Rhaon wnaeth i gilydd i gyrdwyr 11 o gyflawni'r oes gwladwyr i'r gwaith ddoll yn 2023. Yr holl yma o'r agendaeth â hynny o gymryd gyda ni o'r ffordd ar gyfer Llywodraeth Cwyddoedd Cymreibu yn Scythdoedd Ysbydd Cymru. Mynd i gaelodd hyn o'r ysbyddhau. Alison Goff, director of the Good Shepherd Centre, Kevin Northcote, deputy chief executive officer of Rossie Young People's Trust, Claire Lundy, headteacher of St Mary's Kennedy Secure Care Centre, Gerald Mickey, governor of HMP and the Young Offenders Institute of Pullment, Scottish Prison Service and Sue Brooks, interim director for strategy and stakeholder engagement at Scottish Prison Service. We have a lot of ground to cover today, so we will move straight to members' questions. I start with Mr Stephen Kerr, please. I've just come straight to the point. Fundamental to this bill is the redefinition of child moving the age to 18. What are your reflections on that in your experience of dealing with young people? Is this the right age to define a child? It is. The Scottish Prison Service is supportive of the bill and the intentions behind it. It may help the panel to know that I'm also a previous governor of Pullment. My experience of working with the very young children in our carers is that they have very complex needs and risks. We've developed the young people's strategy within SPS, and it really is all about age-appropriate supports, particularly in relation to building relationships and learning. We just think that it's more appropriate for developing children who, as we know, the evidence says that their brains are still maturing in an age-appropriate and trauma-supported environment. Is there something in the bill that leads you to believe that outcomes will be better for that demographic? I don't know whether there's something in the bill, but we have evidence that we've built up over a number of years. There is a particular evidence paper that was produced by a colleague of mine in SPS in tandem with the Scottish Government and CYCJ, which sets out all the needs and issues that children have. As the bill has been developing, we've been working with secure unit partners and the Scottish Government on what that will mean. In particular, we've built up a number of case studies around the very young people in our carers and the children in our carers to inform that process about what their needs and risks are. I suppose that growing evidence-based and all the evidence around the adolescent brain and growing children and maturity all suggest that the weight of evidence is the right thing to do. I absolutely concur with Sue's position as the governor of the establishment for ourselves looking at the children in our carers. We can often identify them in terms of their size, their age, their maturation, etc. We fully support the ambition of the bill to remove children from any Scottish prison. Okay, and anything missing in the bill that would improve the outcomes, because obviously we're the whole concept of them being put into the hands of secure places, is that these young people come out of those experiences to lead productive lives. Is there anything missing in the bill? No, I think that one of the benefits or one of the points recognised in the bill that is an individual case management basis. So, while it says at this morning time that they can go to secure from the age of 16 up until their 18th birthday, there is the opportunity for them to stay longer, and that opportunity exists for us with older young people, for example. So, within the Scottish Prison Service, an adult is defined as 21-year-old, but we can keep young people over the age of 21 in a GMP in a while moment longer if they're benefiting from it, if they're undertaking programmes or interventions, or that rest. There's lots of flexibilities below that in the case management. Alison, definition of a child? I would agree fully with what Sue and Jerry have shared. I also think that it's very important that if the bill is to accept and recognise that all people under the age of 18 are to be regarded and treated as children, then that is fully enacted. So, I do think that there is scope as the bill moves and progresses to ensure that any sense of the risks of a two-tier system and some of the current practice and approaches which do treat 16 to 18-year-olds differently in relation to the justice system, that that is overcome. So, the secure care centres in Scotland have been working with children, i.e., children currently can only be in secure care up to their 18th birthday. And we've been working with children for decades in relation to meeting the needs of children, particularly around things like article 39 rights, which all children who come into secure care by the very nature of the fact that they've met the secure care criteria and the status decided that the risks and dangers of harm, abuse, neglect are such that a child requires to be detained. That child therefore has rights under article 39 in relation to recovery from abuse, harm, trauma and neglect. And it's very important that how the bill is enacted recognises children's full rights as children up to the age of 18. I'm thinking about your evidence. Are you referring in what you've just said to the flexibilities that exist around 16, 17-year-olds being sent through the adult justice system? You're unhappy about that? I think there are issues with it in terms of not fully embracing the Kilbrandon principles in terms of the punitive elements. I think that that has to be explored. I think it's very complicated because it's always a balance of children who harm other children or other people. For example, if this bill is to fully respect and recognise that people under 18 are children, then those young people who harm others, nevertheless, have the full rights of all children under the age of 18. I think that it's going to be in how the bill is actually implemented and interpreted through the children's hearing system, the decision making bodies. So you're not arguing that those flexibilities don't exist? You're simply flagging them, red flagging them? I'm flagging them and saying that I think there will need to be very careful consideration about how the route for children, particularly children who have been involved in very serious events of personal violence, how that is responded to. But I think it's absolutely right that it's within the framework of accepting that everybody under the age of 18 is a child. The secure care centres for decades have operated on that basis, fully embracing the shenari principles, and that's quite right, and that would need to continue in relation to young people coming on. We've got questions on that theme later on, so just in case you're probing on that further, Stephen Carlaw. It's a very interesting point that you've raised in your opening comments. Very quickly to Claire, sorry to... I agree entirely that 18 is the most appropriate age, and I think that there are three critical factors to that for me. One is that that aligns with the UNCRC definition of a child. The second is that it takes into consideration developmental age versus chronological age, which is very different for young people who've experienced trauma and difficulties throughout their life. And the third, as Alison said, is that it creates the potential to rationalise the irregularities just now for 16 and 17-year-olds who are on a CSO versus those who aren't. Yeah. Okay, well thank you Claire, and Kevin. There's not actually much more I can add in terms of what colleagues have said here just now. I think I would just echo the aspect of the developmental impact in raising the age of 18, and obviously the research and evidence suggests that actually developmentally the brain continues into mid-twenties. Yeah, and do both of you believe that the provisions of the bill will facilitate better outcomes? Because I think that that is the most important thing. I'm going to change the law in any way. It's got to be to bring about an improvement in the outcomes. Is it satisfied that the elements of the bill give that, you know, some hope in that respect? And or are there bits missing? I would suggest that hope is the correct word, and based on the current evidence we have of young people who do access secure care up to the age of 18, I would suggest that the outcomes are significantly better based on research. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you members so far for your responses. Just for the record, I suppose that we're trying to get an outline of what the, provide the committee with a brief overview of what your respective roles are in terms of secure care within the employment and the secure care setting. So I don't know who would like to go first, perhaps. We'll go to Kevin to start with this time. So my role with the organisation is the Deputy Chief Executive, so I have responsibility for the secure care, residential care, educational and specialist intervention services within Rossi. I don't know how much you wish me to expand on that. Obviously, the nature of the setting is that we have a holistic approach in terms of everything under one roof at Rossi. My role very much, we have 18 young people within secure setting and a capacity for up to 18 young people with a residential setting, and we have two schools that facilitate the educational provision for those who are secure and a residential school, especially the intervention service contains psychology input and a team who have a series and a suite of interventions that work with young people, both from pre-admission and all the way through their journey within Rossi. And then we have a health department also, which I'm responsible for, so we have a medical provision on site, a fully registered nurse and a health support team that provide the health input and support to all the young people. Thank you, Kevin. Can I just move in along, Claire? I am the headteacher at St Mary's, Ken Muir. I've worked within a secure care environment for about 15 years now, and it's an immersive environment, so despite my background being in education, and that being my primary role, I also have a responsibility for the strategic direction of the organisation, along with my colleagues who are on the senior leadership and management team. There are three key aspects to our service, not dissimilar to my colleagues on the other side of me, and those are care, education and health and wellbeing. All of those have to sit equally in terms of providing the correct level of care and protection for the young people within our care. Thank you, Claire Allison. Hi, I'm Allison Goffin. I'm the director, which is the chief exec role at the Good Shepherd Centre. We're a secure care centre and we also provide close intensive support. So in our secure care services, we have three secure care houses providing up to 18 places, six children can live in each of those houses. We also have places for six young people in a close support house, which has elements of restriction of liberty, but not full deprivation of liberty, and we have an open residential kind of through care support cottage for up to three young people on campus. And as Kevin and Claire have said, we take a very holistic approach. So we have a we do care system, which stands for well-being, education and our care services. We have a fully qualified nurse and healthcare team, holistic therapist, a range of specialist psychologists including forensic psychology, clinical mental health psychology and CBT therapy, who also support the organisation on the young people within it. And prior to working at Good Shepherd Centre, I was actually leading the secure care national project at the centre for children and young people. So it's been very interesting following the journey of the changes that have been happening within secure care and the forthcoming changes to come. Okay, thank you Allison and Gerald. I am the governor-in-charge of HMP and YOI Polmont. Ultimately, I am responsible for the safety, security and positive experience of everyone who lives and works in HMP and YOI Polmont. We are designated as a Nadal female establishment. We are the national holding facility for young people in Scotland and we hold male and female children currently. Thank you and Sue yourself. So the directorate that I currently look after has responsibility for the strategy for young people across SPS and also a number of related policy areas such as a response to the UNCRC issues. In terms of my own background, as I said prior to that, I was a governor of Polmont. I was also privileged to be a co-chair of the independent care review, which led to the promise. For a couple of years, I was on secondment to Education Scotland working with policy leads and headteachers on how to prevent young people from coming into custody. Thank you, that's very helpful. That should hopefully help our members direct questions to those with the right expertise. Could the witnesses outline what assessments are made when children enter into a YOI or secure care establishment, and what services are available immediately to deal with any issues that the children may have? I'll start with a prison position. There are two ways that children will come into prison. There's the transition from secure when they attain the age of 18. We've got a long-standing, really positive relationship with the secure care providers in Scotland, and often we can plan for up to six months for someone transiting from the secure care in Polmont. That will involve meetings, on-site meetings. I will send staff to secure. The young person will come and visit Polmont. They'll meet their personal officers, potentially the managers in their areas and some of the support staff that we have. That's a really well-planned transition. For the few now, thankfully, it's the unexpected unplanned child admission that we will receive at no notice. The majority will come at absolutely no notice after the end of a court day. We will immediately assess them in terms of their health, their physical wellbeing. On admission, they'll be screened by a nurse, interviewed by a personal officer, and then placed in a specific area within the establishment for young people under the age of 18. In the next 72 hours, they will get local induction from our staff again to see nursing staff, mental health staff, inclusion staff and build a package around them. Our team will immediately reach out to the local authority under the whole systems approach and we will go to the local authority to inform them that a young person has come into our care. We will identify who we are, the personal officers and invite them to a 72-hour case conference that can either come physically or by teams. From there, we will start to build an individual management plan on that young person. Today, there are nine children in Scottish prisons, two female children and seven children in Scotland, two female children and five male children. The majority are on remand and there is one recall from an English system. They will then be offered education opportunities, youth work opportunities, vocational training opportunities, and we have a whole catalogue of support that can be offered to them whether they are convicted or on remand and the majority are on remand. We operate a 10-week assessment programme when children join us. The vast majority of children who come to the Good Shepherd Centre are admitted on an emergency basis because of the nature of the acute crisis that has led to the decision to detain them in secure care. That can be problematic and I am sure that the committee may wish to explore that later on. However, we have been working very hard to implement the secure care pathway and standards that came into place in October 2020 and the impact of those standards is being assessed by the care inspectorate at the moment. Wherever possible, we are engaging