Welcome to the Equal Opportunities Committee. It's the 15th meeting of 2014. Can I ask everyone to set any electronic devices to flight mode or off position, please? Today's only agenda item is an evidence session on having and keeping a home enquiry. We'll start the session with some introductions. At the table, we have our clerkin and research team, our official reporters and broadcasting services, and around the room we're supported by our security officers. I'd like to welcome everyone in the public gallery as well. My name's Margaret McCulloch and I'm the convener of the committee. I'll now invite members and witnesses to introduce themselves and turn, starting on my right. Good morning, I'm Mark O'Biagge. I'm the MSP for Edinburgh Central and I'm deputy convener of the committee. Good morning John Finnie, MSP Highlands and I. Good morning Christian Arad, MSP for North East of Scotland. I'm Alex Johnston, member for North East Scotland. I'm John Mason, MSP for Glasgow Shetleston. I'm Alice Ashworth from Crisis. Good morning Bob Stewart from Dunedin Canberr Housing Association. Good morning Vicky Phillips from Edinburgh Sirenians. Hi, I'm Nick Harley-Bell from Homeless Action Scotland. Hi, I'm Roseanne Cubot from Relationship Scotland. Emma Door, Shelter Scotland. Thank you everyone. The first question that I'm going to ask is about the Children and Young People's Act. I could ask witnesses if you could indicate if you would like to answer the questions when we're in the session. We can add you to our list. The witnesses that we spoke to on 14 August spoke positively about the act but highlighted the importance of effective implementation. Can I ask witnesses what your views are on the act and ask you to talk specifically about any areas of concern that you may have and how those areas should actually be approached? Who would like to start first? Will I pick someone? Since you're the only male in the group, can I ask you first of all if I can you? Thanks for pointing it out, chair. I suppose from my point of view, and I'll say this as a social worker in my background, is that I really welcome the act and I think that it gives opportunities for all organisations involved with working with young people, whether they're being people who have come from the care background or not. I think that there's a great opportunity for the multi-agency working, and that's one of the important bits of the act. I'm particularly welcome that the act is now looking to assist people up to the age of 25. My experience over the years is often that young people leave care, come into the community and struggle. In my particular area of homelessness, we see that quite a lot. So I welcome the fact that it's now extended up to 25. I think that there may be some issues there in terms of the funding of those services and the funding of those support issues. I think that that's something that the committee may want to look at in relation to work through COSLA with the councils, is that what we're experiencing on the ground is a wealth, there's a huge commitment from councils to work with young people, particularly with those with care backgrounds. There's still the issue of resources, there's still the issue of, in my case, facilities that can help young people in relation to, first of all, dealing with very strong personal issues, which may be doing with drugs and alcohol and other things. Equally, the fundamental issue of setting up and keeping a home in relation to that, is that perhaps the morning wears on that we can have some discussions around the kind of examples of how that's been addressed by organisations like ourselves and others around the table. The important thing for me is that it's now been recognised that young people who have care backgrounds have particular issues, and those issues extend beyond the point when they've left the care of the local authority. Thank you. Anybody else like to comment? Yes, Nick? Again, echoing Bob that we welcome, particularly, the definition of corporate parenting. In a very 1066 and all that way, it is a good thing, but it needs to have a real practical meaning, and I'm not sure that that has been worked on enough to make sure it translates across as something so that everyone who is a corporate parent has an equal understanding of what their responsibilities are as a corporate parent. A young person that I was talking to described the continuing care aspect as being a long conversation rather than a brief argument, and I thought that was a good way of thinking about things, in that it is about making sure that there are smooth transitions and that it isn't just that someone slams a door, but having that conversation also requires that young people are empowered to know that this is their right. Unless there is a statutory duty supporting, telling young people of support that a public body has to promote and deliver wellbeing rights outcomes, then there is a disconnect, there is an opportunity for what is a broadly welcomed and a positive piece of legislation to actually not deliver as well as it could. I think that element of beefing up the rights element, making sure that someone has got the checks and balances in place to ensure that all young care experienced people know what their rights are. Can I ask, Vicky, you were nodding your head when Bob was speaking as well, and we're talking about actual resources. How is your organisation going to be able to cope with the extra workload when you take on people over the age of 18 to 25?  I think that it would be very much about ensuring that joint working is happening across all partner organisations, including the authorities and all of our partners around the table and other services. I don't think that Cyrenians would ever claim to have the answer to all of a young person's situations and problems and issues. It would be very much about the conversation rather than the short argument with the young person regarding what it is that they would be looking for and who is actually best placed to be providing those services. I would be particularly keen to be having very clear conversations with local authority front line staff about their understanding of their duties, because certainly my experience would be through working with young people that often you can have very different information coming from one department, or even within one department, you can talk to one person and they're very clear about what needs to happen and how that should happen. And another person in the same department who has a completely different understanding of what somebody might be entitled to. Again, that very clear information that everybody has at the same time is critical for young people, whether from a care background or not. We heard in the 14th of August very moving stories from young people about their experience of homelessness, but could you give us specific issues that you've actually came across, faced by care leavers? Will I have to pick somebody else again randomly? Emma, would you like to comment? Sure. Shelter works broadly with homeless people across Scotland. We help around half a million people every year. Amongst those would be care leavers, but there aren't any specific projects which focus on care leavers. However, we've seen through different projects that the transitioning from care into independent living, as the committee has heard previously, can be very difficult indeed. The engagement with professionals, which has happened throughout their life, in some cases result in almost like an engagement fatigue for care leavers by the time they reached young adulthood. At the same time, they can be more experienced in dealing with professionals in their lives. Roseanne, do you want to comment on your experience? I think that adding to that very clearly the skills that they talked about when they were here, we see that in things that we would maybe take for granted is a real challenge for them. That's