Dr. Karen McAuley:

I will give some examples briefly on what we meant by that, then I will hand over to my colleague to comment further on this. On the duty to co-operate, I wish to put on record a further example the committee might want to look at. The Department has decided not to go with the concept of corporate parenting and legislating for corporate parenting at this stage. That is regrettable but it is a decision that has been made. It would be worth looking at the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 in regard to corporate parenting. There is under that a duty to collaborate. One aspect worth looking at is that you must collaborate, not “you may” collaborate but “you must” collaborate. It also provides an indicative list that is quite detailed as to what parties must collaborate on. This goes beyond sharing of information. Interestingly, it includes funding activities jointly. They were thinking about how funding works. The system is organised into sectoral silos and so on. It is worth looking at these examples. There is scope here and there is material we can draw on. However, I will hand over to my colleague, Ms Ward, for further examples.