with the young person if we can and with their family through the local authority prior to them coming to us. When young people arrive, we begin to understand their needs and get to know them. We have an assessment and formulation system in place, which is very holistic. There is a mental and physical health assessment. There is an education formulation and assessment in terms of learning needs and young people are introduced to the school setting very quickly. The majority of young people who come to GSC have been out with school for a period of time or have had a very disrupted learning history and education history. We are very proud of the approach that we take and the environment that we offer within small classroom settings and sometimes individual tutoring to meet young people's needs. We find that attendance is extremely high and consistently high so that over 95 per cent of young people who come to us will be attending school full-time and will be benefiting from that. We have been able to track and trace in terms of educational outcomes, attainment, formal attainment and wider achievement over previous years. We operate a multi-disciplinary team approach, which means that we also engage very closely with Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS in terms of F-Calms services. There are regular review meetings involving the team around the child and involving the external supports and agencies as well. When young people arrive at St Mary's Cairnmure, there is, as part of the immediate admission process, a physical and mental health screening that is followed up within 72 hours by our school nurse. Probably the most important part of the process that informs our plan for young people is a formulation. A formulation is quite simply looking at all aspects of a child's life from pre-birth until where they are now with all relevant parties, including the child and anyone who can contribute information to that and using all of that information to inform and understand what has led to the child or young person being in the situation that they are in presently. With the formulation, what we do is that this is overseen by our specialist intervention team and our consultant clinical and forensic psychologist. We create a plan that informs our care plan for the young person. That plan belongs to the young person, it is informed by them and it is shared with them. Most importantly, that plan goes with the child beyond their placement in secure care because secure care should always be time limited to as soon as it is reasonably possible for that child to move on. As part of their care plan, young people have access to education and, while theoretically young people should have access to education in the community, sometimes the barriers in order to access that are just too great. We have a very high level of universal and targeted support that enables our young people to access education, and we have very similar success rates to our colleagues at the Good Shepherd Centre. That is crucial to the children and young people in secure care because it is often the first real opportunity that they have had to access learning in a number of years. As we know, the opportunity to access learning, benefit from education and gain qualifications, is one of the greatest drivers out of poverty, out of deprivation and away from criminality. It is important to mention the secure pathway and standards because the during phase of secure care is very highly regulated and, rightly so, we are restricting the liberty of children. We are getting better at the after phase and that includes all agencies involved with children, but the before phase of secure care continues to be very difficult to plan for. Admissions to secure care generally are not planned because of the nature of the reasons that children arrive in secure care, arguably, should not be, but it makes it very difficult to reach those ideals and meet those objectives for children and young people. Very similar to my two colleagues. We have very similar models in terms of our delivery. I suppose, from my aspect, what I would add, is the pre-admission aspect. The journey very much starts an assessment period, very much starts. When we first have a telephone call or get an email about the referral around the young person, the papers will come through from care and education. We will assess a minimality agency approach to ensure that, in line with the care inspectorate matching guidance, we are appropriately placing that young person. That is crucial to us because not only do we have to consider the needs and welfare of the young person who is being referred to us, we also have to give due consideration to the cohort of young people that we are looking after within the establishment. When the young person comes in, we have a team around the child that is formed. The encompasses care, education, special and advanced services and health provisions. The young person is at the centre of that, similar to models and colleagues have detailed as well. That young person will chair those meetings on a six-weekly basis to assess the on-going outcomes for that young person. In the initial phase, we have a suite of assessments, not including aspects such as a young YP core 10, which is a clinical outcomes and routine evaluation, and a STAR-AV, which includes the short-term assessment of risk and treatable adolescent vision. There are a number of those that are done within the initials 24 to 72 hours to make sure that the initial stages of the formulation, which my colleague from St Mary's has detailed what the purpose of that is. That will follow that young person through that journey within the environment. As part of that as well, we will assess the educational stages that the young person is at to make sure that the curriculum that we deliver is appropriate. The committee will be aware that cross-border placements are clearly a factor within our secure establishments. Within that, our education provisions need to take cognisance of the English curriculum as well as the Scottish curriculum to make sure that it is most appropriate, because the future destinations will quite clearly, hopefully logically be back to their local authority wherever they may come from. That adds complexity to the delivery, but it is something that we manage very well. As again, as colleagues have said, the secure care pathway and standards is crucial to their delivery and assessment as we move through that journey. Our through-care and after-care department within the organisation commences work almost at the point of admission to understand the next stages for that young person, because the hopes and aspirations of the outcome for any young person hinge on the next stages and the goals and outcomes of where they are going to go, and our through-care team are critical to that. Thank you. I just wanted to build on something that Jerry said. It is that the significant number of the young people who come in are actually with us on remand, and that makes assessment very difficult, because you very often get no information immediately when people come in on remand. Some of those young people, although some stay for an extended period quite often, come in on remand perhaps for only one night, so making assessments about their needs, longer-term risks and certainly vulnerability in the early days can be quite difficult. What we do know from the case studies that we produced as evidence is that the vast majority of the children who come in have had previous contact with the children's hearing system, social work, care system, prior to the offence that brought them into custody. That may be something that the committee would be interested to explore. On that, we have a very brief and directed supplementary from Stephen Kerr to take less time than the introduction. How long on average—I think median average—is someone staying? No, I do not have the answer to that. In the last 18 months, we have had a number of young people who have been in for one night. The longest person spent seven months, eight days with us, but it is about 11 days on average—11 days on average—a young person will spend on remand with us. On the overall population of the demographic, what is the average time that they will spend with you, median? That is 11 days. Thank you. 11 days for the whole population. In terms of children? On remand. On remand? On remand. Sorry. Sorry, in terms of the proportion of children who are on remand, that is higher than the proportion for any other age group in custody. Can we move to questions from Michael Marra now, please? Thank you, convener. The bill projects a potential increase in referrals into secure care. I wonder whether we have capacity to meet those referrals in the secure care system. Can I ask Kevin Northcote, please? I think that the trajectory of the Scottish Government in terms of the utilisation and purchasing of a bed has been useful to start the assessment of whether that capacity exists. It is obviously very early, three months, I think that that has been in situ at present. I think that what would be useful is to look at the number of young people who have been referred to 16, 17-year-olds as a trajectory over a 12-month, 24-month period to tell us what those numbers look like, that can then potentially look at how the numbers are going to be potentially looking at going forward also. In terms of capacity, I would suggest that from a Scottish perspective, yes, there is absolute capacity within the secure establishment. We see—I think that our colleagues would defer this—around approximately over 50 per cent of our current cohort of young people come from cross-border placements, so if you were to look at that cohort, then yes, there is a capacity within that. The challenge will always be within the children's hearing system and understanding in the capacity—in the children's hearing system to manage that aspect as well. To answer your question, capacity, why would I say yes? Sufficient surge capacity. There has been a policy in place around the last bed situation where we reserve a place, given what the colleagues have said about the results in a cohort on that day or results in a children's hearing system. Is that something that we are retaining? Is that helpful? Yes, it is very helpful. I would suggest that in terms of appropriately accommodating young people in the Scottish system, I would absolutely say yes. That is appropriate. The good shepherd centre—the evidence that was given to the committee has said at points that Scottish need for secure care has dropped dramatically. In the face of English authorities, a desperate find of secure care placement needs of the young person, but it has said that we have been turning to England to ensure sustainability. Is that something that the committee should be concerned about? I think that it is something that I am sure that the committee has previously explored and other committees have explored. That goes back to the so-called mumby judgment in 2016, when the Scottish Parliament gave consent to the Westminster Government to introduce the Children and Social Work Act in England, which made amendments to the way in which children could be placed from England in Scottish secure care services, wearing a different hat at the time. I had shared some concern and there was debate across the sector in terms of the implications of that. Since 2017, when that legislation was introduced, there has been a dramatic raise in the number of referrals and the frequency of referrals from England, and that has really been sustained since 2017 to the current date. I suppose my question relates to the sustainability issue. Are your institutions relying on the finance from those placements? I would have to say from the GSC's perspective, we have proportionally had a smaller proportion than perhaps elsewhere in the sector since 2017, so at one point we did have a towards half of our children were from England, but that was for a relatively short period of time. At the moment we have 25 per cent of children would be cross-border placements, and it has been less than that during the last couple of years at many points. The capacity issues, I think, I know that there is discussion at the moment, and the youth justice team have been working with each of the secure care centres to explore the possibility of looking at building on the pilot that was undertaken to purchase one placement within each of the secure care centres. As well, the emergency bedrooms, which are referred to in the committee papers, certainly have not been utilised. We have not needed to utilise or bring that into play recently, so there is additional capacity there as well. St Mary's, Ken Muir, you referred your evidence to the cross-border placements subsidising the bed rate in Scotland. Although the finance has been prepared, you have put it as willing to pay more than the Scotland Excel rate using that finance to subsidise young people from Scotland. That is absolutely fair. That is the position that we have found ourselves in for a number of years now, and that is probably representative of the entire secure estate. In order to exist to be able to provide a service to Scottish children and young people, it is absolutely necessary that when there are a number of empty beds, because the demand in Scotland is not high, we look to cross-border placements and try to find appropriate matches. Only when young people can be matched appropriately from England and from the rest of the United Kingdom do we admit them to our service. Without that, in order to subsidise income, there would not exist any service for Scottish children. In terms of figures that might be relevant to the committee to know that, certainly from Rossi's perspective, a recent three-year analysis found that there were 94 Scottish referrals, not placements referrals, to Rossi over the last three years. There were 515 English referrals over the last three years. That is one-on-one telling you the demand that exists from an English perspective, but the lack of demand that exists within the Scottish system as well. Is there any decrease in the numbers coming into your institutions that might have a positive impact on the prison service's ability to provide care and support for the young people that you have in your care? In relation to the statistics around the children, as Gerry was saying earlier, there are seven of them in with us at the minute. The statistical average is around 14, and that has been dropping year on year. We have a throughput of around 60 children coming in on anio basis. The point that you were asking about in terms of flexibility, the numbers go up and down quite a bit. After January, we were a bit concerned because the numbers were increasing, but you get occasions when the numbers are as low as two, and certainly very often there are no girls. There are issues about flexibility within that in terms of provision. The question that you asked was about, as those numbers are dropping generally, does that mean that we are better able to cope? There are two issues about that. One is that we would still say that the 16 and 17-year-olds as children should not be with us. Regardless of whether the rest of the establishment is empty, those children should be somewhere else. The other issue is a bit complexity. We know that, as time goes on—partly because other alternatives are being found for children and young people aged 18 to 21—the numbers are reducing, but the background circumstances of those young people are becoming ever more complex. That means that they require much more intensive support. We are just redirecting the resources that we have got to make sure that we do the very best that we can for all those children and young people. The bill could result in children under 18 who have been accused or convicted