Seòmar agus comataidhean

Some committees have suggested that we could have done it the other way round, by having the co-design process first. My response is that that would have impinged on the folk who would have been involved in the co-design. The co-design work might have gone to waste, in people’s eyes, if Parliament then changed far too much of what the folks who helped us with the design wanted in place.

Therefore, I think that it is right to have the framework bill and its principles in place before we move it on through collaboration and co-operation with people in order to co-design that extremely important change to our public service delivery.

As I said, we are already at the beginning of the process. We have already done the workshops that I spoke about, and we will move forward and bring folk with us to get that right.

What guarantees do folk have that they will be listened to? They will be listened to. However, the committee will understand that not every single person will get what they want. We have to weigh up what is brought forward. That said, we must listen to stakeholders and to the voices of lived experience, and we must listen to staff.

Over the past year and a half or so since I have been in this job, I have spent a lot of time listening to front-line staff. I do not think that anybody on the committee would say that we do not value, or have not valued, front-line social work and social care staff in the way that we should over the piece. That is why fair work is at the very heart of this bill, which is about not only pay but conditions.

Another aspect is the things that we do not necessarily think about unless we listen to those on the front line. For example, we do not attract enough young people to work in social care; they do not see it as an attractive opportunity. That is not necessarily only about pay and conditions. A number of them have told me that it is also because they do not see career pathways. We therefore have work going on looking at what career pathways we can put in place to ensure that we attract folk for the future, and make it easier for folk to move from social care to social work or from social care to the NHS or the other way round, which is often quite an arduous process. As I said, by listening, we are coming up with new ways forward in order to get this right.

In order to have the social care system that we need for the future, there is absolutely no doubt that we have to make changes. We have to make changes on pay and conditions, career pathways and ethical procurement, and we have to value front-line staff more than we have done over the past few decades.

There are other processes beyond affirmative and negative instruments. The clerks are in a better position to explain those than I am.

Mr Balfour has heard me being questioned about such issues at other committees as well. As always, in any legislation in which I have been involved, I want to ensure that there is full collaboration, co-operation and communication at every stage. I will have an open door in terms of listening to what MSPs have to say and, of course, listening to what stakeholders and other people have to say about the bill.

I will outline the co-design stages, which I think are extremely important. There is understanding co-design, sense making, agreeing, drafting the regulations and consultation on those regulations. We have said that we want folk to be involved at every stage, and they will be. I am very sincere about all of that and, as I said, my door is always open in that regard.

The Government will, as always, look at the consultation responses. Mr MacGregor said that some of the proposals are not popular. I say to him that, in a lot of the conversations that I have had with folk out there, there is popular support for change. I have done a fair amount of talking to front-line social workers. Mr MacGregor has seen me being questioned by folks in the cross-party group on social work.

Many front-line social workers see all this as an opportunity, because they want more freedom and autonomy for the front line and they want the spirit of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 to come into play. At the moment, many of them feel that they are bound by eligibility criteria and by budgets, rather than being able to make the right decisions when it comes to preventative support.

I say to Fulton MacGregor that, although some stakeholders out there do not necessarily favour the proposals, a lot of folk on the front line do favour them. To Mr MacGregor and to the committee as a whole, I say that, as always, we will analyse and look at the consultation responses, and act accordingly.

They do not both need to go.

I will give another example. There has been a lot of discussion at committee about what should be left out of all this. Other things will not be in the NCS but have very clear connections to it. At the Social Justice and Social Security Committee the other week, there was argument from some that housing and homelessness should be in. The Government has not put forward such a proposal. However, we know that there are very clear connections between care, social work and housing—the list goes on.

In that regard, we are ensuring that, whatever is out and whatever is in, the NCS has a clear connection with housing and homelessness. Committee members will understand that, because of my previous role, I have a real desire—it is a necessity—to ensure that all that is absolutely spot-on right. No matter what is out and what is in, those connections must be there.

It is not the case that both justice and children’s services have to go in or stay out.

We will have a look at that, and I will write to the committee on certain aspects.