some of the work that we can do in terms of helping in communication, conflict resolution. Some of the things that we would just say, doesn't everybody know how to do that, actually, is something that they can learn and develop and take ownership and responsibility for their own decision making. Because I think they've been in a situation where decisions have been made for them and it's about empowering them to make those decisions themselves. I think that's our kind of experience. One of the areas that we come across as a housing association, who are housing people of all ages in particular, looking at young people, is the lack of preparedness for young people from the care background for independent living, for living in the community. People are working on it now. Let's be clear on that when it is happening. From our point of view, there is a housing association and other housing associations. Tenancy failure is an issue per se, but tenancy failure for young people is more prevalent because there is lack of knowledge and skills and experience in that area. For most young people leaving care, coming into the community, it will be a first time tenancy. Therefore, that's an area that we've been looking at in my submission on behalf of Doreen Cameron and Foursquare for a partner organisation. It made reference to young people's tenancy training for that scheme. The success of that has been built upon the fact that we have a housing provider such as Doreen Cameron and a support provider from Foursquare. The association and organisation that goes with it, as colleagues have mentioned already, the importance of joint work cannot be stressed. The importance of everyone coming together and being prepared to come out of the silos to work with young people. Per se is something that we need to be looking at. What we have shown is that if we blend those experiences together from the different organisations, you can achieve remarkable success. In my paper that I have sent to you, I have mentioned that nearly half of the young people who have come into this tenancy training scheme, we work in partnership with Foursquare, have care backgrounds. By focusing on the range of issues that they come with, whether it's personal issues of family, nature, family breakdown, whether it's to do with issues around their health, including drugs and alcohol, or whether it's to do with the very basic issues of having, keeping a home, or being able to go into a home and manage it, is something we focus on. By focusing on those and helping them to develop those skills and include within that raising the bar in terms of helping people to go back to school, helping young people to go on to further education, to take up employment opportunities and training, by putting all that together into a package, we have found that we have great success with young people, particularly with young people, with care backgrounds. There are issues around that, going back to what are the issues for care leavers, which affect all young people. One of those issues is the difficulty with the benefit systems we have and the welfare system we have, where for young people to take up an opportunity in a college course is very, very difficult because it affects their housing benefit, and often we have the sad situation of young people saying, I can't do it because I just cannot afford to take up this course, I can't afford to continue this positive pathway into education and employment. I have to say, colleagues around the room, we are looking with interest as to whether or not, after the referendum, whether matters such as housing benefit come to Scottish Parliament, we are very much looking at that and willing to participate in the debate and discussion and how, if that occurs, we can make life better and stop barriers being set up for young people moving into education and going back to school. Thank you very much for that. I am very aware that we have just been joined in the public gallery by a high school, so I am delighted to see you all here. Can you ask the witnesses when we are speaking not to assume, even when we are included, that the terminology that you are going to be using, if you could explain in detail for the benefit of everybody, we would really appreciate that. Can I now pass you on to Alex Johnson? I will take your warning and try to keep the term simple. We have been discussing on this committee and on other committees issues around the housing options approach to homelessness. I have to say that some of my experience with witnesses has been very positive and others have been less positive about the housing options approach. I wonder if you could tell us what your experience is so far and how you think it is working. Emma. Thank you for the question. We welcome the housing options approach and I think that any approach which is encouraging a prevention and early intervention approach to homelessness is positive. The intention of housing options is to give individuals more of a choice and that can only be a good thing as far as we are concerned. And yet there is such a variety of implementation of the housing options approach across Scotland. Shelter Scotland welcomed the recent activity of the homelessness team in responding to the Scottish housing regulators' recommendation around the development of guidance. They have pulled together a small working group involving lead local authorities. And that's great because we do feel that there needs to be some guidance around how you implement the housing options approach giving looking at different choices for individuals when they're in a housing needs situation rather than just assuming the homelessness route. But there seems to have been and certainly the experience of our advisors has been that there's been some confusion on the front line around the application of that alongside the legislative duty to give a housing assessment when somebody is homeless. But we would really call for shelter and other organisations represented here who are representing the people who are affected by the housing options process to have an opportunity to input on that guidance rather than just from the local authority side. And service use as well so that the voices of those who are experiencing the housing options process are included in that guidance. We would like the guidance to represent the specialist needs of young people. I mean that the focus of this committee is on young people and I think colleagues around the table would agree that young people experience the journey of homelessness in a unique way. Most young people, as has been mentioned before, don't necessarily know or understand their rights or that there's even this thing called housing options. And certainly some of the young people, our staff have worked with a very unclear as to what has happened to them when they've gone to the council, whether they've had a housing options interview or whether they have made a homeless application. Still some people are not really being given that options based approach. One of the young people our services worked with recently was just handed a list of bed and breakfasts in the air and told to get on with it. And for a young person that is overwhelming and inaccessible and not really preventing homelessness at all, it's merely delaying the problem. I think in terms of young people accessing the housing options approach across the country where there are specialist staff members who understand working with young people who are accessible, will talk to them in a way that young people understand that can be very helpful. Indeed, the experience of approaching the council, even if a young person knows that it is accessible to them, even if they get there, the experience of going up to a desk where there's an adult in a suit who maybe uses words they don't understand and gives them a form that they potentially can't read, can be very threatening indeed. We've certainly experienced