Good morning and welcome to this 10th meeting of the Equality and Human Rights Committee of 2017, making the usual request that mobile phones are either switched off or on flight mode, silent mode. We haven't received any apologies this morning from the committee, so we fully expect our colleague Alex Cole-Hamlin to be here. Our first agenda item this morning is to welcome our new committee member to the committee, cymhinydd gael Ross a ddymonwad gael ei wneud hynny fel y cymhinydd. Rwy'n fawr i'r cymhinydd bywyd. Gael arwain. Gael ar y trwy'n ddod. Rwy'n fawr i'n ei gweld. Rwy'n fawr i'n fawr i'n fawr i'r gyllid ynghylch推g. Dedech chi'n gwybod y mae heddiw pan wenithiau yn Llywodraethol, ac yn ei pobl yn cymhinydd i'r Prifysgol. Mae'n ddiwybod i'r cymhinydd yn gwybod Llywodraeth. ond weithio fydd yw, a I came forward to working on that. On that. Moving on swiftly to agenda item two, which is a part of our substantive inquiry on desitution asylum and insecure immigration status, we have two panels with us this morning. The first of those panels is with the Kear Inspectorate. We are very pleased that you could be here. We have with us Helen Harper, who is the chief inspector. Thursa Wilson, who is the service manager for registration and inspection, is pleased felly rwy'n credu hynny gynnwys chi. Rwy'n credu bod yn gweithio gwybodaeth nhw'n gallu weld yn bryd rhywbeth a yn rhan o'r byd, ac mae'n gweithio ar gyfer os ymweld â'u fanf hardship ac rwy'n pryd yw eu byddwyd yn caer i'ch gael i weld ar y dod wedi'u i fynd ychydig sy'n dweud. Ond ardechis i地en chi'n hyn ar y broses ac ar gyfer y peisio arlaed rwy'n credu a yn mynd i rwy'n cael ei ddoi. Thank you very much for the invitation to participate. We really welcome that. The Cade Inspectorate is Scotland's independent care regulator. We register and inspect a very wide range of care services right across the country. With colleagues from other scrutiny partners, we carry out joint inspections of how well health and care partnerships are improving outcomes for older people in their communities. With a wide range of scrutiny partners, we conduct joint inspections of how well community planning partners are supporting good experiences and good outcomes for children and young people. That is a programme of work that is about to conclude at the end of this year. We also engage with local authorities and with integration joint boards about their role in assessment and planning and as both providers of care services but also as commissioners of care services. My role in the Cade Inspectorate as chief inspector of strategic scrutiny is to be responsible for our joint inspection work. My colleague Thurza Wilson, who is with me today, has particular responsibility around inspection of regulated care services for children and registration of those services. Thank you very much. Thurza, do you want to give us a insight into the work that you do? I lead up the registration teams that register all care services from children to adults. I have been involved with local authorities in relation to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and supporting local authorities to make sure that the services that they are providing are fit for purpose and suitable for the young people. Thank you very much. As I say, it is great to have you here today. Across the committee, we have been on quite a few visits to different groups and organisations and looked at the work that they do. Across the committee, we have all different experiences within and outwith politics in some of those areas. We are very interested in the work that you do, as you say, for regulating and inspecting and ensuring that there are high care standards in place. One of the key issues that we have picked up in the course of this inquiry is around unaccompanied young people and about age assessments and disputes over that, about specific accommodation and how long that corporate parent stays in place. There is a whole thread of different avenues of areas where we feel that we should shine some light. The opening question for our committee is, what is the experience of the work that you have done and the regulated services that you look after as far as unaccompanied young people? Is there any pitfalls there? Is there any tensions there? Is there any good practice that maybe we could highlight in our report? I see something to start with about the joint inspections. Perhaps there is something to see about regulatory care service work. In our joint inspections, we look very closely at the journeys of young people who are looked after and who are vulnerable for a number of reasons. Some of them are looked after in different settings. Some may be subject to child protection measures or are vulnerable for other reasons. The numbers of children and young people who are unaccompanied has been very small that we have come across during that inspection work. It is variable depending on the area of Scotland that we have been in. Some areas have a larger number of young people who would come into that category than others. Some areas have no young people at all. We do not have enough evidence to draw broad conclusions and broad trends. What we can say is that we see local authorities taking very seriously the responsibilities to meet the needs of those young people. However they present, whether they are young people who have arrived more recently as part of a planned migration to Scotland or whether they are young people who have spontaneously presented and perhaps have had very different experiences as that happens. I agree obviously with what Helen was saying. The numbers so far have been very small but some of the local authorities have been very proactive in thinking ahead and thinking, what can we do if we are presented with these young people? What is the best way that we in this area can support these young people? My role and the team that I work with have been working with local authorities to try and support them to be innovative and to provide the kind of support that the young people are needing. It is variable at the moment but there are very small numbers. We have found some disparity across local authorities and even across local offices with slightly different procedures and policies in place for vulnerable families, especially when there are young children involved and we will probably interrogate some of that with the Cabinet Secretary later in the day. Is your experience that you have seen some of that difference in interpretation of policy, let's be diplomatic about it, because I think maybe it is interpretation of policy and how maybe different local authorities have interpreted that, but have you seen any of that disparity within local authorities across different maybe area teams and local offices? I think that it is certainly fair to say that in general terms the assessment that we know is very variable and assessment is really at the heart of understanding children's needs and that is very variable between local authorities but also still within local authorities. This is a very complicated territory. The legislation is complicated, the rules and so on are very complicated and change quite a lot and I certainly would feel that improved guidance would be helpful, particularly for local authorities for whom this is not an everyday occurrence. I think that what's important to appreciate is that a statutory status should not be the determinant for meeting children's needs and we would certainly want to see local authorities expect to see local authorities assessing needs thoroughly and robustly and appropriately and then finding ways to meet those individual needs. Children and young people who are migrating and who are appearing for local authorities have very different unique needs at times and those need to be properly assessed and then services put in place that will meet those. That doesn't hinge on one particular route so that may explain some of the variability is that local authorities are actually doing what's good practice in assessing needs and trying to meet those in that way. I think we're going to dig into this a bit deeper but I'm going to open up to questions to Mary. Thank you very much, convener and I'm really pleased you could both join us this morning. We've heard a lot of evidence as we've been doing this inquiry and there are a couple of specific areas that have caused me quite considerable concern. Helen, you touched on one of them in your answer to the convener previously and that's on the issue of evidence because it concerns me the lack of data that is collected, the way it's collected, the information that's collected and the way it's used. I wonder if you might want to expand on the comment that you made about evidence. Have you come across adequate data collection? Data collection is actually used to build services, to build on the support that's needed for people? Local authorities are under no obligation to tell us if they are providing services for unaccompanied children and young people unless they are looking to register a service or vary an existing registration of a care service. So we don't have a complete picture across the country of which local authorities are looking after young people who are unaccompanied and where those young people are and what services are being provided for them. I can see that it might be very useful for Scottish Government to have a better system for collecting that kind of information. Our information comes from our inspections and inspection evidence, and therefore that will depend entirely on where young people are and how often we're inspecting and what we're seeing. So that's what I mean by our evidence. Of course, if the data that's collected is not collected in the same way across the country, you'll get a different picture anyway. So it is really important that however it's collected, it's collected in the same way regardless of what local authority area that it's in, and that helps to build on whatever support is offered. We do know that, in general, not thinking specifically about this group of children and young people, community planning partners operate in very variable ways about how they collect information about children and young people, how they use that information to use that as an assessment, to build on the services that they have, to decide what to invest in and what not to invest in. Some partnerships are quite sophisticated in what they are collecting, and others are really much further back in that journey. So that would apply generally not just to this group of children and young people. Do you have any evidence of communication and co-operation between organisations across Scotland in sharing that