Education, Children and Young People Committee [Draft]

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Official Report 818KB pdf

---

Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland

The next item on our agenda is to take evidence on the work of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland. I welcome Nicola Killean, the commissioner; Gina Wilson, head of strategy, and Nick Hobbs, head of advice and investigations. I thank you all for joining us, and I apologise for the slight delay in getting started.

Before we move to questions, I understand that the commissioner would like to make an opening statement—over to you.

I thank the committee for inviting us to give evidence.

It has been a busy year since we laid our strategic plan in Parliament, which was based on the priorities of thousands of children and young people from across Scotland. Children and young people have been clear with me about which areas need more change to enable them to enjoy all their rights in Scotland. I am grateful to be able to raise those issues, and what we have learned across the year, with the committee.

I will start with education. Our report on education that was launched this week is grounded in the experiences of children and young people and makes significant calls for greater progress in education reform. I am very concerned about the range of vulnerabilities that children are facing and how those are not yet being systematically understood, planned for, supported or resourced across education settings. I have called for a commitment from the Scottish Government and education authorities to redesigning a truly inclusive system with children and young people at the centre.

As the committee will know, my office has also raised concerns across the years on the use of restraint and seclusion. Over the past year, we have continued to hear from young people and families about the extensive use of restraint and the harm that it does to children and young people. I am grateful that the committee will soon be considering Daniel Johnson’s Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill. I am asking the Scottish Government and Parliament to consider all forthcoming legislative opportunities—such as the proposed Promise bill, the Education (Scotland) Bill and Daniel Johnson’s member’s bill—to bring greater legal protections for children and young people across all settings.

The committee will be aware that, with the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, my office has been granted new legal powers. That is the biggest change to my office’s role and powers since it was created, and we have been making good use of those powers since they came into force in July last year. I would love to share with the committee the learnings so far, along with plans for the future.

We have also been undertaking extensive work to ensure that we are hearing and acting on the views and voices of children across Scotland, including those whose rights are most at risk, such as children in insecure care, children distanced from mainstream education and children with long-term health conditions. I am keen to share what we have learned from this work, how we have approached it, and where we continue to see the need for more systematic approaches to embedding participation into institutions and systems. We have also been developing work with my young advisers to develop an impact framework model that allows children and young people to determine whether we are delivering our work well, and that of course allows MSPs to appropriately scrutinise our work and impact.

UNCRC incorporation was a landmark moment for children’s rights in Scotland, but there is much more to be done. The other priorities that children have asked me to focus on are poverty, mental health, climate change and discrimination, which are all very broad areas. I have shared with the committee in a written submission some information about what we have focused on within those themes so far.

Throughout all the work that we do, we continue to promote children’s rights and to push leaders and duty bearers to go further in their proactive and positive duties to children and young people.

Thank you again for inviting us. I look forward to sharing our work with you and exploring the issues in more detail.

Thank you for that opening statement and for your written evidence, which was very helpful, and the report that was published at the beginning of this week. What were the main findings of that report? Will you outline some of the top issues that you think that we should be looking at?

Absolutely. The report that was published this week, which is based on the views of children and young people, shows clearly that the current education system is not working for all children. The most important thing that I was keen to draw out in the report is how it feels to be a young person, and to be impacted by a lack of support and the pressure and stress that the current system places on children and young people.

As you all know, all children have a right to an education that develops their full mental and physical abilities, personality and talents, but many children and young people are not currently experiencing such an education. The report calls for change across the areas of culture, curriculum, personalisation and support, exams and qualifications, and purpose. Fundamentally, one of the primary recommendations calls on the Scottish Government to lead a full redesign of what support for children and young people across our education system should look like, to work with education authorities and to put children and young people at the core of that work.

We recognise the work that has been done to date, but that work has not looked at resource. The report says that that work needs to start now. Right now, children and young people across our system are not able to access the full support that they need. That they should be able to do so is a fundamental recommendation.

We have also made recommendations about the fact that children are still not able to access their choices when it comes to what they want to study. In relation to the curriculum, we are seeking increased participation so that those voices can be heard. We also want a full audit to be conducted so that there is a good understanding across Scotland of where and how children and young people can access choices. There is also a need for investment in digital opportunities to enhance that provision, when it is not possible to access it on site.

The exams and qualifications system needs to change. Members of the committee are all well aware of and sighted on Professor Hayward’s report. Reform has not taken place at sufficient pace and the Scottish Government has not been fully committed to implementation. In our report, we make a clear call for full implementation of that and a clear implementation plan.

On culture, we come back to the issue of support needs. As well as calling for greater participation for children and young people, we call for more work to be done to support a wider culture of understanding needs and the breadth of vulnerabilities. That links back to the need for a redesign of support. We need to ask, “What is the profile of our children and young people? How is that fully understood?”, and to start the work to consider what the system needs to look like in the future.

You have brought some new issues to the fore, but a lot of what you speak about has been raised in the past. How frustrated are you that, in 2025, we are still discussing and debating barriers that children and young people face in education and wider society?

It is very worrying that there are children and young people in our education system who cannot access the support that they need, who feel misunderstood and who feel very vulnerable in that system. The report says that we need to move on, because that has to change.

There are recommendations that were made in Professor Hayward’s review that can be fully implemented. UNCRC incorporation gives the Government a legitimate opportunity to recentre the purpose. Good work is being done as part of the curriculum improvement cycle, which can be built on. However, work needs to be done to consider what the footprint and the resource should look like and how we ensure that the supports and the infrastructure are in place not only for children and young people but for the professionals who work in the sector.

On schools and the exam system, what is your view on the Education (Scotland) Bill as it stands? We will consider amendments to the bill when we come back from the Easter recess. Does the bill offer you any reassurance that things will progress, or do you think that the bill needs to do more?

As the committee will be aware, we supported the bill at stage 1. We believe that there needs to be a much broader focus on the priority of education reform, but we recognise that some legislative changes are necessary to remove His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education from Education Scotland. However, our report is about bringing everything back to the table and saying that we cannot ignore the fact that there are opportunities to create a new way of resourcing and putting in the supports that children and young people actually need. We recognise that legislative changes might be required; we will be looking at the proposed amendments and, once we have had the opportunity to review those, we will provide the committee and MSPs with a full briefing on them from our office.

Ultimately, we are calling for much more pace in educational reform, with a focus on who our children and young people are. What is the profile of our young people now, across all our settings? What infrastructure is currently in place? What is the gap between what children need and what we are delivering, and how do we get to a better place in the future in that regard? That will need to be accompanied by an investment plan in the future. We are not shying away from that—that is the work that I believe has to be done.

You mentioned the Scottish Government and local government. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but do you think that the lack of progress and the fact that we have not done as much as we could in this area is down to financial resources, or is it because councils have fewer employees to develop and enact some of the policies? Where is the barrier to progressing some of the aims that you set out your report, which your predecessors also highlighted?

There are many different recommendations in our report. We have directed some of them specifically at the Scottish Government and some specifically at education authorities and other key duty bearers, while others need collective action; I do not underestimate the complexity of that.

I believe that a full analysis of the resourcing and financial planning around that has not yet been done. We currently have professionals who are working very hard within a system and trying to deliver for children and young people, but we still have not looked at that picture.

We hear a lot of anecdotal responses about the profile of children having changed over time. My team and I have been spending a lot of time in mainstream schools over the past year, working with children and young people. We are beginning to visit additional support needs bases and connecting with children and young people in alternative education.

There are many complications in the world in which children and young people are living now, but the main action that has not yet happened is the work to ask, “What should this look like?” Rather than trying to solve all the issues with the current system, we should consider what it is that we need to have. We need to do that collectively.

Another big priority for me concerns the fact that children and young people have been further and further away from education reform decisions over the past few years. When the reports were commissioned from Ken Muir, Angela Morgan and Professor Hayward, I believe that those authors worked hard to engage with children and young people to build communities around the reviews and build consensus for the recommendations. As things have moved on, however, children and young people have become further away from the changes, so we need to put them at the centre—as Ken Muir said—and ask what infrastructure we need now and what it needs to look like for the future, for all our children and young people.

Why have children become further away from those debates and deliberations? Is it because they are engaged when the reports are written but not in how the reports are then enacted?