that when a member of our staff goes along with them and can advocate for them, explain what's going on. In an empowering manner, always supporting the young person to present their views, there can be very positive results for the young person. I'd like to take the opportunity to highlight the level of mental health difficulties that young homeless people experience. Up to 80% of the young people who use our safe and sound service have mental health issues which make using the housing options system trying to navigate that sometimes complex system very difficult and things like anxiety, depression, anger can really get in the way. We would really look for any guidance on housing options that's issued to take account of the particular struggles that young homeless people face. Ficke, can you also explain what housing options actually is? No problem at all Margaret, thank you for that opportunity. My understanding of housing options and what that means as an approach from local authorities and national guidance to local authorities is a rose out of really the commitment to preventing homelessness from happening in the first place. Therefore, asking if not requiring local authorities to take an approach to when a person, whoever that is, comes to the local authorities seeking housing because their current housing situation is, for whatever reason, problematic, that the local authority would rather than, for example, putting them on a waiting list and saying, well you just need to be here and wait and we will give you a house at such a time when one comes along and that was clearly no longer realistic and hadn't been for a long time in many local authorities. There would be a conversation and that conversation would include a variety of options of what their housing situation looks like at the moment and what it could look like and that conversation would include giving a lot of information on, for example, the private rented sector in some areas that would be, so I suppose one of the dilemmas I think and perhaps I'm going off a bit because actually explaining housing options in one short sentence isn't really all that straightforward and it's very specific to the local authority itself, I think, and that's one of the real challenges and I think when I was nodding my head when Emma was talking, it was really about this, absolutely, we would all welcome the idea that people have choice when it comes to where they live. However, you have a real dilemma I think in terms of balancing the local area and what's actually available in terms of choice, along with having a nationally consistent policy that is delivered in pretty much exactly the same way whatever part of the country you're in and I think that that's possibly one of the real, I don't have the answer to that dilemma but I think it's important that we recognise that that is something that's across the board in terms of housing options. Alex, Alice would like to come in but I don't know if you want to go first and finish your questions and then Alice can come in the back of it. I think we've covered many of the questions I was going to ask but the one thing I'd be interested in hearing slightly more about is housing options where it applies to care leavers specifically and any issues that are surrounding that. Alice, do you want to answer that? The point that I wanted to come in on was about the potential of housing options to identify opportunities for housing in the private rented sector and earlier this summer we conducted research where we held interviews with local authority staff in seven case study areas across Scotland and this particular project was looking at the, about helping young people into shared accommodation in the private rented sector because of the extension of the shared accommodation rate which I'm sure we'll come on to later. What we found in that research was that there was a real lack of understanding amongst housing advisers across these local authorities of what was available locally in the private rented sector including shared options in shared accommodation and while there are some examples of good practice where there are schemes to support young people into this sort of housing we identified here a real need to empower and provide the necessary support for local authority staff so that they really are increasing their knowledge of the sector and are sufficiently able to support young people into it and where it is an option particularly for those who are limited to the shared accommodation rate. In that respect I can't really answer your question about care leavers primarily because when it comes to the shared accommodation rate which is our particular interest in this area fortunately care leavers do have an exemption up to the age of 22 from the shared accommodation rate. That said there is obviously an issue about young people being able to take advantage of those exemptions because we know certainly from other exemptions so the exemption for those who have lived in a homeless hospital for instance we conducted research that found that one in five housing advisers said that none of their clients had been able to take advantage of those exemptions where they were entitled to them so I think that is still an ongoing issue but as I say in terms of the housing options approach our main concern really at the moment is that it is not sufficiently identifying options within the private rented sector which for some young people could actually be a viable option for them to sustain a tenancy. Alex, you are capable for Alex yet? I wonder if anybody else has anything to say about care leavers. Nick? A little bit. Through our work alongside the Scottish through care and after care forum we have had some joint practice meetings trying to share housing practice with through care practice which of course is all going to become continuing care practice which is another issue that we might get onto. We found that from the housing side of things there is an understanding of what housing options means and that it is that process that Vicki managed to define of looking at, you did brilliantly compared to what I had come up with of looking at a range of options that suit the local area that are available at that time that might prevent someone from needing to make a homes application. Young people with care experience background it is within the care leavers guidance that they should not be put through a homeless route and so the housing options for them it is almost as though it runs in parallel to the homeless route and we were discovering that from talking with through care workers it is as though you have the same process but again without the same rights and so they were finding that the friends of the people that they were working with at an age similar issues would be housed quicker through taking the homeless application than the young people who are going through the care leaving process. Now whether they were housed more appropriately is different one of the great there is some great practice that is happening across Scotland one of them is Edinburgh's care leavers housing options panel where again it is about a conversation and it is about the art of gentle persuasion that just because you have a right to a flat does not mean that you should actually take that right up not straight away and finding the appropriate support solutions to put in place at the right time so that it is never going to be smooth it is never going to be without problems but that there is always someone somewhere who can support you and we found that the housing people understood housing the through care people understood through care but through care and housing do not speak the same language and so it was as simple as talking about we were talking about section 5 referrals which is where Bob would know more about it where a housing association or a social landlord has an obligation to take on a homeless tenant through care