Caring for our children and young people: corporate parenting update 2018 to 2021

Chapter 3: Corporate Parenting Activities of Scottish Ministers

Introduction

Scottish Ministers have particular responsibilities with regard to setting the legislative, strategic and policy frameworks within which they and other corporate parents deliver their duties. These responsibilities span the broader context for children, young people, families and carers in Scotland as well as more specifically the current care system and support for children and young people with experience of care.

In this chapter, we review the corporate parenting activities of the Scottish Ministers, providing examples of specific activities through which Scottish Ministers have delivered their corporate parenting duties. Many of the activities described have been delivered in partnership with other corporate parents and further detail for many of these activities can be found in later chapters of this report.

We have presented the corporate parenting activities under the six Section 58 duties of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 – Alert, Assess, Promote, Opportunities, Access and Improve – as explained in the Methodology section of Chapter 1. To bring the activities and duties to life, a selection of ‘Spotlights’ have been used to provide real-life, illustrative examples of what supports the Scottish Government has put in place.

Alert

It is the duty of every corporate parent to be alert to matters which, or which might, adversely affect the wellbeing of children and young people.

The Scottish Government has been alert to the matters affecting the wellbeing of children and young people via a number of different of routes. The main routes to boost awareness and understanding were:

• Work connected to, and findings of, the Independent Care Review.
• Understanding the challenges faced by children and young people during the pandemic.
• Listening to the challenges faced by the workforce across the sector.
• Including the voice of young people with care experience in policy decisions.
• Surveys and research focused on experiences of care.

Policy:

1000 Voices

Activity:

1,000 Voices: In September 2016, the First Minister committed to listening to 1,000 young people with experience of care. These engagements were completed in early 2020 and formed a key opportunity for the First Minister to understand the priorities of children and young people with experience of care.

Issues frequently raised by participants included homelessness, age limits for support for children and young people with care experience, stigma, transitions from care, and mental health support. The impact of separation of children with brothers and/or sisters who are cared for away from home on their lifelong relationships was evidently significantly felt. Participants also highlighted the benefits of Champions Boards and positive experiences with Modern Apprenticeships.

These voices informed both The Promise and the Scottish Government’s commitment to #KeepThePromise.

Spotlight:

In addition to input from the 1,000 Voices engagements, a variety of different ways and methods were used to involve people in the Independent Care Review. These often involved a strength-based and appreciative enquiry approach to encourage and stimulate things that were already working well. Infants, children, young people and adults with experience of care were involved in roadshow events, one-to-one conversations with a participation worker, inviting the Review to their own groups, showing the Review something they’ve created as a group or as an individual, emailing, writting in or completing an online survey. The Review listened to over 5,500 experiences in total, with over half of these from children and young people with experience of the ‘care system’, adults who had lived in care, and families.

Policy:

COVID-19

Activity:

During the height of the pandemic, a number of emergency funds including the Immediate Priorities Fund and the Winter Support Fund were open to third sector organisations to apply to which in turn supported people within their reach who were experiencing financial, digital, emotional and/or wellbeing assistance.

£350 million of additional Communities Support Funding was made available to local authorities to help people most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in their areas.

To strengthen the evidence available on the impacts of the pandemic, we supported a range of new research activities to address evidence gaps, including three Lockdown Lowdown surveys of young people aged 11–25; the Children’s Parliament survey of children aged 8–14; the COVID-19 Early Years Resilience and Impact Survey (CEYRIS) survey of parents of 2–7 year olds; questions on mental wellbeing in the Young People in Scotland Survey of secondary school pupils; as well as qualitative work with groups of young people and their families facing a range of challenges.

Spotlight:

Aberlour were funded to ensure the safety, welfare and wellbeing of children being looked after at home and kinship carers. They delivered practical in-home support and telephone support interventions where there was significant COVID-19 risk to support staff and their families.

Following calls to action from third sector bodies representing their communities, further assistance was put in place to support children and families with little or no digital access. In addition, digital devices and broadband connections were provided through third sector organisations and Connecting Scotland to over 4,000 care leavers.

Guidance for residential children’s houses, residential schools, secure care, and residential respite/short break facilities on staffing, social distancing and self-isolation was developed to protect children, young people and staff. This was done in collaboration with sector representatives and published in October 2020 and regularly revised. Following changes to local levels in Autumn 2020, Guidance for Family Contact for children and young people cared for away from home was developed collaboratively with the sector, and published in December 2020.

The second Lockdown Lowdown Report had an additional report on : The Voice of Seldom Heard Groups During COVID-19 Pandemic Report - November 2020 – Scottish Youth Parliament held five focus groups with groups of young people with particular lived experiences, asking them questions and documenting the impact of the pandemic on their lives. One of these focus groups was with care experienced young people.

Themes discussed included education, employment, relationships, physical and mental health and access to information. The results have been widely publicised and have helped to inform the responses of Scottish Government and partners developing and delivering policy and services during the pandemic.

Policy

Housing

Activity

A Way Home Scotland is a national coalition set up by the Rock Trust and funded by the Scottish Government until March 2022. It is committed to ending youth homelessness in Scotland within ten years. It is made up of organisations and professionals across Scotland representing delivery partners, service providers, local and national government as well as people with lived experience.

The coalition has held conferences to inform their partners and established working groups to address specific issues.

Spotlight

A Way Home Scotland Coalition was commissioned by the Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group (HPSG) to take forward work in relation to young people and care leavers following the initial publication of the Ending Homelessness Together Action Plan in November 2018. The coalition has had a strong focus on young people with care experience. The A Way Home Scotland Coalition is also currently working with Government on the implementation plan for the recommendations in both the young people and care leavers pathways.

Aff the Streets is the National Youth Steering Group created to ensure young people are represented on the A Way Home Scotland coalition. Some of the members represent people who are care experienced, which is one of the groups of people at higher risk of homelessness.

Aff the Streets is also represented on the Scottish Government’s Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group, meaning that young people’s views can be heard directly in discussions of future housing policies and legislation.

Policy

Kinship Care Forum

Activity

The Kinship Care Forum was established with third sector partners who were delivering services directly to kinship families. This ensured information about challenges experienced and appropriate responses were shared and developed together. These included information about direct aid and therapeutic parenting resources.

In partnership with Children 1st, the Kinship Care Forum suggested and contributed to a series of webinars led by therapeutic parenting expert Suzanne Zeedyk and supporting information sheets to help kinship families provide therapeutic responses to their children and young people. Collaboration also ensured families were signposted to the most appropriate local partner for direct aid.

Policy

Foster care

Activity

The Fostering Network (TFN) interacts regularly with Scottish Government to influence policy and legislation in order to support and promote excellence in foster care. All registered fostering services in Scotland are members, along with 97% of foster carers. Scottish Government provides annual funding of £145k to The Fostering Network through the Children Young People and Families Early Intervention Fund.

Spotlight

The funding provided to The Fostering Network has enabled the operation of Fosterline Scotland – a telephone and e-mail advice service to listen to and support the needs of foster carers, foster carer practitioners and services involved in the provision of day-to-day foster care to care experienced children and young people in Scotland. Fosterline has provided both practical and emotional support especially throughout the pandemic to ensure that children and young people receive the best possible care. The Fostering Network carry out a UK-wide State of the Nation survey every two years to get feedback from the fostering community on a variety of issues. They extrapolate Scotland-relevant information and publish a Scottish report. The next report is expected in December 2021.