Again, I have made a number of recommendations on how children and young people can be meaningfully and systematically embedded through a participation element in our institutions and systems. When we worked with children and young people, one of our findings was that participation, as a method of listening to children, engaging them and enacting their right to have a say in decisions that are made about them, is still not fundamentally embedded throughout our systems across education.

That is another key priority. From the bottom up and the top down, we have made specific recommendations for the Scottish Government, the Scottish Qualifications Authority, as it moves to qualifications Scotland, Education Scotland, local authorities and schools. They all need to act on those recommendations and, wherever possible, utilise the excellent expertise and knowledge that exists in our third sector and youth work sector, which are very good at that and understand it well and meaningfully. Children and young people have very mixed experiences of participation but, to date, it has not been completely embedded institutionally and systematically through education as a system.

You listened to the deliberations that we had earlier on an SSI, which the committee has now passed and which will now go to the Parliament. Do you stand by your words in September last year, when you said that agreeing those regulations, rather than having a universal approach to free school meals, will increase stigma for children in P6 and P7 whose families are in receipt of the Scottish child payment?

11:15  

I had the benefit of listening to some of that conversation.

Your ears would have been burning during part of it.

I need to be clear that, from a pragmatic point of view, if there is an opportunity for 25,000 more children to receive free school meals, that is a good thing. My position and that of the office is still that we should move towards free school meals for all children and young people. From what I heard this morning, the Scottish Government must seek continued reassurance that mitigations are in place to ensure that any stigma is minimised.

That is where the committee got to with our deliberations. However, the cabinet secretary and one of the Government’s legal advisers were clear that there are already protections in place. Section 53B of the 1980 act means that local authorities have to prevent such stigma. Are there still examples of people being stigmatised for receiving free school lunches even with those provisions in place? I think that the cabinet secretary suggested that there should not be, but she could not tell us that there were none.

It is interesting for me that there are legal protections in place for children and young people, but we know that they are still not applied consistently.

It is encouraging to hear about the progress that has been made in relation to free school meals, but more reassurance is required. However, it comes through in our report that, on many occasions, we have heard evidence from children and young people about the lack of consistency in approach across the school estate. You will see that in our section on culture. We share examples in which we know that protections should be in place, that there should be a culture that supports children in certain ways and that there are standards according to which all professionals should act, but children still experience inconsistencies.

That is why we have published the report. It says that we need to be honest and say that more has to be done to ensure that children and young people experience consistent standards and approaches. One of my key recommendations in the report is that children’s vulnerabilities be understood in their fullest sense and that we have an infrastructure that is resourced and supported well to enable that to happen.

On young people feeding into the process, we took stage 1 evidence on the Education (Scotland) Bill and kept hearing that the landscape is massive. We have parents, teachers and people in higher and further education. They all want some space and to be able to do what they need to do.

Of course, the fact that children and young people are part of that was brought up as well. We were told during the evidence that there was no place for children and young people to engage—no, to be more accurate, we were told that it would be better if we could find a way for them to engage more with the process. How do we improve that?

In a second, I will bring in Gina Wilson, who oversees some of our participation work.

Participation must be systematically embedded. There are lots of different models and ways in which children and young people can be engaged. There are good participation models that we can always point to, and we are increasingly being asked to point to them, which is a good sign. However, participation should be continuous and should particularly involve children who are further away from their rights being enabled because, if we are looking at improvements and changes, it is most crucial that we hear the voices of the young people for whom education is not working. However, the approach must be systematic.

We used to talk about hard-to-reach parents and children. We do not use that language any more, but those are the ones who are not engaging. Mums and dads are not joining the parent council and are not engaged with the school. I agree that those are the people we need to get to. How do we get to them? How do we get to the young person who might be bright and gifted but is from one of the poorer areas in Scotland? We are not even getting the chance to give them the opportunity of a university place because, even from primary school, it becomes challenging and difficult for them.

I will bring Gina Wilson in, in a second, but I point to some of the work that we have done during the past year to ensure that we hear from children and young people from a variety of backgrounds.

You mentioned the pupil council model. Historically, that has been a go-to in the education system, but it is actually quite an adult focused model that has been taken and implemented into a children’s structure. We have to look at where children and young people are and go to them, and we have to consider models that are child friendly and age and stage and developmentally appropriate.

I will bring Gina in, because she leads on our participation work and I know that she would love to respond to that question.

I will answer the question in two parts. The first part relates to the Education (Scotland) Bill and how we can improve participation, and the second part is about how we engage with those young people who are never going to join learner interest committees or governance groups because they will not engage in that way.

Throughout stage 1, we have been working with committee members on ensuring that children are better represented through the governance structures of the agencies that are included in the Education (Scotland) Bill. We have now started the analysis of some of the stage 2 amendments, and we can see different ideas that members have as to how children can be embedded into the governance structures of each of the agencies. We will provide a briefing to help members in their deliberations on that. We can definitely see progress in the ways in which those agencies are being designed to ensure that children have a meaningful voice in their governance structures.

On engaging with children and young people who are further from their rights and who will never be involved in the groups that I mentioned, each of the agencies will have to be resourced to do outreach work with those children and young people. We cannot expect them to come to the agencies. However, I note that some of the most important places for that to happen are not the agencies that are included in the bill; they are the education authorities who are responsible for delivering education. That is where we need to see a significant change in the way that children and young people are involved.

To give you an idea of the resources required to do work of that kind, I will use an example from our work with six young people who have long-term health conditions. The course of that work was six months. Three months of that involved planning to engage with them, and during the next three months we visited those children and young people five times. We worked with them in the ways that they wanted to work with us, which were often quite different to what we anticipated. We sat alongside them and did crafting activities and we had elbow conversations with them to understand what their priorities are. Since we finished the five formal visits, we have stayed in touch with the children to ensure that they understand what we have done with the views that they gave us, and we invite them to keep talking to us about the things that matter to them.

An investment of time and resource is needed to ensure that the views of children and young people who are furthest from having their rights met are heard by organisations. We want to see that work take place.

Work of that kind has happened all over the country, but St Mirren is the local football team in my constituency, and the local authority there has worked with it and with football camps and street football. I have been regularly to one of the meetings in a particular area of my constituency, and—for want of a better phrase—some of the young men turn up in all kinds of states, but they engage with the coaches because they want to. A former chairman said to me, “When are you going to second some educators and social workers to the football club?” That is not such a crazy idea as it was when he initially said it, because it goes back to your argument that that is where young people are.

It is about schemes such as that, which are more focused on the education side of things, and on getting young men—that is mainly who that work reached—away from being drunk on a Monday night, and about looking at education and at trying to engage with them.

To build on the point about going to where young people are, Gina mentioned some of the work that we have been doing with young people who are in alternative forms of education. We continue to progress that work to ensure that their views and experiences are captured and that we can use that information to ask for more change. One of the angles that we have looked at is connecting through youth clubs. If we go into a community and be with the young people where they are, we can have conversations about their education in places where they are comfortable, where they feel relaxed and where the conversation is on their terms. As Gina mentioned, it is all about our going back, and going back again, because some young people might not feel comfortable and confident about sharing on the first or second occasion. It is also partly about our saying, “This is why we’re here, and this is what we would like to do with this information.” That sort of thing takes time.

As a result, our recommendations on participation go absolutely across the board for each layer of education. One of our strong recommendations is, as I mentioned earlier, for education to connect with youth work services and the third sector to gain from their learning, where that is helpful. However, as Gina said, resourcing will need to be looked at to ensure that investment is made and the infrastructure built.

That is also one of our recommendations to the Scottish Government. We are looking for a much stronger, on-going and long-term commitment from the Scottish Government’s education department to working with children and young people, with on-going participation and consultation work when it creates action plans and make policy decisions in future, to see how it is acting on recommendations and feeding back to young people.

Programmes are already happening with third-party stakeholders, one of which is the work with young women that the SFA and the Union of European Football Associations are doing with Disney. Football is not part of that; I think that it is called “Disney Princesses”, or something like that, but it is about the whole experience and getting young girls into a room to talk and do things generally.

All those schemes are happening, but as far as I am concerned, the issue is very similar to what we were talking about in our previous conversation; it is all about getting the data and information together so that we can get to and engage with these young people and move on such ideas, so that we will not be sitting here in for four or five years’ time, saying, “We can’t reach these young people.”