information? Because, again, we've heard differences in how information is shared. Do you have any information on that? We know that local authorities are actually very willing to look for help from others where they are presented with something that's unusual for them. So we know that our Glasgow, for example, has a much longer tradition than any other local authority and has much greater numbers. So they have far more experience in catering for this group of children and young people. We know that local authorities often lift the phone and try to find somebody to help. Say, we have a situation that's presented today and we have this young person who would like to meet their needs. There have been some, in the last few months, some very useful sharing of good practice and sharing of information through COSLA, through other seminars. That's been very welcomed, I think, and there's been a buzz about that. I think that it would be very helpful for that to be stimulated and supported because it can be very isolating if you're in one small place and then suddenly you're faced with a situation to respond to. When COSLA came to give us evidence, I mean, COSLA were very keen to tell us of the work they had done with the Syrian refugee programme and I think that it should be acknowledged the good work that they have done. The top level of COSLA are more than happy to tell us about all the policies that they have in place, all the guidance that they have in place, all the joint working that they do, and it's almost the kind of all singing, all dancing, everything works perfectly. But we have heard conflicting evidence that on the ground that is not happening. There is almost a disparity of what's been shared, things aren't filtering down, and it kind of leads on to the point that the convener made at the beginning. It's not actually the policy itself, it's the way they're used. Some evidence we've heard suggests that the guidance that local authorities have needs to be urgently updated with the help and support of partner organisations. Do you have a view on that? I would absolutely agree that updating guidance and so on is very helpful, but it's about how that guidance is disseminated and used that's really critical. That can only happen at local level. It happens with good leadership, it happens with a concerted effort to say that this is very important and we're driving this through. But there are so many things that your average social worker on a duty team who may then be faced with something is trying to get a grip of and deal with. So it really is about having very simple routes for getting accurate information and an accurate understanding of what might be in front of you and some help and support with that. My view is that guidance should be almost a living document. It shouldn't be something that sits on a shelf and gathers dust. I think that's been one of my biggest concerns, that there is acknowledgement that guidance is there and it is refreshed and updated. It's almost a tick box exercise that this is refreshed and updated and then we move on to something else and nothing is done. I've also been quite concerned about the almost postcode lottery of the cavern support that's available across the country. Is that something you've come across as well? We certainly know that in terms of performance in meeting children's needs, I wouldn't use the term postcode lottery but I would say it's variable. We've published a number of reports which have indicated that there's still a lot of work to do to bring everybody up to a level where needs are well-made and consistently well-made, not just across areas but even within particular areas. Yes, I agree. Thank you. It sort of leads me into a brief supplementary before I bring everybody back in. We had some evidence from an asylum-seeking young woman who had a support person with her who has went through lots of systems and appeals and was able enough and supported enough to make complaints when the system had failed. However, other evidence that we've heard is obviously you're dealing with a group of people who are already a bit afraid of authority, of organisations of statutory bodies, of telling their whole story and the impact that may then have on them. Many of them said that they would not go down a complaints procedure. How, as an inspectorate, do you get the evidence? I would suspect that if it was an older adult's care home, for instance, that wasn't treating their residents very well, you would hear about that. In this instance, it's unlikely that you would hear about some of this unless you get a anecdotally third party from other organisations who are maybe the support organisations, and that's difficult for you to interrogate that as well. How do we resolve that, because the people we spoke to said that they would not complain when they had a bad service or they had been given bad advice or bad information? How do we fix that, because that's part of the problem? It's probably worth prefacing this with the fact that we are aware that we have relatively few complaints given to us about care services from children and young people, and that's relative in relation to the number of complaints that we have about older people's services. We think that there are a number of factors at play. One may be about young people not using a formal route. It may be about our profile and visibility with young people. It may be that young people have other routes in which to complain through who cares, for example, and other advocacy services. It may be that young people have good services, so we're not making any assumptions about that. As part of our own organisations corporate parenting approach, we are looking at that whole area about how we engage better with young people in order to make sure that we have an ear for them. As part of our continual revision in our inspection methodology, we are looking at how we support our inspectors to spend more time in and around services in order to be able to have a listening ear and observe what's going on for young people because we know that young people don't necessarily use the same routes as older people and as other adults in order to tell us what they think. That's an area of work for ourselves. Other things that we are doing is using inspection volunteers much more, young people themselves who have maybe been through the system as part of our inspection methodology, and they can engage with people who are receiving the service as well. We are trying to look at different ways of how we can be accessible to the young people. We've heard some evidence from some very vulnerable families who, when faced with difficult situations within, maybe, we're a duty social worker in an area team in a local office, and we've been told that if this is going to become difficult in your destitute and you're on the streets, then our only responsibility is to the children, and therefore we'll take the children into care. The last thing that family's going to do is then make a complaint to the social worker complaints authority or to ourselves because they then think that's them exposing themselves even more to that system who would take their child into care. We've heard that not just from one family but from a number of families, which is extremely concerning. How do you, as an organisation, ensure that there's a safe place for that family to make that complaint, so that they don't feel more vulnerable and more at risk of losing their kids? We know that there is a need for more advocacy services for children and young people and for families who may be in that situation. The third sector plays a very important role often in advocating for children and young people. In terms of that point, local authorities are placed often in very invidious positions because of the legislation. There's a very nuanced message there about what local authorities may be able to provide in terms of support to a family under the legislation where they can provide support to the child but not to the adult unless it breaches the child's human rights. It's very complicated and nuanced message. It's a difficult message to give to somebody, particularly if local authorities are struggling to find interpreters and so on. That is very difficult. I accept that. My apologies for my late rival. Thank you for coming to see us today. I should start by declaring an interest in that, before I came to this place, I worked for an organisation that delivered Scotland's guardianship service for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. I was also the convener of the Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights. I'm keen to hear your views in terms of the care inspectorate and the principal line of inspection for social work in this country as to how the knowledge on the ground of individual social workers operating right across Scotland at both points of entry to the UK but also in big metropolitan areas where unaccompanied asylum-seeking children will present. What is your view as to the picture today in terms of the knowledge base there as to what to do when an unaccompanied asylum-seeking young person and their age might be in dispute presents to social work in terms of the application of section 23 orders, section 25 orders and the obvious vulnerabilities particularly if there's a suspicion that that young person has been trafficked. We don't have inspection evidence to draw on for that, so what I would be giving you is really quite impressionistic from our network of contacts with local authority services and it's important to see that at the beginning. It is a very complicated area and as we were saying earlier on in areas such as Glasgow where there are specialists in the field where the numbers have been substantial there are places for workers to be able to go and get that kind of support and advice quite readily. For other areas who have had very few presentations of young people maybe no presentations of young people then I would be saying that it would be unwise to feel that everybody has all the knowledge that they need. However, knowledge is one thing, practice confidence is another and if you're going to be in a situation where it will likely occur very rarely that you'll have a presentation of a family or a young person then we can't just rely on people being given a piece of information or attending some training two years ago. So we have to find ways of having live documents and networks of support that people can draw on in order to be able to do that. In social work practice, irrespective of whether it's about asylum or anything else, is there a culture operationally for when a social worker, perhaps a junior social worker perhaps a senior social worker