Quote from foster carer “I didn’t know who could help me or give me advice but everything I needed was provided by this wonderful service.”

“I think you all do such a fantastic job. If it wasn’t for you I would not feel as supported as I do now.”

Policy

Youth Justice

Activity

Throughout August and September 2020, the Scottish Government commissioned a group of four young people with experience of the care and justice system to lead a project seeking the views of their peers on three separate, but related topics:

• the priorities for a future Youth Justice Vision and Action Plan;
• the use of a place of safety (under the Age of Criminal Responsibility Act); and
• raising the age of referral to the Principal Reporter.

The views gathered have been used to inform the new Youth Justice Vision and Action Plan. They were also incorporated into guidance on the use of a place of safety.

Views from young people showed strong support for changing the law so that all under 18s can be referred to a children’s hearing. These views are included in a report published on 7 December 2020. We are now working with partners to identify what needs to change to allow this to happen.

Spotlight

Supported by the Youth Justice Voices Project staff, the ‘Youth Justice Visionaries’ were responsible for developing and co-producing an engagement strategy to gather views. They developed the questions, a topic guide, and facilitated online workshops to gather views for us.

Around 80 young people, aged 15–28, shared their views on all three topics through online sessions and face-to-face discussion.

One of the Youth Justice Visionaries wrote about the experience:

“Having young people themselves involved in the care and justice systems participate to direct the collection of evidence from their peers about the shaping of a policy that affects them all is a significant but welcome change in direction by the government. It gave responsibility and also a pride to the youth justice visionaries who say they feel increasingly listened to and respected by those in power. A job well done!”

Policy

Adoption

Activity

The Scottish Government funds Adoption UK Scotland (AUKS) and the Adoption and Fostering Alliance (AFA) Scotland to undertake a scoping study based on online surveys of a) the adoption support services provided by local authorities and voluntary organisations and b) adoptive parents’ experiences of accessing adoption support. The study highlighted some good adoption support practices and services, but identified these are not consistently available across Scotland.

To help make the adoption process as smooth and uncomplicated as possible the Scottish Government funded Adoption UK Scotland (AUKS) and the Adoption and Fostering Alliance (AFA) Scotland to develop the Adoption Journey publication. The Adoption Journey is a guide for every prospective adopter in Scotland to help prepare them for the reality of adoption and to point them in the right direction for further help and support. The Scottish Government has also funded AUKS to set up the Adoption.Scot website to support adoptive families from the first day with advice and resources.

In 2018 the Scottish Government made a commitment to “increase support for children and families affected by FASD” given the high incidence of care experienced and adopted children living with this condition. As part of this commitment the Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) Hub Scotland was established in 2019 and we have committed to fund Adoption UK Scotland over three-years to carry out work to support children and families affected by FASD. The FASD Hub was originally set up to support adoptive parents and carers, but due to demand the Scottish Government has extended the support and Adoption UK are now offering its services to birth parents.

Assess

It is the duty of every corporate parent to assess the needs of those children and young people for services and support it provides.

Scottish Ministers evidenced assessing the needs of the care community effectively in order to ensure national legislation and policies support the provision of help, advice, support and protection when it is required. This was done by:

• Understanding common themes across children’s services.
• Co-designing system changes with children and young people.
• Collating real time data across Scotland to assess and prioritise, needs and support.
• The use of third sector support to support mental health and wellbeing.
• Encouraging and upskilling a trauma-informed workforce.

Policy

Children’s Services Planning Partnerships(CSPP)

Activity

The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014^[7] requires local authorities and health boards, working in partnership with other public bodies and organisations, to undertake strategic assessments of need in preparing Children’s Services plans.

A Scottish Government Strategic engagement exercise with CSPPs in 2019, and feedback sought during the pandemic, highlighted examples of good practice focused on meeting the needs of care experienced children and young people. The national review of Children’s Services plans (2017-2020) identified a common theme of addressing the specific needs within plans.

Policy

COVID-19

Activity

The COVID-19 Children and Families Collective Leadership Group was established in 2020 as an operational leadership group to tackle the impact of the pandemic on children, young people, families and carers facing challenges and undertake longer-term work to improve support for health and wellbeing.

A regular data collection was established to provide intelligence to the COVID-19 Children and Families Collective Leadership Group, with input from the 32 Chief Officer Groups, national agencies and delivery partners including the third sector, Police Scotland and the Health Service. This included key data on what was happening across Children’s Services Planning Partnerships to support children and young people on the child protection register, children in care and children and families needing extra support.

A second data set covering aspects of adult protection was also established to help provide a broader picture on related issues such as domestic abuse, problematic substance use and other populations with specific vulnerabilities.

Spotlight

The assessment of data along with the wider evidence base has been used to inform policy decisions on the COVID-19 response, as well as to develop actions to address emerging issues.

A short-life working group was formed to identify key issues relating to transitions for young people leaving care and aftercare support that emerged as a result of COVID-19.

The data suggested variation in the contact rate for young people requesting aftercare support throughout the pandemic. The group worked with Chief Social Work Officers to ensure that difficulties in real-time data collection were not indicative of the reality and that young people were being provided with consistent support. In response to this we continue to work with local authorities and statisticians to explore how we can refine data collections to obtain real time data that is more reliable and provides relevant information that can be used to inform ongoing policy development and decision making.

Policy

Children’s Hearings

Activity

The Better Hearings programme, being delivered under the Children’s Hearings Improvement Partnership (CHIP) created local multi-agency groups to assess where improvements are required and implement standards across the hearings system. Many changes have been co-designed with children and young people. The broad work of the programme includes: the redesign and refurbishment of hearings centres to create safe, calming and child-friendly environments; the production of guidance on planning and preparation for a hearing to better equip children and young people to participate and influence their hearing; the involvement of children and young people in the recruitment and training of panel members; and the production of child-friendly information material on rights. The views of children and young people have been essential to the success of this work.

Review of Children’s Hearings System

Scottish Government made a Programme for Government Commitment that we will undertake a comprehensive review of the Children’s Hearings System, to rethink the structures, processes and legislation that underpin it, ensuring courts can facilitate child-friendly justice that upholds children’s rights.

The Promise announced on 15 August that former Sheriff David Mackie has been appointed as the independent chair of The Hearings System Working Group. This Group will facilitate a redesign of Children’s Hearings System with representatives from The Promise, Children’s Hearings Scotland, Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration and young people with recent experience of Children’s Hearings and care services. Scottish Government are members of the group. The Promise asks for a rethink of the structure, processes and legislation in relation to the Children’s Hearings system, ensuring that children and families continue to be at the heart of decision making. A review will ensure that Children’s Hearings fully align with incorporation of the United National Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Activity

The Our Hearings, Our Voice (OHOV) board was established in 2018 to ensure that the views of children and young people are fully embedded in work to improve the Children’s Hearings system. OHOV is composed of 12 children and young people with a wide range of care experience and current and/or live experience of the hearings system. Full support is provided to enable OHOV members to develop and to be fully participative. OHOV reports regularly to CHIP, and therefore has a direct link to key decision makers to facilitate change and drive improvement. In 2020, OHOV published ‘40 Calls to Action’ for changes in the hearings system to improve the experiences of children and young people. Progress on the 40 calls will be reviewed before the end of 2021. The progress report will be key to informing the ongoing modernisation and improvement of the Children’s Hearings system in line with delivering the changes needed to #KeepThePromise.

