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New survey launched to help #KeepThePromise

Posted 30.06.23 by Alice Hinds

Charities, organisations and individuals around the country are being encouraged to share their opinions to help shape the next phase of work done by The Promise Scotland.

With less than a year to go before the end of the first phase of the organisation’s work to bring about the change outlined by the Independent Care Review in February 2020, Fiona Duncan, chair of The Promise Scotland (click here for more), has launched a survey to capture thoughts from across the sector.

In an open message, Duncan, also the independent strategic advisor for The Promise, explained that the challenges of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis have meant delivering the original aims of Plan 21-24 would not be realistic by next year, but added that the “task is difficult, but deliverable”.

Building upon the methodology designed to deliver the Independent Care Review (click here for more), the next steps will include a rapid review of the past three years’ work and, over the summer, Duncan will consult on how to co-devise Plan 24-30, with the approaches set out in autumn this year.

Input is now needed to inform how to co-devise Plan 24-30, with contributors asked to consider; what they would you like to see in the plan; the barriers and challenges to #KeepingThePromise, and whether a six-year plan would be just as effective as the current three-year approach.

Duncan said: “The work to co-devise Plan 24-30 will be relentlessly focused on keeping The Promise, with the care community actively and meaningfully involved throughout all stages of the work, including in monitoring and governance.

“Co-devising Plan 24-30 ensures it will both meet the needs of the care community and children and their families and give confidence that it will be entirely deliverable by the paid and unpaid workforce.”

Plan 24-30 will be communicated from spring 2024, mapping out the milestones, timelines, roles and responsibilities required to #KeepThePromise, including a midpoint review of progress in 2027.

To have your say, click here to visit The Promise Scotland’s website: https://thepromise.scot/what-must-change/plan-24-30/plan-24-30-consultation-form

News: Study finds social work interventions vary widely by Scottish local authority

Posted 2 March, 2023 by Nina Joynson

New research has found that, nationally, 26.5% of children were referred to social work before the age of five, but figures are not consistent across Scotland.

A new study provides a longitudinal view of Scotland’s social work interventions in the first five years of a child’s life.

From data on children born in year ending 31 July 2013, 13,784 were found to have been subject to social work referral due to welfare concerns before their fifth birthday, a rate of 26.5% of children.

One in 17 (5.9%) children had been subject to a child protection investigation, and one in 26 (3.8%) had been placed on the Child Protection Register.

The research was carried out by Emeritus Professor Andy Bilson and independent researcher Marion Macleod at the University of Central Lancashire. They used data collected from Freedom of Information requests relating to child protection information systems from all 32 local authorities in Scotland.

Disparities in intervention

In 2020, the Independent Care Review in Scotland called for fundamental changes to child welfare services. The Scottish Government issued new national guidance on child protection as a result, with the objective of promoting greater consistency across Scotland’s support and protection for children and families.

However, the study found large disparities in referrals across local authorities. For example, 18.5% of children were investigated for child protection in Clackmannanshire compared to 2.1% in Aberdeenshire.

It shows that there is considerable progress to be made to create greater consistency in what families can expect from welfare services.

The likelihood of investigation was largely unrelated to levels of social deprivation. Four of the five local authorities with the highest referral rates were in the least deprived half of all authorities (Dumfries & Galloway, Falkirk, Midlothian and South Ayrshire).

Independent researcher Marion Macleod said:

“There are huge financial and emotional implications for families involved in social care child referrals and once they are caught up in the system, they are swallowed up by the whole bureaucratic process.

“Local authorities in Scotland are being put in an impossible position by the Government and are bound by statutory legislation that isn’t tailored to the needs of the local area. Instead, what is needed is more investment into early years, mental health services, community groups and improved parent advocacy so that the families can get help instead of being victimised.”

Click here to read the full paper

News: Funding to help transform family support

Posted 12 July, 2022 by Jennifer Drummond. Image: Children's artwork.

The Scottish Government has released funding to help support families and reduce the number of children going into care.

Local authorities are to receive £32 million in Whole Family Wellbeing Funding over the next year (2022-23). The funding will help build services that focus on prevention and early intervention, ensuring families get the support they need to overcome challenges before they reach crisis point.

Keeping the promise

The Whole Family Wellbeing Fund was announced in September 2021 as part of the Programme for Government 2021-22. It commits to investing £500 million over the course of the Parliament to help support families to stay together, with £50m earmarked for 2022-23.

The Fund aims to significantly reduce the number of children and young people in care by 2030 and will provide support on a range of issues, including child and adolescent mental health, child poverty, drug and alcohol misuse and educational attainment.