isn't entirely sure what to do with the situation? Is there a culture or practice for a new friend or a national maybe yourself or social work in Scotland? Is that something that permeates the culture of social work in Scotland? It would be false to think that social workers are working out there just in a vacuum. They work within a duty system, they work with managers who are able to call on and so on. As I said, where we have quite specialist needs, it's knowing who to call, who to be able to access at any particular time. There are some fundamentals of good practice in terms of assessment, whatever you're assessing. In terms of children and young people, the structures that are in place around looked after children, particularly where those children are accommodated, and some processes that have been put in place to support the implementation of getting it right for every child are very useful mechanisms and structures for social workers to make decisions and to involve their multi-agency partners in making decisions. We also know that in one area of Scotland that we've come across services there are using the standard child protection systems that are in place, which is a multi-agency structure for involving other agencies as well as social work in looking at presentations of concerns about children. They're using that existing structure wherever a child may present and may have been trafficked because that would be seen as a child protection issue. That seems to be early days, but that seems to be a really helpful framework. If I may have one more question. We are in a changing landscape in respect of the way in which we treat any asylum seekers or victims of trafficking, particularly with the nascent human trafficking act in Scotland. A case that we were involved with when I was working with Abel Aira was the situation involving two young guys from Vietnam who had been arrested as part of a cannabis cultivation farm, although they had been victims of trafficking. Despite the Lord Advocate guidance at the time, they were held in HNP Pullmont. We had to work very closely with the Children's Commissioner and the Justice Secretary and the Lord Advocate to get them released. Are the lines of communication sufficient? Subsequent to that, the Lord Advocate changed that to instructions so that nobody should be held against deprived of liberty if they are held in those situations. Is that knowledge-based clear among social workers so that they can, because I am not entirely sure that is still clear throughout the justice division and the police and the rest of it, but it would help to know that social workers were absolutely clear on the rights and instructions around asylum seekers, particularly victims of trafficking in that regard. Are you confident that those channels of communication, that information, has been disseminated down to the social workforce? I am sorry, I am not able to answer to give you a direct answer on that. I would say that the new act is very helpful in clarifying that and in terms of child protection procedures, those are constantly being re-looked at and updated and disseminated with the same caveats that we spoke about earlier on about writing a policy and updating a document is one thing, but disseminating itself. Getting that understanding and that appreciation, trafficking that children who are presenting, where we do not know what their background is and their experience, is a child protection issue and should be dealt with under child protection measures is a really helpful thing. For older young people, that interface between child protection and older young people is a very difficult issue and will remain a difficult issue. Good morning and welcome. That may be a question that you cannot answer, so please feel free to say so. We have heard evidence over the past few weeks that the civilian people coming have been treated very well. There has been a lot of joined-up thinking between local government, NHS, Scottish Government. First, would you agree with that? Had that been your experience? Is that simply due to money or is there something more underlying that, why that has worked and why perhaps somebody who arrives by themselves is working less well? Is it purely a money financial thing or is there something more behind that? I am not able to answer that question fully and I certainly cannot answer that second bit about whether there is about money. I think that what we can see is that towards the latter end of last year, when there was a lot of publicity around the pending closure of the transit camps in France and Belgium, that there was a concerted effort and a lot of discussion amongst local authorities around what the response might be and that stimulated people's thinking and discussion and that certainly meant that there was more thought perhaps into what people might do and a time for preparation and that certainly stimulated some discussion with us. I do not know if there is a few. A with Helen, certainly once we realise that we might get quite a lot of young people from France. There was a lot of discussion and support from local authorities with each other about how we can do this and what is the best way to support these young people. Again, it depended on the age of the young people and what their circumstances were and what was to be the best way of supporting them when they got here. I can just ask a very different second question. I have to confess until last night when I was reading my papers that I did not fully understand what role you had in all of this. How do you advertise yourself? I think that it was the community that said, if you are a vulnerable child, vulnerable family in Glasgow today, Edinburgh, whoever, how do they know about you? Who would point them towards you? How do you advertise yourself? If we do not know that you have a role within this, a lot of other people will not either. We have quite a visible presence in our care services. Young people who are involved in care services and are already using those, we have quite a visible presence. We have a website. We have quite a high profile on lots of areas across the country. I think that in relation to a vulnerable family, that is a much more challenging question for us about what our profile might be with a family who is not currently using a care service. I think that that is a difficult question. However, I should make one point that in relation to making a complaint about a service to the care inspectorate, we do not have a locus in taking complaints about social work services in general. We have a locus in taking complaints about care services, and that is why we are presences within care services. Does that make sense? Thank you. I want to come back in, because I have something to come back in on, but you go first, Mary. I just wanted to explore a bit more the issue of GERFEC. You may not be able to answer this, but I would be interested to hear your view if you can give it. If the GERFEC works correctly, it should adequately and fully support a child. The young people and adults who have met throughout the inquiry have on the whole said that they have had a very positive welcome when they have been settled in a community. We have heard some examples where there has been on-going and continuing discrimination, which has had a huge impact on their mental and physical welfare. I wonder, within the structure of GERFEC, is there enough there so that a holistic approach can be taken? It is not about meeting just the physical or the material needs of a child and a family. It is about making sure that they are emotionally supported and emotionally within the community that they are properly supported. If they are not properly supported within the community, that can have a massive impact on their welfare. Is there enough within the structures that exist to almost branch out into community organisations to make sure that, if something is picked up, it is fed into them? We have quite a lot of inspection evidence that would tell us that one of the parts of the GERFEC approach, which is working well, has been the embracing of the eight wellbeing indicators for children as a vehicle relief to help to create a common language around how to meet children's needs. Where people are getting together to consider children's needs and planning, it is giving a shared language. Those eight areas of wellbeing include issues such as identity and wellbeing, inclusion, respect of responsibility and so on. We know that some indicators, people find it easier to get hold of than others. When it comes to health, people know what they are talking about or are safe. It is much more difficult when we are talking about concepts such as respect and responsibility, but those are proving to be very helpful, a helpful framework to start to think about that. The GERFEC approach is still being driven out across services. By no means would we be confident that all services have understood that the concepts are important and that they need to think in that way. There is still much more work to do with that, but that framework is very helpful in taking us beyond just what is in front of us and starting to think much more about the parts of children's wellbeing that really make for a positive, inclusive experience and help them to go on to become happy, safe, confident adults. My question leads quite nicely on from that. It was when you mentioned the Calais kids and the preparations that were put in place for that. When we had the Scottish Children's Young People's Commissioner here a few weeks ago, he had mentioned the issue around disputed age assessments. A lot of the young people may have been brought in in those specific schemes, being age assessed in England under a different policy as an adult, then put through the adult system. They arrive here because the dispersal scheme brings them here. We realise very quickly that this is not an adult, it is a child. Some of the evidence that we heard is the tension in attempting to change that status for that young person because the adult services will not meet their needs at all. Whether that is something that you have come across yet, whether there is enough evidence of that and whether local authorities are ready for it. I know that Glasgow has done some work on age disputes over the past few years, but how is that information shared via your inspection of the good practice being shared with other local authorities in order for them to ensure that one of the two or the three young people that may come across their threshold are cared for appropriately? I do not have any evidence of that. There has not been enough. In Scotland, we view children as children for longer. That is built into our legislation and that is, in our view, a very positive thing that we would be looking to meet the needs of young people as children and young people, not as just young adults in that sense. That brings its own tensions, but in our view, that is a more positive thing and allows a framework for more positive and age-appropriate experiences for young people. That is about how the immigration system determines status. You said in your opening remarks that status should not be an issue here, but in a lot of cases it is. We hoped to have the immigration inspector at committee via video conference, but all sorts of things came together that did not allow that to happen. That is really good information from that inspectorate from that point of view, so that is something that we will probably work on as well. I have not got any more questions. Is the pan, colleagues? No. I think that we have exhausted our questions to this morning and almost bang on time as well, which does not usually happen. I thank you both for your evidence to this morning and I make the usual request. If you go away and you think that we should have said this, can you please just get in touch with the clerks? We will be compiling this report over the next couple of weeks in order to get it finalised and out into the public domain. