'Moving on' from care into adulthood: consultation

2. Consultation Purpose And Process

2.1 What is the consultation about and who is it for?

This consultation is about ensuring that young people leaving care and moving into adulthood have the right scaffolding of support available to ensure they thrive.

To ensure the package of support available to young people leaving care meets their needs, the Scottish Government committed to a public consultation on the support for young people with care experience when they become adults in the Programme for Government 2023 to 2024. The Scottish Government wants to understand how this support can be improved to ensure all people with care experience get the information and support they need during the transition out of care and into adulthood, where needed.

The consultation invites views on the support available to young people as they leave care and enter adulthood. Although not an exhaustive list, it will gather views on areas impacting care leavers such as planning and preparation, Continuing Care, Aftercare, health and wellbeing, education, and housing.

The consultation is open to all members of the public. We are particularly keen to hear from those who have care experience, are a kinship or foster carer, are the birth family of a young person with care experience, or those who support young people with care experience professionally or otherwise during this time of transition in their lives.

The consultation aims to align with and build on other work in place or that is upcoming. This includes the recent Moving On survey issued as part of the Moving On Change Programme, the Care Inspectorate’s Thematic Review which is exploring the current experience of the transition out of care, and the Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum (Staf) 100 Days of Listening exercise which concluded at the end of February 2024. Our consultation will fit with the other work and consultations underway to Keep The Promise. It is only through our collective voice and action that we can ensure we Keep the Promise and make improvements for all our young people.

The vision for this next step is to take a deeper look at what is working well and can be built upon, as well as the issues facing care leavers. We want you to play a key role in shaping the changes we need to deliver effective, caring and supportive services which meet the needs of young people leaving care when, where and how they need it. By equipping young people with the tools they need to make a happy and healthy transition to adulthood, Scotland can unlock a vast amount of talent and potential which will benefit everyone.

In order to Keep the Promise by 2030, we need to identify the opportunities for change and find the best way to deliver that change. We know many of the issues impacting care leavers thanks to the invaluable work of the Independent Care Review and the work that continues with delivery partners and organisations supporting people with care experience. To avoid duplication as much as possible, this consultation is focused on finding solutions and actions that can be put in place to build on existing effective practice to improve the experience of leaving care and improve outcomes for care leavers.

This consultation will build on the existing evidence base and delve deeper to uncover and understand:

• the good practice already happening and having a positive impact on young

people leaving care;

• what is missing in our scaffolding of support for young people leaving care;
• the potential solutions to the issues and challenges facing delivery partners and young people leaving care; and
• the best way to deliver the required changes, as highlighted in The Promise.

Scotland’s care ‘sector’, including care givers, local authorities, third-sector organisations, educational establishments, and health providers, are at the front line of delivering the required reform. We are grateful to each and every one of these individuals for their insight, expertise and dedication in getting it right for all our young people, and in particular our young people with care experience.

2.2 Why does Scottish Government consult

Consultation is an essential part of the policymaking process. It gives us the opportunity to consider your opinions and gain your expertise on an area of work.

You can find all of our consultations online: Scottish Government consultations. Each consultation details the issues under consideration, as well as a way for you to give us your views, either online, by email or by post.

Responses will be analysed and used as part of the decision-making process, alongside a range of other available information and evidence. We will publish a report of our findings. Depending on the nature of the consultation exercise the responses received may:

• indicate the need for policy development or review;
• inform the development of a particular policy;
• help decisions to be made between alternative policy proposals; and
• be used to shape legislation as it develops

While details of particular circumstances described in a response to a consultation exercise may usefully inform the policy process, consultation exercises cannot address individual concerns and complaints. These should be directed to the relevant public body.

2.3 Responding to the consultation

The consultation will run for 12 weeks and will remain open for responses until 3 October 2024.

In order to respond, please use the Scottish Government’s consultation hub Citizen Space, which can be accessed online Scottish Government consultations - Citizen Space.

We appreciate this is a detailed consultation and you may not be able to complete it in one sitting. You can save and return to your responses while the consultation is still open. We would stress that there is no requirement to complete every question in the consultation. You may choose to only respond to the particular questions or sections you have an interest in. However, please ensure that consultation responses are submitted before the closing date on 3 October 2024.

If you are unable to or choose not to respond using our consultation hub, please complete the Respondent Information Form included in this document and send your responses and consultation questions to keepingthepromiseconsultations@gov.scot.

2.4 Engagement Sessions

The voice of care experience was at the heart of the Independent Care Review and shaped the recommendations set out in The Promise. It is vital that the voice of young people with care experience is front and centre of all discussions, planning and implementation to ensure the services and support reflect the scaffolding young people want and need.

This consultation forms part of a wider programme of engagement aimed at people with care experience and those who support them.

In addition to this consultation, there are a number of public consultations and further engagement on issues related to Keeping the Promise planned over the next twelve months, including Childrens Hearings Redesign, the definition of care experience and the future of foster care.

As well as engaging with young people, we will engage with the workforce, stakeholders, caregivers, birth families and third sector agencies supporting young people with care experience. We will use these sessions as an opportunity to hear from those who have lived experience of supporting care leavers and explore solutions to clear a path through any obstacles highlighted.

Details on the engagement events being held will be shared at a later date.

2.5 Handling your response

If you respond using the consultation hub, you will be directed to the About You page before submitting your response. Please indicate how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, if you are content for your response to be published. If you ask for your response not to be published, we will regard it as confidential. To find out how we handle your personal data, please see our privacy policy.

All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Government is subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under that Act for information relating to responses made in this consultation exercise.

2.6 Next steps after you have submitted your consultation response

Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public, checks will be undertaken to ensure the responses do not contain potentially defamatory material, information which could potentially identify the respondent or raise any other data protection concerns. After this process is complete the responses will be made available to the public on the Scottish Government’s consultation hub. If you use the consultation hub to respond, you will receive a copy of your response via email. An independent analysis of the responses will then be carried out and a report on the analysis will be published once the consultation closes.

2.7 Impact Assessment

A Data Protection Impact Assessment has been prepared for the consultation.