Policy

Housing

Activity

Through the Ending Homelessness Together Action Plan, originally published in November 2018 and updated in October 2020, we committed to developing and implementing pathways to prevent homelessness for people at high risk, which includes young people and young people moving from care to independent living.

The A Way Home Scotland Coalition, the national coalition to end youth homelessness, was commissioned by the Homelessness Prevention and Strategy Group (HPSG) to take forward this work and a report setting out recommendations around what needs to change to prevent homelessness for care leavers was published on 12 November 2019.

Spotlight

The report, Youth Homelessness Prevention Pathway: Improving Care Leavers Housing Pathways sets out the evidence-based steps required to ensure corporate parents act on their legal and moral duties to prevent young people leaving care experiencing homelessness, at the point of leaving care and later, by fully implementing existing policy and legislative frameworks. This includes ensuring more consistent implementation of continuing care and aftercare policy.

The pathway report recognises that not all young people with care experience fit into the legal definition ‘care leaver’ and as such are not provided with the same protection, such as corporate parenting supports. The pathway highlights that additional support should be in place to help the transition to adulthood for this group, with consideration being given to any trauma or adversity they may have experienced.

In March 2021, A Way Home Scotland published a second Youth Homelessness Prevention pathway aimed at all young people in Scotland. Young people who have experience of care but are not legally defined as care leavers will benefit from this pathway.

Polic - Mental Health

Activity

Since 2020 and in light of enhanced worries people with care experience were facing because of the pandemic, the Scottish Government provided funding to Who Cares? Scotland through the COVID-19 Social Justice Fund to assist with the delivery of a national helpline for care experienced people and their families.

The Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Joint Delivery Board has been formed to continue to progress the aims of the Mental Health and Wellbeing Programme Board which met for the final time in December 2020. The Joint Delivery Board is jointly chaired by COSLA and the Scottish Government and is expected to run until December 2022.

The deliverables have been revised to meet new and ongoing priorities and agreed by Scottish Ministers and COSLA spokespeople. One of the Task and Finish groups (group 3) is considering how best to support mental health pathways and services for children and young people facing challenges, aligned to the work of The Promise. This would include children and young people who may be at increased risk of experiencing mental ill health, in line with GIRFEC which would include children/young people in care or who have left care.

Spotlight

Using this funding, Who Cares? Scotland, in partnership with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BCAP) offered a number of one-to-one counselling sessions to support people with high levels of stress, anxiety and experiencing difficulty with their mental health.

The Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Programme Board is overseeing a £50m investment into improving mental health support, advice and care for women, infants and families. The work of the programme board, but most specifically the infant mental health work, is aligned to The Promise with a focus on its foundations, Voice, Family, Care, People and Scaffolding.

The joint delivery board has engaged regularly with organisations representing care experienced children and young people as part of the planning process of the boards future work. The task and finish group 3 has also begun a consultation exercise to understand the experiences of children and young people seeking access to mental health support and how these pathways to support can be improved.

Policy

Trauma-informed Approaches

Spotlight

As part of the NTTP, work is currently underway to develop tailored trauma-informed training resources for people who support care experienced babies, children and young people. This learning programme is building on existing progress to date. For example, in 2020/21 work was undertaken by NES in partnership with the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) and Children’s Hearing Scotland (CHS) to support embedding the principles of trauma-informed care for their service users and also for their staff and volunteers. This included an event focusing on the application of trauma-informed practice within their organisations and identifying priority areas for development with input from people with lived experience of trauma. Both CHS and SCRA have highlighted their ongoing commitment to further developing trauma-informed systems and services.

Policy

Kinship Care

Spotlight

Informed by this work, a commitment was made in the Programme for Government to work with key stakeholders to improve outcomes for children and young people and better support kinship carers and professionals. The Kinship Care Collaborative was created to take forward this work.

Promote

It is the duty of every corporate parent to promote the interests of those children and young people.

The Scottish Government has taken action to promote the interests of looked after children and care leavers. Activities and policies include:

• Working collaboratively across the sector to tackle stigma for people with care experience.
• Promoting and providing advocacy support for Children’s Hearings.
• Providing and promoting services to kinship carers, foster and adoptive parents and their families when children become looked after.
• Promoting the rights of brothers and sisters.
• Ensuring child protection guidance is strengthened to protect children at risk.
• Promoting the right to education regardless of age.

Policy

Advocacy in Children’s Hearings

Activity

The Children’s Hearing (Scotland) Act 2011 placed a legal duty on the chair of every Children’s Hearing to inform the child about the choice of having an independent advocacy worker present. This duty was commenced on 21 November 2020 and a national advocacy scheme was launched to ensure the availability of advocacy and reinforce the rights of children involved in the Children’s Hearings System. A Children’s Hearings Advocacy Expert Reference Group supported the design, delivery and continues to support the implementation of this demand-led service, which was backed by £1.5m in 2020-21. The national advocacy scheme was expanded in July 2021 to provide support for the right of children with brothers and/or sisters to participate in Hearings on matter of staying together and keeping connected, and funding increased to £1.8m for 2021-22.

Spotlight

The Children’s Hearings Scotland Learning Academy developed a new learning module on the national advocacy scheme in collaboration with Partners in Advocacy, Children 1st and Aberdeen Civil Legal Aid Office. The module is mandatory for the Panel Chairs and 2,403 members of the CHS community have successfully completed this course.

Over 500 children and young people were referred for support through the national advocacy scheme, and support for their Hearings in the period up to 31 March 2021.

The national scheme is made up of 10 third sector organisations who collectively provide the Scotland-wide independent advocacy services for Children’s Hearings. A dedicated website about Hearings Advocacy (Home - Hearings Advocacy (hearings-advocacy.com)) was developed. Other publicity materials and activity has included developing posters and leaflets and the views and direct input from Our Hearings Our Voice Board has helped to develop these resources. Information about the national scheme is also available on the Education Scotland National Improvement Hub. The advocacy organisations funded to provide the national scheme have also promoted services with local partners involved in Children’s Hearings to ensure children and young people know how they can get advocacy support.

Policy

Tackling stigma

Activity

Since 2018, in collaboration with organisations who champion and support the care community, we have funded and participated in the Each and Every Child Initiative. This partnership funded by CELCIS, the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Life Changes Trust, The Robertson Trust, Social Work Scotland and the Scottish Government, aims to help us improve and better understand public attitudes on the stigma around being ‘in care’. The project gathered evidence on the main communications challenges around the care system and tested ‘reframing’ strategies to counteract these.

Spotlight

The Each and Every Child toolkit based on this work was launched in May 2021 to help people reframe how people talk about care and people who have experience of care. The toolkit is online and open access and training to stakeholders began in June 2021.

A group of Early Adopters are working with the the Each and Every Child initiative to produce examples of how the reframing techniques can be used. Who Cares? Scotland are using it in their support for corporate parents, while The Promise Scotland are looking at how it can be used to change discourse with policy makers. The toolkit has been shared with Scottish Government officials, with training offered to officials across the Children and Families Directorate.

Policy

Vulnerable Witnesses

Activity

For some children and young people, their contact with the care system is linked with justice proceedings in which they are a witness. It was recognised that the justice system risks re-traumatising child victims and witnesses. The Vulnerable Witnesses (Criminal Evidence) (Scotland) Act 2019 created a new rule for child witnesses under 18 to ensure that, where they are due to give evidence in the most serious cases, they will be allowed to have this pre-recorded in advance of the trial. This will usually be by the special measure ‘evidence by commissioner’. The Act builds on the earlier Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Act 2014 which introduced new rights for vulnerable witnesses to help them give their best evidence.

