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We fully intend to keep the Promise and we intend to ensure that we deal with the difficulties that were highlighted in the independent report on adult social care. In order for us to be able to do that, we need to shift the financial alignment and the balance of investment that we make in this area so that we are not spending constantly on crisis intervention, which is often the case, but can spend on prevention. That will free up even more resource to do that and, of course, by doing it that way, we also lessen the human cost of not getting this right.

We carried out a CRWIA screening in February 2021. The Government has adopted a consistent approach to rights and equality that has been used across all the protected categories when assessing deliverables in the mental health transition and recovery plan. Our mental health, equalities and human rights forum is central to that.

Crucially, we continue to involve children and young people in all aspects of our focused actions on mental health and wellbeing. As Ms Todd and I have reiterated again and again today, lived experience should be at the heart of all that we do.

For example, the involvement of members of the Scottish Youth Parliament enriches the work of the Scottish Government and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities children and young people’s mental health joint delivery board. We have attached to that two participation officers who focus on children’s and young people’s engagement.

We will write to the committee regarding a publication date, but I would say to all members that we have an ambition and we will meet that ambition. Folk have to recognise that we have had two years of a global pandemic. That means that some of the work that we want to undertake has been put to one side in order to deal with the real crisis that everyone has faced because of coronavirus.

We are making moves to improve. The new national data set for psychological therapies and CAMHS, for example, will provide individual level data for the first time, including experience and outcome measures. I think that that is a major move forward.

Can I add to that because—

The project that Ms Harper has talked about is not one that I am aware of. If she furnishes me with further detail, I will have a look and see what work it is doing. I am sure that it is very good work. I have said to the committee previously that there is good work in destigmatising mental health going on in communities across Scotland. Nationally, we have provided £5 million over five years for See Me to give it the comfort of knowing that that resource is available over a longer period of time. It has done some immense work, but we still have a way to go.

There are some areas of mental health that we have to destigmatise further, such as self-harm, which it is much more difficult for folk to talk about. I have met representatives from the Labour Party and the Green Party about our ambition to create what is I think the world’s first self-harm strategy. We will have to get folk to open up in order to be able to do that right and we will have to destigmatise. I am due to meet Conservative and Liberal Democrat representatives about this, too, in the near future. I hope that we can work cross-party collaboratively to help destigmatise that area, because there is a lot of work to do there. I hope that we will see collaboration and co-operation right across the Parliament on an issue that we have not done enough to tackle.

We want to track what is happening on the ground to ensure that our investment is making a real difference to young people and their families. Ms Todd talked about the £15 million investment in local authorities. We know that some local authorities have responded more quickly than others to utilise those resources and that others are taking longer. We need to ensure that they speed up. Beyond that, they need to recognise that the moneys that we have made available will flow into next year, so they have the comfort of knowing that the resource will be there. All of our expectations are that the money is best utilised for the good of children in every area.

The other aspect of tracking outcomes is looking at the data that is currently available and considering what changes we need to make. For example, we have the annual health and wellbeing census, which is one of a number of sources that the Government uses to track the wellbeing of young people, but we need to go beyond that, and the pandemic has taught us some lessons in that regard.

During the pandemic, the support that we provided to Young Scot to undertake the lockdown lowdown survey provided us with useful insights into the particular impacts that the pandemic and associated restrictions had on children and young people. This year, we will commission an independent evaluation of our children and young people’s community wellbeing supports and services, and we will ensure that we are listening to the voices of those who use and seek access to those services.

Those are the kinds of things that we need to do. We need to listen to the voices of lived experience to see what is working and we need to track to ensure that the resourcing that we are making available is actually getting it right for young people.

Can I come in on the team aspect?

Ms Webber made an excellent point about team activity. I know that, during the first lockdown, which was very difficult for young folks, some teams coped by being able to gather online. At an event that I was at at St Mirren Football Club, which I have talked to the committee about before, I had a discussion with Paul McNeill, who is the excellent head of community development at the Scottish Football Association. He said that the kids in one of the teams that he coached were getting on grand online, but there was a much more difficult experience mentally for folks who could not get online, because they were not able to connect with their team-mates. It was very important that we made the investment in getting digital devices out there to folks who were digitally excluded because the team aspect has seen a lot of folk through.

We cannot overstate the value of team sport and the camaraderie that there has been, even though many people could not take part in activities in the first lockdown.

Can I just say one thing here? I have said this regularly, and it is not just me—a lot of the mental health professionals out there will say the same thing. Poverty is the main driver of mental ill health, and it is very difficult for some folk to engage in programmes if they have real concerns about how they will pay their bills, whether they will be able to feed their kids, or whether they will be able to buy that pair of shoes for wee Johnny or Jenny going to school. We cannot get over the fact that many of the powers here still rest with the UK Government.

As Maree Todd has said, we have a situation in which we are doing our level best to mitigate some of the policy decisions from down south, but as we increase the Scottish child payment, which is the right thing to do, the UK Government takes away all of that through a universal credit cut. Although we have mitigated the likes of the bedroom tax, the UK Government still has the welfare cap. We have to recognise that, although we will do everything that we possibly can on such issues, it would be much more helpful if those welfare policies, which have been enacted by the UK Government, were got rid of, because they are having a major impact on the physical and mental wellbeing of so many folk in our country.