did not understand what section 5 referral was housing saying why aren't you using section 5 referrals we don't know what they are and so if you have got a simple we are trying to break that down as agencies with the Scottish through care and after care forum so that there is a training element here learn to speak through care learn to speak housing it is something that you can do but when it is as simple as that you can see how that would then affect young people who know even less than the professionals because they haven't encountered this before it hasn't been their day to day job for a number of years it is not to place blame on anyone it is just it is two separate cultures that are now having to work more closely together and there hasn't necessarily been the resource put into support those two cultures coming together thank you very much we're actually running short of time we've got quite a lot of questions we would like to ask you because can I ask you to keep your questions answers quite short please so we can cover everything because it's really important we do Markle would like to come in for a supplementary yes I just had a supplementary to Alice based on what you had said in response there we don't generally do a name and shame in the committee but I do believe in name and praise there were some good examples of good practice where there was knowledge of the private rented sector can you point us in their direction certainly one example of good practice we found was in Fife the scheme is called the Fife Key Fund and they have a 10 bed unit which young people can stay in for up to 12 weeks and in that 12 week period they're encouraged to essentially buddy up somebody else living in that unit and so at the end of that 12 weeks they're then supported by the local authority to then secure a two bed tenancy in the private rented sector together and so that's been an example of good practice that we've seen moving on now to Jordan Mason please thank you convener I mean the area I wanted to look at was mediation and if I'm correct Relationship Scotland is one of the opinions as well quite involved in that I mean maybe you could also give us a definition of mediation as you understand it and then maybe tell us some of the benefits Roseanne happy to speak on that so yeah we've got a network of mediation services across Scotland and 90 mediators mediation for those of you who don't know is an opportunity for people to get together with an independent person an impartial third person to basically help that communication go smoothly so one of the important things is about helping people in the room to listen and hear what the other person is saying so in the context of this work one of the all the research shows that relationship breakdown is a key factor in risk of homelessness so what we can offer is an opportunity for young people to meet with their family members whoever it is that they're in dispute with and create an opportunity for them to have a conversation and talk about the issues reach an understanding one party to the other to find out what's the root cause of the issue and in a lot of cases that allows the young person either to stay at home in a more positive environment or to move out and to have their own tenancy but to have the family support able to make that tenancy go forward positively so one of the projects that we've done recently is with shelters the Safe and Sound project in Dundee because we recognise that our specialist knowledge is around conflict resolution and communication and that area and family and family development and family issues but the specialist housing knowledge when we work in partnership with shelter allows us to bring that part in as well so that the young people have the opportunity to access that knowledge with the support of the services working together so I think somebody said earlier about partnership working that's a real good example of the two organisations bringing their skillset together to provide a more kind of holistic support. In your paper you gave another example about 75 cases referred 58% of cases engaged well that sounds reasonable that's more than half and 37% resolved their immediate housing problem but I suppose it does beg the question as to why did they not all want to get involved in mediation so some of it's about engaging with the process and we're learning as we're going along about how to engage with young people which is different maybe from our traditional client group so we're looking at engaging through texts and SMS messages and Facebook private messaging so some of it's about developing that engagement and trust and building up trust the issues aren't easy to resolve mediation isn't a panacea it's not like a magic wand so it can really help and it can help in the sense of even just understanding about communication and problem solving and developing skills about communication one party's willing to engage like the young person but maybe the rest of the family aren't the family or the other way around so in that sense we wouldn't count it as mediation because we haven't got them all together but we can still do useful work with one party or the other the other thing we do a lot more with young people and families mediation is we might do a lot more one to one work with the young person before they ever get to mediation so we're kind of a model and much more able to respond to those needs so the statistics doesn't always give you a clear picture of what's going on Miss Phillips you're involved in this as well is that right and your paper you mentioned one local authority I think it's not named where they seemed up for it they were expecting 20 cases and you ended up with only three in the first couple of months or something like that well at the risk of showing disrespect which is not what I mean to the people who were responsible for explaining mediation to the young people who were presenting to the local authorities homeless we were not given the opportunity that we had hoped for to do some training of the homeless prevention staff so that they were then put in a position of having to do all of the housing options assessment interview all of the kind of questions and information gathering that that process requires and then having to remember that they also needed to say oh and would you like some mediation at the end it would appear of these conversations and our sense really was and from the conversation with the manager of that service was that in actual fact people really just either were just not interested and I think it's one of those things of would you like mediation and it's a closed question 99% of the time people are going to say no if you say would you like an opportunity to have a bit of a chat with somebody about how things are at home at the moment the chances are you're going to have a much more positive response to that because you're not putting people in that position of having to say yes or no to something that they don't actually even know what it is they're really being offered in the first place does that answer your question there yet? In that case in a sense the money and the personnel were available but it wasn't all taken up I also get the impression from some of the papers that it's kind of patchy across the country that in some cases the money and the finances aren't there to do it I don't know who can answer this is mediation an expensive process? I would say absolutely not and in terms of what it can actually achieve in terms of the preventative spend it's an extremely cheap option probably almost to the point of ludicrously cheap actually if you stack it up against what you're potentially saving we have in East Lothian taking the name and praise approach in East Lothian are asked to leave service there has been incredibly successful I think in terms of actually returning people back home where that's an appropriate and safe thing to happen and that's largely