Why is it important?

The Promise Plan 2021-24 is the next step towards keeping the promise made to children and families across Scotland.  It sets out the changes that need to happen over the next three years and is the first of three plans running to 2030.

It sets a series of outcomes that must be achieved by 2024 and seeks to ensure significant and sustained action in the following areas:

• A good childhood;
• Whole family support;
• Supporting the workforce planning; and
• Building capacity.

We are committed to the overall vision of The Promise and pledge to work on the above outcomes through the following commitments.

We will work to provide better access to health support, providing an education that fully meets needs of learners, promoting the importance of strong and consistent relationships (particularly brothers and sisters), improving access to advocacy support, the decriminalisation of care experienced young people, supporting young people with moving on from care and ensuring the right support is available for all families at the right time.

Where are we now?

We have aligned our Corporate Parenting Strategy with the 2021-24 Promise Plan and our local improvement and change ideas.  As a result, the Promise Plan has greater visibility and alignment with our Children’s Services Plan.

We have established a Promise Board at chief officer level, which ensures a shared level of accountability to drive change.  We set up a Champions Board to enable our care experienced children and young people to articulate their views and experiences, which has already had a key role in helping us shape and adapt practice.

In 2021, we strengthened our capacity to drive the Promise agenda by recruiting a dedicated Promise Participation Team in partnership with Who Cares? Scotland.  The team’s aim is to elevate voice through creating opportunities for the participation of care experienced children and young people on the issues that matter to them.

We have endeavoured to support the voice and support for our kinship care families through a network of support groups, which are improving how we listen, support, and promote the value of kinship care.

There is a programme of improvement activity to support care experienced young people when they wish to move on based on what our young people told us needed to change.  This includes more accessible mental health support, substance support and treatment and help with employability options.  This includes:

• Access to health care with dedicated nurses to support better health outcomes for young people aged 16 – 26;
• Strengthened independent advocacy through an advocacy pathway;
• Young people over 16 benefiting from improved and more consistent pathway planning; and
• Targeted employability support through our youth employability service Aspire, which supports positive destinations for all young people including our care experienced young people.

Our lottery funded; whole system approach project in Cambuslang/Rutherglen ‘Inclusion as Prevention’ works with young people to redesign early support services to demonstrate ways to reduce the number of young people going into the Criminal Justice System.

The Pathfinders initiative (in Cambuslang/Rutherglen) explores different ways to work with families to improve outcomes for vulnerable young people experiencing barriers to learning. The initiative addresses issues such as low-income families, alcohol and/or drug difficulties, employability, disabilities and improve overall health and wellbeing.  The initiative is now being extended across South Lanarkshire.

What will we do next?

We have worked with our Champions Board and our wider care experienced population to agree the priorities for our work over the next three years.

By the end of the plan, we aim to achieve the following outcomes:

Children and young people grow up loved, safe, respected and listened to:

• Put voice at the heart of all decision-making processes at all levels;
• Increase the number of care experienced people accessing further and/or higher education opportunities and successful employment;
• Reduce poverty amongst care experienced people;
• Improve lifelong support for care experienced people;
• Improve support into long term housing for care experienced people; and
• Improve the mental health and emotional wellbeing of care experienced people.