Scotland's children's services plans 2023-2026 review: improving outcomes for children, young people and families

12. Resources (budgets, assets, workforce)

This chapter discusses resources available across Children’s Services Planning Partners to deliver services to improve outcomes for children, young people and families, including financial and other forms of resource utilisation such as workforce development. It also considers how expenditure is prioritised to support service transformation, including how resources are being invested or disinvested.

Resources (Criterion 12)

The Statutory Guidance specifies that Children’s Services Plans should include information on collective resources (budgets, assets, workforce) across partners, and describe how this will be spent across different services and partners over the period of the Plan.

To fully achieve this criterion, CSPs should include information which reflects use of budgets across relevant organisations and services to improve outcomes for children and families. This would include discussion of how different funding streams are spent and explain steps the CSPP is taking to shift resources towards prevention and early intervention (including disinvestment activity).

In general however, there was little detail in Children’s Services Plans to describe how the resources would be allocated over the three-year period to deliver against the CSPs’ strategic priorities, delivery actions and provision of children’s and related services. This accounts for the relatively low number of CSPs which fully achieved this criterion.

Eight CSPs fully met Criterion 12, compared with 10 CSPs in 2020-2023. Those categorised as partially achieving this criterion provided some information about budget and wider resources, but more detail about how budgets across statutory and third sector partners are being allocated to different types of support and service provision would have been required to fully meet this criterion. The 13 CSPs that did not achieve this criterion provided very little, if any, information regarding budgets and resourcing of children’s and related services.

Eleven CSPs provided the total allocation of core funds for statutory services, with some of these providing a breakdown by service type. Very few included references to third sector children and families’ finances, though one did provide a breakdown of financial amounts allocated to the third sector by recipient agency (Shetland) and another noted an intention to work with the third sector to lever in additional funding (Moray).

Ten CSPs indicated they were in the process of developing a joint commissioning strategy to commission services, however little detail tended to be provided on these. The Tayside Plan noted that Angus and Dundee Child Protection Committees had jointly commissioned a consultant to review and develop learning review guidance for all Protecting People arrangements. In Edinburgh, the joint commissioning framework will be used to support the Partnership in agreeing upon, planning for, developing, and commissioning new services and will begin to allocate the Scottish Government funding for Edinburgh’s Whole Family Support transformation.

Most Children’s Services Plans (28) referred to at least one source of non-recurrent funding that will finance specific actions. These included the Pupil Equity Fund, Whole Family Wellbeing Fund, the Care Experienced Children and Young People Fund, the Community Mental Health Fund and other national and local funding streams. However, there was often little detail about the total allocated for each fund nor how this would be spent.

Just over two thirds of Children’s Services Plans (21) discussed investment in training and workforce development. Most of these included brief discussion of investment in training across CSP partners. However while most gave at least a brief description of training being delivery, with trauma informed training being commonly provided for instance, none provided financial information on workforce development. Similarly, how JSNA findings were being used to inform workforce planning was not generally discussed.

Nearly half of the Children’s Services Plans (14) provided some information on resourcing, funding and spend to address child and family wellbeing. The level of detail provided varied widely, but examples included as good practice included detail on specific budgets and how these were allocated and spent across different partners and services.

Eight CSPs provided a clear description of how and where disinvestment and shifting of resources towards early intervention and prevention is taking place. However, the discussion mostly used descriptive text, with figures rarely given. Realignment or prioritisation of resources were evidenced for instance notably towards early intervention and prevention, though discussion on disinvestments was generally not provided. Examples included increased investment as part of Whole Family Wellbeing pilots in Aberdeenshire, in mental health services in Orkney and in more intensive family support to enable children to be cared for at home in West Lothian and Stirling.

Examples of good practice

North Ayrshire: The Children’s Services Plan contains a section on financial resourcing across the period of the plan. This shows that in 2021/22, more than £218 million was spent on Education and Children’s Health and Social Care services; and breaks this down across different types of services. This includes £140 million on primary and secondary education, £22 million on pre-primary education, £13 million on special education, £5 million on community learning and £38 million on Children and Families Social Work. In addition, the CSP sets out plans to "develop a trauma informed workforce by rolling out trauma-aware and trauma-skilled resources” referencing use of Whole Family Wellbeing Funding to provide vicarious trauma counselling sessions for children’s services staff.

Stirling: The Children’s Services Plan includes commentary and charts with details of financial breakdowns across Stirling Council and NHS Forth Valley. The CSP also sets out specific ways in which Stirling CSPP aims to shift resources towards early intervention and prevention by (1) reducing the number of children in external care placements and bringing them closer to home, (2) providing intensive intervention when families are in crisis, or only just coping, and (3) strengthening additional and universal support for families.

West Lothian: Financial figures are provided in the Children’s Services Plan for allocated spend across West Lothian Council (including social policy, education and youth services) as well as NHS Lothian services. The need to invest in preventative approaches is highlighted, along with information regarding disinvestment activity. For instance, service redesign in social work services has enabled a shift away from residential care provision toward enhanced support for families, to prevent children being placed away from their homes.

Additional Policy and Engagement Context

The Children’s Services Planning Strategic Leads Network have raised a number of workforce pressures faced by local areas, which impact on their capacity for effective planning and delivery of services and supports for children and their families.

These issues are similarly reflected in the findings of the CELCIS research on Children’s Services Reform:

• Relationship-based practice needs to be prioritised, enabled and supported
• Investment in Scotland’s children’s services is needed to address workforce crisis, including promoting positive public and media perceptions of the sector
• More focus on workforce planning and workforce wellbeing is required, to address challenges in retention and recruitment
• Pay levels are required which support parity of children’s services practitioners
• Strong organisational and collective leadership is essential to effect change through strengthened collaboration and shared culture at all levels (national and local)
• The role of the adult services workforce as crucial for child wellbeing, whole family support, and ensuring positive experiences of transitions for young people.
• There is a need for sustainable funding, with greater flexibility

The Children and Families National Leadership Group (C&F NLG) held a deep-dive session on funding in September 2023. This considered opportunities to better connect funding streams at national and local level, to enable a shift of resources towards prevention and early intervention. The Children and Families National Leadership Group is developing its future work programme, informed by the deep-dive sessions and improvement themes from the CELCIS independent research.

These themes are focussed on: collective leadership and culture; supporting the workforce; collective resources/sustainable funding; improving outcomes/data and information sharing. The research findings will also help shape the future focus of the C&F NLG Workforce Development Sub-group.

Findings from the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) Year 1 Process Evaluation: Final Report highlights detail on issues which have been identified in the review of Children’s Services Plans, and from engagement with the Children’s Services Planning Strategic Leads Network. These relate to collective use of budgets, joint strategic commissioning, and procurement processes. The WFWF evaluation emphasises that these processes are often experienced by Children’s Services Planning Partnerships (CSPPs) as a barrier to effective partnership working, and to the provision of holistic whole family support. A six-month project began in June 2024, in collaboration with Scotland Excel and representative statutory and third sector partners. This project aims to provide a clear evidence base on what action is needed to support effective commissioning and procurement of family-based support services.

The Scottish Government continues to engage with The Promise Scotland (TPS) as well as with national and local stakeholders about opportunities for investment/disinvestment.