National review of care allowances: final report and recommendations

Outline approach

The rights and needs of children in kinship and foster care as well as adopted children were central to the work of the Review Group. The approach adopted by the Group was seen in the wider context provided by Getting It Right For Every Child ( GIRFEC) as the means by which, better outcomes can be achieved for all children and young people and their wellbeing improved, by ensuring they receive the right help at the right time from the right people. This ensures that foster, kinship and adopted children grow up feeling safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included. The Group noted the importance of a relational approach that keeps the child at the centre of decision-making, underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Group also noted their collective role as Corporate Parents to represent the principles and duties on which improvements can be made for looked after children and young people. In tandem with GIRFEC, as Corporate Parents, the Group focused on the actions necessary to uphold the rights and secure the wellbeing of children in foster and kinship care as well as adopted children, complementing and supporting the actions of parents, families and carers, working with these key adults to deliver positive change for vulnerable children. The Scottish Government’s recent report Turning legislation into practice together on how looked after children, young people and care leavers have benefited from corporate parenting support since the introduction of Part 9 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 offers an account of how corporate parenting has been embraced by the many different representative public sector individuals and organisations throughout Scotland.

In taking forward the Review, the Group recognised that the needs and rights of the child are paramount and that there was an opportunity to provide consistency and transparency to foster, kinship and adoption allowances across Scotland. The group met on 7 occasions and took a thematic approach to scope out the order and the wide range of topics that the review should cover over a series of meetings. It is important to note that the Group acknowledged the work undertaken in other parts of the UK and further afield in developing proposals for a national allowance, as well as approaches to develop the cost of a child growing up in the UK, notably the work taken forward by the Child Poverty Action Group. Details of the themes for each meeting are included in Annex B.