Care Experienced Children and Young People Fund: operational guidance 2023 to 2024

Planning

The Care Experienced Children and Young People Fund has been allocated for the duration of this Parliamentary term until March 2026. Opportunities to implement longer-term interventions can be realised with the support of this long-term commitment. Consideration should also still be given to shorter-term interventions which support the mission to improve outcomes for children and young people impacted by poverty, with a focus on tackling the poverty related attainment gap and to improve educational outcomes for care experienced children and young people.

Utilising a longer-term approach by planning the use of Care Experienced Children and Young People Funding over multiple years may enable better planning of spending, recruitment and development.

Funds will be allocated to local authorities and it is the role of the Chief Social Work and Chief Education Officers to ensure that the funds improve attainment in a way that is consistent with the Getting It Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) approach.

The money can be used to fund initiatives that benefit a number of children or families or activities that are specific to an individual child’s or family’s needs and impact positively on their attainment. Use of the money for individual children should be discussed within existing planning processes for children in accordance with their local authority’s additional support policies and/or GIRFEC. Examples of this include additional support plans, Child’s Plans, Looked After Children reviews, or integrated children’s services plans.

It would be beneficial for local authorities to work with their Champions Boards or other groups of care experienced young people to coproduce approaches, interventions or activities which could be funded in line with the guidance above.

Local authorities should also work in close collaboration with Attainment Advisors to ensure effective planning thereby identifying appropriate opportunities for improvement and to close the poverty-related attainment gap for care experienced children and young people.

All support should be planned through a trauma-responsive lens, with acknowledgement that most care experienced children have experienced developmental trauma and are protected under article 39 of the UNCRC: Article 39 (recovery from trauma and reintegration).

Scotland’s Equity Toolkit aims to provide an accessible and adaptable resource for local and sectoral needs to support the refreshed mission of the Scottish Attainment Challenge.

The toolkit has been designed to support practitioners in their practice and decision making by providing access to a range of evidence, research and practice, and importantly identify the conditions contributing to success in one place. It includes key information which may be helpful to consider or guide implementation and sustainability in different settings.

The toolkit is underpinned by existing research and evidence. It and will be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure high quality information that is relevant and impactful.

Support can be accessed via this resource on how to enable children and young people to have that input to planning and evaluation of approaches.

Planning can be supported by the logic model, which shows how a programme produces change. The logic model can help bring detail to programme goals, aid planning, evaluation, implementation and communication. It incorporates outcomes reflecting the mission, which encompasses child poverty, broader achievement and an increased focus on health and wellbeing and family and community support which can be found as a supporting document to the Framework for Recovery and Accelerating Progress.

The planning cycle will follow the academic year, aligning with the annual Service Improvement Planning cycle. Therefore, stretch aims as described and exemplified in the Framework for Recovery and Accelerating Progress should be agreed annually by the end of September at the latest.