New MSP Duncan Dunlop in powerful plea to transform Scotland's care system
“If we want to end the scourge of Scotland that is drug deaths then we need to transform care” - Duncan Dunlop MSP
New Lib Dem MSP Duncan Dunlop used his maiden speech in the Scottish Parliament to make a powerful plea for reform of the care system.
Mr Dunlop, former chief executive of the charity Who Cares? Scotland, said he had worked with care-experienced people for the past 30 years and been an expert independent adviser to the New Zealand and UK Governments on care system reform.
He told the Holyrood chamber: “A good friend of mine, Tony McDonald, was a care-experienced young man who spent most of his childhood in care. When he was 12 years old, he recalled wanting to go home to visit his mum, and he went to the phone in the corridor of his children’s home and called her. However, Tony’s mum had her own struggles. She said, ‘Nah, Tony, I can’t cope this weekend.’
“Tony felt the pain of rejection. The shame that came with that was the most corrosive feeling of all, and it quickly turned to anger. He slammed down the phone and was quickly restrained by three adult members of staff, pinned to the ground with such force that they ruptured his gut on the doorstop. He was held there for 20 minutes.
“In later years, Tony would recall, ‘How did they see me as a threat? I was a wee boy. I just wanted a cuddle. I wanted to be held, to be told I mattered and that I was loved.’
“The state would go on to spend more than £1 million not loving Tony throughout his childhood. An unloved child can all too easily turn into an angry young man. Unfortunately, that happened to Tony. Three months after his 16th birthday, he was sent to prison, where he would spend most of the next six years.
“However, there is hope. Remarkably, Tony’s mum turned her life around, and she gave inspiration to Tony to do the same. After he had spent 18 months in rehab, I am proud to say that I employed him.”
Mr Dunlop - who stood in Midlothian South, Tweeddale and Lauderdale at the election, but got elected via the South of Scotland list - said he employed many other care-experienced people too — “brilliant, inquisitive and intelligent young people who were born the same as any of us”.
He went on: “They have the right to claim others and to be claimed and loved, and many remarkable people in Scotland do just that. However, there are those—I am afraid that it is nearly half—who are not claimed and are left alone. For them, life is difficult. In fact, the personal and societal cost is tragic.
“If, in this parliament, we want to make a change, and to halve the adult prison population, then we need to transform care. If we want to cut by a third our rough-sleeping population, then we need to transform care. If we want to end the scourge of Scotland that is drug deaths—a subject that has been debated in this chamber often enough—then we need to transform care.”
He said that 10 years ago, Tony McDonald and another 1,000 young people had shared his story with the then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. “She was affected. She said that she was committed to ripping up the system. She commissioned a care review, which led to the Promise. To a large degree, I am stood in the Parliament today because that Promise is unfulfilled.
“The reality of the situation is stark. This is a crisis because too many people have died since promises were made. I estimate that more than two million days of life will not be lived by those who have died prematurely since promises were made.
“My ask of the Government is simple: commit to publishing the premature death rates of care-experienced people. We have a moral responsibility to know, and that will also give us a baseline for knowing whether we are making progress.
“The situation may well be endemic and have become normalised, but it must change. If we want to be ambitious for Scotland, let us start with our children. We already have all the powers in our constitution to do that.”