from members of the panel.

I will ask about support for people who have made it to Scotland. It is complicated for many people to arrive here. As one of the witnesses said, we have 18,000 expressions of interest from people who are prepared to host refugees from Ukraine. I am conscious that a lot of the people who have been in touch have already improved or decorated their housing and bought new furniture to be ready for people.

One of the witnesses said that there is an issue with what happens when the match is not right. I want to explore that. It will not be easy for everybody to do the work of hosting a family once they have arrived. What follow-up work is being done to check that matches have worked? If they do not work for whatever reason, the family or person does not automatically become homeless. I have spoken to Afghan and Syrian refugees recently, some of whom are still homeless years after arriving, particularly Syrian refugees.

I ask Gayle Findlay to pick up that question from an overall COSLA perspective first.

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Crisis in Ukraine

Meeting date: 21 April 2022

Sarah Boyack

It is really useful to get feedback on that. It needs to happen because, as you say, it is not necessarily about people falling out. It is just a reality check. It could be about the food that is eaten if somebody is vegan, for example, and all the other things that cannot necessarily be predicted before people arrive.

10:00  

The other issue that I wanted to ask about was safeguarding, not just for an initial matching process but for follow-ups. What support will be there for families? I am thinking particularly about people who have come from Ukraine having experienced sexual abuse, or who have had contact with traffickers because of the length of time that it has taken for them to get to safety. What follow-up work is being done to provide support—for example, mental health support—as well as making sure that there are not just checks carried out once by Disclosure Scotland but a follow-up process for people?

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Crisis in Ukraine

Meeting date: 21 April 2022

Sarah Boyack

If you want to keep going on that one, Gayle Findlay—

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee

Resource Spending Review

Meeting date: 17 March 2022

Sarah Boyack

On one level, that is very heartening—the cabinet secretaries are saying the kind of things that we like to hear. However, in a year’s time, post-pandemic, what will you be able to show us that has changed? As the convener said, Mr Yousaf, we are 11 years on from the Christie commission and we have not seen transformative change. We can all quote brilliant local projects, but they are facing massive post-pandemic pressure, and the evidence that we heard earlier in the meeting was that local authorities have had a decade of cuts and that culture is not core funded.

In 2026, GP access will be a real issue—that is 15 years on from Christie—and both of you have basically said that preventative spending is not just good but very important for pandemic recovery. What is the kick-start approach to delivery on the ground?

It feels like we lobby the cabinet secretary for culture weekly, but you have the big budget that has the potential to cut right across our communities. What can happen in the health budget that is transformative? It is not just about link workers, but about them working with local projects on the ground so that those projects are still there in a year’s time.