of serious crimes entering into secure care rather than the YY. Does that cause any concern? Do you have any experience of dealing with children in secure care that has committed those serious crimes? What sort of challenges might you foresee in managing that? Who would like to go first from the secure care providers? When the Good Shepherd Centre opened in 2006 as a secure care centre, the initial young people who were placed there, there were several young people on-sentence, serving quite long sentences for very serious situations. Across the secure care sector, there is substantial experience. Currently, there are young people within the secure care centres, on-roman situations and other situations through the justice system. Absolutely, the secure care centres are well used to balancing very complicated and difficult balance of rights as well. Throughout the committee papers and the considerations in relation to the bill, that constant tension between children being regarded as victim and perpetrator. Sometimes, that language has continued to be used. It is a debate that has been going on for a long time, but there is a really strong record within our inspected and regulated services of secure care, of delivering care, education and wellbeing support, and effective risk assessment management, safety and security to children who have been involved in harming others and in very serious situations of violence. Before I move on to Clare, Kevin, do you have a sense that the staff are all well trained and well equipped to managing these young people coming into your work? Very much so, but always through that lens of the Shanauri principles and working with children and young people and obviously in our three care services, working with young adults as well. I think that there are implications, as we've highlighted in our submission and others have as well, in terms of ensuring that there is further specialist training and also that there's very, very careful partnership working and collaboration to look out the role of the universal and specialist agencies as well in terms of how forensic support and risk management is delivered, particularly looking at the interface with mental health services and FCAMs. Absolutely, and to answer your question, yes, I do believe that we've set up very well to support and, as Alison said, we have significant experience in the secure sector of working with young people of this particular age and stage. What I would say is that, for me, the trauma informed journey is critical to this and, as that's been enhanced by the Scottish Government in our centres, we're very much at the forefront of working alongside that. As we upskiller staff with trauma informed approaches, in essence that is designed to work with any human being, not just young people in terms of child development. The other aspect for me is that within Rossie we've been engaging with Education Scotland just now through a curriculum design pathway and redesigning the curriculum for young people up to the age of 18, which is on one level very exciting but also conducive to the learning of the young people that we're referring to just now. The other critical aspect of that is that, as centres, we have to tease out the expertise of those who have managed these young people for some time, so we've been engaging with Pullman and Mr Meekie in terms of understanding the cohort of young people and will continue to do that because, for some time, within that setting they've obviously managed young people for some time, so it's critical to all centres to suppose that we have that engagement on going. To echo what my colleagues have already said, the hypothetical admission of a 17-year-old who has a very serious index of friends is not something that's new to the security state. It's something that we're well versed in handling and we do so very well. We've had a number of successful transitions to young people leaving secure care and going to Pullman and we work well with Pullman in order to support those transitions. What I think it is important to take cognisance of though is that the security state and the young people who reside within it are continually diversifying. The continuum, if you like, of risk and need is ever-expanding, particularly post-Covid. We have seen an influx of very young children with a very high level of need and to hypothesise, I guess, that these young children have missed a critical stage of early intervention when those resources weren't available to them and they have experienced sometimes extensive harm and have a really exponential level of need. We've expanded that one end in terms of very young children with a very high level of need in terms of care and protection and whilst the admission of older children who have committed offences also have extensive needs and the same rights, we need to consider the fact that there's a very high level of risk to others associated with some of these young people and the offences that they have perhaps committed and the entire environment in the demographic within the secure care facilities that we are feeding into. Thank you very much. Can I move to questions now from Ross Greer? I'm interested in some of the issues around transport. In the first instance, to get a better understanding, I'm going to ask Claire and Kevin. When it comes to transporting young people to and from your facilities, who would you organise that through? Do you provide any of your own transport services or do you contract third-party providers for transport? There are a few third-party transport providers who have limited numbers of resources and the onus to provide the safe transport to a secure provision to St Mary's, Kenya, sits with the local authority who is purchasing the placement. On the way in, that is generally pretty well managed. It's not always done timeously because you're reliant on the secure transport provider who can be travelling from Portsmouth at 9am to pick a child up in Glasgow to take them to the other side of Glasgow. The way in the management of that child in that timeframe can be exceptionally difficult because it's been identified that that child is not safe in the community and there's a time period there where unfortunately they're continuing to be managed in the community, not only that but sometimes in the knowledge or certainly should be in the knowledge that they're going to be going to secure care later that same day, which intensifies that risk. There are a number of reasons why children are required to leave secure care throughout the course of their stay. That can be to attend court, to attend meetings, to attend hospital and it can be very difficult to acquire transport into do so when you need it. There's often a delay in that. Only when it's absolutely necessary, usually in the case that a young person requires medical treatment in a hospital environment, do we transport young people using your own staff wherever it's avoidable, then wherever there can be a delay in the timing of that, then we look for the local authority to arrange transport. I would certainly welcome some discussion around how that situation can be improved because it's not something that's easily managed for any of the secure providers or indeed the local authorities who place children in our care. Just before coming to Kevin on that, on the example you gave of your waiting on transport provider to come from Portsmouth to move somebody from one end of Glasgow to the other, is that because of there are very specific providers that you think provide the right quality of service or is there just an absolute lack of service providers elsewhere in Scotland, and that's why you're needing to go so far to find someone? Portsmouth is probably quite an extreme example, but it is something that happens. More often than not, secure transport providers come from the middle of the south of England to Glasgow in order to transport a child from St Mary's Cairnmure to Glasgow Sheriff's Port in back, and that is because there is a lack of providers, not of secure transport but of secure transport that is trauma-informed and that's appropriate for children, and it is very difficult to come by. Kevin, is that a similar experience for yourselves at Rossie? Very much so, and I think there's a reason that transportation of young people to and from secure is subject to discussion around the provision of this. Similarly, it's written within the secure care pathways and standards as critical to young people's experience. We continue to involve young people in terms of their experience within that, fundamentally, when you ask any young person of their experience in secure care, one of our vivid memories is of their arrival or transportation, and part of that is unfortunately the experience within secure transport. As my colleague said, in my experience, fundamentally, pretty much all of the secure care transport providers are English-based, although some have areas within Scotland that they have offices, for example, but again they are few and far between. To give a case an example, we have, to expand on my colleague's example, is that we have young people who can sometimes be based on risk and is based on risk assessment. A transport division will travel from London to Montrose to transport the nine-wheels hospital 30 minutes away and therefore return the young person back 30 minutes to return back down to London again. Now that will come clearly at a significant cost. To answer the other part of your question, and we will all be the same in the secure centres, we will always endeavour to transport our young people ourselves where risk allows. That will primarily require three staff in clearly one of our own personal vehicles. If the risk assessment allows, it may be two staff, but it will very rarely be under two staff. The resource implications of that can be quite extreme, especially when it is on an emergency basis. For me, primarily because it is written within the secure pathways and standards, there has to be, as my colleague said, some substantial discussion and decision making around the provision of secure transport. Thanks for watching. If anybody else on the panel wants to come in at any point, please do feel free. I am interested in your thoughts on some of the proposals that have been put forward by the hope instead of handcuffs campaign. One of their specific proposals is around mandatory reporting of any instance where restraint has been used by a transport provider. You have both indicated and clearly said in particular that you are really trying to make sure that you are using providers who are taking a trauma-informed approach. At the moment, are there any formalised arrangements with the providers that you used? Are you confident that, in any instance where they have had to use restraint, you would be informed upon the young person's arrival or return to you? I was going to reflect back on what Kevin and Clarey have been sharing. There is a working group, as the committee will be aware, led by the COSLA and the Scottish Government that involves all of the secure care centres while exploring those issues. Fundamentally, in terms of the pathway and standards and the work of the secure care strategic group that led to the pathway and standards, it is a children's rights issue. Obviously, at the point that the decision is made to deprive a young person of their liberty and they are then being brought to a secure care centre, the same standards apply to them in relation to UNCRC and treatment and no use of pain-inducing restraint, for example, and some of the other difficult situations that we have heard about from young people should be occurring. It requires to be regulated and brought into the whole picture in terms of the entire journey and pathway for children and young people through secure care. I think that it is complicated by the commissioning arrangements at the moment, as Clarey explained, that, in fact, it is the local authorities responsibility and so it is the local authorities who actually commission the transport rather than the secure care centres ourselves in terms of having that overview and analysis of the standards that are being applied by the staff who are employed by the agencies that work for secure transport companies. Ross, can you repeat your other question very succinctly so that we can get some of the reporting? Yes, thank you. I have been interested in A. At the moment, are you confident that transport providers will inform you in any instance where they have used restraint? On the wider point, if we do move to a system of more formalised reporting, should that just be to the local authority, or is there a need for that to be collected and reported nationally? Should it be the care inspectorate who has to be informed of every instance of restraint being used by a transport provider? Responses, please. I have my eye on the clock at the moment, sorry. Anecdotally and informally, yes, I am confident that the staff who transported a young person would let you know if they had been involved in a physical restraint. My professional view is that all restraint should be regulated and it makes sense to me for that to sit nationally. I do not think that it is enough for it to sit with the local authority. Does anyone else want to add to that, or do you agree with Claire, Alison and yourself? On the first point, I would say that Anecdotally is consistent, and I would not have full confidence, and I would also agree that absolutely in terms of the calculation of data and the being accurate data that it needs to sit at a national level. Can I just check, Gerald, once to come in? Just in terms of a very different contract provision, so GOA may are the secure transport provider for the Scottish Court of Service, Police Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service. In terms of transporting males and females, they are a separate entity. Children, young people and adults might be in the same vehicle, but it is cellular vehicles and they would not be together. We have a very robust process in terms of any incidents in terms of restraint that would be reported and fully investigated in terms of transport of a child in particular and a woman. We try to do that very directly so that there should not be multi-drops and the individual risk assessments are made by the provider for transporting children. Thank you for that. Mr Day, a supplementary from yourself and then on to the next thread. Indeed, I appreciate that. I have a sort of dafflady question. Paint a picture for us of what trauma-informed appropriate transportation is, because for the benefit of people perhaps looking in on this we wouldn't actually have an understanding of that, so define that for me please. So I guess that's a bit of a utopia that doesn't exist at this point in time because admission to secure care is not trauma-informed. That's a traumatic experience. It's a decision that's made in order to prevent further trauma being experienced by a young person. It provides a place of safety and stabilisation, but the journey to getting there, the physical journey and also the mental process of arriving in secure care and adjusting to that environment is not a pleasant experience for a child. The process that Gerald has just described in terms of the journey to polement is not trauma-informed. What young people tend to do in being transported to secure care is that they will travel in a car probably not dissimilar to your own. They'll sit in the backseat in the middle. There will be two adults either side of them. I would like to think that the adults will try hard to engage them in discussion to help them relax, to inform them of where they're going, the reasons they're going there, what they can expect on their arrival. There'll be a driver in the front of the car that they'll stop as often as