Management of the phased implementation of the Act is being progressed through a multi-agency working group chaired by officials from the Scottish Government.

Spotlight

In January 2020 the Vulnerable Witnesses (Criminal Evidence) (Scotland) Act 2019 (Commencement No.1 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2019/392 came into force to ensure that any child witness under the age of 18 giving evidence in the most serious cases in the High Court, will be allowed to have this pre-recorded, sparing them from having to give evidence during a trial. The regulations have had a practical effect to all relevant cases in the High Court from autumn 2020, with the remote evidence suites having to be adapted to meet public health requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic, including those in relation to physical distancing.

The Scottish Government has also committed to the Barnahus model, to ensure that by 2025, all children in Scotland who have been victims or witnesses of abuse or violence, as well as children under the minimum age of criminal responsibility whose behaviour has caused significant harm, will have access to a ‘Bairns’ Hoose’: a child-friendly environment which designed to provide them with trauma-informed recovery, improve their experience of the criminal justice system, with the aim of preventing children being re-traumatised.

Policy

Kinship Care

Activity

There has been a significant rise in the number of children living in kinship care over the past 15 years, with over 4,400 children living with kinship carers in 2020. This represents around 40% of children and young people who are cared for away from their birth family.

The Scottish Government currently provides around £270k per annum to Adoption UK Scotland (AUKS) and the Adoption and Fostering Alliance (AFA) to deliver the Kinship Care Advisory Service Scotland. The purpose of the service is to raise awareness of kinship care and to provide information, advice and support to kinship families across Scotland and develop networks of knowledge for professionals working with them. The service also provides events and learning opportunities for the kinship community, builds capacity within informal peer networks and organises Kinship Care Week.

Spotlight

In 2020, Kinship Care Week was a virtual event, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and took place in March, with 282 people attending over 10 information and training events. The week also included family fun events, an art project for children and a recruitment campaign to create an advisory group for the Kinship Care Advisory Service Scotland (KCASS). In response to a request from kinship carers, the key theme for the week was empowering kinship carers to understand how children and young people’s behaviour may be related to trauma and how to support recovery from trauma. The Minister for Children and Young People answered kinship carers’ questions on a range of the challenges they face, and a video message of thanks from the First Minister was viewed 23,200 times by the end of the week. 98% of participants who responded to a survey rated their experience of the week as good or excellent.

Policy

Adoption

Activity

There were 211 adoptions registered in Scotland in 2020, a decrease of 261 compared to 2019.

Overall the number of adoptions has fallen over the long term.

The Scottish Government provides the following annual funding:

• £270,000 to the Adoption and Fostering Alliance (AFA) to maintain and expand Scotland’s Adoption Register.
• £98,000 to AFA Scotland to maintain services to professionals and practitioners in the adoption sector.
• £75,000 to Adoption UK Scotland (AUKS) to provide a national helpline and support for adoptive families in Scotland.
• £55,000 to Birthlink in order to provide and maintain the Adoption Contact Register for Scotland.
• £40,000 to St Andrews Children’s Society to support adoptive families, both during and after the adoption process.
• £18,000 to AUKS and AFA to organise and facilitate Adoption Week.

Spotlight

Scotland’s Adoption Register is an online database which facilitates finding a match between young people and prospective adopters. In 2021 it has been 10 years since Scotland’s Adoption Register was formed and in February 2021, the Register celebrated its 700th match.

Adoption Week Scotland (AWS) 2020 was held in November and 15 events were held over the week as part of the main programme, with 698 attendees – an increase of 68% on attendees from the previous year. The themes of the week were fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, sibling relationships and therapeutic parenting.

AWS made full use of the newly created www.adoption.scot website, with a specially created section acting as the hub for the week’s activities - www.adoption.scot/adoption-week. The website was used widely to share information.

Policy

Foster Care

Activity

The Scottish Government provides annual funding of £145k to the Fostering Network (Scotland) through the Children Young People and Families Early Intervention Fund. Part of this funding includes support for the annual ‘Foster Care Fortnight’.

Spotlight

The Foster Care Fortnight campaign aims to promote foster care within Scotland and to attract new carers who are equipped to meet the needs of children and young people who come into the care of local authorities. Scottish Ministers support events to help promote foster care during the campaign to the wider community, as well as to show their appreciation for the care that foster carers provide to children and young people. A successful event was carried out in 2020 in the Scottish Parliament to promote the voices of primary school children being care for by foster care which was attended by the Minister for Children and Young People, MSPs and foster families, some of whom cared for children and young people with disabilities.

Policy

Maintaining relationships

Activity

The impact of separating children who have brothers and/or sisters when children are cared for was a major issue raised by children and young people with care experience who contributed to 1,000 Voices and to the Independent Care Review. Following a commitment in the 2019-20 Programme for Government, changes have been made to law and guidance to enable siblings to maintain their relationships with each other. Section 13 of the Children (Scotland) Act 2020 places on a duty on local authorities to promote contact and relations between siblings. The duty to ensure that, where appropriate, siblings are placed together is contained in Regulation 5A of the Looked After Children (Scotland) Regulations 2009. Where it is not appropriate for brothers and/or sisters to live together, steps should be taken to help them stay in regular touch with each other and to nurture their relationships.

Spotlight

Staying Together and Connected: Getting it Right for Sisters and Brothers: National Practice Guidance was published on 26 July 2021, the same day the legislative changes came into force. The Guidance will help practitioners to implement the legislation and was developed in consultation with children and young people with care experience.

The Guidance is focused on the nurturing of sister and/or brother relationships, offering a range of creative examples for professionals to use in support of this. This collaborative approach in production continues with partners across the sector and people with care experience committing to involvement in the Staying Together and Connected Implementation Group, formed in Autumn 2021.

At the same time we implemented changes to the Children’s Hearings Rules of Procedure^[8] which will help hearings focus on maintaining strong relationships between children with brothers and/or sisters. These changes are designed to respect siblings’ right to family life. Siblings, and those with a sibling-like relationship, will now have the right to participate in Children’s Hearings and give their views on keeping in contact with each other.

Policy

Child Protection

Activity

The primary purpose of child protection processes is to ensure the safety and long-term wellbeing of the child. This may in some cases, involve a child being cared for away from their original home. The National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland 2021 was published on 2 September 2021. This non-statutory Guidance describes responsibilities and expectations for all involved in protecting children in Scotland. The Guidance promotes partnership between all who care about and have responsibilities for the child, and entails a collaborative approach between professionals, carers and family members.

The Guidance has a strengthened focus on children’s rights, engagement and collaboration with families, and on building upon existing strengths. It incorporates the experiences and views of children, young people, families and carersand includes a greater emphasis on ensuring that a child’s views are taken into account in all decision making that affects them. These views have also informed the development of a series of Practice Insights, published alongside the Guidance, ensuring a central focus on the child’s voice and perspective.

Policy

Council Tax Exemption

Activity

In October 2017 the Scottish Government announced its intention to exempt care leavers from paying Council Tax allowing care leavers up to the age of 26 to be exempt from Council Tax. The policy was introduced in 2018.

A practice note was drawn up following a round table participation event hosted by CELCIS and the Scottish Care Leavers Covenant Alliance. It outlines key considerations and a range of measures for local authorities to take as Corporate parents to ensure consistent and effective implementation of the regulations, now established in law^[9].