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. I look forward to reading the report now. I am going to the suspense committee for about five minutes for a quick comfort break, and we will convene back at 5 past 10. It is coming out there, but it is not coming out there. Ox1 is PA, right? No, it is coming out of the customs. For the whole, they have also started in the centre of Norfolk. Good morning. Welcome back to the Equality, Human Rights Committee. To the second panel this morning on our substantive inquiry on asylum, destitution and insecure immigration status. With us for the second panel this morning, we welcome Cabinet Secretary Angela Constance, Cabinet Secretary for Communities, Social Security and Equalities. She will be supported this morning by Leslie Irvine, who is the head of equality policy, equality, human rights and the third sector, and Caroline Uni, who is the head of corporate, parent and formal care. Good morning and thank you so much for coming along to committee. This is the last session, no doubt, in this inquiry, although we have on-going correspondence with many organisations and governments, and parts of governments, in order to get as robust information as we can. We are really grateful for you to come along this morning. Cabinet Secretary, I believe maybe you want to see the opening remarks. Good morning, colleagues, and thank you very much for inviting me to give evidence to this very important inquiry, which I believe will bring a much-needed focus to the issue of destitution, asylum and insecure immigration status in Scotland. As we all know, asylum and immigration are currently reserved to the UK Government, and this includes decisions on visa and asylum applications, accommodation and financial support for asylum seekers. However, the Scottish Government believes that, when people come to live in Scotland, they should be supported as part of our communities to live and lead fulfilling lives. I believe that destitution should absolutely never be an outcome of the asylum process, and frankly, it's outrageous that people fleeing war, terror and persecution should end up destitute or homeless in a country where they have sought refuge and sanctuary. I very much agree with other witnesses, convener, who have presented evidence to the inquiry, who have said that destitution is built into the asylum system, whether this is in the rate set for asylum support, or the length of time people wait for support, or in the ending of support for many of those who have been refused asylum. In this situation, I believe, we'll only get worse when the asylum support provisions of the Immigration Act 2016 are implemented and support will be cut further. I want to say a wee bit about the impact of destitution firstly and most importantly it is devastating for the people who are directly affected. Many who are or have been in the asylum system have suffered trauma that we could barely imagine and to then find themselves homeless and penniless and so vulnerable must just be absolutely unbearable. Destitution does not only impact on the individual it impacts on our communities as well. We believe that asylum seekers and refugees should be welcomed and supported to integrate into our communities from day one of arrival. This is the key principle of our new Scots strategy and if people have to spend all their time fighting off destitution and are susceptible to exploitation then integration becomes impossible. This is first and foremost devastating for the individuals but it is also a big loss for our communities. Government both national and local the third sector and charities in Scotland are all literally paying the price of the UK Government's policies they are all paying for the services and support that would not be required if people were not being left destitute by an asylum and immigration system. The success of the Syrian resettlement programme shows what can actually be achieved when programmes are sufficiently funded but it also shows up a chasm between the support that people arriving on resettlement programmes receive and the complete lack of support available to people on the asylum system including those who have actually received refugee status and this is driving the creation of a two-tier system and risks a division between communities. I am particularly concerned about the needs of asylum-seeking children both those who are unaccompanied and those who are with their families. I do find it difficult to understand how the UK Government could be so heartless as to remove the safety that was provided by the Dubs amendment for the most vulnerable unaccompanied children in Europe. The Dubs amendment has provided the only legal route for unaccompanied children outwith the Middle East and North Africa to reach the UK and with the news of the destruction of the camp near Dunkirk in a fire earlier this month the plight of these children without homes and without their families can only get worse I fear. I've said previously that unaccompanied children are ours, they're our kids and the interests of all their children must always be paramount and the Scottish Government is working to try and ensure that all children receive the protection and the support that they need and I'm sure that we'll discuss this later. So very happy, convener, to be here this morning to respond to your questions as best I can and I look forward to the committee's recommendations of course. Thanks very much, cabinet secretary. We're going to go straight into questions on many of the points that you have articulated in your opening statement. I'm going to start with David Torrance. Thank you, convener, and good morning, cabinet secretary. Can you give me your views on the Surin Resettlement programme and the services for unaccompanied children? Yeah, I mean I think overall the Surin Resettlement programme has worked very well in Scotland. We were able to very quickly reach out and step up to the plate and offer support to Syrian refugees and Scotland was able to stand together very quickly to participate in the Surin Resettlement programme. In a large part due to the new Scottish strategy, which is a partnership strategy, so those partnerships between local and national government and the refugee council were already existing and we already had that view that integration has to start from day one. So we were in a good place to welcome refugees to open my heart, open my doors and I think overall the Surin Refugee programme has been a huge success. 30 local authorities are participating. 1600 refugees from that programme have resettled in Scotland. We shouldn't be complacent though. I've had the great pleasure of meeting many refugee families who have participated in that programme and I think there's always things to learn from any process, even where overall it's worked well and that learning from the Surin Resettlement programme is very important in terms of how we refresh our new Scottish strategy moving forward. In terms of unaccompanied children 35 children have company Scotland under the Dubs amendment. There are 150 unaccompanied children who've made their way to Scotland in spontaneous routes. These children are of course supported by the guardianship service which I know committee and particular members will be very familiar with. The First Minister convened around the table a few months ago on our attempts as a nation and as a country to galvanise support for unaccompanied children. All but five Scottish local authorities have expressed an interest in supporting unaccompanied children so Scotland stands ready to do more. My officials are in discussions with the Home Office because there are some barriers there are issues around funding Mark McDonald and the children's officials will be taking forward the work to do with a national transfer scheme so that we could welcome children who have already arrived in Kent. So there is a lot of work on going to do more for unaccompanied children as I said in my opening remarks it is with great dismay that we find the UK Government have turned their back on the Dubs amendment. Thank you, cabinet secretary. An evidence previously given to us by COSLA, that was the example we gave of best working practices as a civilian refugees programme but from evidence that we have also taken from individuals there doesn't seem to be the same level of service for other asylum seekers or refugees across Scotland. How do we ensure that we share the information in best working practices are shared across all local authorities so that every asylum seeker or refugee gets the same level of services? There is a fundamental issue here in that as I said in my opening remarks we are at risk of creating a two-tier system where we have seen an exemplar programme, not necessarily perfect in all cases but in a civilian resettlement programme that has worked well and then there are other routes into the asylum and immigration system where we know there are greater problems as perhaps the way to put it so there is a real risk that we are creating a two-tier system and fundamentally that's not right it's why in our engagement with the UK Government about things like the future of the accommodation contract for asylum seekers that we are arguing very strongly that integration support should be fundamental and part of the support for accommodation so we shouldn't just look at support for refugees and asylum