It forms part of the Scottish Government’s Keeping the Promise implementation plan, responding to the report from the Independent Care Review that called for a “radical overhaul” of Scotland’s care system.

Education Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville said:

“It is essential that we provide the right kind of support to enable families to thrive so that, ultimately, fewer children and young people go into care.

“Whole Family Wellbeing Funding aims to transform the way support is delivered by ensuring families can access seamless support that meets their individual needs.

“The £50 million committed in 2022-23 will focus on building the capacity for further investment from 2023-24 onwards. This funding is a critical part of how we will keep the Promise by helping families access the support they need, where and when they need it.

Ms Somerville also outlined the ambition that from 2030, at least 5% of all community-based health and social care spending will be invested in preventative whole family support measures.

Spending decisions

Decisions on how to use the £32 million allocated to local authorities will be made by Children’s Services Planning Partnerships.

Arrangements for distributing the remaining £12 million are still being finalised.

'When supporting families, we need to be prepared to deliver on our promises' - SallyAnn Kelly, Chief Executive of Aberlour, responded to the announcement of the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund in Issue 1 of Insight magazine.
Click here to find out how to read her comment piece in full

25 & Up: After a year of adversity, change is coming – and we know Scotland is more determined than ever to Keep the Promise

9 February 2021

Chair of the Promise Oversight Board Fiona Duncan revisits her original 25 Calls campaign call, updates on the Plan, and hails everyone who has campaigned so hard to keep the Care Review on track

It’s almost four years after the launch of the Independent Care Review, two years on from the start of Children in Scotland’s 25 Calls campaign, and a year since The Care Review published its conclusions and a vision for the Scotland that together we could be. Driven by the voices of thousands of care experienced babies, infants, children, adults and families as well as the paid and unpaid workforce, the demand was for a Scotland where every child grows up loved, safe and respected.

When I contributed to the 25 Calls campaign in autumn 2018, the Care Review had been running for 18 months. It had already listened to the experiences of care from more than 1000 infants, children, young people and adults across Scotland. Discovery Stage had concluded with the emergence of 10 thematic areas that required deeper understanding and the Journey stage of the work was underway.

The Care Review had also developed its 12 intentions which included supporting families to stay together; protecting relationships significant to infants, children and young people; aftercare available for as long as needed; children and young people’s rights and voices meaningfully impacting decision-making; understanding the financial and human cost of care, including what happens when people don’t get the help they need; care services planning and working together; and tackling stigma in all its forms.

When it concluded, just over a year later, the change the Care Review called for was vast and urgently needed. Its challenge was met with equally all-encompassing support and enthusiasm: from the care experienced community, organisations and individuals across sectors and industries, politicians, community leaders and the press.

The Promise was made.

One year on and the world is different in terrible and unexpected ways. Our lives are dominated by restrictions and fear – fear of transmission, fear for loved ones, fear of what comes next. For too many life has become even more difficult.

But Scotland’s commitment to #KeepThePromise has remained. There is much still to be done and hard decisions and actions to be taken. But foundations have been laid and change is underway.

Despite unanticipated adversity, the schedule laid out a year ago in The Promise report called the plan (click to read) hasn’t slipped. Massive effort from organisations, individuals, government, and those who campaigned so hard for the Care Review have kept it on track.

Set up in July of last year, The Promise team has pursued the massive task of engaging and working with everyone who needs to #KeepThePromise and more than 100 organisations have outlined how they will change, including local authorities and community planning partnership, Children’s Hearings Scotland, the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration, the Care Inspectorate plus NHS trusts, charities and many, many more.

These commitments have shaped the draft of one single, multi-agency, cross-sector, collectively owned three-year Plan for Scotland, detailing what must happen for the promise to be kept. This will be supported by annual rolling Change Programmes detailing how this will happen, by who and when.

The Promise Oversight Board (click to find out more) – a 20 strong assembly, more than half of whom have care experience, and who will hold Scotland to account – has been recruited and met as a group for the first time.

The Promise Design School, which will pilot in the next couple of months, will give people with care experience the training and skills to collaborate and design public services. With the Pinky Promise Design School following closely afterwards to capture children’s ideas on change that can happen now.

The Promise Partnership, a £4m investment from Scottish Government, opened for applications on 1^st February.

The care community called for change and Scotland answered the call. There is no place for complacency and some of the bigger, harder and more painful calls are still to come. But I am as full of hope as I was last year and I feel that hope reflected back in the actions of those who have pledged to #KeepThePromise. Hope fuels change – and change is here.