needed, particularly when they're completing a long journey to use the bathroom to stretch their legs, to have something to eat or to drink, but they're still sitting in a car with three adults that they've probably never met before. In the best-case scenario, when they arrive at secure care, they'll be met by their social worker, and that's generally the only familiar face. Why is that service not available in Scotland? It doesn't sound particularly challenging to set up. It's not a service that I would like to hold responsibility for. I think that it carries a lot of risk. While the financial return is undoubtedly very high, if you're transporting a child to a locked environment on a motorway at 60 or 70 miles per hour and they have a feeling of hopelessness or desperation, lots can go wrong there. The core principles of being trauma-informed in essence rely on trust, safety, collaboration and empowerment in the core principles around that are relationships. Quite simply, I would suggest that we believe at Rossie that the secure care transport should lie primarily within the secure centres because we have those relationships. By virtue of having those relationships, we are, in essence, trauma-informed and we can approach that with trauma-informed points. If I may, we could have touched on some of this earlier, but I want to think about the physical environments of prison sentence and secure accommodation. If I was someone looking in on this today who was concerned that, from their perspective, instead of going to a young offenders' institute, you go to secure accommodation, it's a soft option. I don't believe that if you have visited Rossie, I've been through the secure unit, but there will be people who will think that this is a soft option. Can you outline, for the benefit of anyone in that situation, what's so inappropriate about the physical prison setting for young people who have committed serious offences? What is it about the secure accommodation setting that does clearly deprive them of their liberty, but is a secure setting and appropriate? I can come in here in the first instance given a work with Mr Michey in a prison setting for a number of years along with my role now, so I can compare and contrast quite well. I think that there's a very clinical nature in setting an environment and all the prison services have done a lot of work with that over the years to as much as the sensory aspect of noise and keys and things like that. That adds to a lot of the current needs and complexity of the needs of young people who come to secure care. If I come to insecure care, the environment is significantly more therapeutic in nature and by virtue of that, you're talking about even just the size of the area. Primarily, there are either four or six bedded houses that have individualised rooms on suites.  Direct access to a living room, games room, dining rooms, and then obviously have access to a whole suite of activities. A number of our colleagues have got swimming pools, secure gardens, but not withstanding that resources and staffing resources. The staffing ratio is almost one to two and to achieve that with a prison setting is almost impossible in terms of resource implications. On that very basis, you've got that therapeutic intervention work that can go in that relational based work that, as the trauma-informed approach is as the relational work, you can achieve in our view quicker outcomes for young people. I'm trying very hard to soften what a prison looks like, but architecturally, it is a prison. For example, today, the five young men in our care are in half a gallery within a hall in Pullman. There are 44 single cells, and there are five of them. It is absolutely massive. There are young offenders below them and above them. Prisons tend to be quite noisy and busy places for the young girl in our care. She's actually with another three female yos, but those four young ladies are in an area with 34 single cells. We're trying to soften it in terms of the fashion and fabric of some of the furnishings that we put into it, etc. But prisons are massive. Pullman has a design capacity of 810. If any of you have visited prisons are rather large, busy, noisy places. Would you be of the view that the move to have young people children housed in that sort of environment is absolutely desirable? Yes, completely. I think the numbers also suggest that it's further the right thing to do. We've had periods where there's been one or two young boys and one female or no females, and we are legally obliged to keep them separate in terms of their living and sleeping accommodation. Through risk assessments, they will attend activities and education with other people. However, the numbers now, there are so few of them, but in many ways they might be isolated in prisons. We have to work really hard to stop that social isolation being with young people of their own age group in much more smaller living conditions, with a much more throm-informed approach. How secure is the accommodation from the perspective of the public? Secure accommodation is, as it says on the tin, in terms of the physical environment, although all of our secure care centres are designed to be as therapeutic and homely as possible and are on a much smaller scale than a prison setting. We have fully operational schools, sports, relaxation, recreation facilities and gardens and so on. We have airlocked doors, we have security systems to ensure that we've got very good track record. When you look at some of the statistics and outcomes in prison settings across the UK and other forms of secure care for young people, incidences of violence between young people living in insecure settings and situations of very serious self-harm. Obviously, to the extreme tragic outcomes, we have a very good track record of keeping children and young people safe and we have high levels of security that meet the standards that are required. As we were describing earlier, we have many times over many years cared for young people on-remand and subject to sentence through the courts and we have done so successfully whilst keeping everybody safe. Can we move to questions now from Ruth Maguire? Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I'd like to ask about the changes to movement restriction conditions and, first off, whether you think the provisions in the bill go far enough to support the rights of children. Alison, you spoke a little about balancing the rights on children and young people. I wonder if I could come to you first. Thank you. When we were considering the provisions, there are mixed views for us at GSC. We noted with interest, including submission, which I know you'll be considering later on. We do have some concerns that there may be some missed opportunities and unintended consequences from what's being considered and that further refinement might be necessary to ensure that, by default, we're not creating a situation where we are unnecessarily, perhaps depriving young people of their liberty or restricting liberty in some communities, particularly where the onus is on young people in some of the provisions. Young people who themselves are at risk, so young people who may have been sexually, financially, physically exploited by others, are then subject to a movement restriction condition. If that's not properly enabled and supported and it's simply a matter of the young person, their own movement being restricted and them not being able to go to certain areas or spend time with certain individuals, we believe that that could be very problematic in terms of children's rights. We also think that there could be a further look at the provisions and those boundaries between the bridging, what we've described as bridging support, the cliff edge that a lot of young people experience when they move on from secure care. It's very, very rare in our experience that MRCs, that type of package is actually delivered to a young person when they're moving on from secure care into an open community setting and, at the moment, the way the secure care criteria works and the XO or CSO, it really is a cliff edge that a young person is subject to full deprivation of liberty one day and the next day there is nothing to actually help to keep them safe. We believe that a good parent who is very concerned about dangers and risks around their young person will at times apply some restriction of liberty in order to keep that young person safe and to protect them, so we think that there should be a further look at those provisions. Do you have a view on access to legal aid for children with an MRC? I believe that that is correct, because if the state is moving to restrict a child's liberty then their rights should have that right. Do any other panel members have views on that? I do have a view on the MRC. There are occasions where it can work very effectively, but more often than not, at the disposal of a children's hearing system. What we are reliant on is a traumatised and dysregulated child assuming responsibility for their own regulation. That is a big and quite unrealistic ask. If the outcome of that is a return to the children's hearing system, where the consequences of not meeting those requirements might result in an escalation in further restrictions, we are potentially setting children up to fail in that situation. One of the other things that was raised in written evidence—forgive me, I cannot remember exactly who it was—was the change to consider harm rather than injury and the subjectivity of that. The child was using an MRC so that it was avoiding the child causing physical or psychological harm to others. Do any other panel members have a view on that change at all? I am conscious of the time and we are getting some really excellent information from yourselves, but if you can do what you can to make your answers and responses concise, and I know that the committee members will do all they can to keep their questions as concise as possible. Can we move now to the vice convener, Cokab Stewart, please? Thank you. We have actually had some great detailed answers already with regards to smaller, safer, trauma-informed, secure places for young people. I am interested in whether you think that the bill goes far enough to specifically address the recommendations of the promise. I wonder if Sue would have anything to say on that. I think that, for 16 and 17-year-olds, the key objective is getting them out of custody. The promise also talked about issues about restraint and the need to move away from restraint, so what I can say for Scottish Prison Service in respect of that is that we are moving towards a model of non-pain-inducing restraint at the minute for women and young people, including up to 21. We are training our staff at the minute and we are due to go to pilot in the middle of April in relation to that. We have an independent evaluation in place with regard to that process. Staff are very enthusiastic about it and I have to say that it has been really well supported collaboratively with some of our trade union partners, because it is obviously a very sensitive issue. That is a really positive step forward for us. We are happy to share learning around that with secure unit providers in due course. In fact, I think that some are coming through to a demonstration relatively soon, so that is another important dynamic of the promise. The other aspect would be about seclusion and isolation. Gerry might want to come in to support me around precisely, Paul Menter, at the minute, but we have gone a long way to reducing isolation for all young people, not just the children in our care. There is some really innovative work taking place around the inclusion unit. We are looking at neurodiversity and speech and language. We build individual management plans and timetable activity for all the children in our care. Whether they are convicted or on remand—as I have said earlier, the majority are on remand—they will have access to purposeful activity education in life skills, literally Monday to Friday, 85, two large periods in between recreation, evening activities, gymnasium and outside spaces. Fife College, our education provider, we have embedded learning by stealth in VT joiners, VT brickheads, engineering. We have literally education embedded everywhere, so whether they sign up to education, they are learning in various different things. Huge opportunities in terms of life skills and learning vocational training. We have a programme now where we are getting them work ready and giving them various different skills to go back outside. If the personal officer does not engage, there are personal officers that then go up to inclusion officers, community safety officers, Barnardo youth workers have a responsibility for safeguarding. We build packages around individuals and we bring them out so that they have the most meaningful experience they can, given that it is within a prison setting and we have had real success. Do you get feedback from the young people themselves? What is their opinion and how do you test that? Absolutely. In many ways, and I am sure that colleagues sitting next to us will say that, the personal officer of a young person or a care will become a trusted friend, a responsible adult, someone who will advocate for them and often they will go looking for advice from their personal officer. They are often unwilling in the early stages to engage, but we are determined and we encourage and we have different ways to bring them out. After they are involved, they are genuinely grateful and many many benefit from the activities that are available. Does any of the other panel wish to come in on that, Alison? Yes, I think the provisions of the Bill would give a very strong foundation for moving forward to keeping the promise. However, it really is going to be about how the Bill is implemented and how it is resourced, so I do think there are significant issues there in terms of the bridging support that we were talking about earlier in terms of the transitions for young people coming in to secure care settings from the community and moving on once they have experienced a period of time in secure care. It is going to be about the resourcing and the direction of resourcing in relation to services that promote wellbeing and try to prevent significant harm and risk arising to a situation where young people are required to be secured. I think that there is a significant piece of work to do in terms of framing and language. I think that during the course of the Bill, we have still seen the use of the language around recidivism, for example, and applying that to situations of really quite young children. I think that for us in the secure care settings, we work within a theoretical framework around child development and attachment theory and trauma sensitivity. The way that we are regulated, the way that we are registered, we work to national standards relating to children's residential school care services, we are registered with the care inspectorate, we are registered with Education Scotland and we are thoroughly scrutinised and inspected on a regular basis. I think that the reports that have been published in recent years are testament to the fact that we have the skills to do that and that we are working hard to keep the promise in relation to those standards for children and young people, but we have a big job to do in terms of the language that we use in relation to how young people feel about themselves and secure care can still be associated with a sense of punishment and othering, and that is not aligned with keeping the promise. I touched earlier on, we talked about cross-border placements in relation to financial sustainability. Interested here around the regulations in the Bill, it seeks to further regulate those placements. Do we think that the regulations in the Bill