Spotlight

The Scottish Care Leavers Covenant Alliance welcomed this measure as a good example of leadership and corporate parenting, and a practical and positive benefit to care experienced young people.

There are no national statistics on how many people have benefited from this exemption; some anecdotal information suggests that not all local authorities make it straightforward to claim the exemption. This will be an area of focus in the next reporting period.

Policy

Education

Activity

The Care Experienced Children and Young People (CECYP) Grant was introduced in 2018-19, recognising that children with experience of care need additional support. Funding is provided to local authorities, with anyone in care, or who has had experience of care at any stage in their life, no matter how short, is eligible for this support. More than £33 million was made available over the last parliamentary term and additional funding of just over £11.5 million is being provided to local authorities over the 2021-22 academic year. The operational guidance for the fund articulates the need for all corporate parents to co-ordinate services and support across organisational boundaries.

Spotlight

This funding is making a real difference, through increasing attendance and reducing exclusions. It has supported developments such as the Virtual School Head Teachers, who help ensure strategic support is in place for care experienced children and young people. Additional Attainment Scotland Funding has helped support CELCIS to bring together and enhance a virtual school headteacher network, to help facilitate the sharing of good practice to benefit care experienced children and families. A new online resource has also been developed and may be accessed here:- Virtual School head teachers (celcis.org)

The closing the poverty-related attainment gap: progress report 2016 to 21 and the 2020 Headteacher Survey showed good progress was being made and the Scottish Attainment Challenge, supported by the £750m Attainment Scotland Fund, was having a positive impact.

Funding has been used in way which has increased attendance and reduce exclusions. It also supports programmes such as enhanced tutoring and mentoring, which help care experienced children and young people, and their families to engage better with education.

Resources have been provided by partners in Education Scotland in this summary to help support corporate parents to support care experienced children and young people in educational settings.

Policy

Education

Spotlight

The MCR Pathways mentoring programme has grown from its initial base in Glasgow to over 10 local authorities across Scotland with more to follow, thanks in part, to support through Care Experienced Children and Young People Grants.

The education outcomes statistics for looked after children for 2019-20 showed a narrowing, albeit continuing, gap with overall school leaver population. The attainment of looked after children and young people has risen between 2012-13 and 2019-20 at SCQF level 4 or better, SCQF level 5 or better, and at SCQF level 6 or better. The gap between looked after children entering positive initial destinations (80%) and all school leavers (93%) has narrowed over the last ten years (from 30 percentage points in 2009-10 to 13 percentage points in 2019-20).

Opportunities

It is the duty of every corporate parent to seek to provide those children and young people with opportunities to participate in activities designed to promote their wellbeing.

The Scottish Government has provided opportunities for children and young people with care experience to help them improve their wellbeing and become successful learners, confident individuals and effective contributors to their communities. For Scottish Ministers, this has included a focus on the provision of direct opportunities within the Scottish Government and its agencies as well as support during the day to day lives of children and young people, where opportunities have included mentoring support, internships and family and young people wellbeing activities.

Policy

Social Justice & Mentoring

Activity

The Social Innovation Partnership (SIP) was set up in 2016 to test and scale different approaches to tackling inequality and poverty that focus on increasing people’s wellbeing and capabilities. In practice this means supporting people to flourish in terms of who they are and what they are able to do, based on what they value and what matters to them.

MCR Pathways is a key SIP partner, delivering school-based mentoring support to young people in, or on the edges of care. MCR Pathways and Columba 1400 are working in partnership to improve young people’s education outcomes, career opportunities and life chances.

Spotlight

Independent evaluation of the MCR Pathways programme suggests that there is positive impact on young people’s attendance at school, attainment and post-school destinations.

MCR Pathways is a mentoring programme that supports young people with care experience or who may need more support, to realise their potential through education. The programme aims to inspire and support young people into positive post-school destinations, including employment or further education. Mentors are drawn from across the community and provide a listening ear, support and continuity as a role model and reference point. Mentors are trained to develop strong relationships that are at the heart of the programme and key to helping young people achieve their full potential.

We are supporting the rollout of the MCR Pathways programme to enable it to reach up to 15,000 young people, alongside expansion of Columba 1400’s values-based Leadership Academy for Young People to put their experiences and voices at the heart of the change journey.

Polciy - Social Justice & Mentoring

Activity

We are improving experiences and outcomes for children and young people looked after at home with the Indandem Mentoring Programme, delivered by Inspiring Scotland.

The programme aims to help children and young people to develop positive relationships with an adult role model, recognising that the disruption they have faced in their lives can make this challenging in a family setting. This helps them to set and make progress towards their own goals and aspirations.

Between 2016 and March 2021 £3.75m has been invested by the Scottish Government, including to develop the 664 volunteers trained and supporting 385 matches in 19 local authorities areas. 125 matches continue to meet on a weekly basis.

Spotlight

Through intandem, a 17 year old young person was supported to continue with his studies during a challenging time at home. By developing positive relationships and having a safe space to discuss his challenges and talk through achievable solutions, this approach resulted in Jamie passing all required work, meaning he was able to return to school for sixth year, and now has a conditional place at college to study HNC childcare.

Activity

Through the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention Fund, funding is provided to over 100 organisations to promote wellbeing, prevention and early intervention activities and improve parenting and family support.

Spotlight

The Scottish Mentoring Network receive £136,000 to increase the scale, quality and awareness of mentoring across Scotland.

From their most recent survey of members in 2019, they estimate that there are over 12,454 trained mentors and over 32,000 mentees across Scotland. Voluntary mentors are providing over 1,948,684 voluntary hours of mentoring, giving a value in kind of at least £27 million.^[10]

Polciy - Internships in the Civil Service

Activity

Since 2019, the Scottish Government has participated in the Civil Service Care Leaver Internship. The programme, aimed at those aged between 18 - 30 offers an opportunity to undertake a 12-month paid internship to develop and enhance skills and experience within the Civil Service.

Fair Start Scotland took a role in promoting the internships and offered direct advice and support to anyone who was interested in applying.

Spotlight

Through this programme 18 interns have taken up posts across core Scottish Government and Executive Agencies in a range of policy and business support roles.

Quote from Intern:

“The Care Leavers Internship Scheme has provided me with a unique opportunity to grow professionally and personally. My role as a policy officer has helped me become more adaptable and flexible within a fast-paced work environment. So far I have had to opportunity to work among some of the leading experts in COVID-19 response strategies both internally and externally.

Besides the wealth of knowledge around me, the Scottish Government is also home to some of the kindest people. Everyone in the Scottish Government interacts with one and other in an empathetic manner.”

Policy

COVID-19: 2021 Summer Offer for Children and Young People

Activity

As a component of the Education Recovery Plan the Scottish Government has provided £20m to deliver the Summer Offer to support those children and young people most affected by COVID-19 with a specific focus on improving mental health and wellbeing. £15m was available and Children’s Services Planning Partners, and up to £5m to national organisations across Scotland to deliver the Summer Offer for children and young people. The Summer Offer has been designed to capture those care experienced children and young people – one of the target groups for Children’s Services Planning Partnerships to support as part of the offer – and therefore covers activities up to 25 years of age.

