Keeping The Promise to our children, young people and families: progress update 2024

Part 3 The Next Stage of our Journey to Change

In presenting this update on progress the Scottish Government do so connected and aligned to the wider work that is being led by Fiona Duncan, Independent Strategic Advisor for The Promise, and The Promise Scotland to develop Plan 24-30.

Plan 24-30 sets the strategic direction of travel for the remaining period that The Promise has identified the change programme must deliver. Furthering our commitment to lead from the front, this update from the Scottish Government is designed to directly inform the work underway and regular updates have been shared with The Promise Scotland as we have progressed this review.

In addition to the detail set out against all the existing actions and commitments in Part 7, nine key actions to support the next stages of progress.

• We will lead a package of consultation work from summer to the end of 2024 to inform the next stage of policy development and in support of the legislative direction to be included with The Promise Bill

The voice of the community with care experience must remain at the heart of all the work we do to keep The Promise and set the direction for the commitments outlined in our Promise Implementation Plan. We recognise our role, alongside partner organisations, to align our activity and ensure the opportunity to share views and experiences. From June to the end of 2024, we will take forward a coordinated programme of consultation and engagement. This will involve working with partners to deliver a connected package of participation and engagement with children, young people, adults with care experience and their families, and the workforce which supports them. This package of consultation will include:

• Consideration of a universal definition of Care Experience
• Implementing the outcomes of the work to redesign the Childrens Hearing System
• A package of support for young people transitioning out of children’s care services
• On the future of fostering

We will work closely with key partners to support consultation activity and wider engagement. The Children and Young People Participation Framework Agreement will support us to lead a coordinated approach across a broad range of representative bodies to deliver structured engagement that is broad in geography, age and scale.

Children & Young People Participation Framework Agreement

Under Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), every child and young person who is capable of forming their own views has the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting them. Particular consideration should be given to how views will be obtained where children and young people’s views are not known on a matter that is likely to have an impact on them.

The Children & Young People Participation Framework Agreement (The Framework) has been developed as part of the UNCRC implementation programme to respond to the growing need for children and young people’s participation in decision making and policy design across Scottish Government.

The Framework offers an approach that ensures a broad range of children and young people are involved in the wider work of the Scottish Government especially those identified as being seldom heard, furthest from their rights because of factors related to their personal development, features of their family life, or because of wider influences that impact on them within their community. The Framework aims to support engagement that is inclusive and address barriers faced by those under-represented in decision-making processes.

• The Minister for Children, Young People & The Promise will Chair a Partnership group of key stakeholders to support delivery of topics for change, including oversight of the coordinated consultation programme. The first meeting of the group will be held in autumn 2024.

The Minister will bring together key partners to jointly consider the status and identify forward actions to aid progress. This will include the approach to lifelong advocacy for people with care experience, the development of a universal definition of care experience, as well as other topics being considered as part of the co-ordinated programme of engagement taking place from summer to end 2024.

The outcome of this joint work will inform identification of any legislative proposals for inclusion within The Promise Bill; areas for the development of improved guidance; and direct what should be recorded and reported through the progress monitoring framework.

• We will work closely with The Promise Scotland to lead a Quality Improvement Programme. This will provide a national learning opportunity using a method to test and learn what works and to share best practice across Scotland

We will focus on supporting change where it is needed using the systematic rigour of a quality improvement approach. We will work collaboratively to innovate, test and learn about what works sharing and spread of our learning to support improved outcomes.

• We will develop and promote a package of support for foster carers

Informed by a national consultation on fostering, we will identify what further support is needed to develop a package of financial and practical support for foster carers so they feel better equipped to nurture and care for the children they are looking after.

We will improve the existing Scottish Government website so that all Caregivers and prospective Caregivers can access information and support at a national level; and explore the development of national communications to recruit more foster carers.

• We will continue to progress work across public protection areas to support those vulnerable to harm, to reduce risk, and to ensure that people get the right help at the right time.

We will work to identify areas where we can work together across public protection to develop a strengthened approach to protecting people that recognises that individuals and families may be linked into multiple public protection systems at the same time, and connects policy both locally and nationally to ensure the best possible outcomes for all individuals, families, and the workforce.

• We will continue to work with COSLA and other key stakeholders to assess how National Care Service benefits, and system improvements, can be offered to both adults and children consistently across Scotland

The independent research clearly shows there are functions which are better discharged at national level, such as policy, guidance, standards, and data structures. However, it also shows that localities are better placed to deliver the day to day provision of services and support in a way which responds to the individual needs of people living in that area.