Absolutely. I come back to one of my first comments on the key recommendations in the report. Obviously, we have focused on participation, but another key recommendation is about discussing who these young people are, what their needs are and what the infrastructure needs to look like in the long term. That is why, when I am asked about who should be involved in that discussion, my answer is “children and young people”. Of course, it will also involve our educationalists, as we understand them, within the main infrastructure, but we are saying that we should also be involving our allied health professionals, our youth work leads and our third sector organisations in the conversation because we need to capture the expertise that is out there, as well as the ambition that exists for children and young people, and design an infrastructure that benefits from all of that.

Thank you.

Good morning. Following on from George Adam’s questions about hard-to-reach children, I heard you say earlier that you were engaging in mainstream schools. Have you done any engagement with our non-attending children? Before I came to the committee today, I did a little bit of digging and saw that the Children’s Commissioner for England has recently done a report on England’s missing children. I thought that it was really good. Are you thinking of doing a piece of work like that, too?

We have first of all been looking at children and young people in mainstream and additional support needs settings and children in alternative forms of education. As I said, we are starting to go out into youth groups and communities, too. In those areas, we are starting to talk to and pick up those children and young people who might not be attending school at the time and trying to understand why that is.

With regard to the work of the Children’s Commissioner for England and our work, each of the commissioners has different powers. As for the nature of that work, the data that the English Children’s Commissioner was looking at is already held in Scotland and can be analysed at Government level, so it would not be necessary or appropriate for us to pick up on that. I also know that the English Children’s Commissioner is starting to do some more of the qualitative work that we have been focusing on.

The main question for me is: if children are not attending, why are they not attending and what do we have to learn from that? I have had some conversations with Education Scotland, because I understand that this is a priority area that the Scottish Government has asked that organisation to look at. Again, I am waiting to hear back from it; I have asked whether children and young people are involved in the work that has been asked of local authorities, because we have to understand from the children and young people who are not attending, why that is the case.

Are you saying that you have not managed to involve them directly in this piece of work? I am sorry—I am not trying to put words in your mouth.

No—that is okay. We have involved some children and young people; however, we were looking at children who were potentially not attending but who might be beginning to re-engage in terms of their attendance.

I will bring in Gina Wilson, as I think that she wants to talk about this, too.

We have engaged with some groups, and specifically non-attenders, as it was important for us to hear about their experiences. We have clearly heard from them that their support needs are not being met in school, which is a large driver as to why they are not attending.

11:30  

One of the recommendations in our report is that we would like the Scottish Government to invest in meaningful research to understand all the reasons why there has been such a drop-off in attendance among children and young people. We can highlight some of the areas, but a systemic understanding of why children are not attending and what we can do to address that is needed.

You have said that you are talking to groups, but there are a lot of non-attending children who are like I was, I must admit, in third year: I did not go to any groups, stayed at home and did not connect with anybody. How are you reaching those children? They tend to be the most vulnerable. They might have issues at home, or they might just come from disadvantaged backgrounds. They are the folk who are hardest to reach. As Willie Rennie always says, how do we get the voice of that little boy in the classroom heard—even if he is in the classroom?

Ultimately, we will get those children’s voices heard through systematic participation and engagement at every level. We have been doing some work in this area, as Gina Wilson mentioned; we need that work to be embedded at education authority level and school level, and at the Scottish Government and Education Scotland as well.

We will continue to connect with children and young people. I met a young person yesterday, and they shared with me their story of how they are now connecting with a group, with engagement around education, although they had not attended school for three years before that. The support that they had been offered by their education authority for those three years consisted of being sent assessments for them to complete.

We continue to gather stories about such issues, but that work has to be done systematically.

We hear from individual children, too. We do not want to claim that we are hearing from all children who are not attending. That would not be accurate. Even in the past few weeks, however, there have been instances of individual children contacting our office, often supported by advocacy workers, because they want to share with us their story of why they are not able to attend school.

The commissioner had a very powerful meeting with one of those young people recently, in which we heard some alarming things about what had happened to her. Without wanting to pip the report before it is out, we are working on something with Who Cares? Scotland and its advocacy workers, who are supporting care-experienced young people, some of whom are not attending school. We are trying to reach individual young people who are experiencing all sorts of issues and not attending, so as to understand the causes.

If I can go to—

Before that, Clare Haughey wishes to come in on this point.

I am a bit concerned about what I am hearing about your not seeing this matter as a priority, given that education is one of your strategic priorities in your plan for 2024 to 2028. Do you not see yourselves as having a role in looking at school attendance in more depth, in the way that the Children’s Commissioner for England has done?

My concern is about why children’s needs are not being met. Children not attending school is a symptom of that. My recommendation, first, is that part of ensuring that education, as a whole system across Scotland, is able to understand why those children’s needs are not being met is to engage with them and talk to them. As part of the first year of—

An advocacy role, speaking up on behalf of those children? Am I wrong in that?

The role of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner is to promote and protect children’s rights. We have been taking a systematic look at children’s experiences across Scotland. Our recently published report is the first report and, as Gina Wilson mentioned, we are about to publish another report very soon on care-experienced children and young people.

My message is clear: children’s needs are not being met within the system right now. That includes children who are currently attending, children who are attending and have been put on part-time timetables and children who do not feel able to attend school.

I am sorry to interrupt you. I will come back in with other questions later, but my supplementary question was specifically about school attendance, which the committee has voiced its concerns about. I am concerned that you do not see that as an area that you should be looking at in depth. However, I will leave it there, convener.

We go back to Jackie Dunbar.

My next question is about military children; you touched on them. We have two different kinds of military children. First, we have our serving military families who move every couple of years and the children have to move schools. What could be done to ensure that their education continues and does not go all over the place? Secondly, we have our veterans’ children, who are used to moving every couple of years but are suddenly put into a school permanently when mum or dad leaves the military. That is a huge change for them. What needs to be put in place to ensure that their needs are met?

We also have—I apologise for going off on a bit of a rant—children who have serving parents who might be away for months at a time. What can be put in place to ensure that they are emotionally supported?

I am asking the Government to tackle all those points. We have so many different groups of children and young people who have particular experiences, and many of them are saying that the current system is unable to meet all their needs. I have met children and young people who have talked about the experiences that you describe and have mentioned anxiety and mental health concerns relating to parents who are deployed. They have also expressed worries about changes, records not being maintained, transition planning not going particularly well, and being unable to get continuity of understanding about diagnoses. For some children, a move might mean that they go back to the beginning of a waiting list to get a diagnosis.

I am fundamentally concerned about all those issues for children and young people, and I am concerned that there is not widespread understanding of them across the board. That is why we are saying that we need to address the issue now for all children and young people. We need there to be an understanding of the profile across the board and what a long-term plan looks like, and we need to have an infrastructure, a system and a workforce that understands that and can put those supports in place.

As yet, there are no recommendations on how that could be done. You are just asking the Scottish Government to deal with it. Is that correct?

The Scottish Government is the key duty bearer in relation to the delivery of children’s human rights, so we are asking it to act now on the numerous concerns that have been raised—which I can see are also held by members of this committee—about the unmet need in our education system. Our recommendation is that the Scottish Government takes leadership and drives forward action to address the gap between children and young people’s experiences and the infrastructure that is required.

Okay. I will move on to my final question. What challenges have you faced in tracking actions and outcomes following Government or public body commitments? Why do you believe that the process is more complex than it should be?

I will comment on that in relation to our priority area of children’s and young people’s mental health. Many of you will be aware that, in 2023, the young advisers to the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland carried out an investigation—we believe that it was the first time in the world that young people were able to use a commissioner’s investigation powers—into the counselling support that is available to children and young people in schools. Based on that work, they made some recommendations, a number of which were directed at the Scottish Government. However, we were disappointed by the response.

We have also been looking at why, when recommendations are made, not just by us but by external organisations or commissions, and particularly when children and young people have invested a lot of time, energy and passion in sharing their experiences, there is a lack of clarity about commitments. That led us to the piece of work that we have commissioned with Young Scot and Scottish Action for Mental Health to take the youth commission on mental health’s recommendations and to make a tracker for them. I will bring in Gina Wilson to speak about that.

As the commissioner said, our initial focus is on mental health and tracking what actions have been taken when recommendations have been made. One of the immediate challenges that we have faced is that, often, when recommendations are made, another committee is set up to look at the issue or another review group is created to progress what has happened, which makes it very difficult to map a single recommendation’s path over several years to see who did anything with it, whether any budget was assigned to it or whether there was any outcome from it.

