Seòmar agus comataidhean

Before I answer, if this is your final question, Ms White, I commit to coming back to the committee—at a time of your choosing, convener—once the consultation has closed on the teacher qualification issue, to summarise precisely what we will do next on some of the criticisms that have been made around the number of teachers with BSL at a suitable level for teaching young BSL users.

The points that are made about young BSL users seem to all come back to two points. One is about the number of suitably trained teachers in BSL to ensure that every young person has access to a teacher.

The second point is about ensuring that teachers are at a level that means that the young person will be competent in BSL, because, if you are not able to train them in BSL at a young age, they will miss out on opportunities for the rest of their life. From my engagement with young BSL users, I have heard that they must have a teacher but that it cannot just be any teacher—the teacher has to be trained to a suitably high level.

That is the answer: having enough teachers who are trained to a suitably high level so that every young person has access. I would like to come back to the committee, convener, once the consultation is closed, so that we can tell you precisely what we will do to ensure that that happens.

I would like to because, if I do not come back before the end of the year, we will not have long before the end of the parliamentary session. Alison, when does the consultation close?

That is a very interesting comparison. What the committee will get from me is an openness to radical ideas about how to accelerate progress; it will also get from me a strong desire only to take action that the community asks us to take. One can sometimes go ahead and build well-meaning infrastructure that is not in the best interests of, or has not been demanded by, the community, because a more decentralised approach is more effective.

I am open to suggestion. We have some very effective partner organisations. For example, I mentioned BDA Scotland, which is an effective representative organisation, but which also has a role to play in advising, guiding and supporting listed authorities and others, including us, on how to take action.

I am neither shutting down Paul O’Kane’s idea nor saying, “Let’s do it,” because we need to engage in careful consultation on everything that we do, and we need to understand what structures would be most effective.

I do not know whether my team has more to say about that.

The way that you characterise the evidence that you have heard on Contact Scotland BSL is consistent with the evidence that we have heard, which is that some users are very satisfied and happy with the service, but there are others—some of whom I have heard directly from—who feel that there are areas in which the service could be significantly improved.

We know that the total number of people who use that service currently is not the full number of BSL users who need to use a service. In other words, we have a responsibility to take on board both the positive feedback and some of the more negative feedback. That is why we have been in active consultation with the community and are currently engaged in live procurement of a new service.

I want to stress two points. First, I regret hugely any alarm that was caused by the communication of that new procurement round, and the fears that that gave rise to. Since then, we have made efforts around consultation—I have certainly attended a number of different groups to hear directly from BSL users—and the fact that we are now in a live procurement process is very encouraging.

The second thing that I want to stress is that there will be no break in provision. That is the commitment that we gave to the community, and we stand by it. On the timing, we are hopeful that there will be a new service in place as quickly as possible once the procurement process completes, and there will certainly be no break in services for BSL users as we transition to a new contract.

If there are any other details that you would like to know about that process, I am happy to ask a colleague to come in.

I am always keen to see tangible evidence of delivery, particularly when it relates to people’s lives and the barriers that they face. It is difficult not to be inspired and moved in equal measure when engaging with the BSL community about the barriers that they face and the opportunities there are to support the removal of those barriers.

There is a statutory element to all this; there are legal implications. There is a statutory requirement for listed authorities to meet their obligations under the act. The point that I was making about regulation is that local authorities have a responsibility to ensure that they comply with the legislation and publish their plans in line with statutory deadlines and deliver on those plans. There is no regulatory role for the Scottish Government under the act in that respect, but there is the backstop of what the legislation requires of listed authorities.

I am very happy to reflect, particularly if this comes out of the committee’s evidence, on what further steps can be taken to ensure that local delivery. We have a duty to deliver. You hold us accountable for what we do or do not deliver—and rightly so. When it comes to the national plan, the same will go for other listed authorities, and it is about all the public sector taking ownership for how to remove those barriers. If there is a tool, an instrument or a means by which we can make that happen more effectively, I am very open to considering that.

Let me take on board those comments, in particular. In my own consultation or engagement, some of the most inspiring conversations have been with young people, including young people who are still in school. I was very inspired by their comments on what we need to do.

The Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2009 places a duty on education authorities—who are the listed authorities for local BSL plans, too—to identify, provide for and review the additional support needs of their pupils, which includes all deaf children. The level of support that is required and the amount of input from a specialist teacher of deaf children and young people will vary depending on a child’s individual needs; that has become clear to me. We have to, therefore, support staff to increase the capacity in schools to provide effective support to deaf pupils.