from B&B circumstances and that it is really just I think echoing Rizan it's about being very flexible about actually what do you mean by mediation there anyway sometimes it is just a bit of a conversation with the parties without actually having to get all kind of formal and round the table and signed up agreements but just a bit of a kind of chat about what's actually going on and providing some support and signposting where that's assessed as being required Mr Stewart, is that something that you maybe don't call mediation but you actually do along the way? I think it's been mentioned a couple of times about the use of language the mediation such will take place but it will be a different language used and I think that Vicky's connect is important for the young people that we carefully don't use a language of the professional adults that they understand and are comfortable with and comfortable in a way that then they're prepared to open up and discuss at times quite difficult discussion needs to take place within families and that's a skill that staff need to have and it's an area that perhaps is under-invested and it's something that we should be looking at Who should be taking a lead while Mr Stewart's coming in now so I can ask you Who should be taking a lead in encouraging mediation? Is it the councils? Is it Parliament? Is it the housing associations? Or who is it? You want to say something else as well? I'd say it's probably all of the above as Vicky's example shows where there's not a shared understanding and buy-in of the effectiveness of mediation by front-line staff then it's less effective if you don't really understand what mediation is and what it can achieve then you're not really going to be selling it in the right way I think that as Dunedin Canwall's experience shows sometimes it's the the right person in the right place and if the young person has a good relationship with the housing officer somebody who's popped round, that's great but I think it's important to say to pick up on the point that's already been made there is a lot to do with mediator being a trusted person somebody that a young person in the family will engage with and can feel open to touch on some very difficult very personal, very gritty issues in a safe way and kind of bring that into the open which is a very vulnerable thing to do and research has shown and certainly the experience of Relationship Scotland and Dunsirenian is that being delivered by an independent person who is not from the housing team at the council is very effective somebody from our service said that the fact that they're not wearing a council badge meant that I wanted to talk to them but also both the Safe and Sound Service and Syrenians have found that having the support for a young person and Safe and Sound Piloted having the opportunity to support the family is also important through mediation you can bring up some very difficult issues it might not just be that there's conflict but there's conflict because of mental health issues criminal justice issues et cetera and just having a conversation can go some way to addressing those but both parties can need a bit of help to then progress with those issues we would like can we move on sorry I'm really short for time and again can I just ask you to keep your answers quite short please if possible can I move on to Christian now please first of all I would like to ask a question about education I know that some of you in your evidence given talked about some program that you were involved in to try to increase the the prevention at early stage at school and making sure that people know young people know what the roots are and at the same time maybe talking about stereotyping so I would like to know what kind of program you have and you talked about some of them and what kind of influence can you have on the education department some of you talked about a lack of enthusiasm from the education department so how can we inspire education departments to put that in the curriculum maybe Nick this is my baby actually when it comes to engaging with education I'm not even sure but it's encouraging and nurturing that we need to be talking about but actually it's a big stick and that's unusual for me because I'm more encouraging and nurturing as an organisation before we were homeless action Scotland we were Scottish council for single homeless and we pioneered leaving home and housing education in schools through the development of something called the I'm off ski pack I actually had a phone call earlier this week from a teacher in a local authority area that I shall not name who was asking me, oh do you have that video on DVD they're still using materials from 15 years ago the situation has changed so much but one teacher wanted to make sure that her students had some information she didn't have anywhere else to go and I think she found us more by chance than anything else we might have a redirect on our phone number so that might have helped the big stickers needed to make sure that the one enthusiastic teacher in every three schools is actually the competent, trained aware teacher in every school and ideally every teacher in every school I would like to see that there's no reason for teachers to be experts in housing I mean people sitting around saying we chose this as a career often falling into it rather than choosing it but it's something that we've actively engaged in there's no reason why teachers who are brilliant at teaching should choose to know about housing in particular yet housing is one of the fundamentals that affects young people's attainment when you look at the shelter of produced brilliant reports about the effects of homelessness on children if you look at the educational attainment of young homeless people they are as Bob was saying they're stifled they are hampered so I would like to see and it is, it's a big stick I would also like to see an element of initial teacher education to be about factors that can affect young people's learning and looking at housing and housing situations because it's such a fundamental everybody has to live somewhere and everybody has to go to school not everyone who goes to school will have a permanent somewhere to live I would also like to see continuing professional development for teachers accredited in leaving home and housing issues and homelessness issues and at the moment it's not there so how are these there's nothing to say that the teachers aren't enthusiastic that the schools aren't enthusiastic and we provide materials that teachers can use and we will go wherever we are needed to ensure that there is support there but we can't be everywhere it's just me that's an issue to be able to have a CPD course that works that works for everyone that works in the same way that is reflective of real need and that teachers can feel empowered to actually do the right kind of signposting and it's not enough to rely on a local service to come in because not everywhere has them and even if you do and I will be quick but not every third force organisation has the capacity to go out into schools and deliver it so that's kind of where I'm at thank you Christian particularly it leads me to another question you're talking about I'm astonished to see that people are asking for videos and now give it is but in one of the in our enquiry Sharlene Michaela from UK Scotland tell us about why and ask the question why there were nothing done on social media I think she said it was totally there are other places that it needs to be hit so how can we you talk about a pack how can you have this pack a lot more available not only to the teachers but to the children as well and social media will maybe be I think social media I mean you can't force a social media thing to happen if you do you tend to get it horribly wrong and it falls on its face and so again it's about ensuring that people have the right information at the right time and so it