Programme for Government 2025-26: How it impacts the children’s sector

On Tuesday 6 May, the Scottish Government released its 2025-26 Programme for Government (PfG), detailing its priorities and plans for the coming year. For reasons why this years’ is particularly important for the children’s sector, read our PfG introduction article; read Children in Scotland’s Chief Executive’s response to the PfG; and for an additional support for learning focused summary, read Enquire’s response here.

This year’s Programme for Government contained the same four core priorities as the 2024-25 PfG: Growing the Economy, Eradicating Child Poverty, Tackling the Climate Emergency, and High Quality and Delivering Sustainable Public Services. As there was only a nine month gap between the two programmes, a continuation of priorities is not altogether surprising.

Growing the Economy

The section detailing the government’s plans for the economy concentrates largely on creating jobs and investment in the country’s economy in order to counteract the ‘economic shocks’ resulting from global economic uncertainty.

It does make mention of the intended impact on children and young people, including the government’s intention to deliver free childcare for all 3- and 4-year-olds, and to keep 40,000 children out of poverty by providing the Scottish Child Payment.

Eradicating Child Poverty

In this section, the PfG described eradicating child poverty as a ‘national mission.’ Of note for the third sector is the mention of a Fairer Funding pilot project intended to trial the effect providing multi-year funding will have on third sector organisations. Along with many other third sector organisations, Children in Scotland has argued the importance of this change to funding. To ensure that third sector organisations have the security needed to invest in babies, children and young people across Scotland, we look forward to this to being promptly built upon.

Additionally, with the bringing forward of The Children and Young People (Care) (Scotland) Bill to support The Promise, we look forward to seeing how the legislation delivers the change promised to care experienced children and young people across Scotland.

Regarding social security changes, the PfG claims the government will ‘effectively scrap the impact’ of the two-child benefit cap imposed by the UK Government; this would likely involve introducing alternative payments designed specifically for families impacted by the cap. This is a welcome addition, but there is little further clarity given in addition to the announcement of this measure in the December budget; in order to meet current child poverty targets, this policy should be introduced as soon as possible, and a detailed timeline included in this PfG would have been a good first step.

Further changes to social security funding included plans for a new Care Leavers Payment of £2000 to improve the financial security of young people leaving care, and an expansion of free school meals alongside funding for breakfast clubs throughout the country.

Also welcome was a commitment to drafting legislation and policy to end conversion practices to protect LGBTQ+ children and young people from this abusive practice. The Scottish Government has committed to working on this alongside the UK Government to create a Bill covering England, Wales and Scotland, but has stated if an agreement cannot be made, a Scotland specific Bill will be introduced in the next parliamentary cycle. Primarily, this raises the question of why the Scottish Government doesn’t begin work on a separate Bill for Scotland without first attempting to align with the UK Government in order to shorten the timeline on this incredibly important piece of legislation, and to distance itself from the UK Government whose recent stance of LGBTQ+ rights leaves much to be desired.

Tackling the Climate Emergency

The document talked extensively of the government’s plans to address the climate emergency whose inclusion is of course highly positive, but none were in relation to issues particular to children and young people other than the broad importance of ensuring a safe and secure future for children and young people.

Delivering High Quality and Sustainable Public Services

The most relevant aspect of this section relates to education reform, especially talk of commitment to recruitment, development and retainment of ASN workforce, which is vital to improving the delivery of additional support for learning in schools. Additionally, the intention to pass the Education (Scotland) Bill is a commendable inclusion and will be an opportunity for the Scottish Government to demonstrate their commitment to the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Particularly, we hope the promises of new models of transparency and decision-making will reflect the Scottish Government’s commitment to Article 12 of the UNCRC and allow for the voices of children and young people to be heard and to effect decisions made.