go far enough in order to ensure the welfare of those vulnerable children? Can we start with Claire? I think that the changes in the Bill are necessary in terms of cross-border placements, given the other changes in relation to young people no longer residing in the moment. The security state has to exist in order to make any of those changes, and I think that there will always be a need for cross-border placements, both in terms of the need of the child and the need of the centres. I would like to give an example where cross-border placements can be very effective. We have a number of young people who come to us who have been involved in child criminal exploitation. Quite often, young people from London boroughs. The purpose of a secure placement within Scotland is to break those links to criminality, a placement closer to home. When young people are associated with criminal networks, it would be very difficult to do that, because the criminal networks are very well established and they have the ability to create opportunities to communicate with children and to apply pressure on children even when they are in the relative safety of a secure provision. When those children are plucked almost to obscurity from a London borough and they arrive in Glasgow or in Montrose, it savers that tie immediately and almost completely, and it allows criminal precedence to begin elsewhere to address the behaviours of the adults, which is exactly what we should be doing. It creates a bit of respect for the children who are able to articulate that they absolutely need secure care in order to maintain their safety and sometimes to continue to be alive. They have been placed in situations where they have been in grave danger. Also, very often, those young people are able to articulate to their guardians for English young people, their social workers and to their immediate care providers within our centres that they do not want to return to that environment, that they would like to look for other opportunities and remain in Scotland beyond their secure placement. In those instances, we can support transitions much more effectively than we can if they return to London or to the south of England. That type of placement, of which there are many, serves a real purpose in meeting the needs of those children and young people. There are other situations where it seems to be more of a quick fix for the local authority that can potentially create bigger problems by removing the child from positive family networks and associations that they need in order to thrive. We had some evidence last week on that point. One member said, by making it harder for local authorities to place children in Scotland, our hope would be that that would somewhat force the issue of providing more appropriate places in England. In terms of the dynamic of the bill, do you see that change happening in England if we make it more difficult for the staff in Scotland? No, not really. We have been waiting on that change for a long time. I can remember a number of years ago, I guess, at maybe late 2016, early 2017, in my role at that time within another organisation. I had a visit from the Department of Education in England, who were driving this very agenda. Seven years have now passed and the predicament is becoming bigger because the issues that children and young people are exposed to are changing. I have already mentioned the changing demographic of the young people in the security state.  Child criminal exploitation is something that we are still learning about in Scotland and the networks that have been established in London and in the south of England are now extending to Scotland in their impacting on our young people here. Young people further south you go are much more entrenched in those networks, the associated behaviours and the criminality involved in that. So that problem is increasing tenfold. Even if that work was to happen now south of the border, I do not think that they would ever be able to catch up with the level of need that young people have. Other colleagues have? I think that it is maybe just a point out in terms of data. Through discussion with commissioning bodies in England, at any point in any given week between 60 and 80 young people who meet a secure care criteria, who are in a variety of different places in, through my experience, in barges on rivers and things. You are talking about young people who meet secure care criteria. The position that we find ourselves in within Scotland is when these young people are referred to us, we see a child completely and utterly understand the political position and agenda. However, if that young person, in terms of referral, meets the criteria for us and we have a vacancy, for me it is incumbent on us to support that young person and their needs. In terms of the regulation around cross-border placements, again fully agreeing and understanding that, I know the care inspectorate, I have done a lot of work around the regulation and looking at unregulated placements, shall we say. The fear would always be around the monetisation of young people. The more you create structures and the right structures, other things are created that continue to monetise young people. That would be my fundamental fear that, as much as the trajectory is correct within Scotland in terms of the intentions, what do we create with those unintended consequences? Does anyone else want to come in before I move to the last set of questions? Can I move to Willie Rennie, please? This is a question for you, Alison. You have said some quite strong things about the children's hearing system but also about attitudes within the justice system. Could you maybe just elaborate a little bit more about that and how widespread do you think those issues are? I would refer back to the comments that were asked earlier from Graham Day and the perception that secure care is a soft option. I think that there is a lot of work to do in terms of reframing and the language that we use and the words that we think and say and write about children and our understanding of the children who experience secure care. Historically, the current secure care services support 90 per cent to 95 per cent of the children and young people coming to us from the children's hearing system and that is their route into secure care. Those are children in common with children who come to us through the justice system because of situations in which they have harmed others. Those are children who have experienced high levels of adversity, disadvantage, discrimination at times and exclusion. There are still perceptions and we have experienced it on occasions and we have certainly heard it from young people who come to stay with us. Secure care is a soft option and young people who are involved in the kinds of difficult situations that our young people are involved in really should be dealt with through the justice system and punished in some way. There is a fundamental mismatch between people's understanding of the brand and principles and how we have operated in the secure care setting for decades. The reason why I raised those issues again is that we are putting through this bill more faith and trust in the children's hearing system that you have identified your experiences as variable with it. Have you got concerns that the children's hearing system won't be able to live up to the expectations that we've got of it and if so, what work do we need to do with the children's hearing system for it to do so? I have confidence that the children's hearing system can adapt in the way that the children's hearing system has continued to do for all the decades that we've had the children's hearing system in place. Previously, I haven't worked with colleagues at CHS at the time that the new organisation was coming into being and the 32 local authorities were becoming our national children's panel. I believe that there's an appetite there. I believe that the children's hearing system is on a journey as we are in secure care. What we need to do is to ensure that the panel members are fully equipped, that SCRA is fully equipped, that everybody is equipped to respond to the needs that young people have now and that we reframe things in our response to young people in need of intensive support. Do you think that the tools that are available to the children's hearing system should be broadened as well? There's been talking about, given the perhaps greater powers in terms of restorative justice and so on, how would that happen and what more should be given? I'm quite happy for others to come in if they've got a view. Alison first, though. I think that that should be explored and I think that some of the potential that was envisaged way back at the beginning of the children's hearing system in terms of the wider involvement of family and community and looking at other models internationally as well in terms of community justice and how that could interface with the children's hearing system. I think that that would be very beneficial. I think that in terms of keeping the promise, it's about the totality of the child's life and no child exists without their family or without their community. I do believe that it's not just about looking at extended legal powers, it's looking at how that's implemented, what kinds of orders could be developed through the use of conditions related to CSOs and ICSOs and how would they be implemented and what's the interface between that and the local authority, social work departments, responsibilities. Would anybody else like to come in on the back of that? I thank for many of the children's hearing system. I echo Alison's position that I have every confidence in the children's hearing system. That said, we engage on an annual basis in delivery of training to the children's hearing system across the east coast of Scotland from a rosie's perspective on secure accommodation. That was in situ pre-pandemic in recommends last year. What was evident to us as they have acknowledged themselves as a lack of understanding of the provisions that exist within the secure settings and that it was beneficial to them and that that's going to continue this year. That, for ourselves, would be worrying in the sense of if you're delivering an outcome for the young person at a children's hearing system and that you fundamentally have a lack of understanding of where that young person is going. I echo in terms of the justice delivery that could be explored, but again, I would say that they need to have a full understanding of what that looks like to be able to deliver it. Elliot Jackson, the chief executive of the children's hearing system, visited last year. Alison described that they are currently on the journey. Some of his senior team have been in to the establishment to engage user voice, look at the experiences of young people, upstream etc. We're continuing to work with the children's hearing system staff to help improve their systems and engage user voice. We are going to circle back a little bit to bring in a supplementary question on additional support needs from Stephanie Calhann, please. I suppose that it's a quite separate question really, but it kind of goes back to talking about, I know certainly in the submission clear that came in from St Mary's that you were talking about more often than not, there's these children are here because it's a result of acute stressors, neurodevelopmental impairments, ACEs etc. here as well. I'm really interested in the numbers around neurodevelopmental issues, if you have that information there, but you also mentioned about children arriving as well earlier on, and I'm wondering if there's any kind of additional preparation, which might also be helpful for other children, like seeing photographs and pictures of where they're going, having the lights a bit dimmer, keeping the noise down etc. So by definition every young person in secure care has an additional support need, because being a looked after young person in itself as an additional support need tends not to come alone, because you don't arrive in a situation where you're a looked after child in secure accommodation by magic. It usually comes from multiple adverse experiences throughout the life of a child, which contributes to the person they are, their rate of development, their cognitive ability. Most of our young people have numerous additional support needs and numerous barriers to learning. Some of those barriers can be quite easily overcome in a secure environment where there is an intensive level of support, and are undoubtedly more difficult to continue on transition back to the community. There are some steps that we can take to support admissions to St Mary's Ken, you are into the other secure providers, and I think between us we've touched on some of these already. There are lots of things that we would like to do, so we have a video of our service, almost a tour, that is narrated by other young people, and it shares lots of the nice experiences that young people will be involved in at St Mary's. It shows what the school is like, it shows what your admission will look like, what the house you live in will look like, it shows people having fun, playing football, going swimming in an art classroom. Prior to admission, so we do a pre-admission meeting where we try to gain as much information as possible on a young person. When we agree on admission, that video is shared with the social worker, with the hope that the social worker shares it with the child, more often than not, the child arrives with us and they haven't seen that video, so at that point we do show them. We try to be as kind, as empathetic, as trauma informed as possible at the point of admission with a young person. It's not uncommon for a young person to arrive in fight or flight mode, because it's a very traumatic experience and it can take a period of time to help them to begin to feel safe and secure in a new environment with adults who are complete strangers to them. We take our time with that process and we do everything that we can, particularly on that first night, to try to help young people to feel safe. We have a welcome box that all young people receive that has some colouring pencils, some paper, some fidget toys. We ensure that young people have clean and fresh clothes and that, to go back to, I guess, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we ensure that all basic needs are met immediately. It takes a long time to understand and then begin to unpick and support young people through the trauma that they have experienced before their arrival in secure care. To go back to the pre-admission process as well, it can often be very difficult. Sorry, Claire, I'm very conscious of time and I know that Mr Northcull wants to come in as well, so if you can keep your responses concise, please. It's very difficult to access the information or the quality and the level of information that you would like to have on young people prior to the admission to secure care. And not having that information makes the beginning of their journey in secure care more difficult than it would be ideally. Kevin Stewart I just wanted to highlight some data on additional support needs. Currently, within Rossie, we have a secure provision, we have 16 diagnosed young people and nine suspected in our residential campus. There's 10 diagnosed and one suspected. We've commenced the journey of attempting to see if there's a trend or a correlation between suspected diagnosis in terms of admission to secure care and that early intervention pathway. Is that new to developmental specifically? It is. Thank you very much. I would like to thank you all for your time today. I know that some members of the panel have another commitment that they have to dash off to as well. We're now going to have a suspension until 10.40 to allow a change