seekers in silos that it's financial, it's accommodation it's integration to rebuild your life we need an end-to-end system that is holistic in the support that it offers to all refugees and asylum seekers as opposed to having quite bespoke programmes that are working very well we can't have a two-tier system Gail Ross on that point just to pick up something that the cabinet secretary mentioned in an answer to David Torrance's first question you said five local authorities have not participated is that in the resettlement programme? No, no, no 30 local authorities have participated in the Syrian resettlement programme and I think that's fantastic 30 out of 32 local authorities I mean that's a tremendous response in terms of unaccompanied children 27 local authorities have expressed a willingness and interest to do more to support unaccompanied children and I think that also has to be commended It's absolutely excellent it just concerns me that there are local authorities that haven't expressed an interest or the two local authorities that are not participating in the programme Do we know why? Well I think it is important that in programmes or in the dispersal system it should be voluntary and I think that where local authorities have a reticence it's actually about the support and in particular the financial support that would be available for them to participate in programmes so there is an overwhelming desire to help where there's a reticence it's usually around concerns around immigration and asylum so understandably local authorities as corporate parents and if we take the example of unaccompanied children they're looked after children under our legislation rightly so and local authorities have a responsibility for unaccompanied children even when all rights are expired even when they've reached the end of that asylum process and they've been successful local authorities as corporate parents still have a responsibility towards those children so you can understand that the reticence and part I suppose I would rather focus on the fact that 27 local authorities have said we would be up for doing more to support some of the most vulnerable children in the world and that 30 out of 32 local authorities in Scotland are participating in the Surin recently programme on that. Do you think that funding provided by the Home Office for unaccompanied children is enough? No, I don't. The work undertaken by COSLA shows that there's a shortfall of around £10,000 per child per annum. There are on-going discussions between COSLA Scottish Government and Home Office officials and there's some suggestion that they're reviewing levels of support and I've just written to Robert Goodwill who's the immigration minister for the UK Government on a range of issues. As you can imagine, I write to the UK Government regularly and I think I've written about 12 letters to them since being in this post. I don't always get a reply. That's another matter. But we continue to engage with the UK Government with the Home Office because we want to overcome the barriers and Scotland stands ready to do more. Thank you. For your information, we have invited Robert Goodwill to the committee, offered all sorts of ways that he could give evidence to the committee but that invitation was not taken up. Jeremy Balfour. Good morning, cabinet secretary. Thank you very much for coming along. I suppose that I wanted to follow up a wee bit the points that have already been made. I mean, we've heard kind of at a high level COSLA chief executive directors of local authorities that there's always great practice, there's lots of guidelines, there's bits of paper kicking around. But then we've heard from individuals who have had face-to-face contact with a social worker or with some other kind of officer, which has been very negative. And I appreciate that this is beyond, in some ways, your remit. But what do you think Scottish Government can do to help what is good practice undoubtedly actually filter all the way through so that when somebody picks us up on a Tuesday morning they get the appropriate service that they deserve and are entitled to. I should just, for clarity, see that I'm still a local councillor in Edinburgh City Council. Good. So, your corporate parent. Like all of us, of course. I think it's a good point. Like committee members I've also met individuals and families. I went to visit the British Red Cross. Last week I have spoken to families face-to-face who it's fair to say that experience of front-line services has been less than exemplar.  But we all have a responsibility including the Scottish Government to be very clear about what the law says in Scotland and the rights and needs of the child as paramount. That goes back to the 1995 Children's Scotland Act. I know that committee has discussed it in great detail. Section 22 of the 95 act which makes clear that children should be assessed in the context of their family. Section 25 talks about unaccompanied children being looked after and more recent legislation in terms of the 2014 act is very clear about the continuing care and the aftercare that looked after children are absolutely entitled to as well. We need to be very clear about what the law says about children. I think that that is clear. I think that the rules around the no recourse to public funds for practitioners on the ground can muddy the water because they change a lot. It is not a policy that is owned by the Scottish Government or the local government. I know that COSLA did a lot of work to produce guidance in 2012 but it is an ever-changing area. My officials have been discussing with the unaccompanied asylum seeking children dispersal working group whether it would be helpful for additional guidance around section 22 and section 25 of the 95 act. I think that that group which is meeting again with officials tomorrow is not pressing for additional guidance but we will always consider those requests. I do think that the law about children is very clear. It is much more complex and murky with regards to adults because the 99 immigration act amended section 12 of the social work Scotland act that removed that general welfare provision for asylum seekers and then you are relying on the 1940 national assistance act and that only applies in very particular circumstances that are not driven by destitution as if destitution in itself had enough. The law around no recourse to public funds is very complex but the law about children is clear and I am happy to consider any practical measures that would help but first and foremost we should be saying that the law is clear and our expectations are clear. The needs of children are paramount and the needs of children have to be assessed within the context of their family. Good segue Thank you for coming and thank you for our officials to come as well. My question absolutely dovetails into your remarks just there. Yes, the law in respect of children is clear but the application of that law has not necessarily been as clear on the ground until recently. Certainly for a number of years we were almost outstripped by England in respect of the precedent set by the Hillingdon judgement at risk status to young and accompanied asylum seeking children to the point where they were effectively looked after. We played catch-up to a certain degree I think that we've got there now but even so I think that the understanding on the ground particularly among social workers is not necessarily at this sort of standard we would hope and expect and still we have the situation where young people present unaccompanied seeking asylum at points of entry and in metropolitan areas and present to social work and are not necessarily dealt with under section 25 which we would all hope and expect given their unaccompanied status that they would be. I was struck by the revelation in the last panel session just before you came in that the care inspectorate don't actually have any inspection data on the application of section 25 in respect of young and accompanied asylum seekers presenting to social work. Can we through guidance and policy close that gap and mandate the inspection regime to collect that data but what more can we do to make sure that social workers understand their responsibilities particularly in the grey area where age might be in dispute to presume that somebody is the age they say they are and need to be treated under section 25. Is this a short question? I'll try very hard and give a short answer before I get right off the convener. I think the issue about scrutiny is an interesting one and an important one because I think scrutiny brings with it an awareness and a need to do and helps with consistency. In terms of the work that we've done so far my portfolio and portfolio we are in discussions with the care inspector because we want to find innovative ways to do more to help more unaccompanied children but we can't have a dissipation of standards, absolutely not these children, they are ours the same expectations and standards of care has to apply and if there's a need for better information I'll certainly go away look at that and discuss Mr MacDonald the children's minister as well because I think there is an important point about scrutiny because there is always the risk in any service that there is a chasm between as Jeremy Balfour said what the chief officer says and the glossy bits of paper and what can happen on the ground I would also suggest that the authorities operate that it's probably an issue broader than social work that there will be a need for other professions to be very clear about what the law says around children and I think it's also worth highlighting that when children come to Scotland and if they've been deemed an adult through the immigration system if there's a social work assessment that then considers that adult and child that assessment stands and that need for support stands so we need to be clear about that as well and I appreciate that age assessments are very complex we get into all sorts of ethical issues as well we need to be careful that we're not breaching people's human rights in terms of how we do age assessments it's not an easy bit of work to do it's complex and all the appropriate evidence so I hope that's a helpful answer It is, thank you and if I may just follow up in respect of the issue of human trafficking and we are obviously in the context and landscape of a new trafficking act in Scotland which is coming into force and has come into force there are very particular needs around the interests and welfare of children who have been trafficked and that stems from the right presumption not to prosecute if they are caught in criminal activity they've been compelled to