In addition, 18 National Partners have been providing tailored support to care experienced children and young people such as Barnardos; Who Cares? Scotland; Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum; Scottish Association for Mental Health; sportscotland; Youthlink and Creative Scotland; Mental Health Foundation and the Family Fund.

Spotlight

The Summer Offer has provided increased opportunities to get it right for every child and has care experienced children and young people at the heart of its delivery. Each local authorities has been able to, as required, tailor experiences for children and young people who are care experienced. This includes supporting participation, opportunities to go to the cinema with friends, support to travelling to activities and providing opportunities for holidays.

£200,000 of the total funding was allocated to projects to support physical health and wellbeing of young people with care experience.

Who Cares? Scotland were provided with funding to create a broad range of activities with their regional coordinators to support both physical and mental health and wellbeing. This included social engagements, family fun days, and a street soccer tournament.

Staf (Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum) were provided funding to expand an existing proposal working with Scottish Forestry (in their capacity as a corporate parent) to create opportunities for young people to explore woodland spaces across Scotland.

Access

It is the duty of every corporate parent to take such action as it considers appropriate to help those children and young people to:

• access opportunities;

make use of services, and access support, which it provides

Scottish Ministers have introduced national actions to improve access for children and young people in general, and for those with care experience in particular, access to digital services, education and employment. Actions to keep children and their families informed of the services available to them became even more important during the pandemic and is also included in the examples provided in this section.

Polciy - Digital

Activity

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown meant that the internet has become a critical route for staying connected to friends and family, being able to learn, work and access information on health and other services. Those who are digitally excluded could not access these benefits.

The Digital Divide has been recognised as significant issue for Scotland’s care experienced young people highlighted and exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic. Reports by CELCIS and the Scottish Care Leavers Covenant Alliance, and other key partners and corporate parents, have helped inform the response and strategy to meet these needs.

Spotlight

Connecting Scotland is a Scottish Government initiative which run in partnership with the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, local authorities and third sector organisations. The programme was set up in May 2020 in response to the pandemic, providing those who need it with access to a device, an internet connection, and training and support. Building on the success of the initial rounds, the programme has been extended to reach 60,000 people by the end of 2021, including families with children, young care leavers, socially isolated older people and disabled people, residents in care homes, lone parents, and people seeking employability support.

In total, Scottish Government has committed over £48m to Connecting Scotland and to date the programme has delivered over 45,000 devices, including over 4,000 to care leavers.

The programme is capturing information to help with evaluation through surveys, case studies and evaluation interviews. Stories are also being shared on social media using #ConnectingScotland and #NeverMoreNeeded. An impact report looking back at the first year of Connecting Scotland was published in August 2021.

Policy

COVID-19

Activity

Through the Immediate Priorities Fund (IPF), Barnardos and Action for Children were funded to support families negatively impacted by the pandemic. A condition of this funding was to ensure they joint approach to provide assistance where required across all 32 local authorities.

Our Coronavirus (COVID-19) Mental Health – Transition and Recovery Plan, published in October 2020 outlined the mental health impacts of the pandemic across the wider population and the actions planned or in progress in response.

Spotlight

Through the IPF, Action for Children and Barnardos identified a gap in third sector provision in Orkney Health and Social Care Partnership. They worked quickly to provide financial assistance with a short turn-around period to benefit families in Orkney and care leavers, at the height of the pandemic.

An additional £15 million was provided to local authorities to respond to children and young people’s mental health needs, with a focus on impact on mental health and wellbeing brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over £1 million was provided to roll out the Distress Brief Intervention programme to those over the age of 16.

With Scottish Government support, Who Cares? Scotland, in partnership with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), opened a counselling service in May 2020. The offer included eight sessions available for up to 150 care experienced children and adults over the age of 12 from a qualified counsellor or psychotherapist of their choosing who was registered with BACP. The service cemented people with care experience’s expectations around opportunities and access to mental health support.

Policy

College and University Education

Activity

Following a recommendation to Scottish Ministers from the Commission on Widening Access (2016), a Care-Experienced Bursary (CEB) for learners with care-experience was introduced in April 2017.

The bursary was introduced as a non-income-assessed, non-repayable grant of £7,625 and available to both new and continuing eligible students in higher education (HE) up to age 26. At that time, in further education (FE), care-experienced students were awarded the maximum FE bursary level of £4,185. Following the independent review of student support, the CEB was uprated to £8,100 for both FE and HE students from April 2018.

From 2020-21, the age 26 cap for access to the CEB for both FE and HE sectors was removed. In addition to the bursary entitlement, HE students are also eligible for an additional repeat year (known as +1 year) if they require it to complete their studies. They can also use this plus one-year to complete one-year of their course over two-years (on a part-time basis) and retain their full bursary and other living cost support for both years.

Students who are in receipt of the Care Experienced Bursary can apply to SAAS for the Care Experienced Accommodation Grant. This is a grant payment of up to £105 per week to assist students with the cost of accommodation in the long (summer) vacation.

Spotlight

545 HE students accessed the care-experienced bursary in its introductory year National Statistics Publications (saas.gov.uk) . Since that time, we have seen a steady increase in numbers with 840 CEB awards in 2018-19 (increase of 35%) and 1,045 in 2019-20 (increase of 20%).

In 2019-20, 1.7% of Scottish-domiciled entrants to undergraduate courses at Scotland’s colleges and universities were care-experienced. That’s up from 1.2% in 2018-19 and represents an increase of 425 students. The reporting of students from care-experienced backgrounds has been given more focus in recent years, with increased efforts made to encourage students to declare themselves as being care-experienced.

In the college sector, 3.5% of enrolments to full-time HE and 8.7% of enrolments to full-time FE courses in 2019-20 were from care-experienced students. That’s up from 2.3% (full-time HE) and 5.5% (full-time FE) in 2018-19.

In the university sector, 87.0% of Scottish-domiciled entrants to full-time first degree courses with experience of care continued their studies into Year 2. This is lower than the overall retention rate of 90.9%.

Policy

College and University Education

Activity

All higher education institutions in Scotland committed to guaranteeing an offer of an undergraduate place at university to care experienced applicants who meet the minimum entry requirements for learners entering university from autumn 2020.

The 1,000 Voices exercise and Independent Care Review highlighted that people with care experience can take more time to enter further or higher education. In line with a Programme for Government 2019-20 commitment, the bursary has been available to all students from a care experienced background, regardless of age from academic year 2020-21.

Spotlight

In 2017-18, 94.5% of Scottish-domiciled care-experienced graduates from full-time first degree courses at university were in work or further study 15 months after completing their course. The proportion of graduates not declaring themselves as care-experienced in positive destinations was slightly higher at 96.5%.

In 2018-19, 90.7% of care-experienced leavers from full-time HE college courses and 94.8% from full-time FE courses with known destinations were in work or further study 3–6 months after qualifying.

The rate of care experienced students withdrawing from FE early was lower for eligible Bursary recipients (4.1%) in 2018-19 than all care experienced students (8.2%).

Data from the SFC for the 2019-20 academic year suggests that the bursary is having a positive impact and providing extra financial security, helping care-experienced students stay at college and university. It should be noted that SFC and individual institutional corporate parents provide a range of other support for students with care experience.

Policy

Employment

Activity

Fair Start Scotland (FSS) is the Scottish Government’s employment support service, launched in April 2018. FSS aims to support those who face the greatest challenges accessing the labour market, contributing to tackling inequalities and growing Scotland’s economy. FSS offers personalised, one-to-one support tailored to individual circumstances. This includes 12 – 18 months of pre-employment support (depending on specific needs of the individual) followed by up to 12 months in-work support.

