How it plans to tackle undervaluing of residential and foster care staff and whether it has any plans to establish a Scotland-wide training…

We are committed todelivering a competent, confident and valued social service workforce, in line withChanging Lives and Skills for Scotland. A key activity, which is still at an earlystage, is the development of a continuous learning framework for all in the socialservice workforce, including those working in residential child care. In addition,we provide significant direct investment in training the residential child careworkforce. This is provided through the Scottish Institute for Residential ChildCare (SIRCC) which currently receives £2 million a year to provide free nationaltraining for frontline workers in residential child care, delivering the core skillsand registration-based qualifications they need.
The Scottish Governmentalso provided £4 million to fostering agencies across Scotland earlier this year to support the training and development of foster carersand kinship carers. We will set out further details with regard to our plans forthe training of foster carers in the forthcoming National Fostering and KinshipCare Strategy.