We provide specific grant funding for the Scottish Sensory Centre to support such staff training. We also fund CALL Scotland to provide advice and training to support staff in the use of assistive technology when working with children and young people who have specific communication and sensory needs such as hearing and/or sensory impairments. Education Scotland has a professional learning resource to support practitioners to engage more effectively with BSL users, and the Scottish Qualifications Authority offers qualifications in BSL in the form of awards from level 3 to level 6. We track the number of secondary school leavers who are deaf from publicly funded schools in Scotland to see how many are in a positive destination nine months after the end of the school year, and that number has increased in the past few years.

That is what we are doing, but the evidence that you have just shared with me and the evidence that I have heard still gives the sense that some young people are not getting the full package of support that they want to enable them to participate as fully as they want.

For me, the answer comes in the answer that I gave to Tess White, which is that we must ensure that there is the right number of teachers with the appropriate level of training. Some of the criticism that I have heard is that there are teachers but that they are perhaps not at an advanced level of training and, therefore, a young person does not get the full advanced experience that they could get. I am very conscious of that, and it is why I would very much like to come back to the committee once we have done a little bit more work off the back of the committee’s evidence, and we can say how we can go further to fill the gaps of young people’s experiences.

I am not aware of it having been watered down. The BSL national plan is a six-year plan, so it represents our commitment to improving lives. It is important to state that we are committed to delivering on the plan, but we are also committed to responding to feedback. It is not that the BSL plan is so rigid that, if the community makes representations in another area where they feel that more progress needs to be made or issues need to be strengthened, we ignore that.

The plan is heavily informed by consultation with the community, and the actions in it were all chosen because they address the barriers that BSL users had identified in their daily lives. However, as all lawmakers and representatives in the Parliament will know, the plan is there to provide strategic focus. In a sense, it is a means by which all parts of Government can get behind the plan, because the nature of any language is that it cuts across all spheres of Government. It is not just the remit of the BSL team to implement the plan; it requires change from education, justice and so on. Having the national plan brings together or requires responsibility to be taken by other areas of Government.

However, as I said, it also requires us to respond to the feedback that we hear regularly. Take the procurement round for Contract Scotland BSL as an example of that. The process—the specifications—that Kevin McGowan just mentioned are in response to the consultation. That happens independently of the national plan.

Ultimately, the value of the plan will be in whether, annually, we can point to tangible changes that have improved people’s lives in the BSL community. A plan is only as strong as its implementation.

Yes. These are very timely questions because quite a number of education changes are being proposed or are currently being consulted on that have particular relevance to BSL users, including in the Education (Scotland) Bill, which is at stage 3 next week, on parity of esteem and on support for training facilities. I ask Alison Taylor or Robert Eckhart to come in on that.

I will ask an official to speak about the process, because I was not here to manage that.

On the criticisms, I have been following the committee’s evidence so I have certainly heard the same evidence as the member, some of which he has referenced. I am conscious of some of the commentary, for example, from BDA Scotland about how comprehensive the second plan is compared with the first plan, which included some of the areas where it would have liked to see it go further.

I was seeking to give reassurance that, in the spirit of always seeking to listen to those with lived experience and those who are key partners in representing the community, I do not dismiss their feedback. I am very happy to engage on that and on how we can respond to some of the points that have been made, independently of the plan. Rachel O’Neill made some particularly interesting remarks on education, which we might get on to. I was quite struck by that reflecting some of the other comments that I had heard when engaging with community groups.

On monitoring plans, an action in the BSL national plan focuses on the sharing of best practice, and we are working with listed authorities to develop how they effectively implement and deliver their plans. If every listed authority, as well as the Scottish Government, takes ownership of delivering their element to the best of their ability and seeks excellence and effective implementation, you completely shift the dial in removing the barriers that BSL users face.

There is a challenge with our regulatory role in relation to the 2015 act. It is up to listed authorities to comply with the legislation by publishing local plans in accordance with the act. We consider how we can support them to do that and fill any gaps that are identified. That is maybe the difference between a carrot and a stick. I do not know whether that is what some of the evidence was getting at.

Support is in place. We encourage listed authorities to engage with BDA Scotland in particular. We fund BDA Scotland and we ask listed authorities to seek BDA Scotland’s support and to work with it to engage with BSL users. That is all part of a process that is about encouraging rather than necessarily about regulating, and that might be quite a critical difference.

Does someone want to talk about the process?

I do not have those figures to hand. I completely agree on the importance of data. I am conscious that the impact of domestic abuse on BSL users was referenced in some of your earlier evidence sessions. Data is important, and so is training in the justice system so that examples such as the one that you referenced do not happen. Representation of BSL users in all parts of the justice system is also important.

It is important that we have, first, monitoring of data; secondly, training in the justice system; and thirdly, representation and access for BSL users to all parts of the justice system. Those are three ways in which we try to tackle what is a completely abhorrent issue in society.