Spotlight

An evaluation of the third year of FSS delivery highlighted that compared to the second year of delivery, there was a reduction in the number of young people, and people who have care experience joining the service with 4% of FSS participants between April 2020 and March 2021 being care experienced (just over 10,000 people joined FSS in Year 3).

Access to the service for specific groups of people, including people with care experience was initially available after six months of unemployment. However, following assessment of who was using the service and of the impacts of COVID-19, a series of eligibility pilots were successfully ran across Scotland in 2020 and as a result FSS eligibility was extended for people facing particular disadvantaged in the employment market to ‘Day 1 unemployed’ status. This includes, amongst others, people with care experience to ensure immediate support is available for people who need it most.

The Year 2 FSS Evaluation Report highlighted the continued need to ensure that FSS was accessible to those groups who are currently under-represented on the service including care experienced young people. In response, the Scottish Government worked in collaboration with FSS Service Providers during Year 3 and the extension period to develop action plans to identify and engage with both national and local organisations to extend the reach of FSS.

Polciy - Employment

Spotlight

The FSS Year 3 evaluation report stated that a higher proportion of people who had experience of care, left the service early. In line with our ‘test and learn’ approach to employability services, we introduced changes to the service delivery model for the FSS extension period which included allowing a ‘right of return’ to previous FSS participants who still require support to access work after their initial pre-employment support period has ended.

FFS provided a direct offer of support to any young person applying for the Care Leaver Internship in Scotland during 2019, 2020 and 2021.

Activity

No One Left Behind has been developed by Scottish and Local Government as a collective approach to employability, built around the needs of individuals. The delivery plan published in November 2020 responds to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including its disproportionate effect on young people aged between 16 - 24 years. The Scottish Government committed £100m of new investment for employability and skills support. This included the Young Person’s Guarantee, extending Fair Start Scotland for a further two years and continuing momentum on existing strategies to drive inclusivity across the Labour Market.

Under No One Left Behind, Local Employability Services, including support for young people will be designed locally to address identified needs. Services are likely to include those targeted at young people at risk of not being in education, or in employment or training on leaving school.

Phase 2 of No One Left Behind will commence from April 2022 and will see national employability programmes – Employability Fund and Community Jobs Scotland cease with the funding transferring to No One Left Behind. People will continue to receive their full balance of support. In 2021/22, we are investing up to £7.078 million in No One Left Behind.

Spotlight

Young people in receipt of support under No One Left Behind may often have experienced challenging circumstances in their lives and be facing barriers to access and sustain employment, this can include care experience.

COVID-19 and the associated restrictions and ‘lockdown’ have impacted on delivery to all participant groups within No One Left Behind. However some local authorities reported that interacting with participants at home has been beneficial.

“Bringing clients together in remote groups as well as offering one-to-one video calls has helped boost confidence in the majority of participants. This has been complemented with an offer of one-to-one engagement for those clients deemed at most risk of disengaging during lockdown due to feelings of isolation and/or poor mental health and wellbeing.”

“We are calling on the public sector and other partners to build on new ways of working, based on what has worked well during the pandemic, and to develop new arrangements for local governance, best suited to the communities they serve.” (Social Renewal Advisory Board ‘If Not Now, When’; January 2021, Call to Action 18)

Activity

The Job Start Payment was launched on 17 August 2020 and aims to help young people aged between 16 - 24 into employment by providing a cash payment to those who are offered a job after being out of work and receiving a low income benefit for at least 6 months. In recognition of the additional challenges faced by young care leavers in entering the labour market, they are not required to have been out of paid work for six months, and will be eligible for a year longer – until their 26th birthday.

Spotlight

High level statistics published in August 2021 show that applications from more than 1,800 young people were approved between the launch of Job Start Payment on 17 August 2020 and 30 June 2021. That represents an investment of more than £470,000 in helping young people into employment.

5% of applications included evidence of care leaver status (care leavers who met the standard eligibility criteria would not have been required to provide such evidence). Data is not available on the proportion of applicants who were care experienced.

Activity

The Young Person’s Guarantee was launched in November 2020.

The aim of the Young Person’s Guarantee is to provide every person aged between 16 - 24 in Scotland the opportunity of a job, apprenticeship, further or higher education, training programme or volunteering.

While inclusive in approach, the support is particularly valuable to those in most need of assistance. Care experienced young people were identified as a priority, alongside people with protected characteristics in the development of the EQIA and Equality Action Plan. To support the Young Person’s Guarantee Activity Plan, an Equalities Subgroup was formed to support and monitor progress, which includes the Scottish Through Care and Aftercare Forum.

Since the launch of the Young Person’s Guarantee, we have committed up to £130 million to provide new and enhanced employment, training and educational opportunities for young people. Supporting greater inclusion and equity are central to the Young Person’s Guarantee and we recognise that care experienced young people may require additional support to achieve their potential. Scottish Government funding has enabled the development and delivery of initiatives and programmes designed to enhance the support available for care experienced young people, including via: Local Employment Partnerships: the majority of local plans have identified care experienced young people for specific employment, training, educational and support programmes. Many local plans also recognise the need to co-design and co-develop programmes with the care experienced community, as they take forward plans to implement The Promise;

• Developing the Young Workforce: working with MCR Pathways to help address the attainment gap for care experienced young people through mentoring as well as other initiatives at regional level;
• Discovering Your Potential: an employability programme that provides specific, flexible and intensive support for young care leavers.

Polciy - Early Learning and Childcare

Activity

For people with care experience, we understand that becoming a parent can often be more challenging because young care experienced parents can be less likely to have consistent support around them. That is why, as of August 2021, entitlement to funded early learning and childcare for care experienced parents was made available.

Although COVID-19 impacted on the delivery of expending ELC provision to families with care experience, it was agreed with COSLA that full implementation of this commitment would be aligned to the new date for implementation of the 1140 Expansion Programme, from August 2021. It was agreed that local authorities:

• will use their discretionary powers to provide access to places for these families;
• use a wide definition of ‘care experience’, in line with the findings of The Independent Care Review, published in The Promise;
• adopt a pragmatic, sensitive approach to establishing eligibility.

In order to support initial and ongoing implementation of this work, a working group has been established with representation from a local authorities in each Regional Improvement Collaborative (RIC) area, Scottish Government and Who Cares? Scotland.

This group ensured commitment from the 2019 Programme for Government – to provide 2 year olds who have a parent with care experienced with access to funded early learning and childcare. This was in place from August 2021.

We continue to work with the working group in order to ensure care experienced parents feel able and willing to access this offer, if they choose to do so.

Policy

The Promise Partnership Fund

The Promise Partnership Fund offers funding and support to organisations and collaborations to #KeepThePromise and help drive forward the required system change that matters to children, young people and families.

In 2021 the Scottish Government committed £4 million investment per annum up to 2024-25 to support early intervention and prevention, holistic family support and enable system and infrastructure changes needed to #KeepThePromise.

In 2020/21, a £4 million fund was administered by The Corra Foundation on behalf of the Scottish Government. Grants were awarded through a decision making process involving a decision panel of people with care experience, with support of an advisory group.

Funding of up to £50,000 was awarded to over 60 public sector and third sector organisations working with children, young people, families and carers to support them with a range of change activities, including testing new approaches, training and developing staff, driving culture change, building capacity, redesigning services, increasing engagement with children, young people, families and carers and improving how they use data.