of witnesses. Welcome back. We're now going to take evidence from our second panel today on the Children, Care and Justice Scotland Bill. I welcome to the meeting Sheriff David Mackie, a chairperson hearing system working group that promised Scotland, Chloe Riddle, policy lead from the promised Scotland, Meg Thomas, head of research, policy and participation act, including Laura Pasternak, policy and public affairs manager, who cares Scotland, and Kate Wallace, chief executive officer from Victim Support Scotland. Good morning. We are going to move directly on to members' questions. Can we start panel 2 with Graham Day, please? I suspect that I know what your answers will be to my first question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Can I get your views on the definition of a child being 18, given your experience of dealing with that cohort? Laura, do you want to go first? From our experience, the definition of a child is in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that a child is 18, although we know that the children's commissioner, for example, supports care experience people up to the age of 21. We know that our legislation supports care experience people up to the age of 26 in line with brain development. That answers your question. I think that it's really important to be clear that we've had some discussion about when we're now treating 16 and 17-year-olds as children. I think that we've heard that in the previous discussions at the committee. Actually, 16 and 17-year-olds aren't suddenly children. They've always been children. We ratified the UNCRC in 1991. The first article of that is that a child is up to the age of 18. What we're doing here with this bill and with the processes to help keep the promise is to bring the law in line with what's agreed and established since we ratified the UNCRC. Given that this is probably a question for Sheriff Mackie, we've just heard about changing the approach to 16 and 17-year-olds. Is there not an argument for introducing elements of restorative justice into the children's hearing system as well beyond this bill? There really is. I agree with that. The starting point is to recognise that the children's hearing system is not a criminal justice process. It is rights-based and, fundamentally, concerned with a welfare approach to the interests of the child that's referred. With that background, with that starting point, how do we address the needs of the victims of crime? A rule of thumb in relation to sentencing in the criminal justice system is that sentencing addresses retribution, rehabilitation and re-offending. What will not happen so clearly in the children's hearing system is any form of outright retribution. However, a restorative justice process does offer the victims of offending behaviour the opportunity to those who have been harmed by behaviour to engage in the process and, in many cases, to gain some satisfaction from the process. I agree that the promulgation of restorative justice services in the children's hearing system as well as in the criminal justice system is something to be promoted in my view. The other witnesses. I certainly would agree with what Sheriff Mackay has said. We support young people who have both been harmed by other children but also children who harm. What I would say is that the young people who have caused harm also often want that opportunity to be able to make amends in a way that is not retribution but promotes the restoration of relationships because they are fundamentally often people in their communities, they are people that they are interacting with and there are knock-ons from that lack of ability to restore relationships that we certainly would be strongly advocating for restorative justice processes within the children's hearing system. Okay. Anyone else want that? Just from our point of view, there are two key things around this. One of them is making sure that children who have been harmed or victims are free to choose and their choice is paramount about whether or not they want to be involved in this but also I think it's important as you will have heard from previous sessions to this committee that at the moment the lack of information sharing would make that whole process pretty much impossible. I would suggest people who have been harmed by children or young people do not get any information about that case if you like at all at the moment so it's hard to see how that could work without significant change but you would welcome such change obviously some we work with some young victims who actively are asking for a restorative justice approach as long as it's about their free choice and it's a victim-centred approach to restorative justice where victims get very nervous is where they see it as being not about is about you know soft or justice for perpetrators if you like so you know making sure that we actually take time to design a restorative justice system from the start that is very clear that it's victim-centred I think would really help. Okay thank you thank you thank you thank you Stephen Kerr now please. Can I ask you a very quick question actually which is in relation to the bill does the bill bring Scotland into line with the UNCRC and the ECHR? Straight forward yes or no I suppose Laura? Or is it not a straight forward yes or no? I think for the most part the bill does and it's a massive step forward to bring the arcade injustice system in line with the UNCRC in terms of increasing the age of referral to the children's healing system in terms of abolishing detention of children and young offenders institutions and prisons. I think there's a couple of tweets in the bill that would make it more UNCRC and the European Convention on Human Rights compliant and I think that's something hopefully we can discuss throughout the questions but particularly in relation to some of the age points that the point in the financial memorandum around 17 and a half being the cut-off point for referral when we know from the UN general comment 24 on child's friendly justice that the relevant date in human rights standards is the date when the challenging behaviour the harmful behaviour happened. Right. So even if the child surpasses 18, if the processes aren't in place in time for them to go through the children's healing system they should still be dealt with through the children's healing system so I think there's a few tweets that need to be made here. So it should be age appropriate to when the offence was committed? Exactly. Exactly. So that's one in the other kind of main concern I have is around that the lack of reference to the right to independent advocacy and legal representation in the bill and I think that there are various points in the bill where that needs to be made clearer those rights because we need to ensure that children going through the children's healing system are involved in the decision making processes with the support of an advocate and can understand the offence grounds or the welfare grounds that are being put to them and can understand how to instruct a solicitor to ensure their rights are being upheld. So I think those are some key areas that could be improved to make it more UNCRC compliant. All right that's very helpful so it wasn't a yes or no answer after all. Meg, do you want to comment further? No I would fully support what Laura has said I think particularly in relation to the legal pieces. I think the movement restriction condition is a number of places in the act where there's not a clear right to legal representation that needs to be considered. I think I do welcome it in terms of in line with the right to recovery to trauma however that that move to secure care rather than young offenders institutions will be a long way towards meeting that obligation under the UNCRC. From our point of view there is a challenge with this in terms of the rights for victims within this particularly children who have been harmed by other children so the bill is very much focused around the rights of the child who has harmed but not so much in terms of the child who has been harmed and I think that's something that needs to be addressed. You know a reference point that I made around lack of information so as other people have said it's very difficult to see how children who have been harmed their right to participate in precedence and how that can be fulfilled. There's also a question mark about the right to recovery and trauma for those children who have been harmed too so I think there's a bit of work to do around that from our perspective. Okay does anyone want to add anything to my yes please Chloe? I agree with Laura's broad overview there but just to add as well that the promise was quite clear about a child friendly approach to youth justice so we know that some of these 16 and 17 year olds will still be going and younger children will still be going through the criminal court process. I don't propose that that will be addressed within this bill but it's really important to to recognise that we still have some really quite inappropriate structures for children within the adult criminal justice system that should be addressed. The other thing to mention is that as with all of our legislation what's really important is upholding children's rights not just throughout the processes of the bill but in terms of implementation. There are some really significant resource implications for this bill and we need to be considering the bill not just in terms of the changes to the children's hearing system but in terms of the changes that it will mean for our colleagues and local authorities and police and I'm sure that you've heard that from other witnesses but the significant resource implications mean that children's rights will not be upheld in implementation unless those are addressed. And those are human resources on infrastructure itself the infrastructure is not great. In terms of availability of support services but we know that 16 and 17 year olds have particular needs that younger children might not around things like housing around transport around some of these really the things that we've discussed here about restorative justice around early and effective intervention so we need to make sure that the supports are in place for those children to uphold their rights otherwise we'll just be passing legal orders in the absence of support. The hearing system working group that Sheriff Mackie is chairing that's facilitated by the Promise Scotland is looking at some of these points so we'd be happy to share a bit more about the work of the group in the discussions but one of the primary things that the group is looking at in a redesigned children's hearing system is how we can make sure that the system and the changes set out within this bill are compliant with EHRC and with UNCRC. There's a lot to unpack in what you've just said and I'm sure other colleagues will... Questions on some of those threads coming from colleagues? In the Promise it's also explicit that under 18s should not be placed in prison like settings because it's considered deeply inappropriate for children and clearly that would include secure settings such as the specific in the bill. The promise is clear that that young offenders institutions are inappropriate. There are broader discussions about secure care which I'm sure will be picked up in terms but from our perspective we really welcome the absolute clarification that no children should be placed in young offenders institutions. I don't know if Sheriff Mackie wants to pick at them. Yeah well I agree with everything that's been said so far I think whether or not we are ECHR and especially UNCRC compliant becomes a matter almost more of practice than just being a performative provision in a piece of legislation and that's particularly apt in relation to those older children. It's all very well having 16 and 17 year olds coming into the children's hearing system but we don't want there to be a cliff edge at the age of 18 of services being withdrawn or a lack of availability of services and it's difficult to find a legal way in which that gap can be bridged however the way it will be bridged that's what Meg has said is to ensure that access to adult services are available to those older children who are going through the children's hearing system who can be supported beyond the age of 18 not necessarily with a court order or with a children's hearing order but with services that they want and they need and that are available to them so a great deal here depends on practice and attitude as much as having that provision that says 16 and 17 year olds. Absolutely. I think there are many other things we've talked about but I think probably I should. On the thread of children's hearings it moves on nicely to questions from Willie Rennie please. Perhaps Sheriff Mackie would like to just explain a bit more about his work of the working group and you may be heard in the earlier session some quite strong words about attitudes within the justice system but also among some in the children's hearing system and just wondering how your reforms would address those issues so perhaps just tell us a bit more. Yes I do have to qualify everything I say but by explaining that we haven't yet arrived at final recommendations and that there's a limit to how much I can disclose. Our interim report on emerging themes gives us strong hint as to the direction of travel but we're imagining that the hearing will be strengthened in a number of ways to meet the needs of young care experience people to avoid repetitively telling their story to anonymous adults about to make big decisions in their lives. We're looking for continuity at least in the chair and that desirability for continuity is there in any event for better quality of decision making decision writing and so one can reasonably anticipate the aspiration to have a permanent chair who can be there for that child throughout their journey in the children's hearing system and that's one area that we are addressing. We are devoted to adhering to the Kilbrandon principles and restoring the notion of the children's hearing as a non-adversarial inquisitorial process at which the only issue that the tribunal has to decide is what is in the best interest of the child. Nobody is so naïvet to think that there wouldn't be competing views as to what where the child's best interests might lie and there might be quite strong views but nonetheless the single objective would be that and that will how that operates will depend a great deal on what we hope will be a strengthened better qualified more competent chair. An important thread running through all of this is the notion of a child's plan. We recognise that the children's hearing system sits within a much wider context of child protection regime and we will be making a strong statement about that that before a child arrives at the children's hearing there should be a child's plan, there should have been a lot of work done with a child and family long before they reach the children's hearing but rather than having the hearing as a fresh starting point for decision making we think it'd be important for there to be a continuity of decision making to recognise the expertise that will already have been involved in the family in terms of looked after care reviews, child protection meetings, teams around the child and so forth and to draw on that expertise and to maintain that thread through the whole process so that the child's plan becomes central to the decision making of the hearing and so I could go on at some length about some of the ideas we're coming up with but these are some important threads that are emerging which I hope will give you a sense that when our recommendations will lead towards a much more strengthened more robust tribunal in the form of the children's hearing and one