Having spent several months trying to track those outcomes for mental health matters, we have taken the step—which the commissioner described—of commissioning a deep dive to look at nine specific recommendations around mental health. Then, we will make some recommendations for the Government and other bodies about how to increase transparency about the actions taken on recommendations so that children, young people and others can meaningfully track whether they have been delivered.

You have said that you are looking at the recommendations. If you are not making recommendations yourself, how can you be part of the process and say whether bodies have gone and done each recommendation? I am confused, to be honest with you.

I did not describe that very clearly—I apologise. I am talking about recommendations that have been either made or accepted by the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament or local government. They are not our recommendations per se—although some of them will have been—but are recommendations that have been accepted by the Government.

The commissioner said that the recommendation was that the Scottish Government should basically just get on with it. I took that to mean that you had no recommendations moving forward.

No—that was in reference to the armed forces families that you were asking about.

That was in reference to the questions about armed forces families and the challenges in the education system. We published a report on Monday that—

I want to ask you about the attendance part of it as well.

Yes. My view on the responsibility of the Scottish Government is that it needs to provide the leadership, have the accountability and consider what an education system needs to look like to meet the needs of all the different groups of children and young people within it.

My colleague Gina Wilson was answering a question that is more related to tracking accountability and how, once recommendations are made and are in the system, the progress on them can be more easily understood.

I will leave it there, convener.

Good morning. I have a related question about the trends that you have identified in relation to barriers and gaps in knowledge in Scottish public services, specifically ones that affect the realisation of children’s rights and outcomes. I will put two issues on the table: first, violence in schools, and, secondly, mainstreaming and the failure to meet children’s needs. What have you gathered from your work on that so far and from the work that you intend to do?

On distressed behaviour, I am clear that we need to address the fact that many children and young people are in a system that has not been designed to meet their needs and does not have the support in place to do it. Addressing that should be the priority. Those children and young people are being failed in the system, and other children and young people who may be exposed to that are bearing the brunt of the consequences. That is leading to a huge amount of pressure on professionals who are trying to meet the young people’s needs in that system.

I know that we have touched on this a few times, but that is why one of our key recommendations is that there is a need for a fundamental redesign. That should not hold up the other recommendations about embedding participation and taking forward the recommendations of the Hayward review. However, there is a fundamental need to grasp the fact that the problem is about unmet need in the system.

Have you undertaken a piece of work specifically on mainstreaming? The subject of mainstreaming and the different needs of children was raised yesterday in Parliament. You have touched on additional support for learning—Audit Scotland’s recent report on that was pretty damning. Are you likely to do a piece of work to look at the different models of different councils and how they are providing different outcomes?

11:45  

Again, we will continue to visit and work with children and young people to look for good examples. We know that there is good practice, and there are very good examples. We will continue to look for those and draw them out.

In essence, the Auditor General has made a very similar recommendation to the one that I make today: there needs to be a new model, which needs to be looked at alongside the infrastructure and resource that are needed for it. Ultimately, the Scottish Government needs to lead on that and take it forward.

Ahead of your coming to the committee, I looked back at the November 2023 report that you commissioned into children in Scotland who are homeless—specifically, at some of the recommendations. Do you think that the Scottish Government has taken any of those forward?

I will pass to Nick Hobbs, who led on that work.

Are you referring to the human rights analysis report that we did on children in hotel accommodation?

Yes.

We made a number of recommendations about the way in which duty bearers—principally local authorities but also the Scottish Government—should ensure that decisions about placement in temporary accommodation are made in ways that respect children’s rights.

A few weeks ago, I was at an event at which Shelter Scotland presented its own research on temporary accommodation—which, unfortunately, suggests that not enough has changed in that regard: children are still being placed in hotel-type accommodation, or other unsuitable forms of temporary accommodation, in ways that violate their rights.

I was at that event, as were other MSPs. A record number of children—upwards of 10,360—are now in temporary accommodation in Scotland. Thirty-five per cent of those—more than 3,600—are in the City of Edinburgh Council area. The negative educational impacts are clear, but we have not seen policy in that area—for example, on children moving between schools. Has there been any engagement between you and the Government on the clear recommendation that that should not be happening?

We have had no direct engagement with the Scottish Government on the broad issue of temporary accommodation. We have had some conversations with various parts of the Scottish Government specifically on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. There has been positive discussion in that area, although, it is fair to say, significant challenges remain—not least, the availability of suitable accommodation, to begin with, before you even get into the decision-making process.

That may be something to return to, specifically in relation to educational outcomes. Given the direction of travel of those numbers and the Scottish Government’s lack of progress, there should be standards for what those children should be able to realise, especially when it comes to education.

As you touched on in your opening statement, the commissioner has called for

“a coherent statutory framework on restraint and seclusion across all settings in which children are under the care and/or supervision of the State”.

What is the commissioner’s view on the Restraint and Seclusion in Schools (Scotland) Bill? You pointed to support for that; however, it covers practice only in schools. This question returns to my previous one, about considering the other areas and environments in which children are, in Scotland.

I am very supportive of the bill that has been introduced. We will continue to review it as it progresses, and provide MSPs with briefings. However, we retain the call for a statutory legal framework that covers all settings in which there are children and young people. Until we can see a future in which all that is in place, we will continue to have major concerns from a child protection and safeguarding point of view.

Nick Hobbs might wish to add something.

I certainly would not want to be critical of Daniel Johnson for the scope of his bill. When you do something as an individual member, as opposed to having Government resources behind you, you need to be targeted in your approach. I entirely understand and support the position that he has taken on the scope of his bill.

In partnership with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the Scottish Human Rights Commission and The Promise Scotland, we have asked the Scottish Government to look at legislative opportunities over the next wee while. That includes the Education (Scotland) Bill and the promise bill. In addition, the Government has made commitments—albeit that, to go back to the previous question, they are difficult to track—on the Scottish mental health law review, which also made recommendations about legislation in this area.

There is an opportunity to do a bit of joined-up government in order to align the on-going work and make sure that the definitions, legal tests and legal protections are consistent across all the pieces of legislation so that children get a consistent experience and consistent levels of protection. That requires the Government to join up the work, and we are not yet convinced that it has moved far enough away from what has historically been a fairly siloed approach to law and policy making in that area. We are continuing to push the Scottish Government on that.

That is helpful, thank you.

To start with a fairly general issue, you probably know that the Finance and Public Administration Committee, of which I am a member, has been looking at commissioners as a whole—I think that you as safe, because the United Nations require you to be in place.

If we had not had a commissioner for the past 20 years, what would be different in Scotland today, or the other way round? What would you say if someone asked you what are three main achievements of the successive commissioners?

We have been engaging well with the Finance and Public Administration Committee throughout that process. The creation of the office of the Children and Young People’s Commissioner’s was a proactive decision by the Parliament to recognise that children and young people do not have economic or political power. The Parliament recognised that—you made the decision to put the role in place in order to promote and protect children’s rights in the long term.

The incorporation of UNCRC into Scots law has to be one of the most important elements that has moved us forward. Over a number of years, the office has also been significantly involved, alongside civil society and children and young people, in laws and legislation that have been put in place. We have an improving culture in which children’s rights are being recognised and understood. We continue to see that: people are no longer just talking about whether children should be involved in law making, policy decisions and practice decisions. Even today, I have been asked questions about how children can be involved.

Progress is being made on that, but many more rights violations are happening, therefore a lot more work is to be done.

Would you argue that, if the commissioner had not been in place, children’s rights would be further back and not improving as much as they have been, if at all?

Yes. The office has played a significant part in advancing children’s rights in Scotland, but, moving forward, we still have a significant role to play.

However, you would not say that there are specific things that have been done, such as there being a lot more schools, because you have been in place. It is more general and vague.

The commissioner’s role is to promote and protect. Over the years, the commissioner’s office has been very involved in pieces of legislation. We have already talked about how we provide MSPs with additional analysis from a children’s rights perspective. We have new powers now, so we are able to bring proceedings to court on rights violations and give children more power.

Do you have anything to add on the historic impact, Gina?

Yes. I have a slightly dry but really important point. The tools of the UNCRC sit right at the heart of the Scottish Government in a way that they simply would not have done without our office. In 2006, we created the children’s rights impact model. The then Minister for Education and Young People asked the Scottish Government to look at how the Scottish Government could adopt a model around children’s rights impact assessments. It took until 2015 for the Government to introduce the model, which shows the length of time that it takes for such things to happen.

