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We are talking about a national care service that might or might not have children’s services in it. I am sure that Mr Marra is aware that we are in negotiation with COSLA on that issue, and have been for some time. We are very keen to get a resolution to that. There would be a financial cost within that.

I do not think that Mr Stewart could answer that question at the moment, simply because he does not have the figures in front of him, but we are not waiting—we are working on those issues.

No—I am happy for you to move on.

I covered some of the primary legislation that Mr Dey has alluded to in answer to Mr Marra’s earlier question. The pieces of primary legislation in question, which are all listed in schedule 3 to the bill, relate to local authority social work functions and duties. We are in the process of identifying all the relevant Scottish statutory instruments that might be affected if those functions were to be transferred, and much of that work has already been done. Where adjustments to SSIs are needed to further reflect the transfer of functions, that can be done through the ancillary powers in section 45 of the bill. I hope that that will reassure Mr Dey a bit.

I am afraid, though, that I will have to ask him to repeat the second part of his question. I must apologise for not scribbling it down.

Good morning, and thank you for the committee’s invitation to be here.

Mr Stewart has spoken about what we hope to achieve with this reform of Scotland’s community health and social care system. I will speak about the impact that the national care service will have on services for children and young people.

The national care service will provide support for adults, including children’s parents, grandparents and adult siblings. The most important structure around children is their family and services must wrap around the family. Children become adults and transition between services, which is often a difficult process.

The current landscape is complex, with 31 integration authorities taking a variety of approaches to the integration of children’s services with adult, community health and justice services. We must ask ourselves whether the best way to help children is for those services to be together or apart. To answer that question, we have commissioned independent research to consider how children’s services are currently delivered across Scotland.

Making no change is not an option, so it would be too risky not to consider including children’s services now. However, I reiterate Mr Stewart’s point that no decision has yet been made about whether children’s services will be included in the national care service. The bill therefore provides a mechanism to include children’s services in the NCS by secondary legislation, if we ultimately decide that that is what is best for children, young people and families. The full detail of any proposal to include children’s services in the NCS will be available for scrutiny, consideration and consultation.

The independent care review told us that significant change is needed to improve the care and support that children and young people receive. All of us here, and across all the organisations that work with children and families, are committed to delivering the Promise. Building on our approach to getting it right for every child, we are continuing to make the improvements that we need to see in children’s services. That work will not pause because of the national care service. Strong links with other services that support children, such as education and early learning and childcare, must be maintained and strengthened, whatever the decision is.

I also recognise the challenges and demands that those working with children and families face every day. If we transfer children’s services to the national care service, that must improve the experience of the workforce.

We want to carefully consider whether it would be best to include services that support children and young people in the national care service. Meanwhile, we will make sure that the needs of children and young people are a key consideration in the development of the national care service.

To follow on from what my colleague has said, the independent review into adult social care made recommendations that are equally applicable to children’s services: fairness and equity; the removal of variation in eligibility in charging and commissioning; and removing unwanted variation across services, local authorities and integration joint boards.

Given the change that the National Care Service (Scotland) Bill will bring, if it is passed, it would be too risky not to consider the inclusion of children in the national care service. None of us would want to think of children as an afterthought. The interface between services for adults and children has been a critical consideration regarding the impact that the NCS could have on children’s services. As Mr Stewart and Iona Colvin mentioned in their evidence, we cannot view children in isolation. Children live as part of families; they do not live in silos, and their needs are not singular.

We are considering services in the round. The public consultation in 2021, which Mr Stewart mentioned, included questions on children’s social work and social care services. The responses to that consultation were mixed, and key stakeholders highlighted the need for more evidence, which is what we have set out to address.

I hope that I answered some of that in my first response. We are ensuring that children and young people are involved in the co-design and that they are at the table.

I do not recognise what Mr Marra has said about young people being dropped into this. If children’s services are covered by the national care service, the services that will be provided will be subject to national standards and, through the charter that is being designed, children will be given rights that they currently do not have. There will be risk either way—there will be risk if we do not bring children’s services into the national care service, and there will be risk if we do. We have recognised that. Indeed, the task in the research that has been commissioned is to reach the best decision about where those services should be placed to best serve those children.

There will be changes, no matter whether children’s services are brought into a national care service, and we need to be prepared for them. The Government has been doing preparatory work for that through our engagement with children and young people and their families through the organisations that represent them, as well as through the research that we have commissioned on an evidence base for the best way to provide the services.

We touched on that at the very beginning of the meeting, when we spoke about why children’s services are being considered as part of the national care service. The independent review of adult social care looked only at social care for adults. When the public consultation on the national care service was concluded, it was clear that there were mixed responses to our questions about the inclusion of children’s services within the NCS, mostly because people felt that there was a lack of evidence in that respect, whereas there had already been a large inquiry into adult social care.

Therefore, as part of an evidence-gathering exercise, we commissioned CELCIS to carry out independent research on how we ensure that children, young people and their families get the help that they need when they need it. There are five strands to that research: first, a rapid evidence review of the published literature; secondly, a deep dive to examine approaches to the integration and delivery of children’s services; thirdly, a national scoping and mapping exercise to explore different models of integrated service delivery and any potential effects on a range of outcomes; fourthly, a national survey of the children’s services workforce and children’s services leaders to build on emerging findings; and fifthly, targeted focus groups and interviews with the workforce. Although the research will not give us a yes/no answer, it will give us an evidence base for where we are, what is working and how the workforce feels.

In parallel with that, we are working with children, young people, their families, organisations that represent them and other groups on what they feel that they need from a national care service. We are not going back to ask them lots of questions for which we already have lots of evidence from the review of care services, but we will look at all that evidence in the round and make a decision in principle on whether children’s services should or should not be in the national care service.

The research, which started in September, will run for a year to next September. The committee might be interested to know that the strands will report as they conclude, and I am more than happy to share those reports with the committee if it is interested in receiving them. Obviously, I am not asking you to make a decision on that today, but the offer is there to see those reports before the research itself is finally written up. The timeline for the research has been developed to ensure that we can make those decisions on the inclusion of children’s services in the NCS, and the two things will run in parallel prior to the operation of the NCS itself.

No, no—that is all right. I will come in to address the second part of Mr Rennie’s question.

In 2021, the overall headcount was 15,300, an increase of 6.7 per cent, and the largest two subsectors in children’s social services were residential care and fieldwork services. The latter accounts for 38 per cent of the total headcount and covers social work services. In 2021, 9,100 of the children’s social services workforce were employed by a public employer. I point out that not all social workers are employed by public employers; 24 per cent are employed by the voluntary sector and 16 per cent by the private sector. Of course, that does not necessarily mean that all those employees are social workers; some will be social care workers.