doesn't become the specialist information it's just something that people can share getting the right communication channels if you try to keep up with young people then as soon as you've got twitter down pat they have discovered something else and I'm sorry but we're snapchatting today we're all moving from facebook to elo we don't know what the next pattern is going to be and so you have to make sure that the most common communication channels are the ones that are open so I would rather rather than follow what could be a passing trend although I believe that things like facebook are here for a wee while yet I'll put my hands up to that that we have to focus on the most common channels of information and where we get our information from that requires a little bit of information gathering not heavy research and to put things into that but I do know that people teachers use the website that we provide and have provided the reason that is through old fashioned mail and email that we let them know about it good thank you a question about funding I know that we talked a lot about action and funding and then in the camera maybe Bob will want to talk about it you describe funding for youth from recess as a movable feast I don't know how the effect of funding cuts will affect you and I know that you talked about some maybe imaginative way of a type of funding and maybe you could share this with the committee thanks very much two things there one is creative use of funds is probably more to the desperation than the fact that we are unable to get fund from other sources forces to look at creativity in that area this afternoon I'm going to a briefing session in the city chambers where the homeless services and other services we told there's going to be a further 10% cut to the funding of services three months after we were told we're going to be a 15% cut we're now looking at nearly a 25% cut to funding from the local authority for homeless services in Edinburgh that's the backcloth that we're operating to convener which means then that for the fund money organisations there's some hard decisions to be taken regarding some services which I think would be very sad if that's the case but councils themselves have their own funding issues to deal with and we respect that my comment on that would be for young people the importance of investment and funding for services to help young people at a stage where we stop the cycle of homelessness we stop the cycle of deprivation that takes place we're very familiar with all of that and I think it's really important that we do not go down the track of ceasing funding for services that at the moment helped to prevent the cycle continuing in terms of the kind of funding that's going on we are all people involved in the third centre involved constantly in finding money to continue the services that you're doing just now but important looking to develop other services and for me it's important that we do that jointly in the Dunedin Canmore Housing Association we have experience of a number of very positive partnerships with agencies that enables us to combine the resources to enable us to deliver those services at times it's a bit of a struggle with local councils with local council departments God bless them working silos and it's important that we can encourage our colleagues and the councils to be able to look at multi-departmental funding as well as multi-agency funding with the health for instance and I'll be interested to see how the Public Bodies Act goes forward in terms of the integration of health and social care I would like to see that taking place and act as a model for a range of services that we are all involved in delivering thank you can we move on to Marco now please to complement the housing options approach there's been the housing support duty now legally since last year what effect do you think it's had in and of itself by the way this is as quick as possible I've got about four points we've recently completed a survey a very quick and dirty survey of local authorities of which we had about 19-20 responses from all 32 local authorities so I think it's a fairly good picture and it's from the homelessness prevention and housing options teams there's a report on our website I believe if it isn't it will be there by the end of today but to summarise they were saying less than a quarter of the homelessness services were saying that they required any additional demand on services in order to fulfil the duty a similar number were putting in additional resources but they might have been doing that anyway and housing options has been credited with refocusing the work and support duty complements it very well the biggest issue that has been picked up has been to do with non-engagement and so where people have had initial assessment and have been found to require support and then they haven't engaged with the support services provided there isn't a great deal more that we've said about other than people generally feel that the housing support duty is a good thing the guidance came after it was in place and so a lot of processes were already in existence and so it's a bit carp for the horse and people are having to wait until you can't move a big ship really quickly to turn around and so they're having to look at when is a convenient review point in order to tally up with what their practice is and what their guidance is and so it's been welcomed but it hasn't had the big scary impact that people perhaps have been afraid of but it has flagged up issues to do with non-engagement and communicating the importance of support to people who are liable to need it Emma Just briefly I'd like to pick up on that last point from Nick that our services particularly the Safe and Sound Service have felt that maybe some of the non-engagement comes from how the support would be offered particularly to young people that in some circumstances the young person might have just been shown a tick list with a whole list of different support needs are any of these you 10 seconds no or yes I have a problem with maybe so and so and then a leaflet is given or a phone number particularly where these issues are they're difficult issues maybe long term issues and that's why the housing support duty is in place because these are the issues that are going to prevent somebody potentially from being able to maintain a home that communication around what can we do to surround you with the help to deal with this needs to be tackled in a very informed and appropriate way particularly for young people Malcolm Moving on then one of the areas that we've gone on is about the intentionality criterion do you think that there are people young people being defined as intentionally homeless that really shouldn't be and if so what should be done Volunteer Alice Would you like to answer? You said that just as Emma was volunteering to speak Emma will go to Emma then If you look at the percentage increase of intentionality that's been seen across the board of the homelessness population that the youth homelessness intentionality his decisions have risen from 3% a couple of years ago to 5% last year which is still a small percentage but in terms of 3-5% that's a significant percentage change but it reflects the general population change across the whole homelessness population I think particularly with young people we need to recognise that their journeys into homelessness are often very complex and very messy and it's not necessarily just a one instance we had a terrible argument and my parents kicked me out and I can't go back and I can get them to write a letter to state that it's very difficult in and out and sometimes staying with one person staying in a car and that is difficult to demonstrate particularly where the relationship is entirely broken down and the parents don't necessarily want to engage with the local authority for whatever historical reasons getting the evidence of what