do but again I think there's still a gap about understanding and I think you're very right to raise this it's not just the social work workforce it's every sort of point and organisation that might have interface with those kids that they are aware of the particular vulnerabilities particularly around re-trafficking it's a small phenomenon but it does happen if we don't get the decision right and can we be doing more as legislatures and policy makers to ensure that that knowledge gap is filled Absolutely and the human trafficking strategy will be published and brought forward me this year obviously that involves our justice colleagues I hope that gives the sense that much of this work has to be a cross-government endeavour as well and I think the point about the link between destitution and re-trafficking will be very real Thank you very much, Mary Thank you and good morning Can I just continue on the issue of guidance because we do have a mismatch in the evidence that we've heard from coslin organisations on the ground that there is guidance through the organisation and everyone knows what they should be doing Organisations on the ground tell us that that guidance needs to be urgently refreshed with input from all the partner organisations that are part of this process and I almost think that guidance needs to be a living document but it also needs to be almost an A4 piece of paper to say if this is the need this is what you do then after you've done that and you've supported the family or the young person then you jump through all the hoops and you go through the tome that is guidance to work out what you're meant to do after that but I think we get caught up too much in huge big documents of guidance that are refreshed almost as a tick box exercise but a really important part of guidance is the data that's collected and there is a huge mismatch of the data that is collected and the way it's used and the data should be used to feed into the guidance to make sure it's regularly updated and it does become a live document and I just wonder cabinet secretary how you can influence change in those areas I think it's a really interesting area this year of data there's lots of data I would like to access there's lots of questions I ask all the time about how many asylum seeking children do we have in Scotland that have our all rights expired and it's quite difficult or impossible to get that information from the home office because it's not done in a devolved nations basis so I really appreciate the frustration in trying to get good solid data to inform our decision making processes I suppose I'm conscious as well that there are many different organisations who have data of their own very conscious of the research published by the British Red Cross Council who actually show not just the increasing number of asylum seekers that they've been working with but the increasing number and proportion of asylum seekers that are facing destitution and I think that their research was particularly stark I'm also conscious about overburdening organisations such as the British Red Cross other organisations who are actually trying to deliver a service on the front line but we're open minded I suppose with some of those caveats to consider recommendations and the knowledge that data and information is important but some of those challenges emanate from the home office and I'm conscious that we have front line organisations that are trying to deliver a front line service in terms of the issue of guidance I suspect in terms of the position with regards to children and the law in Scotland we probably could get to that A4 piece of paper and again happy to discuss with COSLA another organisation what would be helpful in that regard I think in terms of guidance there are no recourse to public funds I think there are challenges around that I know the COSLA team which we co-fund the Migration Population Diversity team they've been spending their time rightly so working on issues around unaccompanied children and the Syrian Resettlement Programme but there is perhaps something around the no recourse to public funds forum that might enable us to be getting information to the front line quickly but we're always happy to consider any reflections or recommendations that come from committee Can I just ask a further question about GERFEC and it's a question that I asked the previous panel because the majority of people that we've met while we've been doing this inquiry have had really positive outcomes when they've been settled in an area but we have heard some quite distressing stories about discrimination and persecution and if we think specifically about GERFEC when GERFEC works correctly it should meet all the needs of a child and if it's a child within a family if that child's needs are properly met it has a huge impact on how the family settle and how they feel about Scotland as a country that they've come to and the previous panel said that there are a couple of areas of GERFEC that are quite difficult to measure and you can easily assess and that's around wellbeing which I think is quite crucial given the group of people that we're talking about we don't know the mental trauma and the issues that they have faced and we need to make sure that they are adequately supported and I just wonder if there is a way that we can look at GERFEC and the principles within GERFEC and perhaps make some changes to make it far more easy to understand and easier to measure I suppose the challenge for us all in this area and its entirety is we are trying to make it all easier to understand so actually that the principles that we know that we can firmly hang our coat on actually apply on the ground so again if there are specific recommendations that the committee wants to make I'll give an undertaking to look at that but also to do so in collaboration whether that's with justice colleagues or the Children's Minister a lot of time and effort has been invested in GERFEC I think there's a cross-party commitment to GERFEC so it's always worth revisiting and revising the areas because wellbeing is not necessarily a straightforward issue to assess as any front-line worker would tell you to look at that It's probably falling on from Alex's and Mary's and probably a bit of Jeremy's it's about the refresh guidance because we've heard from a lot of people saying that the guidance is there but it does need updated quite urgently and my sort of question to that then is we know that the assessments get done at the front line but we've heard that not every local authority carries out the same assessment for unaccompanied children so do we think the training is there for those carrying out the assessments or do we think that needs refreshed as well at the time because if you, for example a social worker in Glasgow you are more used to dealing with these and you've probably got a lot of support round about you but if you're coming from a different local authority and this is something that isn't an everyday occurrence to complete the assessment I think that there's probably a fair reflection that in some areas and in some local authority areas they're very well versed they're experienced in supporting refugees and asylum seekers and unaccompanied children and for other areas their experience is fresher and newer and of course the advantage of the Surinry settlement programme is that 30 out of 32 local authorities are now actively working supporting refugees there is still particularly in terms of asylum seekers Glasgow is still the only area that's participating in the dispersal programme and that the Home Office are having discussions with other local authorities so a lot of that expertise particularly around unaccompanied children does indeed rest with Glasgow who over the years have supported in the region of 500 unaccompanied children but as I said earlier 35 children that came through dubs they haven't all went to Glasgow there are 150 unaccompanied children who've come to Scotland through spontaneous routes so it is changing the only local authority with that experience so there will always be that issue about how we share best practice as part of the new Scots strategy there's the integration forum there are various social work forums, community learning and development forums so that's something that we can discuss with COSLA just to ensure that the way in which best practice is shared that's up to date and actually the most effective way to do it we may all sit here in the committee room have our own notions about how best to share best practice but actually it's about what works for those that are on the ground it's just obviously it's slightly concerning to know that assessments have been carried out differently in different local authorities by individuals but I take on board what you've said and best practice should be the way it works so Can I just pick up a point on dispersal and dispersal scheme we've interrogated a lot the difference between the Syrian family resettlement scheme as a gold standard and all the others one of the aspects of the Syrian family resettlement scheme was the way that local authorities the government the third sector and even Civic Scotland came together on that in the future of other dispersals where the UK Government are talking about the Kent kids for instance and issues like that what influence has the Scottish Government had in any of that have you had even any discussions on it because some of the evidence that we heard from some of the organisations where we opposed which would then create another layer of a different procedure which we could maybe put other people at risk and especially if it's young people that is contrasted with if they have been assessed as an adult in the English system and they come here and we assess them as a child we heard from the care inspector earlier that status shouldn't matter but we know very clearly that in order to get support status does matter so maybe I'll be insight into where the Scottish Government have had any influence on that or even any input I met with Robert Goodwill last year at the end of last year, I think it was last October to discuss a range of issues Primarily to say him the Syrian Resettlement Program in Scotland has worked well at that time over about a quarter or a third of people who had come to the UK in the Syrian Resettlement Program were actually in Scotland, it's now at 23.7% so it's a real success story not just about the partnership that we have on the ground in Scotland but actually it showed that the strength of the resettlement programme that the UK Government had put together and the weakness is that we're going to have a two-tier system so if you compare dispersal