The National Care Service (NCS) will empower us to strike the right balance between national consistency, regional strategic planning, and local delivery, and it is right to explore how these new arrangements and processes can benefit both adults and children equally.

The importance of joined-up, multi-disciplinary working and a holistic approach to the provision of social care, social work, primary care and community health support cannot be overstated in an environment where children and families have multiple needs and can often be known to, or require support from, a range of services, whether in respect of abuse and neglect, recovery from trauma, addiction, involvement in criminal justice system, disability, physical or mental health, or poverty.

For example, in 2022/23 a total of 10,748 children were subject to a decision or measure by the Reporter. Out of these, one third was issued due to a lack of parental care and one fifth was closely related to domestic abuse. Additionally, for around one half of children on the Child Protection Register, drugs and alcohol were a key factor for registration, with many also affected by the impacts of domestic abuse and parental mental health. This further reiterates the need for a whole-family approach and arrangements which best ensure integrated delivery of support across adult and children’s social work, social care, primary care and community health services, and justice services.

The NCS is being co-designed with people with lived-experience, with active participation and human rights-based approach at its heart. This means that children and young people could have a say in what NCS looks like, how it delivers services, and how their voice should be heard and represented across its structures and processes.

This meaningful involvement of children, young people and families, and, in general, people with lived experience, in the co-design a of the new system, is an important step to take, in an environment where children, young people and their families often feel not listened to. In fact, this practice should be expended to other reform activities to ensure an explicit feedback loop is in place to monitor implementation, gain feedback on what difference we are making to improve outcomes and experiences of children, young people and their families, and to ensure their views visibly inform reporting on progress as well as influence decision-making at every level.

• We are refreshing the common core framework of knowledge and values required of everyone who provides support to children, from birth to young adulthood, and their families.

The original ‘Common Core of Skills, Knowledge and Understanding and Values for the “Children’s Workforce” in Scotland’ (the Common Core) was introduced in 2012 to describe the knowledge, skills, understanding and values which should be the foundation characteristics of all those working with children and young people in Scotland.

The Practice guidance for Scotland’s framework for improving outcomes for children and young people, Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC), was refreshed in 2022, and during the passage of the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill, the Scottish Government commissioned the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) to lead on a refresh of the Common Core, working together with key partners to do this.

This refreshed Common Core aims to provide the foundational values and learning required to deliver the Promise and provide holistic family support and rights-based practice in accordance with UNCRC and GIRFEC principles.

• We will progress the delivery of a rights and relationship based practice and trauma informed training programme for the integrated children and family’s workforce

We continue to work with partners to support the workforce to develop a wider trauma-informed approach to the provision of care within residential child care settings. The emerging evidence from active practice implementation is both a reduction in restrictive practices and developing skillsets of a specialist workforce.

Working to support the implementation of The Promise, and as part of the National Trauma Transformation Programme (NTTP), we continue to rollout ‘Transforming Connections’, a tailored ‘Trauma-Skilled’ level training and coaching package, to people who work alongside children and young people with care experience in priority sectors of the Children and Families workforce in Scotland, including school nurses, health visitors, secure and residential care providers and Children’s Hearings Scotland. A training for trainers model is also operating for future sustainability.

In addition, the development of trauma training and resources to support alternative caregivers (kinship, foster and adoptive parents) provide trauma-informed care for their children and young people is currently being considered as part of the long term delivery plan for the NTTP, with next steps currently being identified.

The Trauma Responsive Social Work Services Programme has developed a workplan with partners that aims to embed trauma responsive practice into social work services across Scotland. This includes children’s, adult and justice social work services and workforces.

• We will introduce the national Promise Progress Framework working jointly with COSLA, The Promise Scotland, and key stakeholders. The Framework will be jointly used to support informed decision making nationally and locally.

The Promise Progress Framework will provide Scotland with a shared understanding of where we are in (the journey towards) keeping The Promise. This will tell the story of the processes in place to generate change and how these are impacting the outcomes we need to improve, which allows us to be responsive in guiding what needs to happen next.

The Scottish Government, COSLA and The Promise Scotland will jointly publish a Statement of Intent before the end of 2024. This will set out a joint evaluation strategy detail on the structure of The Promise Progress Framework and a timeline of the development and publication of quantitative, qualitative and experiential data over the medium and longer term.

More detail on the present status of the work and how we are understanding progress towards keeping The Promise, and how this can be used to help set direction in the coming years is set out in Part 5.