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Ms Colvin has just told me that we are still in discussion with COSLA on that issue. We do not hold that data centrally so, in some regards, we are reliant on getting that information from COSLA. If we can get that information, we will get it to you.

That commissioning would be done by local care boards. Let me expand on that. In all of this, there is the opportunity for a once-for-Scotland approach for specialised services. One of the key elements of the bill is ethical commissioning, and we want to get that right.

I said that that commissioning would be done by local care boards. We are very aware that, for some specialisms and for some very complex cases, there is real difficulty at the moment in getting it right for folks. That is why the bill includes the ability to set up special care boards to deal with those once-for-Scotland elements that involve more complexity.

As the committee can well imagine, some pretty complex cases cross our desks regularly. Health and social care partnerships, local authorities and health boards have great difficulty in commissioning the right service for those individuals because of the complexity of their needs. We have the ability to make a real difference here and to take a national approach, with flexibility at a local level.

Iona Colvin wants to come in first.

We could provide many examples of where services have not delivered well for people. Again, I hearken back to what I said earlier: some of the areas in which there are real difficulties for folks are the transition stages from children’s services to adult services.

Members have probably had correspondence in their mailbags and inboxes about some young person who leaves school and is then left with nothing in terms of care and support. That will obviously have a major impact on somebody with a disability or a learning disability. There are a lot of examples of where that transition has not worked. We could probably provide the committee with some very good examples, but I am always a bit feart of giving examples, because we could end up with a situation in which an individual can be identified, given that some of the circumstances are so complicated.

I think that we need to improve on the here and now as well, and we, as a Government, will continue to do that across services, even in these tough financial times. However, what we actually require is a service that is fit for the future, and which is built with people at its very heart.

At the moment, a huge amount of folks out there receive care and support in order to survive. We need to turn that around so that folks can thrive. That is the ambition for our approach, which is person centred with human rights at its heart. It is about closing those implementation gaps by actually getting those folks who are currently receiving services, and those folks who are on the front line, to help us in shaping the service.

We have a huge opportunity here to change the culture. At present, in many parts of the country, we find that, where front-line staff have more autonomy and independence, that means better delivery for people. If the committee were minded to go out and about and speak to front-line staff in certain places, it would find, without a doubt, that that freedom and autonomy for the front line, which in many places has been restricted and clawed back over the piece, is the right way forward. By doing that, we will improve services for people across the board.

The committee can be assured that this will not become a bureaucratic nightmare. This is about improving services for people across the country. As we have already said, we are doing the groundwork that Ms Haughey outlined, to look at whether it is right to include children’s services in the national care service.

I know that some people are not in favour of that change. However, during the discussions that we have had over the past 18 months, the voices of lived experience have highlighted to us some of the difficulties that they experience in accessing care and support.

One example of things that are key for people is transition phases. The movement from children’s services to adult services is not smooth for a lot of people in our country at this moment. The scenarios are much better in some parts of the country than in other parts. Again, if you talk to the voices of lived experience, they will make quite clear their views about where that works best. In my opinion, things work best in areas where greater integration has occurred, and the scenario is one in which integration joint boards have been delegated various functions, including children’s social work, social care services and children’s health services. I would say that, without doubt, that is the view of many folks.

We are lucky enough to have Iona Colvin as our chief social work adviser. Before she came to work in Government, she had a vast range of experiences in life. She was the chief officer of North Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnership, where there is a greater degree of integration. It might be an idea, convener, to hear from Ms Colvin about her previous experiences in that.

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.

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?