Seòmar agus comataidhean

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.

Some of the early co-design work that we are doing is on the charter of rights and responsibilities. I was pleased to be able to attend a virtual event last week, or the week before last, on how we build that charter, when I faced a fair number of challenging questions from stakeholders about how we get that right. That is what needs to happen—we need to be challenged in all such regards.

We want to make sure that the co-design process is as inclusive as possible. We absolutely need to hear from a myriad of voices about how we get this right, because many people have previously been failed by the system. We have already garnered a lot of views, but there are missing voices, and we must do better in ensuring that those people, too, are at the table when it comes to helping us to create the charter.

You mentioned young people with disabilities. Many disabled folks have been excluded from helping to shape such things previously; we want them to be at the table. We have had some criticism, which I think is fair, from some ethnic minority groups, who say that they have been excluded from some of the design processes in the past. Again, we are going out of our way to try to get folks from those communities involved.

I will bring in Iona Colvin for a brief bit, and then I might come back in.

Convener—[Interruption.]

I am sorry—does Clare Haughey want to go first?

There are significant pressures across budgets, and last week’s United Kingdom Government budget did not help in that regard. That is why—

There are a number of important elements here. As I have previously told one committee—I forget which of them I have been to now—there need not be a wholesale transfer of staff to the national care service. I have explained that in terms of social care. In terms of social work, our ambition is to create a national social work agency, but that might not lead to a wholesale transfer of staff, either. We need to work our way through that.

As far as social work is concerned, what we definitely need to do is ensure that, no matter what, we look at pay and conditions and other aspects—

If I can just finish, convener, because it is extremely important—

There are certainly a number of things in that regard. Again, I will talk about what folks have said to us, and I will give the committee a good example from not so long ago. We talked with, and listened to, someone who currently has 15 different interventions in their life from a number of folks in social work and social care. It would be fair to say that that person felt that it would be much better if there was a much more joined-up approach rather than the current fragmented approach, in which someone deals with each individual element of what is a very complex case. I will not go into the elements of that complexity, because that could identify the individual, and I do not want to do that.

From a person-centred perspective, the NCS gives us the ability, without a doubt, to listen to what folks’ needs are and to actually make things better, rather than our doing certain things to folk that do not help them in any way, shape or form.

I do not know whether that answer is helpful to Ms Maguire.

I will come back briefly. In some respects, one of the simple things to look at is self-directed support, so let us go back to that. In some parts of Scotland, children and young people are not able to access self-directed support—it is as simple as that. If you talk to some of the stakeholders again, many of them will point out that the joining up of services for young people who have similar care needs can be very different from one area to the next. There can be top-quality service in one area, which ensures that all the linkages are there, and next to nothing in the next.

Good morning. Thank you very much, convener, for having Ms Haughey and me here today.

I will give an overview of our approach to the bill, and Ms Haughey will focus on services for children and young people in the context of the national care service. I should say at the outset that no decision has been taken on whether to transfer children’s services or criminal justice services to the national care service.

It is fair to say that the national care service is one of the most ambitious reforms of public services. It will end the postcode lottery of care provision across Scotland, and it will ensure access to consistent high-quality care and support, which will enable people to live a full life.

The bill sets out the framework for the changes that we want to make, and it gives scope for further decisions to be made later through a co-design process. That flexibility will enable the national care service to develop, adapt and respond to specific circumstances over time.

I want to take time to reflect on why change of such scale is necessary. Scotland’s community health and social care system has seen significant incremental change over the past 20 years. Despite that, people with experience of receiving care support, and of providing it, have been clear that there are some significant issues.

We are not changing just to address the challenges of today; we must build a public service that is fit for tomorrow. Today, about one in 25 people receive social care, social work and occupational health support in Scotland. Demand is forecast to grow, and the NCS must be developed to take account of our future needs. We will build a system that is sustainable and future proofed to take account of the changing needs of our population.

The principles of any new system will be person centred. That means that the NCS will be delivered in a way that respects, protects and fulfils the human rights of people who access and deliver care and support.

On Monday, I was in Perth to hear about Turning Point Scotland’s excellent work in supporting people with complex needs. That includes preventative work with school leavers to turn their lives around. Its work highlights the value of focusing on the whole person and collaborating across boundaries.

Our co-design process will ensure that the NCS is built with the people that it serves, and with those who deliver it, at its very heart. We are committed to working with people who have first-hand experience of accessing and delivering community health and social care to ensure that we have a person-centred NCS. We must have a care service that is person centred and that best fits the needs of the people who will use, and work in, its services.

Absolutely. The week before last, I was at the carers parliament and a large amount of the questioning from the floor was about why money that had been allocated to areas was not being spent on carers.

As folk around the table know, the Government has said that it will not ring fence large elements of money that it gives to local authorities. Obviously, local authorities make choices, but there is a real difficulty in some respects for folks who care for people when they cannot access services and they know that the money that is being sent for carers is not going to carers.

Off the top of my head, I think that the Government is now sending £84 million or £85 million per year to ensure that the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016 is lived up to. I have talked to some folk out there, including a man from Shetland who was at the carers parliament. He has requested information on what Shetland is doing through freedom of information legislation, but he canna get it. I am checking up on that, because such an allegation has to be checked up on. We have to ensure that that money is actually going to carers.

Another very important element in the bill for carers is that it will enshrine in law the right to short-term breaks. That is essential.