For some folk, some of the proposals that we are putting forward are controversial. However, the key point in all this is that we listen to the voices of lived experience. Those voices are the primary motivation for me getting up in the morning and doing this work, because they know what works for them and what does not.

It might well be that something was controversial a decade or more ago, and now it has its day. That is the way that the world works at points, is it not?

I think that social work, including criminal justice social work, has changed dramatically since the previous Administration was in power. It is only 10 years since I left local government, and I have seen massive changes in social work and criminal justice social work since then. Some folk would say that some of that change is for the good, while others would say that it has been for the bad.

I referred to front-line social workers talking about eligibility criteria and budgets. It is fair to say that many front-line social workers feel that social work has lost its voice at the moment, in particular in certain parts of the country. Again, that needs to be addressed.

I promise Ms McNeill that I will look back at the history of that over the holidays—I am nothing if I am not an anorak—and we will respond as best we can to the question about whether there are similarities.

All committees have heard some criticisms. Some of those views have come from critical friends. Other people, of course, do not want change. I think that it is fair to say that. However, change is required in relation to a national care service. We cannot continue in the same vein. We have changing demographics and we have a postcode lottery of care in Scotland, which is not good enough. I have to say that the lack of voices of lived experience in some of the committee evidence sessions is frustrating. The voices of those folks who are in receipt of social work and social care help and support are the ones that we need to listen to, because they will rightly point out where the system does not work for them.

We have been on a 20-year journey of health and social care integration; there have been improvements, but there are still implementation gaps. One reason why there are implementation gaps is that we have not listened to people, and we have not let people help us to shape services.

I recognise that some folk do not want this change, but, if you listen to the voices of lived experience, you will hear that many of them are hungry for change. They want rid of the postcode lotteries, and they want those implementation gaps to be plugged and a system that works for them.

I come back to the point that I made to the convener on the system not working for some folk, and I come back to that lad who I talked about earlier who was at risk of offending—he has 15 interventions going on, but it seems that the system does not work for him.

I will answer those points, starting with the point about “churn”, as Mr Greene put it. I agree that there is a lot of churn in social work. I point out—without naming authorities, because it would be a little bit naughty of me to do so—that we know that there are folks who leave one authority to go to another because pay and conditions in the other authority are much better. That causes grief. It means that there are difficulties with recruitment and retention in some parts of the country, because other local authorities pay much more or the conditions there are better. We need to ensure that there is some kind of uniformity, and an improvement, in pay and conditions. I cannot do that at present, because it is not a matter for me.

With regard to the transfer of staff, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that local authorities’ staff, for example, will need to transfer their employment. The Government’s position remains that new local care boards will work collaboratively in partnership with the national health service, local authorities and the third and independent sectors to improve support locally and nationally.

As I have said, we will have the discussion around that with social workers and their professional bodies, and others, as we move forward. However, there is an opportunity for improvement, not only in pay and conditions but in getting career progression right. One of the things that I have been told by care workers, and by social workers, too, is that opportunities for career progression are often not there. We need to do better on that front, for the simple reason that we need to attract more folks into those professions. For young people in particular, a number of whom I have talked to, as you can imagine, while pay and conditions are way up there, career progression, education and continuous professional development are also high on their agenda. We need to get better at that, too, and we have the opportunity to do so.

Derek Feeley concentrated on adult social care in his review, but he also made recommendations about a national social work agency. When we listened to people initially, we found that many folks felt that bringing only adult social care into the national care service could lead to difficulties around transition points and cause problems with linkages, as I have outlined. That is why we consulted about bringing other things into the national care service.

Derek Feeley’s report looked at adult social care in depth, but, if we are to bring community justice and children’s services into the national care service, we recognise that we need to have the evidence base to do that. That is why we are carrying out the research and the options appraisal and, most importantly, why we are listening to stakeholders to establish whether those services should be included in the national care service. As I have already explained to the convener, whether that happens or not, we have to make sure that the linkages are right. The work that we are doing will be of benefit no matter whether the services are in or out of the national care service.