However, we have now just had our first budget that had a children’s rights impact assessment attached to it. Every single piece of legislation, strategic decision and Scottish statutory instrument has to have a children’s rights impact assessment attached to it, so our office has made children’s rights prominent and put them at the very heart of how the Government works, which would not have happened otherwise.

An important point to make is that we need to be clear about what the role of our office is in outcomes for children and young people. We cannot enforce decisions, do not direct services and are not responsible for population-level outcomes that are related to children’s services, as is the case in health or mental health. The ultimate measure of a children’s commissioner’s value is their impact on the culture of respect for children’s rights in society. If you look at where we are now compared with where we were 20 years ago, we can all agree that there is a marked difference.

To give you your due, I think that it is partly because of the existence of your office that everybody is looking for a commissioner; they want to do what you do from their own angle.

You talk about listening to children. I was interested to read page 7 of the report, which says:

“In our strategic plan process, children and young people directed my office to make education reform a priority”.

Is that how it works: you listen to a group of children, they tell you what to do and then you do it?

For our strategic priorities, we invested a lot of time and used different ways of working to ensure that we could engage a wide variety of children and young people. We reviewed 135 consultations that had taken place in Scotland in the past five years with children and young people. We created a new data-gathering tool and gathered responses digitally from around 5,000 children and young people. We created targeted engagements and conversations with children and young people who were more at risk of their rights not being enjoyed; we had about 20 of those online and in places where children and young people were.

I do not recognise the way in which you described groups of children and young people, because we undertook extensive consultation with thousands of children and young people. However, yes, this office is primarily here to work on children’s priorities. Therefore, we try to look for data analysis and engagement with children and young people in a variety of different ways.

I understand the engagement and the listening—there is a lot of that through the report. It was just that the word “directed” jumped out at me, because that is a slightly different emphasis. Rather than you listening and engaging, then assessing and going forward, “direction” suggests that they give you an instruction and you just follow it.

It is about prioritisation. We analyse what children and young people are saying and then we prioritise. That shapes our priorities and the choices that we make. However, there might be specific examples of a young person asking us to act on something. Again, that is why we have invested in our strategic priority work, so that we can consider whether something sits within the priorities that we have engaged with, or whether it is a rights violation that, if we can work on it, would make a strategic difference to more children and young people in the long term. I could bring in Nick Hobbs to talk about and explain some of our legal work, if that would be appropriate.

I have one or two other issues to cover, if you do not mind moving on.

Every year, you meet the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, which questions your budget and so on. We have noticed that your costs are up 20 per cent over three years and that your staffing costs are up 30 per cent over three years. Can you explain why that has happened?

I am absolutely committed, as accountable officer, to delivering our functions and our statutory remit as efficiently as possible. On staffing costs in particular, I note that, when I came into post, we added one additional role to the office, and we accounted for that by the fact that we were preparing for our new powers. We tried to offset that as much as possible with our running costs, in which you will notice a slight reduction.

The other increases relate to cost of living and national insurance increases. There was a pay re-evaluation, and a pay deal that was negotiated between the unions and the SPCB in 2023 has kicked in. Those increases were predominantly outwith my control.

If you do not mind, Mr Mason, I want to put this into a historical context. When our office was set up, the financial memorandum projected costs of £1.21 million. Given where we sit now, if we had had only inflationary increases, our budget would be more than £2 million. In the context of the office having existed for more than 20 years, I believe that I and the previous commissioners have worked hard to keep the costs as minimal as possible.

I am sure that everybody is very pleased with that—I certainly am. Dare I ask whether your resources are sufficient for what you feel you should be doing? I accept that everybody would like to do more and have more resources, but are you broadly in the right place at the moment?

We have more work than we are able to do with the capacity that we have—I have been consistently clear about that with the committee. That is why we need to prioritise, and why we have invested so much time in creating our strategic plan and being clear about what we would prioritise.

In addition, we are not even a year into having our new powers. As an organisation, we have committed to dealing with those powers as efficiently as possible, so we have been investing in staff training to build capacity in the existing team. We have also said to other committees, as well as to this one, that as we understand the new powers more and are able to utilise them, and as we get a sense of the possible volume of work, we might, in the future, return to ask for additional resource via the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. However, we will build the evidence base to accompany that ask.

12:00  

You have mentioned resources generally, and have said that some of your asks—not for yourselves, but for schools, in ASN and other areas—would require more money. Linked to that, there have been a few comments about young people being more involved in budget processes, by which I think you probably mean at local authority level. What do you mean by that? If more resources are required for schools, do you think that there is currently a bit too much for universities? Do you have any ideas about where that money would come from?

If you do not mind, I will answer that and then pass to Gina Wilson to chat a little bit about children’s rights-based budgeting to give you a methodology and a process for that.

With regard to investment in additional support needs and the education infrastructure that is needed for the future, we first have to understand what that needs to look like. What is the profile of our young people, what resource is required and what is the gap between what we have right now and what we need?

I recognise that we will need an investment plan, but we cannot overestimate the cost of failure right now. A number of weeks ago, I met another young person who had been attending primary school part time; the family had removed them from secondary school, because that school was not able to meet their needs, and their experiences had been horrendous in that space. That family was now considering whether a parent would have to give up work to be able to support the child. I am hearing more and more of that sort of thing happening across the country.

My main message is that we need to start the work on understanding the gap between the money that is there and the money that needs to be there for education as a whole, but we cannot overestimate the hidden costs across the system, both in families and in the many ways by which other services are trying to pick up and support children and young people who are not having their needs met in education. I appreciate that—

I will not ask if you think that we should raise taxes in order to get more money, because I suspect that you will not answer that question.

If you do not mind, I will bring in Gina Wilson at this point. We recognise that we will always be pitched against other services—services will always be struggling in terms of which one should get the money over another. There is, therefore, some work happening on children’s rights-based budgeting, where we believe that there is important learning to be had.

I have mentioned that the Scottish Government has produced the first child rights impact assessment for the budget that we have just had. It is the first of its kind. There is a lot of learning still to be had from that with regard to how to make the most of the children’s rights budgeting approach, but it is a first step.

We would really like to see that process drop down into local government, too, which is where so many of the spending decisions around children’s services are made. One of the things that we have been looking at is the extent to which local government feels that that it has the skills, knowledge and understanding to be able to apply a children’s rights budgeting lens to the decisions that it needs to make, because that can help it to prioritise spend.

I completely recognise the issue that you raise: there is not a limitless amount of money, so how do those who make the budget decisions decide on how to prioritise the allocation? Some of the children’s rights budgeting tools—and human rights budgeting in its entirety—can help with some of those decisions. We are keen, alongside others such as the Improvement Service, to see what support we can give to local government and others who are faced with those really difficult decisions to enable them to use some of those tools to help them assess where investment needs to be prioritised.

That was helpful, and it ties in with our recent online session with care-experienced young people. They said that they quite often came up against the “not enough money” thing.

I call Clare Haughey.

I think that it was Gina Wilson—or it might have been you, commissioner—who said that children’s rights have been put at the heart of Government. You have also talked about children’s rights-based budgets. As it stands, the budget for 2025-26 is £1.78 million, which has increased by 20 per cent since 2022-23.

If you have achieved all that, why do we still need a children’s commissioner? You will be aware that another committee in Parliament—the SPCB Supported Bodies Landscape Review Committee—is scrutinising all the commissioners in Scotland, of which we have many more compared with countries with a similar population. I am keen to learn why we still need you, if you have achieved so much.

We are pleased with the progress that has been made in how children’s rights are recognised and discussed. As Gina Wilson has mentioned, we are pleased, too, that child rights impact assessments are now being utilised across Government.

However, UNCRC incorporation was only the beginning of the process; there is much more to be done in the long term to work towards our country being one in which all children are able to enjoy all their rights.

So, in practical terms, why can you not do that?

The Children and Young People’s Commissioner office has been given specific functions that are different from parliamentary functions. We have been given the functions to enable us both to promote children’s rights and to protect them. For example, our new powers include using strategic litigation to challenge situations in which systemic issues have not been addressed.

