Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you, cabinet secretary. I open the meeting to questions from members.

It would be interesting and helpful for the committee to see that detail. Thank you.

I am going to bring our session to a close. I thank all our witnesses for their attendance; your evidence has been very helpful and interesting. We will now move into private session.

Would members like to come in with any final points?

The question is, that motion S6M-14590 be agreed to. Are we agreed?

Members: No.

Thank you. That will be published shortly.

I thank the cabinet secretary and her officials for attending the meeting. I will suspend the meeting briefly to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

Our next item of business is to take evidence from two organisations as part of our on-going pre-budget scrutiny. From Community Justice Scotland, we are joined by Karen McCluskey, chief executive, and Keith Gardner, specialist adviser; and, from Social Work Scotland we have Lynsey Smith, chair of the organisation’s justice standing committee. Welcome to you all.

I refer members to papers 4 and 5. I intend to allow around 75 minutes for this evidence session.

I will start with a fairly broad opening question to get started. I will work from my left, so I will bring in Lynsey Smith then Karen McCluskey and Keith Gardner. What are the main financial challenges that your organisations face, and what are the main things that need to be done in the budget context to address them?

I will come back with some supplementary questions, but I will move on to Karen now.

I will focus on work with young people and the budget side of things. There has been some movement on keeping young people out of young offender institutions, and there is a clear understanding that that is the right thing to do. However, that needs to be underpinned with community justice approaches and interventions so that detention is, in essence, a last resort. I am interested to tease out more detail on the importance of that approach and of smart budgeting. Keith Gardner, what more, if anything, do we need to do to make that approach work so that young people do not enter the prison environment?

I am going to bring in other members then I will come back to you, Sharon. I know that several members have a keen interest in this area, so we will move on.

A quick one, and then I will bring in Sharon Dowey.

I see that Sharon is okay, in fact.