Fiona Duncan is Chair of the Promise Oversight Board

About the author

Fiona Duncan is Chair of the Promise Oversight Board

Click to read more

The Care Review

The Independent Care Review published its conclusions in February 2020

Click to read more

"Support the Review's aims and its work"

Fiona Duncan's original call was part of our 25 Calls campaign

Click to read more

Hope in hard times

The Care Review informs themes and approaches in our 2021-26 Manifesto

Click to read more

"The Care Review lays down a challenge"

Jimmy Paul responded to Fiona Duncan's 25 Calls piece in a 2019 blog

Click to read Jimmy's blog

"Collective support the key to delivery"

Last year we responded to the Review's publication by expressing our total support

Click to read the news

25 and Up: The ‘old normal’ meant acceptance of injustice for too many families. We can’t go back to it

9 October 2020

In a special blog for Challenge Poverty Week, Clare Simpson revisits her 25 Calls contribution, arguing that UNCRC incorporation and the work of the Care Review provide the scaffolding for change Scotland’s families need

Back in 2018 when we made our call for relationship-based whole family support (click to read), addressing the poverty blighting the lives of too many of Scotland’s families, the world was a very different place.

Things felt more hopeful. The Scottish Government had just announced its commitment to incorporate the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into domestic law. The Independent Care Review was at the beginning of its Journey towards its final Promise. The need for better support for families, along with the acknowledgement that this could not be done without tackling poverty, was really gaining traction. And perhaps most importantly, we weren’t living through a pandemic with all its consequent disruption of families’ lives.

Families have been thrust right to the forefront during the pandemic, their essential role suddenly visible and prominent where once it was just background. We thought we no longer had a village to raise our children. But we realised when they were taken away that family and friends, education and other services were that village and that without them families were left horribly exposed.

But families’ troubles were not due solely, or even mostly, due to the impact of the pandemic. Years of austerity had already created a society riven by inequalities. Too many families had been swept away by a rising tide of poverty and many more were teetering on the edge. A forthcoming report by Barnardos and the NSPCC, Challenges from the Frontline Revisited, puts the stark reality of life for too many families under the spotlight. The pandemic has highlighted what was already too many families’ everyday reality.

Pre-pandemic, one in four children in Scotland was already living in poverty. The numbers are predicted to rise. Many families were living in poverty regardless of whether they worked or not. Approximately four in 10 people were experiencing in-work poverty (Poverty in Scotland 2020, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, click to read). Insecure employment and zero-hour contracts left many at the mercy of unregulated employers while inadequate social security levels meant that those who were forced to resort to benefits were far from socially secure.

After lockdown, the number of working hours in Scotland fell sharply, with low-paid workers more likely to lose jobs and pay. Universal Credit claims doubled in the six months from March 2020 with areas with higher poverty rates pre-pandemic most significantly affected (JRF, 2020). While many were able to weather the storm and cut back on spending, those living in poverty, especially private renters and younger people, already spent the vast majority of their income on essentials and were unlikely to have savings to fall back on, according to the ONS.

It can’t be fair that some of us can take out a Netflix subscription and buy a comfort takeaway to make life easier during these COVID days, while others can’t afford to keep up rent payments and need to rely on foodbanks to feed themselves and their children.

The call that we made back in 2018 has become more important than ever. Relationship-based whole family support is essential to ensure that every family has the resources to ensure their children can thrive. When families are struggling to keep a roof over their heads, to pay bills and put meals on the table, inevitably mental health suffers, stress levels soar and bringing up children becomes so much more difficult. We need to talk about supporting families rather than about family support, working alongside families to make sure they are not cast adrift in a rising tide of poverty.

Article 27 of the UNCRC states “Every child has the right to a standard of living that meets their physical and social needs and supports their development. Governments must support families who cannot provide this.”

It is a beacon of hope and a mark of a civilised society that Scotland has committed to incorporating the UNCRC into domestic law. Properly resourced and used as a framework to support families, incorporation has the potential to be a gamechanger for families who, through no fault of their own, cannot provide an adequate standard of living for their children. Alongside the strong commitment made to supporting families in the Independent Care Review’s the Promise and its Ten Principles of family support, UNCRC incorporation provides the scaffolding for the change that Scotland’s families need.

But effecting that change will require proper resourcing and genuine cross-departmental working at national and local government levels. It will mean help with work and employability, more affordable homes and more income support for families.

It simply isn’t right that we leave so many families unable to provide for their children. We have to get this right for Scotland’s families. Please don’t let the new normal be the same as the old normal.

Clare Simpson is Manager of Parenting across Scotland