We should celebrate the progress that has been made, but we absolutely cannot shy away from the fact that the rights of many children and young people across Scotland are being breached and violated every day. We need to have better services and infrastructure to address that situation, so there is a long way to go.

I am looking for practical examples of what you will do, as commissioner.

First, we will continue to raise the issues that children and young people experience. Part of our role is to work alongside them, gather research, make recommendations and bring them to Parliament so that it can consider change. At this point, I would like to bring in Nick Hobbs to say a little about how we have started to use our strategic litigation powers.

I am just looking for specific examples. You say that you are starting to use those powers, too, so that is fine.

When I use the term “commission”, I am not targeting you personally. Do you think that the commission itself represents value for money? Can you justify your existence to the Scottish taxpayer?

Yes. I believe that the office provides a good, efficient public service. When I recently spoke to another of the Parliament’s committees about those issues, I mentioned our work in going to places where children and young people are having difficult and challenging experiences.

As I touched on in my opening statement today, we have been out to meet all the children who are currently in our secure care estates, and we are also going out to communities to gather evidence from children and young people. I do not think that we can overvalue how children and young people feel, knowing that the Parliament has allocated a children and young people’s commissioner for them—that is, someone who will capture their testimony and ensure that it is brought back to you as members so that you can hear this difficult evidence about the changes that still need to be made. It is important that young people know that they will be listened to about their experiences, some of which have been very difficult and should not have happened, and that their views will inform and shape change.

As I have already mentioned, the commissioner’s office has worked on laws that aim to better protect children’s rights, which are now in place. We now see various tools in place that are being used by the Parliament and local government. As Nick Hobbs will say in a second, we now have new powers that we can use to bring strategic litigation cases in the courts.

You have given concrete examples of things that the children’s commissioner will do that will verify and justify its continuance.

I will leave it there for the moment, convener, but I might come back in later.

You will be aware of Mr Mason’s and Ms Haughey’s observations on commissioners in general and the amount of them that we have. Currently, Scotland has the equivalent of a rather large MGM musical chorus line of commissioners, while comparable nations—I am thinking of Ireland—have centralised the many commissioners’ offices into, say, four main ones. New Zealand, which has a population of 5.2 million, has a children’s commissioner, but it is proposing to merge its office with one of its three other bodies, and Denmark has done the same and consolidated them.

I am just saying that we do things differently. Could your office make an argument for working within a consolidated grouping, which would keep the parliamentary authorities happy in their on-going look? That might take you away from political questions about the office costing quite a bit of money and people asking whether there might be other ways of managing things. Could such reform be considered? I know that I am almost asking for turkeys to vote for Christmas here, but could that be a way forward?

As I expressed to the other committee that is looking at the landscape in detail, we are committed and will continue to be committed to exploring the sharing of services and how we can do that with other office-holders. We will continue to look at how we ensure that we provide best value for money.

However, children and young people should not have to navigate through other organisations and systems that are created predominantly for adults. This is the only office-holder that is there just for children. The Parliament recognised the need for that when it created the office, and the need for that has not changed. I would therefore be opposed to any suggestion of a merger. However, we would certainly work co-operatively and look for any opportunities to have shared services.

One of the examples that I gave was the children’s commissioner in New Zealand, which exists separately but will be merging with others. Other countries that have similar values and ideals to ours are clearly having these conversations. You will understand why the public will be asking some of the same questions that Ms Haughey has asked about what you are delivering. I am all for delivery, and if I can find a better way to get you to do the work that you need to do, I would be all for having that conversation.

On the point about international models, our model in Scotland is held up as exemplary, so any change involving a merger would be a regressive step for Scotland. However, I have to stress, as I have to the other committee, that the important question is not whether it could be possible but whether it should be done. Is it in the best interests of children to consider absorbing their organisation into a bigger one? That would put more barriers in place for them in accessing their commissioner and being able to navigate that system.

Thank you.

Good afternoon to the commissioner and the others who have joined us. Thank you for all the work that you do. It is of huge value to children and young people across Scotland, and I appreciate it.

The report that you published at the beginning of the week is particularly instructive, and some of my questions will relate to it. I specifically want to ask about ASN. In the report, you say that you have intervened in some ASN tribunals. Will you tell us a bit more about the cases where you have intervened?

I will bring in Nick Hobbs to talk about our strategic litigation.

It took a little while for cases to start coming through after the provisions in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 were brought into force in July. That is as we would expect, as is the fact that a significant number of the cases that have come to us have been in the additional support needs tribunal—that is not a surprise. At the last count, there have been eight cases that we have been notified of. We are required to be notified about every UNCRC issue that is raised in a court or tribunal in Scotland. In four of those cases, we have intervened on things such as part-time timetables and access to remedies.

The challenge that we have had is that, in each of those four cases, the local authority settled the case very shortly after we intervened. We have not yet been able to get to the point of receiving a judgment. Again, that is not a huge surprise. I suspect that very few local authorities are keen to be the first to be subject to an ASN judgment in which the commissioner intervenes. However, that has prompted us to think about how we can make the legal arguments that we have developed for some of the cases more widely available to children and families and to solicitors who are working on those cases. That would allow people to get an individual outcome in those cases—if not the strategic outcome of a decision—without us needing to intervene in every single case that comes before the tribunal.

That is helpful—thank you. You mentioned that a couple of the cases that you have looked at were settled so they did not necessarily change policy or strategically change the picture. Will you tell us a bit on the record about what you were concerned about and what you saw happening?

12:15  

I can talk broadly about the issues. Obviously, I have to be careful about privacy rights and going too far into the detail involving individual children, but there are issues that the committee has picked up on in the past. A couple of weeks ago, you were talking to the minister with responsibility for the Promise about part-time timetables. An issue that came up was the educational provision that was being provided to children on such timetables and whether it was delivering on the child’s right to education—

On that, in the report that was published earlier in the week, the commissioner mentions concerns about informal exclusions. Would you consider that to be an informal exclusion?

Yes. There was another case that touched on that issue, too. I am trying to be careful about the details, but the nature and extent of the educational provision that was being provided to the child in question—that is, whether they were engaging in education in the company of other children or whether they were effectively receiving entirely separate provision, albeit within the school estate—was, in effect, an exclusion given the way in which the child was experiencing it. That is very much a concern for us in the cases that come before the tribunal.

I am sorry, but I think that I stopped you as you were discussing some of the cases. Are there any other examples that you can put on the record?

Those are probably the two in which the committee has taken the most interest in the past and, indeed, the two that are easier to discuss, in that they represent a broader and easier-to-articulate issue and do not require having to go into details, which might risk violating the child’s privacy.

Thank you. For the record, will you also set out how you choose the cases that you intervene in?

We have two decision-making processes, one of which was developed with experts in children’s rights litigation at the University of Nottingham. They were drawing on global experience of child rights litigation, and we developed a decision-making toolkit with them and with the involvement of some of our young advisers. That toolkit not only sets out the way in which we make decisions about the cases that we take, but holds us to a commitment to litigate in a child rights-friendly manner.

More recently, we have developed a sifting tool. When a case comes in, it goes through a very quick sift process to see whether it falls within the scope of the legislation, whether it is an issue on which we can apply our legal powers and so on. There is a whole set of criteria that allows us to make quite quick decisions as to whether we can intervene in the case, and then we move on to questions such as whether we should intervene, whether the case raises a strategic issue and what kind of outcome we might seek to achieve.

Are you able to share that sifting tool with the committee, or would that be difficult?

I can go back and check, but my gut reaction is that we could certainly share elements of the toolkit.

Thank you.

Just before we move on, is it not a good thing that some of these cases get settled before families and young people get taken through a court process? After all, if local authorities are willing to settle, they are accepting that there are issues in some cases.

It is certainly good for the individual child, but the problem is that we tend to see the same issue come up over and over again. What it does not allow is—

But it should not be impossible to learn from such cases just because they have been settled. I understand that you will not have the full extent of, say, a debate and a determination, but surely there will still be learning to take from those cases that can be passed on to other authorities—or is that not happening?

It is not happening. If we do not have a formal decision by the tribunal, we do not have something that can be disseminated. Instead, we have an agreement between the local authority and the individual child and family. We are looking at whether we can take the legal arguments that we have put together with regard to the principles that apply to these kinds of cases and make them more widely available. That might help to do what you are asking about, which is to try to ensure that we do not see an endless cycle of cases that get to the door of the tribunal and then just get settled.