final point which is perhaps relevant to the point you've raised Mr Rennie is in relation to implementation of orders of the children's hearing and accountability because again while we recognise the need for the national convener to have that enforcement role that already exists and nobody's suggesting that should change we are desirous of creating a more immediate response to the needs of children and families where orders of the children's hearing are not working well or are not being implemented in the way that people expected and so we anticipate a greater degree of oversight probably through the chair in the implementation and conduct of orders. Chloe, did you want to come in? Sorry, I just wondered if it might be helpful just briefly to talk about the process in terms of the work of the group. The group is comprised of representatives from Children's Hearing Scotland and the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration, the Scottish Government performing an observatory role for the promised Scotland facilitating and participating in the group chaired by Sheriff Mackie. It's been quite a long process so we've had about a year of engagement more broadly than those organisations on the group but with police, with social workers, with people, all sorts of different organisations and what we've come up to is a period of deliberation now. The recommendations will be published in May so it will possibly be helpful for the committee to have the report in advance of stage 2 and 3 but just in terms of that process it may be useful to understand when it's coming. Can I just do one follow-up? All that sounds eminently sensible. What's the hard bit? What will be the most challenging aspect of what you've described? The most challenging aspect may be in the administration and the processing. We're imagining, for example, that hearings will take longer than they do at the moment, that there'll be much more care taken in the conduct of hearings and offering the child and the panel members opportunities to reflect and confer and so forth. That's one thing so that the capacity may be an issue because the prospect of 16 and 17-year-olds coming into the system is one that will undoubtedly challenge the capacity of the system. Our ambition is to reduce the number of children and families that come into the children's hearing system in the first place and hence the emphasis on the wider child protection regime and all that are contributing to the call for better and more services to support families but that's one aspect of the capacity. We are therefore effectively adding to the call for greater capacity in that early support and no doubt on social work services as well. If that doesn't come, could we see longer waiting times? It's difficult for me to answer that. Logically, that might happen. The answer to that question depends entirely on how processes are developed and devised to respond to recommendations and changes that might be coming through. If we don't reduce the numbers and we don't increase the capacity of the system to cope with larger numbers then logically, it would lead to longer waiting times. Even on the current system with the modelling that SCRA has done in relation to the potential increase in numbers, there's an expectation that we will need quite a number of additional panel members, even on the existing system, to cope with the increase in volume and capacity. So, yes, it follows logically. We've got a brief supplementary from Graham Day. Thank you. What is the average waiting time currently and what is the modelling show that it could become? At the moment, the length of time it takes for a referral to be processed from the very beginning through to the completion is about eight and a half months. That's an average time. But there are far too many children lingering in the children's hearing system for years and longer periods than are necessary. So, part of our ambition, our aspiration, is to, by improving the quality and the gravitas of the tribunal of ensuring that the decision making is truly effective. Remember what I said about the child's plan. The child's plan should have a clear exit, so that any child coming into the hearing system should have some kind of understanding, if not an actual date. That's not really what I mean, but a clear understanding of where this process is taking them and what their exit from the system might be. So, part of our aspiration is to reduce that length of time that children are kept in the hearing system. Of course, sitting in there may be the child victims, or the lives victims in all of this, who wait eight and a half months for justice, which they may not get absolute sight of in the end. What does the modelling suggest, roughly, that it could increase by? That's what I personally have. I don't have figures that I can give you. I don't know if anybody else has. In terms of the actual increase in numbers from the increase in age, what we've been told by SCRA on their modelling is that the system can expect something of the order of 2,000 additional cases of which the majority are likely to involve offence-based grounds. That's as much as I can say. It's very broad figures that I'm just holding in my head, but that's broadly what we've been told to explain. The 2,000 cases would compare to what's currently roughly. What percentage of an increase would that be? I'm afraid I can't answer that. Perhaps someone can write us with that information. I think this was from this parliamentary briefing. In 2020-21, there were 595 children aged 16 and 17 who proceeded against a criminal court. The estimated 730 to 1,350 additional hearings per year. It might seem a little bit of a shift in approach here, but we're going to move to some questions from Ross Greer, please. Thanks, convener. I'd be interested in the panel's thoughts around transport to and from secure accommodation or transport for all the young people that we're talking about here, but particularly to and from secure accommodation. That might be something that you don't have direct experience of, but if you do, I'd be interested. You might be aware of the Hope Instead of Handcuffs campaign, which is essentially making the point that, while we've been gradually on a journey towards increasing standards, regulations and inspections when it comes to secure accommodation, transport has been missed out there. There have been instances of what they believe to be inappropriate use of restraint. Some of the things that they're proposing are a mandatory system of reporting of every instance of restraint and seclusion. In the first instance, I would be interested if anybody has any reflections on the state of play for transport provision at the moment. We heard from the last panel of the basic logistical challenge that they've got of even trying to get a transport provider at all, having to get people from the south of England to come up to Montrose to collect a young person to go to Ninewell hospital 30 minutes away. If anybody has any initial thoughts on what the current state of play for transport to and from secure accommodation is, that would be very helpful. We would support that recommendation from mandatory reporting. At Hooker Scotland, we provide independent advocacy to various secure care centres across Scotland. We've done some consultation in the past year with some members in secure care around their transport to secure care. Generally, the comments were around the approach to entering the centres and the transport providers, private transport providers that were commissioned by local authorities to take them to secure care. Several young people were handcuffed throughout the journey. They spoke of journeys of up to eight hours to get to secure care. There was an emotional response from a lot of the young people asked in terms of if they knew why they were going to secure care and if they understood the reasons and if they knew where they were going. There was a theme of deception that we heard from our young people. They'd been lied to about where they were going or why they were going. One kind of anecdote that really struck me was that it was Christmas Eve and one of our young people woke up. A staff member came into the room and said, "'Do you want to go to McDonald's?' and he said, "'Soundman, let's go. Put my best tracks on the journey there.' He asked me, "'What are you getting?' and I said, "'A big Mac.' They were on the M8 passed by the McDonald's. I said, "'The McDonald's is that way and he said you're going to secure me.'" That's just a striking example of the damaging traumatic experience of not being aware of the circumstance that you're in, the system being done to you, and the secure care pathway and standards not being upheld. In that example, and that consultation we did was last summer, but there was a, I know just as recent as last week, one of the advocates was telling me that these experiences are still on going. There was a young person that only found out they were going to secure care when the car drove up to the kind of garage entrance to the centre and secure care standards 11, 13 and 14 aren't being upheld where you're supposed to understand why you're going to secure care. You're supposed to have somebody that you trust on the transport with you. You're supposed to know the details of where you're going to be staying. We heard instances of people not being given toilet breaks on their journey, not being given food to eat, and feeling unsafe in terms of the speed at which the cars were going at. Here we're hearing allegations of violations of article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights and when we're talking about somebody being taken to somewhere where there's going to be such a severe interference with their article 8 rights, with their right to family life, and we need to make sure that their rights are going to be protected not just when they're at the secure centre but on their journey there as well. We're really concerned and anything the bill can do to look at how rights can be better protected on the way and in secure care. Hopefully we can discuss that a bit more later, we're really interested in. Thanks for that, that's just really powerful evidence, I'm glad that you shared it with us. On the specific recommendation around mandatory reporting of any instance of restraint, I'd be interested if anyone on the panel has thoughts on where that mandatory reporting should go through. Should it be mandatory reporting from the provider to the local authority? Should it be mandated to report not just to the local authority but also to the care inspectorate? Should it be mandatory reporting to the secure accommodation centre? Where should that sit? Should it be at an individual institutional basis, i.e. with a secure accommodation provider? Should it be local authority level? Should it be national? Should it be somewhere else that I've not thought of? Laura, Chloe and I seem to be keen to come in on this, so which one wants to go first? Your question really points to a broader issue. There are some policy issues there, there are some immediate things that could be addressed today without legislation, things that absolutely should not be happening in practice. There is quite a lot of work going on because there's a joint group of government and a group looking at secure care transport and the redesign of secure care and what that might look like. I think that it's really important that we don't work or continue to work in these silos where we kind of think about secure care transport over here, secure care over here, young offenders institutions over here, the children's hearings over here. It's all part the same thing and often it's the same children. The promise was really clear that Scotland must strive to have a combination that does not restrain its children. We're quite a long way away from that and we know that. There's a broader issue about how do we record instances where a child has been restrained, whether it's in an education setting, whether it's in secure care, whether it's in a residential children's home or whether it's in secure care transport. The promise bill, which is forthcoming, the Government implementation plan has identified that there'll be another bill might be an opportunity to look at consolidating some of the legislation that we have about restraint and reporting. It's really important that we don't kind of look at it as a separate issue and that it's part of all of what we're discussing today about what the attitudes and values are about how we treat children, about how we uphold children's rights, how they access their rights, how they know what their rights are and what to do when those rights are not being upheld. I think particularly what you're describing here is about a cultural change as well that can't just be fixed by a kind of a line in legislation. Laura? Yeah, I'd agree with that. I think we do need to look at the promise and the trajectory that we're supposed to be on. Plan 2124 refers to their being well communicated and understood guidance on restraint. It's 2023. When are we going to get that guidance and the Equal Protection Bill, the committee that was looking at it at the time, I think in 2019, said that we don't think that this bill is the appropriate vehicle to be looking at guidance on restraint? If this bill isn't, then what bill will be? I think that we really need to be looking at it. I think that it's a missed opportunity in the bill to be looking at how we can have less ambiguous guidance on restraint to make sure that there's no ambiguity in practice and that rights are being upheld. As I mentioned in articles 3 and 8, we're also talking about articles 19 and 37 of the UNCRC. If we're going to have the UNCRC bill reintroduced into Parliament, we want to get that right now in the Care and Justice Bill. Just one brief follow-up. That's a question for the whole panel, but following up on the point that Laura has just made about the relationship between the bill and the bill, the options are essentially the guidance that's being worked on by the group led by COSLA at the moment, putting something on the face of the bill, something through secondary legislation so that we could put ministerial power in the bill to create regulation or a future bit of primary legislation. Does anybody have any particular strong views on how we address this? Because I think that there's broad consensus, certainly with evidence that we've had, we need to address it. There's multiple options. It doesn't need to just be one of them, but does anybody have a strong view on which one or which multiple options potentially it should be? Anyone? I think that whatever could happen soonest, and I would advise your judgment on that, because young people have been waiting for this. I think that the most recent guidance is 2003, so whatever could happen soonest. Lots of nodding heads there on that question. Regardless of whether it has to be on a legislative... We've got Meg and Sheriff Mackie wanting to come in. I think that regardless of whether it needs to be put on a legislative footing though, we already have evidence that guidance around school exclusions, for example are guidance only and that there are lots of anecdotal accounts of young people being illegally, for one of a better word, excluded from school from a variety of reasons. I think that that was the concern around the use of restraint in schools that again is guidance without a legislative footing, so regardless of the approach, it needs to be legislative in order to protect children's rights. Very briefly, I'm really picking up on the points that Chloe has made. I think it would be desirable for it to be embedded in principle in fundamental legislation. It may be that the detail around transport could be picked up in schedules or in secondary legislation, but