with the Syrian Resettlement Programme so 30 out of 32 local authorities were willing and actually were able to participate in that because of the type of support that was coming from the UK Government in terms of the wider dispersal programme that support is not the same it's not there the dispersal programme will be seen in the context of the 2016 Immigration Act which is making the UK as a whole a more hostile place to seek refuge it seeks to increase opportunities to criminalise folk that are seeking refuge it's going to cut financial support even further when those parts of the act are introduced to Scotland so there's a lot of real barriers for local authorities to participate in that wider dispersal programme so perhaps it's not surprising that the Syrian Resettlement Programme nearly all local authorities willing and able to participate so that people are taking a more cautious approach with dispersal so that was an important part of my conversations with Robert Goodwill and the frequent correspondence that I sent to him Amber Rudd Home Office the other area that we have tried to influence is the future direction of accommodation contracts you'll have seen that the Home Affairs Committee report on that where I think we had a small influence or quite a discreet progress was around the issue of family reunion so some of the processes around family reunion have been improved and the fact that people on the Syrian Resettlement Programme instead of having humanitarian status or having refugee status which will make family reunion and travel much easier we can point to quite discreet aspects of progress but we are always chatting at the door of the UK Government and the Home Office in particular to say there's a different and there's a better way to do things convener you're right, the Gold Star was the Syrian Resettlement Programme the wider dispersal programme and the work around unaccompanied children has really to catch up with that you touched on where my next question was going anyway we've heard some very powerful evidence from the destitution housing support organisations and Mary and I went along to visit one and Tory Glenn brilliant piece of work but absolutely harrow and listening to the stories we heard some evidence from Prost of Action and Housing and some evidence from TB nurses who are doing some work on the ground with photographs of very very poor accommodation very unscrupulous landlords and organisations who are running some of that accommodation on the top of that when some of these families are presented to social work for a social work assessment a human rights assessment is not being done alongside it and I would think a basic human right is to live in accommodation that's not rat infested that's no dangerous for your kids that there's no leaky water heaters in the building where there's serious issues are a harm there how do we fix that because Prost of Action Housing you know the work that they do and they do it on a shoestring and some of the other organisations are the same how do we fix that if we want the Scotland that we want it to be welcoming, open, supportive, compassionate providing good quality care how do we fix that bit or have we no prospect of fixing it because it's completely reserved I think and I didn't come here to be overtly political but if we want an end-to-end holistic system you need to be in control of that system I would suggest but my views on that won't be a surprise to anybody sitting around this table in terms of your issue about human rights assessments my view would be that they should be integral to all assessments and I've listened to the evidence and read the evidence that is being presented to committee and I suppose sometimes it's seen as a separate add-on we don't want that separate add-on the human rights assessment should be an integral part to a child's needs assessment and indeed to other community care assessments it should become the way in which we think because we are all challengeable whether we're meeting our human rights obligations or not in terms of the accommodation there's been many MSPs and MPs that have been very active on this area and have approached the Scottish Government about what more we could do the real difficulty and I'm always pressing my own beleaguers civil servants to find where the opportunities are is that asylum seekers are removed from our homeless legislation so I'm always trying to find ways about how we could enforce standards on landlords or those contracts or those providing accommodation and I haven't yet found a way in which within my powers that I can do that because the ultimate problem is asylum seekers are removed from homeless legislation and that's a huge stumbling block what we do in bearing in mind we're impacted by the no recourse to public funds so if you look at for example the welfare fund people of refugee status can and do access the Scottish welfare fund but you can't if you're an asylum seeker because it's listed as public funds in terms of the no recourse to public funds and rules but we are funding a range of organisations so there's £820,000 out of the equality budget that goes to primarily the Scottish Refugee Council and other organisations and the Refugee Council gets in the region £500,000 there was the million pounds that have been invested in the refugee task force and some of that's being used very creatively retraining the refugee doctors programme looking at peer learning for English language to complement the more formal learning there is nearly £800,000 that is invested in human trafficking some of the funds through the housing voluntary support grant go to organisations that are working and supporting refugees so we'll always do what we can to find ways to support and I'm really pleased in terms of our commitment for three year funding that will start actually with the equality fund so that will support violence against women and girls projects but it will also support some of the equality projects as well Last question is about office practice and it's local office as compared to local authorities we've determined through our evidence that there seems to be some disparity and it might just be that it's one local area that's under a lot of pressure and some of the families that we met who were destitute who maybe had other health concerns maybe mental health issues or post traumatic stress disorder or lots of other you know located issues that create the serious vulnerability in these families who pitch up maybe at a social work office who are left sitting all day we've taken evidence for a number of them left sitting all day, told to come back the next day they're sitting there with their bags and they say we've got nowhere to go and our responsibility is only to your children therefore we'll take them into care what that has created is families to just go underground which means to become more vulnerable and more much much harder to reach when it comes to the guidance and the support and I know you said that the law is clear but I think the interpretation of that has to be made clear to local authorities and even all the way down to whoever the duty of social workers I know as you do that that would be a huge undertaking and making sure that that happened but if we prevent one family from running or hiding or putting themselves in further danger then I think that would be well worth it just to get your thoughts on that I think if there's one family who's been wrongly told that the only assistance if I put it like that that's available is to take their children care when there is no child protection or neglect issues that's one family to many and you're right it will push people to flee, it will push people underground and it's not a reflection of the law the law in Scotland is clear front line workers have a difficult job to do many, you know, I've been there I know that convener's been there Mr Cole-Hamilton will have been there in a former life and I know that it's easy for us to sit in Parliament and pontificate about what should and should not happen so we do know that front line workers are indeed hard press so we need to be always challenging ourselves about what more we can do to make the position crystal clear that children in Scotland are assessed in the context of their family and that children are only taken into care as a last resort or where there are issues of child protection or issues of neglect and we need to be really clear about that and we also need to be challenging ourselves and you know, everybody who works with asylum seekers and refugees or everybody who should be working with asylum seekers and refugees that dignity, fairness and respect are a new social security system and we do need to think about issues about people waiting all day in a waiting room it's not a way to treat vulnerable people who have mental health problems who are at the end of their tether so we want to support our front line workers as best we can and we recognise that we all have a responsibility of a leadership responsibility to make the situation as clear as possible so that that will assist both front line workers and families in need We hope to raise that awareness as well so that's some of the work of the committee as you can imagine Any other questions from colleagues this morning? Cabinet Secretary, is there anything else your officials would like to add in relation to the evidence this morning or the work that you're undertaking? Just to say that while our powers are somewhat limited we will always look with compassion and creativity about what we can do Thank you so much I say this to every panel if you go away and you think that there's something else we should have added please let the clerks know we're now in the process of compiling our report and we hope to have that ready in a few weeks time so we'll let you know about that when it's published but thank you so much for coming along Thank you very much I'm going to suspend committee now to go into private session