I am sorry, Pam. Back to you.

That is okay, convener. I was about to make a similar point. Nobody really wants to end up at a tribunal. Parents, local authorities, young people and even you, I am sure, do not want to end up there, but the reality is that, in some cases, that is what needs to happen. That mechanism is there because there must be something that enables people to uphold their rights. Are you considering what you can do to bring some systemic policy change to light, in the absence of what might otherwise be a relatively valuable legal ruling?

In the past, we have produced what we call legal briefs, which are an articulation of the commissioner’s legal position on a particular issue based on our analysis of the law and sometimes, where the matter is particularly complex or difficult, the opinion of counsel. One option that is under consideration is whether we can take some of the positions that we have developed and turn them into public-facing legal briefs that can be provided to solicitors—or even to children and families—who can then take them into the discussions that they have with local authorities before they get to the tribunal. They would be able to say, “Here’s the commissioner’s position on this, here’s what the commissioner says the law is and here’s what’s going to be brought up if we get to tribunal, so maybe we could try to avoid getting to that point in the first place.”

I think that that would be really useful. Any update that the commission can provide to the committee in that respect would be helpful.

Members in the room and across the Parliament recognise that parents are genuinely struggling and that, much of the time, they just do not know where to turn. Parents will say, “This is what I want” or “This is what I think we need” and there is a discussion with the local authority, but the next step is them saying, “I’m going to a tribunal because I can’t get anything in between.” What is the commission’s view on how much support parents get from local authorities to enable them to understand what their options are, what the pathways are and whether they are available, and what other options exist, short of a tribunal, to try to come to a solution that meets the young person’s needs and ultimately gets them into school?

There is some information out there. There are civil society and third sector organisations that provide good advice and support for parents and families who find themselves in that situation.

We do see cases in which families feel that they have no alternative but to turn to the tribunal. They are not able to agree with the local authority, for whatever reason, the level of support that needs to be provided. We also know—I know that the committee has looked at this in various iterations in the past—that there is underuse of co-ordinated support plans, which are the legal mechanism for ensuring that children get the support that they need. I think that that is sometimes a cause of families needing, or feeling that they need, to go to the tribunal system—

On co-ordinated support plans, do you have any understanding of why there is such underuse? What is your understanding of that?

I would be speculating, but there may be a lack of understanding of what the plans are for. There is also sometimes resistance or reluctance from local authorities to put them in place because they are legally enforceable. I think that there is an element of that.

With regard to barriers for children and families, there is a dearth of solicitors who work in the area. I could probably count on the fingers of one hand the ones whom we would signpost people to. Again, that creates issues around access to justice.

The president of the additional support needs tribunal has done an enormous amount of work in trying to ensure that the tribunal system is as accessible as it can possibly be to children and families without their requiring legal advice, but sometimes, in order for families to know whether they have a case and to understand how best to present it, they need to have access to a solicitor, and there is a challenge there.

Forgive me for interrupting you previously, but I wanted to ask about co-ordinated support plans. Going back to the point about parents having information on options short of ending up at the tribunal, what would be the most useful thing that the Government and local authorities could do for parents to help them to navigate the system?

Some additional clarity around the requirements on local authorities to carry out assessments, and how that assessment then leads through into the legal process, would be helpful. How does that lead through to entitlement to a co-ordinated support plan? What does the plan need to include and what rights come along with that?

You will appreciate that my focus is generally on the legal part of that, so that is what I think would be of most use. In the past, we have tended to focus on looking at the awareness of children and families, but I think that it is much more about being clear with professionals about what they need to do so that children and families do not need to be the ones who are identifying and asking for their rights.

Does anyone else on the panel have anything to add on that before I ask my final question?

I have a short point on what the most useful thing would be for parents. I think that we are all of the same view that the help needs to come as soon as children, families and parents need it. They should be able to get access immediately, at the first place that they go to, whether it is the school or elsewhere, to the support that they want for their child.

Nobody wants to get to a point where they have to try to understand the law and look at what their entitlements are, but we hear that support of that kind is missing. There is not sufficient resource for it. I am talking not about the diagnostic stage, but about very early support for people to understand their child’s needs and about what we can do, collectively, to better meet children’s needs in education, a placement or wherever else they need support. We think that support at the preventative stage would be most useful for everyone.

We have often heard in the chamber and other places—and parents have been told this as well—that a diagnosis is not needed for young people to get support, but in reality parents do need that. What is your opinion on that?

We would probably need a whole other meeting to discuss the issue of waiting lists, but we have concerns not only about mental health and neurodevelopmental diagnosis waiting times—which are wholly inadequate across the country—but about the waiting times that families face across all paediatric services before they can get access to professional support for their child’s needs. We are very concerned about waiting times.

In your report, you mention religion and belief, and specifically Islamophobia. I understand that the Young Scot “Truth About Youth” survey is due to be published today. Is that correct? You asked Young Scot to ask some questions on that subject in its survey. Will you say a bit about how concerned you are about that and where the concern has come from?

That goes back to one of our key priorities on discrimination, which young people asked us to look at. One of our statutory functions is to commission research to understand better how children and young people experience their rights. As you mentioned, we asked Young Scot to add a question about that subject in its survey. I ask Gina Wilson to comment on that, as she has had a look at the raw data.

The reason why we focused on that is that, when we were producing our strategic plan, there was an evidence gap in our understanding of children’s experiences based on their religion and beliefs. We asked preliminary questions to get a sense of whether there is an issue and, if so, what its scale is.

In the sample, 17 per cent of the children and young people—about 2,500—said that they experienced discrimination based on belief, but when we dig into that figure, it shows that 53 per cent of those children and young people identify as Muslim. That is by far the category of identity that experiences the most discrimination. Within the 17 per cent, 53 per cent said that they had experienced discrimination at school, college or university. Beyond that, it is online that they experience particular issues with discrimination.

Is that discrimination coming exclusively from adults, or is it partly coming from young people?

That is a good question. It is a mix, but we will have to do much deeper work to try to understand it. Initially, we wanted to get a sense of whether it is an issue and, if so, what the scale and prevalence are. We now need to look at what is next.

In my constituency, there are a large number of Muslim children. The number of Jewish children is smaller, but there is some evidence of Jewish children experiencing some antisemitism.

Unfortunately, that is the case.

Will you pick that up as well, even though the number is small?

Yes. The number is smaller, but that issue is there. I cannot remember what the number is off the top of my head. We hope that that will be a focus of the task force on online harms. There is clearly an issue with discrimination based on religious belief, so we would like it to look at that.

There will be a lot of different views among young people. Some are religious and some are not. Some follow different religions, and it can lead to practical issues; some would be more concerned than others about boys using girls’ toilets or there being mixed toilets, for example. Are you thinking about going down the route of looking at more practical aspects, or is it just at a high level?

It is really too early to say. As was mentioned earlier, we have just received the very raw data and we are just beginning the process in relation to it. It is about looking at next year’s plan, now that we have commissioned a number of pieces of research and done action research in different areas this year. Over the next month, we will be regrouping to ask ourselves what we have learned and to make some decisions about where to go next with some of those pieces of work.

12:30  

My final question is about young people taking part in worship in school settings. You have made some statements on that—will you summarise those? Is it a question of what is age appropriate: for example, if a child is very young, the parents decide, but, if they are 15, they should be deciding or at least having a major input?

In our response to the consultation, we said that our view was that the changes that had been made were not UNCRC compliant. That was our biggest concern—that they, in fact, took us further away from the UNCRC. Perhaps Gina would like to add something.

I am trying to think about how to answer that one simply. The proposals that have come forward would not give children sufficient decision-making power, which was the recommendation from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child recommendation. We are trying to point out that the current proposal would not make sufficient change to be compliant with the UN committee’s recommendations.

The counterargument from some schools is that, if a school has a particular religious ethos, the family and the child have the choice as to which school to go to; if they go to a particular school, to some extent, they have to accept the ethos of that school.

We would still say that children and young people should have the right to have their view on religious observance heard and to be involved in decision making around that in ways that are relevant to their age, stage and capacity.

We will come back to that next year, then.

Thanks for all the information that you have given us, which is very useful. Why are youth work and third sector organisations—which you have mentioned, and which you deal with a great deal—so important in ensuring that children and young people can be involved in decision making and in helping to improve the services that serve them?

