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It is primary 7 from August.

Good morning, everyone. I have a very quick question that follows up Emma Jackson’s point about MAPs and insolvency. What are the negative sides to going down that road? It is obviously a way out, but if a client goes for insolvency or enters a MAP, what are the long-term negative points for them, or are there none?

You might not know the answer to this, so I am putting you and the others on the spot. My understanding is that changing the timescale would require primary legislation. Is that correct?

Can you clarify your comment about it being 10 years before someone can enter a new MAP? Maybe the other witnesses can write to the committee with their answers. What timescale would you be looking for? Would it be three years, four years, or what?

Good morning. Thank you for what you have said so far. I am pleased to say that my first lot of questions have been answered, so I have only one. I will direct it to Charlene Kane, but others can jump in if they want to.

My question relates to local administration of the Scottish welfare fund. In the previous parliamentary session, we took evidence from various charities on whether the welfare fund should be more centralised or work within local authorities. Is more guidance on how the money is to be spent needed? We are aware that some local authorities spend their budgets quickly while others seem to have money left over at the end of financial year.

From your experience, Charlene, how easy is it to access the welfare fund? Would you like there to be more guidance on how the money should be spent nationally while still being delivered locally?

My questions were covered there, so I have nothing else.

I want to follow up on that. It is very helpful to hear that you will be carrying out a review. Roughly when will that review take place? Perhaps you can write to the committee once it has started, as I am sure that we would want to look at how the child payment is working once it has been rolled out. Do you have a rough date for when the review might happen?

We live and breath this day in, day out, but there are lots of people out there who want that reassurance, so that is really helpful.

Could I seek clarification? You helpfully said that people who have long-term conditions will not have to go through the same assessment period for PIP as they do at the moment under the DWP. When people are transferred, if they are, say, two years away from a review, will they be told that that review will not need to take place? How will you make that decision about those who are already on PIP and are coming up for a review two or three years down the road? Will they be told at that point that the review will not take place or will that happen once everybody has been transferred?

Good morning to the minister and his team. I have a couple of questions. First, when David Phillips, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, gave evidence to the committee, he talked about a “cliff edge” for some families, who fear losing out on their eligibility for SCP if they take on extra hours of work. I presume that now is the right time to go into it. What work are you and your team doing on that? What mitigation is there around that and what thinking is being done?

Secondly, I go back to Pam Duncan-Glancy’s question, to which I do not think that I heard an answer. Once ADP is fully transferred and is being run by Social Security Scotland, do you intend to increase that benefit as you have increased the other benefits that are now being run by the agency? Once all the transfers have taken place, do you see a further increase happening, or do you see the amount staying aligned with the UK figure?

I put on record my thanks to the kinship carers who gave evidence to us. I think that all of us who were there were deeply moved by what we heard.

I have two questions to follow up on Emma Roddick’s question. I appreciate that this is about good practice and how things work on the ground, but there is a lot of confusion around the definition of kinship care. For example, if kinship carers are defined in a certain way, they get certain benefits and help, and if they are defined in a different way, they get other benefits and face other issues. That is very confusing for those on the ground. Can further guidance be given, without legislating, in relation to the understanding of kinship care?

In our session last week, I was particularly struck by one individual who told us that two of their grandchildren were given to them because their son or daughter could not look after them. They had no follow up from social work for months—literally months—and when they did work to their house to adapt it to allow the children to stay, they were given no financial support. Such situations do not seem to be exceptional; they seem to happen a lot of the time, and part of that is down to definitions. I appreciate that that is how the system works in practice, but definitions matter, and I wonder whether further work could be done with COSLA on the support that is required. Certainly, it is inappropriate to leave a grandparent with children for several months without any follow-up at all.