Future of foster care: consultation

Part 2: Strategic Context

In Scotland, our ambition is “to be the best place in the world to grow up”. We want all of our children and young people to feel safe, protected, loved and supported at every point in their lives to help them thrive. Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) is the Scottish Government’s long-standing commitment to provide all children, young people and their families with the right support at the right time, so that every child and young person in Scotland can reach their full potential.

Scotland's Independent Care Review published a series of reports called The Promise in February 2020. The Promise was a statement of what needs to change to support the lives and wellbeing of our children, young people, adults and families across Scotland with experience of the care system. The Scottish Government is fully signed up to all the conclusions in the report.

Central to the Promise is support to maintain children with their birth families, and, where this is not possible, to support them in alternative family-based care, such as kinship and foster care. The Promise said that “where living with their family is not possible, children must stay with their brothers and sisters where safe to do so and belong to a loving home, staying there for as long as needed”. To achieve this, we need enough foster carers, with the right skills and the right support, to care for the children and young people they are looking after. While we work to deliver this change, the Scottish Government is grateful to all foster carers who play an incredible role in providing care and support to children, young people and families in Scotland.

We must also listen to what children and young people who were part of the Independent Care Review have told us. They said that any model of foster care needs to support carers to treat them like all other family members, able to participate in “everyday life” and to be treated with love, not as a job⁸.

In March 2022, the Scottish Government published its Promise Implementation Plan, setting out what we will do to Keep The Promise by 2030, including how we will support caregivers. It recognised that while outcomes are important, it is the experiences and relationships that happen on the journey that make a difference to children, young people and families.

An update to the Promise Implementation Plan^[1], was published on 19 September 2024, which sets out progress so far and our plans for the future. The key areas of interest to foster care include:

• A public consultation was launched on 11 July 2024 on the support required to positively support young people moving on from care; the refresh of the continuing care guidance which applies to children and young people in foster care^[2]; and progress in relation to the Care Leaver Payment.
• The redesign of the children’s hearing system. A report was published in May 2023 and covers a broad range of areas including enhancing the voice of foster carers at hearings and ensuring families, including foster carers, get the right help and support. A public consultation on legislative aspects of Children's Hearings Redesign was launched on 26 July 2024.
• Work to re-imagine secure care for children in Scotland.
• Whole Family Wellbeing is a £500 million investment to ensure families, including foster families, get the right support, in the right way and at the right time. Ideally, we want to help families stay together where it is safe to do so, but where this cannot happen, we want to support caregivers to give the children they are looking after the support, love and stability that they need.
• The establishment of a new National Care Service (NCS), which should include certain children’s services consistently across all parts of the country, and will change the social care, community health and social work services landscape in Scotland to improve the lives of children, young people and families across the country.
• A new National Social Work Agency, a single national body which will provide professional leadership and lead improvements in social work education, training and development, national workforce planning, improvement and provide implementation support for policy at local levels. Social workers recruit, assess, support and work closely with foster carers.

Closely linked, Fiona Duncan, Independent Strategic Adviser for The Promise launched the strategic direction for the next six years to 2030 in the Plan 24-30. This is a plan for all of Scotland that recognises the contribution all parts of society must make to deliver the change needed for children and families. In addition, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and the Improvement Service’s third local government annual report The-Promise-Annual-Report-2024-FINAL.pdf (cosla.gov.uk) was published in June 2024, and shows good practice happening across each of the 32 local authorities and voluntary organisations.

We know there are many factors, including housing, education, and workforce capacity that will impact on how The Promise is delivered and, therefore, affect the lives and wellbeing of families. There is no doubt that one of the biggest challenges is poverty. We know our care experienced families are more likely to be at risk of being pulled into poverty and often live in our most disadvantaged communities. That is why the Scottish Government views child poverty and Keeping The Promise as two interconnected commitments, both requiring a coordinated approach to getting services to work better together in order to deliver outcomes for children and their families Best Start, Bright Futures’, the Second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, 2022-2026, published in March 2022, details transformational actions the Scottish Government will take alongside our delivery partners to tackle child poverty. The final Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, for the period 2026-31, will be published by the end of March 2026. The Scottish Government will undertake consultation and engagement ahead of this to inform the commitments outlined. This will include making links with relevant elements of our plans for the future of foster care.