Ensuring the participation of children and young people is a key part of what youth workers, in particular, are trained to do. In that sector, it is very much about creating an environment in which children and young people are part of a democratic process. That is fundamental in youth work. However, that is not necessarily something that professionals in the education sector are trained in, going right back to initial teacher training and probationary training.

We want the education system to progress towards having a meaningful understanding of what participation looks like, how it can be enabled and how it can be child friendly and age-and-stage appropriate. However, it is a huge workforce that, historically, has not necessarily had the supports put in place to enable that to happen.

We know that youth work is doing a lot of work in schools, as well as providing support in communities for children and young people. We wanted to highlight that and to bring to people’s attention the skills and expertise that are there, which could be used to fast-track and support the education system more.

Do you believe that that is working? Are most youth work organisations and groups keen that children should be able to develop the policy direction?

I believe that the youth work sector is very clear about the ways in which children and young people should be involved and participating, with group work based on an individual level. Our key message is that there are lessons to be taken from that sector.

I have another quick question—I say “quick”, because you have covered a degree of it. How do you evaluate early progress in relation to implementation of the UNCRC? You talked a bit about it before, but I want to emphasise the point.

In terms of early progress, we see culture change happening, which is a really positive thing.

We have talked a lot about participation and how that can be embedded, and we have had a lot more organisations come to us on that. For example, HMIE is considering how it can undertake inspections in a different way and has been proactively asking to meet our young advisers to learn from them. In relation to embedding the children’s right to participation, we know that organisations are talking about that more, and are asking for help and support.

You have heard my colleague Nick Hobbs talk about how, as an office, we were given new powers to bring strategic litigation. We have touched on some of the ASN work. Nick could also speak to the other areas in which we have been using those powers. You heard Gina Wilson talk about how we see child rights impact assessments working at Scottish Government level and through the work that the Improvement Service is doing with local authorities.

Those are the conversations and that is the work that people identify as needing to happen. There is much more to be done, so we are still on a journey towards that. UNCRC incorporation has made a difference, but we all need to work to ensure that it continues to make a difference until we get to a point at which more children and young people can enjoy and experience their rights.

Perhaps Nick would like to add something about the other strategic litigation work.

There are two different readings of it. On the one hand, it is positive to see children and young people being able to access and make use of the tools that the Parliament has given them to enforce their rights. Another reading would be that it is a little bit disappointing on every occasion that a child has to go to court to do that.

Aside from the additional support needs tribunal cases, we have intervened in two cases. One related to criminal proceedings. That was about whether the Lord Advocate’s decision to prosecute children falls within the scope of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024. We are obviously pleased that the court agreed with our arguments that it does. That is important in that those decisions can now be clearly tested against UNCRC criteria.

The other case, which has not concluded yet and is still running in the Court of Session, is about children’s rights in eviction proceedings. That is important to us with our strategic focus on poverty. It is a live case, so I am a little bit limited in what I can say about it, but it relates to the discussion that we had about temporary accommodation and housing. It is important that children’s rights are covered as part of that.

That suits me. Thank you.

We spoke a moment ago about youth work and participation. One of the things that you said in the report that you published this week was that you think that the inspector should have a role in examining what inspected establishments are doing on participation. How would that work, and how important is it?

Again, that is related to the fact that children have a right to be involved in decisions about their lives and services that affect them. Therefore, we should see that happening more and more meaningfully in education settings, whether a school or somewhere else where children and young people are educated. That is why that recommendation is in the report. The inspector, when they carry out their work, should ensure that they consider the quality of that involvement.

I hope that you notice that we particularly highlighted those children and young people who are furthest away from enjoying their rights and for whom school is not happening. That will require a rethink of the model that is used for inspections. We understand that the chief inspector is considering that and is doing work to develop ideas about it. We brought to the inspectorate’s attention, for example, the model that the Care Inspectorate uses. Young people who have experience of care can be embedded into that model.

Real change is needed in thinking about the time that is spent with children and young people on an inspection, with inspectors not just observing but getting to know them and understanding how they experience their school. In addition, HMIE should talk to children and young people about what they want the inspectors to look at and should involve them in pre-inspection processes.

There is a range of means to do that, and we have made some recommendations to HMIE, but we are very much looking for the inspectorate to do that work as well. We have pointed it to third sector organisations that could offer expertise and advice to help to shape that as things develop.

Was HMIE keen to do it?

It was very open to suggestions, but we will continue to monitor what comes next.

What precisely should be in the Promise bill?

That is the question. I have been asking the minister at the meetings that I have had with her to get a sense of what will be in the bill.

What do you think should be in the bill?

There has been confusion about what will be in it. In my meetings with the minister, I have focused on asking where we are getting to with what is in the bill and when it can be seen so that it can be transparent. I have been saying that one of the most important things is that the bill is written in a way that ensures that it is UNCRC compliant.

You have not made any recommendations to the minister about what should be in it.

We have not made any recommendations, because the wider sector and the work of The Promise has been involved in that. When I have spoken to the minister about the Promise, I have raised a number of other issues and focused on when the bill will be available to be scrutinised.

One of those issues that I have raised is the experiences of care-experienced children and young people in secure care. As I mentioned earlier, we have been undertaking a round of visits, and we still have serious concerns about capacity across the secure care sector. I have also raised concerns that have been raised with me by unaccompanied, asylum-seeking and refugee children and young people, and I have been talking about education reform. As Gina Wilson mentioned earlier, we commissioned a piece of work on care-experienced young people and that will be out soon.

My key questions on the Promise bill are about when it will be available, what the minister can commit to that will be in it, whether it will be introduced with a timeframe that allows for appropriate parliamentary scrutiny and whether the Government will ensure that it is UNCRC compliant.

I appreciated your letter about secure accommodation. It was very blunt and to the point, which I thought made a significant difference, because the minister had to recognise that there were major flaws. The reference to “cobbled together” accommodation was particularly powerful. You said that you have done more work on that. Will you give us a bit more detail about what is involved and what you have found?

In a minute, I will pass to Nick Hobbs, who has led on some of that. It is important for the committee to understand that I have not yet had a full response from the minister to the letter. I asked how many children have been turned away from secure care. We are still concerned that, if the Scottish Government is not tracking that or does not have that information, we cannot know whether the capacity for provision is enough. We cannot assess that if we do not know whether children are being turned away. I thought that it was important to share the fact that I am still concerned about that. As I said, Nick has been doing some work in that area, too.

We have had a number of discussions with Scottish Government officials, and the commissioner has met the minister and Social Work Scotland. We have another meeting with Social Work Scotland later this week to try to get a better sense of the scale and nature of the problem. As the commissioner said, we need to know how many children cannot access the provision that they need, what the scale of that is and what provision needs to be put in place.

There are concerns about looking forward into the reimagining of secure care work. What is the profile of the children who are coming into secure care now, what kind of response do they require and is our current model of secure care capable of meeting those needs? Are there potential gaps between secure accommodation and mental health detention?

There are some further areas on which we would like a little bit more reassurance from the minister. Is the planning process taking account of not just the number of beds but the nature and level of need and the provisions that are required to meet it?

Have you spoken to local authorities and the providers of secure accommodation?

We have had interaction with the secure accommodation providers in meetings and as part of the programme of visits to secure units that the commissioner referred to earlier. We have also been speaking to Social Work Scotland, which is the representative body for chief social work officers and which is well placed to understand what is happening at local authority level.

What is your estimate of how often that is happening?

We are not able to make one. That is why we asked the minister the question, because we would expect—

Do you know from local authority social work departments and the secure unit providers how many requests have gone in and how many have not been accommodated? What is your estimate?

It is only anecdotal. Six or seven individual cases have been raised with us, but I would not for a moment suggest that that is in any way an accurate estimate of the size and scale of the problem. Those cases were raised with us to illustrate the scale and nature of the problem. That is why we have said to the Scottish Government that it needs to ask that question, because it cannot do its contingency planning without it.

From your experience and discussions, you have heard of six or seven cases, but you think that the figure is probably higher.

That is an absolute minimum.

It is an absolute minimum. Thank you.

Thank you, commissioner, Ms Wilson and Mr Hobbs, for your evidence today, the report that you published earlier this week and your written submission, which were very helpful to us.

I suspend the meeting to allow our witnesses to leave and the committee to move into private session for our remaining agenda items.

12:45 Meeting continued in private until 13:00.