happens that some local authorities can require is very difficult to do in supporting young persons story and evidence but there is some good practice of local authorities out there there are professionals in the field who do really understand that and are willing to take somebody's word or just the evidence of the situation for it From a slightly different angle is there any evidence of young people maintaining tenancies or housing arrangements for suboptimal because they would be worried about being considered to be intentionally homeless if they left them Anybody got any experience of that? I don't have any experience of it but that doesn't mean to say that it might not be the case I'll actually say yes there are recently undertook the youth homelessness in Scotland survey 2014 and one of the situations that again it's an awareness thing young people who are currently for example sofa surfing or staying with family and friends who do not present their homes because they don't know they're homeless eventually will present to a service often the situations that have led them to that have been things such as sanctions whether they're inappropriately applied or not and we've got evidence that's where there's a huge increase and there have been decisions from certain job centres within certain local authorities that I could name but I'm not going to because we don't shame anyone of the temptation who have inappropriately applied sanctions that have had knock-on effects so they have taken away housing benefit when they shouldn't paid payments while decisions have been going through when they shouldn't and that has put young people at risk and because they've been seen not to engage with job centre plus then they've been deemed to be um yeah moving on now to John Finlay thank you I'd like to direct a question to Alice if I may please Alice in crisis evidence you say in a quote here crisis believes that the extension of the shared accommodation rate alongside long-standing problems with benefits for younger adults will put people in Scotland at particular risk of homelessness now can I ask what the impact of the shared accommodation rate and the introduction of direct payments is had on the ability of young people to find and maintain a tenancy please and given the time constraints if you also want to throw in some comments about bedroom tax that would be welcome yeah certainly we have really grave concerns about the impact of shared accommodation rate not only on under 25s but also on under 35 since it was extended in 2012 to 25 to 34 year olds for the first time what we have seen from research we've conducted and we mentioned that in the written submission so I won't go into too much detail about that was that there's real problems with both affordability and availability of shared accommodation and this echoes the conversations that we've been having with housing advisers around the country again a local authority that I won't name said that they didn't see a single room advertised within the local one the local shared accommodation rate within 18 months and I don't think that would be critical for local authority if there is a challenge are you able to see what that area is that would it be? it's anecdotal so I'd rather not if that's okay but certainly there are grave issues with affordability and availability for those who are limited to the shared accommodation rate and at the same time we know that the social housing sector is declining in Scotland so this is going to be putting far more pressure on young people to find realistic accommodation what we know from research that the DWP commissioned is that overall across Great Britain the caseload of under 35s on local housing allowance so on housing benefit in the private sector has dramatically fallen since these changes were made so from the period just prior to reforms being introduced to August 2013 saw a 13% drop in 25 to 34 year olds and a 9% drop in under 25 year olds in receipt of local housing allowance now obviously what that data doesn't tell us is what happened to those individuals some of them may have moved back in some of them may have moved into work and may now be on an income that means they're no longer eligible for housing benefit but our concern is that many of them may actually be homeless or hidden homeless and certainly a number of landlords interviewed as part of that research including a number of large landlords in areas of Scotland said that their analysis was their worry was that these individuals were sleeping on friend sofas and we really don't know where they've gone but that is a real concern when the amount of housing benefit available is simply not enough to meet the cost of even a room in a cheap shared house and that's coupled with the problems identified earlier about local authority staff simply not being aware of what accommodation is available in the private rented sector you asked me to mention the bedroom tax so I will think one of the issues is that we're seeing local authority staff are for the most part unaware or have a lack of understanding of what might be available in the private rented sector but at the same time they're not able to find one bed properties in the social sector because then young people of course would be subject to the bedroom tax and understandably they're not going to be letting rooms that are going to be unaffordable to those young people so it really leaves young people with very very limited options if any and what we're seeing in particularly in the 25 to 34 year age group is that they're too old to be eligible for any youth homelessness services so there's a real gap for that group and that's why we're working with Scottish Government funding I'm glad to say we are working with all 32 local authorities to try and identify ways of supporting young people into shared accommodation in the private rented sector because a lot of those housing advisers recognise that with the impact of welfare reform and the declining social sector the private rented sector is going to have to play to play a bigger role and I guess the final thing I say is that for quite a long time now we've been pressing the UK Government to at the very least review the shared accommodation rate and if the Scottish Parliament does get greater powers in this area then I think that would be a really valuable opportunity to really think about how best young people who need support with their housing costs can be supported. Thank you for that comprehensive reply just one very brief supplementary of course there would be a challenge for identifying the housing component where universal credit is and that's been trialled in my own area in Inverness Yes and I think I mean in terms of universal credit I think one of the one of the elements of universal credit that we're concerned about we don't have any real concerns about the principle of it in terms of if the benefit system can be simplified fantastic the question of direct payments does pose a concern because we have seen rent arrears increasing in areas where it's where it's been introduced and also in pilot areas where direct payments have been trialled by particular housing associations one of the other things that the DWP commissioned research into the changes to local housing allowance revealed was that in those cases where landlords have been willing to negotiate the rent slightly because of people's lesser entitlement to housing benefit then often that has been in exchange for them receiving the housing benefit directly rather than it being paid to the tenant. Yes, Markle. I'm just wondering, Dunedin Canmore was one of the pilot groups for the direct payments do you have anything to add based on the experience in there? Our experience with that is that there are issues around the danger of people falling into debt but also for housing associations the loss of rent revenue is an issue there our pilot experience of that is that some of the