I think that the fundamental principle that the child's rights should be upheld should be embedded in fundamental legislation. If now is the opportunity to do that, then it should be taken. Thank you for that. Can we move now to some questions from Stephanie Callaghan, please? Thank you very much, convener. I'm interested in the victims and I'm wondering what you feel that impact to this legislation on child victims for the bill in its current form would be, if I could go to Kate first. I think that for some victims who have spoke to them about the bill, this is quite challenging, particularly victims of more serious offences. There is some feedback from people around moving children who have committed quite serious offences, murder, serious sexual assault, that type of thing out of young offenders' institutions and into secure accommodation, so that is a concern. There is also a concern from victims who are in secure accommodation at the moment because of serious welfare concerns that potentially they are going to be put at risk from some serious offenders being placed in secure accommodation with them, so they would like to know what is going to be put in place to safeguard them and not put them at further risk. As I said, the point that I made earlier on about the lack of information about individual cases when the person who has harmed you as a child is really, really difficult for people and what we are really talking about at the moment is that that is going to happen more often with more people, as we have just heard the numbers being discussed, so that is really going to be pretty difficult for some people. The other point that we want you to make as well is about movement restriction. Where that is imposed on a child due to a threat of physical or psychological harm that they pose to an individual, if the person who is intended to be kept safe by that is not fully informed of the conditions or any breaches, then there will be significant problems there. What we do not want to see is what happens in the adult system, which is that victims feel as though the responsibility for monitoring those conditions ends up falling with them. If they do not get the information that they do it, they cannot, but they cannot effectively safety plan for themselves in the absence of that information. I think that, in the know that you have heard from others last week around, they need to put more in around movement restriction within the Bill because it is probably at the moment. There are some things that were raised in the consultation that have not followed through into the Bill in the way that we would have liked, and in terms of detail information provision. For example, if you are offended by an adult, there is a victim notification scheme where you can opt into to get information about when someone has either escaped or absconded from prison. You are also entitled to know when they are released, but at the moment you could be within that context if, for example, you have been subjected to a serious sexual assault by a child or young person who ends up in secure care and goes through that route. You will not be informed of when they leave that secure establishment. That will be very difficult for a lot of people who know the types of phone calls that we get to or help line about people who are in extreme distress about exactly that type of thing. I think that there are a number of issues that need to be picked up in more detail put in the Bill around to help safeguard victims and their rights. You have heard me earlier on talking about the kind of balance of rights and how that is out of sync. I will come back and ask you just in a minute about the balance, but I am wondering as well if Sheriff Mackay or if Chloe are able to say something about what last week we had heard that only 14 per cent of victims actually respond to the offer of information. I am wondering if that is clearly something that is needed in this area to do a bit of research into why that is, because they did not have the information behind that. Is that something that the working group could look at or is that something that should be looked at somewhere else separately? I think that that is very much a matter of practice in relation to the way in which, within the context of the children's hearing system, the reporter engages with the people who have been harmed by the conduct of others. Kate's answer is very forceful and I agree with everything that she said, but it highlights the extent to which it is difficult to generalise about victims because, in many cases, the distinction between perpetrators of behaviour and the victims of behaviour is not always so clear cut and people who are coming before the system are not so neatly categorised. Within the hearing system itself, I have touched earlier on the possibility of restorative justice processes coming into play and that would be a process whereby the victims, people harmed by the behaviour of others, could have a direct engagement and an opportunity to participate in the process. Beyond that, I consider that it is probably more a matter of practice in relation to the way in which the reporter manages cases and engages with not only the child who is the subject of the referral and their family but also the individual who might have been harmed by the conduct of that person. Do you not feel that there is a need for a bit more research then to understand why only 14 per cent of those victims do respond to that? I do because I think that it would definitely be desirable to have a proper understanding of that because the point that I was just about to make was that I would not expect to just be devolved entirely on to the shoulders of the reporter. I think that that perhaps indicates a need for other supports and services. We have touched already on the availability of advocacy services for children and young people who are brought into the children's hearing system, but it may be that those who are the victims of such behaviour would benefit from that sort of advocacy with a small a voice to speak on their behalf or to make representations and to support them through a process. It exists already in a patchwork way and in a perfect world, for example, in relation to domestic abuse. One of the most effective supports that is available to victims of domestic abuse is the provision of advocacy support from the very beginning. That notion of advocacy support would be worth exploring and investigating. That is really helpful. Just to come back to you, Kate Lear, you spoke earlier on about that balance and about children who have been harmed, having that right to recovery as well and having agency, I suppose, is what you were saying, too, talking about restorative justice and saying that that had to be victim-centred. I wonder if you feel that there is anything that could be added to the bill, anything else that we could put there, that would actually help to support that? I think that there is quite a specific wording that could be put in to just make that absolutely clear. For example, risk assessments around restorative justice to make sure that children are not being placed potentially at further risk. There have been concerns, obviously, as you will be aware, about that being raised within the adult process. I think that there is quite a lot that can be added to the bill around information provision. We welcome that wording around people having the right to request information. In reality, people are not given information about their individual case and we know that. I think that that needs to change and it might well be driving your 14 per cent figure because when people know they are not going to get information about their own specific case anyway, then what is the point? I think that there is quite a bit, probably more than I have time to say here, about what could be added in specifically. We would really welcome anything like that, a further submission from you with that detail there would be really helpful for the committee too. Thank you very much. Can I move to questions now from Michael Marra, please? Thanks, convener. I want to ask about cross-border placements and obviously, the bill seeks to regulate some of those placements. Do you think that the provisions in the bill go far enough to regulate those? Could you maybe outline some of the current complexities in dealing with those cross-border placements? I think that cross-border placements are always fundamentally difficult and it is hard to support or see a circumstance with removing a child from their community, from their connections, from their family relationship, supports their right to a family life and their other rights. However, it is a really complex landscape. We have the findings of the care review in England that needs to have some time to take into effect. We have the reality of the fact that we don't in Scotland have a say over the legislative decisions that are made in other home nations in relation to children. However, at Include and We've had first-hand the effect of supporting young people from Scotland who have needed a secure bed and have been unable to access one because they have been full of cross-border placements and those young people ending up in poorment instead in really inappropriate and, in some cases, tragic circumstances. But like everything, it's around the implementation, it's around resourcing, it's around what that looks like. At Include and We are really strong advocates of community-based supports where possible, let's make sure that young people aren't insecure. They aren't in young offenders' institutes because we have the capacity within our systems in communities to support alternatives to remand, which is sometimes the situations young people find themselves going into secure. Again, we can't regulate for what happens in England and Wales that results in these children coming across the border, but the suggestion is that we need far more community resources to ensure that those children can be held safely in their communities rather than having such extreme distance and removal from their family relationships. The point that I would make about cross-border placements from a victim's perspective is that, again, it's another situation where lack of information is unhelpful. In an adult context, there are provisions for victims to be notified when people who have harmed them are moved either out of jurisdiction or, crucially, when they are returning. We would like to see similar provisions in the bill, too. If we are really serious about keeping the promise, we need to acknowledge within the bill that cross-border placements have to end. They are not sustainable. When the 2022 regulations came out by the Scottish Government on effectively converting English deprivation of liberty orders into the compulsory supervision orders that we have here, we were promised that there would be a framework around cross-border placements in the bill, but what it feels like is a repetition of the guidance in the bill and not something as radical as I expected when we're trying to put an end to cross-border placements. Meg covered the extreme risk that children in Scotland on cross-border placements experience. They're further away from their family support networks, their communities, which is affecting their right to private and family life, but they're not being able to access the same rights that care experience children from Scotland can access. Our advocates are seeing that day in, day out. We've got a two-tier system of children in Scotland, and it's completely contrary to the fundamental principle of the universality of children's rights. We're almost legalising a process that's going to put us in contravention of the UNCRC when the bill is coming through. There needs to be a lot more thought on cross-border placements in the bill, and I just want to echo clan trial laws comments last week around their specific concerns on the increased use of English deprivation of liberty orders for cross-border placements that are then the children are being held in unregulated settings in Scotland where the deprivation of liberty isn't lawful. We saw the case with the UNCRC in 2020 against NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde in HC1 Oval Ltd, where the care homes were unlawfully detaining adults with dementia without being in accordance with law. The whole process was really undignified, and we need to make sure that we're learning from our mistakes and we're not allowing unregulated deprivation of liberty of children that aren't from Scotland in Scotland. The basis of your desire to end cross-border placements on that basis is about maintaining the right to a family life, is that correct? The evidence that we just added in the last panel expressed real concern in terms of sometimes their expert opinion was that it was necessary or advantageous to remove children at a distance from some of the really negative influences that they were having, and that gave them a chance to have a restart and reset. I didn't listen to the evidence this morning, but in some circumstances, I'm sure that that can be more appropriate. What I would say, and this was a reflection in general on the bill that I was going to talk about in relation to the compulsory supervision orders, is that we need to be thinking about a contextual safeguarding approach where the onus isn't on the child to remove themselves from the harm, but it's on the child protection systems to rally around the child and think, right, what can we do to make people in places safer for the child and what interventions can we put in place? I suppose that goes to the heart of my concern in this regard, though. It's almost some of the evidence that we've had that would seem to indicate that by removing this option that we are somehow going to make change in England. A colleague said to us last week, by making it harder for local authorities to place children in Scotland, our hope would be that that would somewhat force the issue of providing more appropriate places in England. In the last panel, or at least one of the members said, they just don't believe that that will happen. In order to protect and enforce the rights of young people in England, are we not right to say that we have to have some form of backstop option for young people to come to Scotland to be safe? Yes, that's a short answer. I think that while we have children that aren't from Scotland, come to Scotland to make sure that their rights are being upheld as if they were from Scotland, and there can't be any distinction there. That comes with resource implications. That's not ending cross-border placements, which was your original position? No, but there has not been any plan set out for how the Governments are co-ordinating to try and end cross-border placements, which is implied with the Government's implementation plan for the promise. I expected to see a development with this bill, and I've not seen that, so I'm not convinced that the practice is going to end. If we're expanding, we're not expanding, but if we're ending the use of young offenders in situations, there will be more young people in secure care. Last week, it was mentioned that 50 per cent of places in secure care were taken up by cross-border placements. I don't see how that's sustainable. It's an issue that isn't easy to just give a very quick answer. There's multiple different things going on here. The promise was really unequivocal about monetisation of care, and it has very clear statements about Scotland stopping selling care placements to local authorities outside of Scotland. There are various different issues about how that can outweighs for that to happen. Some of it is to do with the Government's working together implementing the recommendations of the care review in England, which I think recommended