channel today's vlog I'm starting off on a Friday it's May 28th I believe I just got back from the gym all sweaty and everything right there but I had a good workout I've been at the gym for like a month Prince is squeaking his toy sorry I'm about to shower and then I'm gonna clean up my apartment because it's a mess I literally just been going to work coming home sleeping going to work my home sleeping it's a never-ending cycle and if you're new here my name is Keira Jenae don't forget to subscribe join the family before you leave girl I'm also uploading a vlog that was supposed to been out earlier this week but I kind of just wanted to take some time to myself and kind of just live in the moment because I feel like literally all I do was work I'm home sleep go to work and you know just all that jazz but I've got friends I got my new patio set I don't know if I showed that in the last vlog or not but I got this screen door cover and these LED string lights to go outside on my patio area area and then I actually haven't even unboxed this patio furniture which I should have to see if anything's broken or whatever but I went to David first but yeah this is the package it wasn't supposed to be here until this week and it arrived last week so yeah I'm gonna try to put this together it is 7 18 so it'll be getting dark around like 8 30 so I don't know if I'll be able to put it out depends on how long you're taking to put it up but I still want to go to at home big lots and like home goods and stuff like that to kind of just window shop to see what they have because I kind of want a patio rug but then I don't know what like color scheme I'm going for and I kind of want like some pillows or so on there so I don't know we'll figure it out but I'm about to let this upload I'm about to shower first they just got done eating and then I'm going to try to put this patio set together okay import is complete let's eject that one so then I work on editing this tonight so yeah let me shower and then we're gonna come back he wants me to play with this damn dummy so yeah I'm gonna also be doing a little clean with me in this because had like a little game night and stuff in my pillow than everything isn't right and I just gotta clean up a picture with a picture of this because I kind of forgot how it's supposed to look so I can know what I'm doing okay so this is the one I got because it was in stock and it was cheaper than the other one it was like $30 cheaper so this is the one I got and I got my new lights and I'm about to try to plug the ones I got in TJ Maxx black black boob tape what it is so I'm gonna try this out I never tried boob tape before so I just got back I've been getting my window fixed literally this morning then I was in my house in my parents house for about the eight hours today but once a big lot and I'm gonna try out these patio pillows my patio I also picked up it's my leftovers we barbecue today is Saturday we barbecue today because I got to work tomorrow which is Sunday and Monday which is Memorial Day so yeah about two outdoor candles they were two for ten big lights literally always have these not year-round but for like spring and summertime they always have them and this kind smells it's strong to tell but it smells really good and I also got this other candle I couldn't make up my mind which one I wanted so I got both of them this one though was $6 for one but I've never seen it last up to 25 hours I've never seen a color changing LED candle so I thought that was like super freaking cool like come on out who does that so yeah this is that one and then these are just regular candles I like these cuz of the little bucket and they're bigger than this one but they literally both start like me away which is stupid like if I'm paying for see where it starts like why is it not all the way up here so whatever the pillow said I got I found some black there was like stripes it was kind of like black white and tan that I really like but I can only find one and I got two chairs so I wanted to pillow so this just says welcome home each pillow was $16 freaking dollars this is the Braille Hill brand I used to work at big lots if y'all are new subscribers so this brand I always try to stay away from because they hide heel but I got those pillows hopefully they look good if not I'm gonna go to the other big lots and get that other pillow see if they have it because I really really liked oh get old I really really liked that black pillow and it was a lot softer than those pillows right there those are more like decorative but the other pillows like you can actually like lay back on them so I'm about to go outside real quick and show y'all the rug that I got the rug was on sale for $40 it was regular $50 so $10 all like I said I also used to work there so I have like cute puns like crazy so I got fit this is the rug already put this out here but I'm gonna take it out so this is a five by seven this is how it's gonna look so I thought this would match really good with the tan going on here so yeah about to find me some scissors and sweep the porch and then I'm gonna start putting everything together I'm about to install this it's been a few days later and I'm gonna put this up on my door please I don't know why he do that shit you hear him I wear sniffing it in he snaps


Today, I have the pleasure of catching up with Chris Berlais from Stakeholder Gold. How are you today? I'm well, Tracy. Thank you very much. Chris, we were talking earlier during investor talk about how significant your news was in October and how the audience may not just not understand it. Can you share this with the investor news audience? Yeah. Thank you, Tracy. Yeah, there's a couple features of what we're looking at at the Ballarat in the middle of the White Gold District in the Yukon that are quite compelling. One is the sheer size of the anomaly that we have, 3,200 meters. So we're looking at 4X, 5X on the footprint for the original footprint for Golden Saddle, which is about 30 kilometers to the northwest. That's about a million, million and a half ounces today. So we're looking at a footprint 4X, the strike length that that deposit had in the early stages. So number one is 3,200 meters of anomalous strike length for the gold anomaly that we have in the sky zone. The other significant feature there is ortho-nicic rock type and an absence of arsenic. So arsenic occurs in the coffee deposit. It occurs in the Ark in south of Golden Saddle, but it does not occur in Golden Saddle giving and there are other attributes grade, spare grade, and also metallurgical recovery that make the economics for Golden Saddle quite compelling, constrained by size, arguably at one million ounces. This though having the attributes of a very extensive gold anomaly over 3.2 kilometers and an absence of arsenic lends itself to the potential for a very substantial and economically recoverable gold discovery in the white gold. So I think those features have not been clearly identified by the market, but we did the best we could to convey those attributes in the press release. And for all of you out there preparing for the holidays, this may be the present you were looking for. If I recall, you have one of the tightest structures I've seen in the entire capital markets. How many million shares outstanding? Yeah, 13.1 at this stage. We're going to keep it to 15 million as our objective through this discovery process. We are expanding our quarries in Brazil. Good cash flow business there, expanding it fourfold now in the next six months. So that gives us some real comparative advantage and an ability to keep our share capital very tight constrained capital structure 15 million shares. So if we go through this process, have what we're talking about, what we think there's possibility of in terms of a multi-million ounce gold target there on Ballarat and have it all with a 15 million share count, then we would look for re-rating of the share price. And you were talking about the valuation earlier. Can you share with our audience what you were telling me? Valuation, they paid $100 per ounce for coffee, part of the coffee deposit, I mean measured indicated inferred ounces in total, but part of the coffee is constrained by arsenic. And you know, again, we're talking about 3,200 meters of strike length. We're talking four or five acts on what has turned into one to one and a half million ounces for the golden saddle, which is probably the most relevant comparable for what we're looking at in the sky zone. That gives us a very substantial target 300 meters to the west off the road that New Monts building. This is going to, you know, this is going to provide some significant logistical advantages to this asset. We're able to prove this out. We're going to do it as soon as possible in the spring. I would expect a very meaningful re-rating of the valuation. But of course, you know, you don't have a lot of volume. I'd like to discuss this with everybody watching right now because you don't have a lot of shares outstanding. If someone needs to buy more shares, do they need to contact you directly for us? That's certainly possible at any stage, of course, anybody that wants to wants to be involved wants to try and, you know, have interest in the company. But there will be a flow. I think I think when we start into this process next year, you know, what's the difference between $1 and $5 a share? I'd say million, two main shares you might see somewhere along the way, you know, and part of the advantage of a tight capital structure is that you can re-rate the share price with meaningful buying that if there's reasons to re-rate the price, which come from a real discovery, then you can do that. The part of the consequence, you might say, of a tight capital structure is less liquidity when there's little activity, but we're generating cash flow from Brazil. So we're not really in the process of issuing shares. We tend to go through this process with 15 million shares outstanding. That's our objective. Well, of course, you are our top mineral prices expert as well. So we are going to be checking in with you regularly in 2024. So for those of you out there going, this sounds very interesting. We'd like to learn more. We'd like to encourage you to go to the Stakeholder Gold website. But what should shareholders anticipate for 2024? What are you looking at? OK, the first four months, we're going to be talking about expanding our cash flow in Brazil. It's been a very profitable business from a single quarry. We're now going to add four new quarries and we could generate between half a million a million dollars a year from each of those quarries. So a good, robust, profitable operation in Brazil. That's what we'll be doing from January to April. As soon as we can, we're going to be active again on the Ballarat and the White Gold. We have the Sky Zone there. We have a large copper anomaly and further gold anomalies. But the Sky Zone is an immediate target, 3.2 kilometer strike length. No arsenic in the soils and, you know, a really a target of merit. So April from April on, it will be about what we're doing in the Yukon. There you go. Gold, Yukon and Brazil. Stakeholder gold for more information. Again, go to the website and Chris, thank you so much for joining us. You're an esteemed colleague and we appreciate this update. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tracy. Appreciate it.