Funding of up to £200k was awarded to five collaborations contributing to the delivery of The Plan 21-24. £500k additional funding was provided by the STV Appeal and the Cattanach Trust to support the PPF, aimed at – getting it right for sisters and brothers to look at helping relationships to be restored or maintained between children young people and families. An additional £750k was added to this from the 21-22 PPF allowing eight projects in total to be supported.

Improve

It is the duty of every corporate parent to take such other action as it considers appropriate for the purposes of improving the way in which it exercises its functions in relation to those children and young people.

For this duty, the Scottish Government has reviewed their performance as a corporate parent to help bring about improvements for people with care experience. Information received regarding improvement activity includes reviewing data statistics collated to inform the national looked after children datasets, secure care pathway, and youth justice work and the discussions on capturing data to inform policy decisions on preventing premature deaths of care experienced young people.

Polciy - Review of statistical data

Activity

A public consultation focused on developments to statistical data collection took place in late 2020, with findings published in February 2021. This sought views from users and producers of statistical data on Looked After Children and Care Leavers on how data collection, data quality, and statistical outputs could be improved to better meet user needs.

National Looked After Children datasets have been developed to facilitate longitudinal analysis of data currently held on children in care or with experience of care.

Spotlight

Ongoing user engagement to oversee developments to statistical data collection. Initial priorities to develop national data collection have been agreed with local authorities partners, on the basis of recommendations arising from this engagement activity. This includes improving current data collection to provide more robust information on continuing care and aftercare provision and uptake.

Longitudinal datasets have been developed with supporting guidance and metadata leading to improvements to the process for researchers securely accessing research-ready data. Further work is ongoing to improve the scope of linking this longitudinal data to other national datasets.

Policy

Joint inspection of children’s services

Activity

The Care Inspectorate, Healthcare Improvement Scotland, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland and Education Scotland undertake joint inspections of services for children and young people across Scotland. These inspections look at the difference services are making to the lives of children and young people in need of care, protection, and corporate parenting, and the lives of children and young people for whom Community Planning Partnerships have corporate parenting responsibilities.

Spotlight

Findings from joint inspections are one of the sources of evidence that have informed the development of the National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland 2021.

Policy

Kinship and Foster Care

Activity

In April 2020 amendments were made to legislation via the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act 2020^[11] that temporarily relaxed the foster care upper placement limit of three children in a placement at any one time.

In Feb 2021 we made amendments to the Looked After Children (Scotland) Regulations 2009^[12] to introduce a further level of exemption to the placement limit for children in emergency or short term placements. Previously it was only possible for more than three unrelated children to reside with the same foster carer for a four-week period, such arrangements can now continue in the longer term, if it’s assessed as appropriate for the child and all other members of the household, including the foster carers.

Spotlight

As set out earlier in this report, Staying Together and Connected: Getting it Right for Sisters and Brothers our National Practice Guidance was published on 26 July 2021, the same day that legislative changes came into force.

The amendment of the regulations enabled placement flexibility for children and young people and foster families who might be impacted by illness as a result of COVID-19.

Policy

Secure Care

Activity

The Secure Care Pathway and Standards, Scotland were published in October 2020.

The fundamental approach to drafting the standards was a commitment to ensure that young people and adults who had experience of secure care were central the development of the standards. The standards are written from child’s perspective and have specific standards on the areas children detailed were most important to them and had the greatest impact on their experiences.

This method of co-production resulted in a wealth of direct quotes, written statements, letters and art designs from young people all expressing what needs to be different and delivered through the new Secure Care National Standards. These are gathered on the dedicated Secure Care Pathways and Standards (Scotland) website.

For the first time, the Standards set out what all children in secure care, or potentially needing such care in future, in Scotland should expect across the continuum of intensive supports and services. They provide a framework for ensuring the rights of children and young people are respected and improve experiences and outcomes for children who are need extra care and support.

The standards are rights-based and outcome-focused and they will be used by children, their parents and/or carers, families and advocates to help them all understand what their rights are and what they should expect from corporate parents and professionals when being supported in the community or in secure care.

Spotlight

Since the launch of the standards in October there have been several on line events held to raise awareness of the standards and offer direct support with their implementation.

The five secure centres in Scotland all have a dedicated Secure Care Standards champion. This group meets regularly to share good practice and experience of implementing the standards. All five secure centres have made strides towards full implementation.

Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice (CYCJ) have contacted all 32 local authorities to offer support and tools to help with self-evaluation to assess where they are with regards implementation. The offer of help has been accepted by a number of local authorities.

Whilst there are challenges working towards full implementation this work has gone well.

Policy

Youth Justice

Activity

There has been significant progress made over the last 12 years since the introduction of the whole system approach to preventing offending by young people and the shift towards prevention. However, there is still more we can do to ensure that the rights of children who come into conflict with the law in Scotland are protected.

Spotlight

Following a public consultation between November 2019 and February 2020, a working group was set up to review existing youth justice standards.

Revised standards for those working with children in conflict with the law were published in June 2021.

These standards outline minimum expectations for all strategic and operational services delivering youth justice in the community, secure care and Young Offenders Institutions, in line with GIRFEC and the recommendations of The Promise.

The Youth Justice Improvement Board will provide governance to oversee the implementation of the standards. In anticipation of the changes in practice, approaches, experiences and outcomes which the standards will bring, they will be subject to ongoing monitoring, review and updating.

Policy

Evidencing Health and Wellbeing Outcomes

Activity

The Scottish Government is working with partners to explore how we can link existing data collections together to provide a clearer picture of health and wellbeing outcomes for care experienced young people.

In 2020, in response to a reported rise in deaths of looked after children and care leavers an advisory expert group was established to identify actions to better capture health, wellbeing and mortality in the lives of those with care experience across Scotland.

Spotlight

The advisory group has identified a piece of work which will help improve our understanding of outcomes and aligns with broader Scottish Government data and evidence objectives. The Scottish Government is undertaking a pilot project with a small number of local authorities to link Community Health Index information with existing looked after children data with the aim of developing a more longitudinal understanding of outcomes for people with care experience once they no longer to receive direct support.

This work will provide a better understanding of longer-term outcomes for our young people and will additionally provide us with clearer data to help us measure improvements in the care system as we work together to #KeepThePromise.

Activity

A National Hub was established in March 2019 by Healthcare Improvement Scotland, in partnership with the Care Inspectorate and Scottish Government, to focus on reducing deaths in childhood.

On 1 October 2021, we launched a national child death review system across Scotland to ensure that every such untimely death is the subject of a high-quality and consistent review – to inform learning and ultimately help reduce the number of preventable deaths (and harm) of children and young people.

Spotlight

Following consultation with key stakeholders and policy officials and in line with corporate parenting legislation, the reviews will be extended to those up to the age of 26 where they are in receipt of continuing care or aftercare.

In Summary

The work of the Independent Care Review has set the context for much of the activity for this reporting period, with Scottish Ministers pledging to delivering on the commitments of The Promise. As set out in the highlighted examples, the Scottish Government has worked in collaboration with other corporate parents and third sector organisations to remain alert to and assess the needs of children and young people with care experience; to understand the barriers they face, to improve access to opportunities and benefits and to improve the services provided to the care community. Collaboration across the sector has been essential, as is the support of our partners and the continued input from children and young people themselves, to help influence and drive policy change and improvement.