The Scottish Government Response To 'A Scotland for Children: A Consultation on a Children and Young People Bill'

Conclusion

The Scottish Government has been making real progress towards realising the ambition of making Scotland the best place to grow up in. The Children and Young People Bill will be critical in turning that movement into acceleration. In seeking to bring about the most significant shift Scotland has experienced in the way public services relate to and value children, the Bill does not aim to do this alone. It complements a wide range of other initiatives, working at national as well as local levels, operating from the public sector as well as third sector bodies, and stands on a decade of policy debate, innovation and determination to put key shared principles into action. It captures much of the best that has developed in the policy and practice and seeks to embed it within the way the whole public sector supports children and young people.

The Bill recognises the value that investment in the early years of a child's life is essential for their long-term wellbeing. For that reason, it proposes an expansion of the number, and a new way of achieving greater flexibility, of hours of early learning and childcare for Scotland's youngest children.

It sets out a new universal approach to early intervention through the Named Person and the Child's Plan, an integrated, person-centred system of public service to ensure there is consistency and coordination in how all children, young people and their families are supported throughout a child's life, wherever they live in Scotland.

It takes on the challenge of improving permanence for the most vulnerable children and young people by contributing to more flexible, effective arrangements for care, whether through adoption, kinship care, better transitions for young people up to the age of 25 and a more deeply-rooted and widely-understood sense of corporate parenting in the public sector.

It puts children's rights at the heart of the public sector, making it clear that it is not just a matter of duty to be transparent about how different agencies are supporting those rights, but that the longer-term improvement in outcomes for children and young people can only come if the public sector constantly tests its understanding of what a child needs against a universal set of principles.

Lastly, the Bill declares a new, central goal for the public sector: a shared dedication to the wellbeing of children and young people. It is no longer a matter of public agencies seeing the needs of children and young people in isolation. The Bill proposes that there is a commitment to the whole development of children and young people, one that must be coordinated across different agencies and taken forward with families and communities.

The Bill expresses a Scottish Government ambition, but such ambitions can never be simply national. They must be deeply held in every part of the public sector and across Scotland. The Bill is the result of a collective recognition of what we need to do if we seek to do right by our children and young people. Many of the proposals have long histories, and are already part of public service experience in some parts of Scotland. They are the result of years of ambition displayed at local level or within individual agencies.

That is why the Scottish Government welcomes the evolution of the proposals as a result of the consultation. The Bill has benefited from extensive experience and wisdom in putting these shared principles across the public sector into action. The consultation has made clear a common goal and a clear appetite for a new approach to improving children's wellbeing. Now the Children and Young People Bill can move forward as the common way to achieve this.