consequences can be mitigated but it's hugely resourceful to put in a huge amount of staff resourcing into that exercise which was funded through DWP and the concern would be where that's not there that's going to leave housing organisations and councils with a situation where it's very very resource-intensive and it's very difficult to maintain that and of course a big issue is that people may become evicted through that and we then get into the cycle again and I think that's the thing we've really got to keep an eye on the danger of in fact creating homelessness through an attempt to try to simplify a welfare benefit system Thank you. Siobhan, thank you to ask the question Yeah, just at fault you said earlier on what we're talking about a welfare benefit and the impact that that would have on a young person who's in a college place for instance and obviously if there are more powers coming to Scotland you would like to see us doing something in that regard I was just looking for more information in regards to that I mean we share in that sentiment but if others share that sentiment because obviously there's the more people that speak about it the better for us to make that case but secondly, have you seen an increase in the same through what's happening out there since our last report? Emma One of the young people who accessed the safe and sound service recently said it's like I have to choose between college and a roof over my head and that's not fair to be happening in Scotland and so I very much would highlight and support Bob's comments that if there was an opportunity to ask questions about whether there is a way to do that with housing benefit that we could find a better solution for these young vulnerable people to continue to engage in training or education which lots of research has shown is one of the roots out of homelessness Emma There is a mechanism that could be used which is discretionary housing payments but I think there is a real fear and even a lack of understanding of local authorities about using them through work with one local authority the clarity about when an application to DHP could be made and sustained and a repeat of that it just wasn't clear within how they were working Emma That problem is lying, is it information from local authority or local authority? Yes, it's government down to local authority particularly due to the changes that were made to DHP I think people are scared of it being a pot of money that runs out but that has led to it being underspent that the extension of DHP now to a maximum of 12 months people seem to think it's a one-off rather than it can be repeated so if you're doing a three-year college course there's no reason why you can't be supported for three years but there's that fear and I think that also sometimes I think there is a loath to use the word prejudice but there is that suspicion that young people might not maintain their tenancy anyway even though there's nothing to indicate that they won't and so we can't give them DHP because and you come up with a circuitous route to kind of fulfil your own prejudices thank you can I go back to temporary accommodation very briefly there was specific concerns about the increased use of temporary accommodation and the evidence was actually raised in our committee and also the infrastructure and capital investment committee during their follow-up work on the homelessness commitment could you give us a comment on the standard of temporary accommodation and could you actually comment whether the standard has actually increased or it's fallen, Emma? Shelter Scotland have long been campaigning for the Scottish Government to produce officially endorsed guidance on a minimum standard for temporary accommodation which would include specific guidance for temporary accommodation for young people but what's appropriate for young people in terms of temporary accommodation as my colleagues have picked up there's a lack of appropriate one bed accommodation within such social housing stock in general which then reflects on temporary accommodation so there needs to be a reconsidering of the stock that's there for temporary accommodation to meet the changing demographic need of demand following the 2012 commitment so I believe that local authorities should review and revise the temporary accommodation stock that they have both in terms of size and shape and geographical position as well as the conditions people are saying for longer in temporary accommodation as well which only highlights the need for a look at the conditions that they're in due to the lack of appropriate temporary accommodation supported accommodation for young people our teams have seen young people for example with mental health difficulties being offered places in completely inappropriate adult hostels which are dangerous and risky but also which young people just can't navigate, they're treated as adults in forms and so on which they don't have skills and resources to respond appropriately to and in that situation we find that many young people would rather sofa surf in unstable and suitable again, potentially risky situations than engage with what's being offered to them because the lack of quality and lack of availability Christian very briefly we're running out of time I just wanted to have a supplementary on this a question to the Scottish Government from John Finnie my colleague John Finnie and Margaret Burgess the Minister of Housing came back and gave us a breakdown by local authorities and I was punished to see that even if there is a decrease across Scotland there are some areas who are very very high and one of the areas being Aberdeenshire an area I represent we're getting the use and bed and breakfast why is this so patchy why is use a lot more areas than others if you think and as well is that sensible option housing option for the future bed and breakfast I think first and foremost I would say that I don't think bed and breakfast is a sensible housing option particularly for young people some very very vulnerable people being put in bed and breakfast situations which are completely detrimental to their mental and physical health as for the variation across Scotland we've mentioned it previously in terms of housing options there's such wide differences in housing stock in the availability of resources in how councils choose to apply their resources for temporary accommodation some local authorities haven't prioritised providing the right temporary accommodation for the people that need it in their areas obviously in rural communities you have issues around the proximity of temporary accommodation to somebody's home or to the centre so I think this is one area where you really have to consider local authorities on a case by case basis but I think where local authorities are showing that they're consistently overusing bed and breakfast there needs to be challenging questions raised for them a very brief question from John Mason and can I ask for an even probably briefer answer please because we're running close to time this is based on the homeless action Scotland paper which is something that I don't think we've touched on at home are a particularly vulnerable group is that the case? Yes and continuing care should help pick that up in that the rights have been extended to them but the moment young people who are in kinship care or continue looked after at home thank you they because they they tend not to have the same access to support when they're at home or when they're looked after by family members and so they have even less support when they leave home and actually it's one of the situations where mediation would work very well but often the opportunity is missed Thank you very much for that that actually concludes today's meeting I can thank our witnesses for coming along and giving us that information it's been really useful our next meeting will take place on Thursday the 9th of October Thank you