The next item of business is a statement by Siobhian Brown on keeping the Promise, progress and delivery to 2030. Questions will be taken at the end of the statement, so there should be no interventions or interruptions.
I will allow a minute or so for the minister to get into place. I ask members of the public leaving the gallery to please do so quietly. We are about to recommence business.
15:02
Six years ago, Scotland made a promise that all children would grow up loved, safe and respected. Since then, we have taken important steps. However, as the Promise Oversight Board’s latest report makes clear, we must take faster action.
In welcoming the publication, I thank the board for the important role that it continues to play in providing independent scrutiny and challenge. It is essential that we listen and be honest about the scale of the task ahead.
As we mark care experience week, let me begin by speaking directly to the children and young people whom I am privileged to represent in this ministerial role. The Promise will be kept by 2030, and I am doing all that I can to make that happen. Over the summer, I have made visits and seen many positive examples of really good work that is under way, including meeting kinship carers in Kilmarnock and attending the Who Cares? Scotland summer festival in August. I am also sure that, like me, many members were touched by the “One Hundred Voices” exhibit in Parliament, which reminded us poignantly that every experience of care in Scotland is unique. I have had the privilege to meet incredible young people across our country who have reminded me why our commitment must be delivered. It is an honour to be in this position, and I am laser-focused on accelerating delivery.
The board’s report rightly recognises the progress that we have made so far. In justice, we have invested more than £30 million in the gold standard bairns’ hoose model, creating a child-centred approach for children who have experienced or witnessed harm. We are committed to multiyear funding as we expand that model across the whole of Scotland. We have delivered a landmark commitment by ending the placement of children in young offenders institutions and we are delivering significant change through the redesign of the children’s hearings system.
In education, we are breaking down barriers and creating opportunities through the Scottish attainment challenge. Since 2018-19, we have invested more than £80 million in funding through the care-experienced children and young people fund to help drive improvements in attainment and wellbeing. Through that funding, we are supporting mentoring, outdoor and play-based learning, wider targeted support and funded specialist staff, including educational psychologists, teachers, tutors, learning mentors and pupil support officers. Across 19 local authorities, we continue to back virtual headteachers, providing strategic leadership to improve attendance, attainment, positive destinations, wellbeing and exclusion rates. In North Lanarkshire, for example, exclusions have fallen from 205 in 2018-19 to just 15 in 2024-25.
That support continues beyond school. Scotland’s higher education institutions guarantee an undergraduate offer to care-experienced applicants who meet the minimum entrance qualification. Both the percentage and the number of care-experienced entrants have increased every year since 2016-17. That education is supported through a non-means-tested bursary of £9,000 and is supplemented further by specialist support loans, summer accommodation grants and priority access to discretionary funding, providing financial assistance totalling £21.5 million to nearly 2,500 people in full-time higher education in 2025-26.
We also continue to strengthen support for those who care for our children. We have introduced, and subsequently increased, a national minimum allowance for eligible foster and kinship carers through the Scottish recommended allowance. That support has benefited more than 9,000 children, and consideration of its annual uprating is now required by statute.
For young people making the transition from care into adulthood, we have introduced the £2,000 care leaver payment, supporting 1,300 young people each year, and we continue to deliver a substantial package of aftercare and continuing care.
The Government recognises that support around the child and the family is what makes the difference. It is about prevention, ahead of reaction. That means embedding whole-family support and targeting whole-family wellbeing funding to enable local partnerships to improve support for families and deliver without stigma or judgment, making greater use of families’ feedback to improve services. In Renfrewshire, for example, the request-for-assistance pathway has streamlined access to family support, enabling earlier help for families and creating a more co-ordinated and efficient local support system.
Taken together, those are significant changes. They demonstrate that the work to keep the Promise reaches across Government and across the lives of children and families. However, we have also enabled further change for the future. In March this year, the Parliament unanimously passed the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Act 2026. That significant legislation was developed through cross-party working and a shared sense of responsibility, which I am committed to maintaining over the next four years.
The legislation will strengthen the voice of care-experienced people through a right of access to advocacy. It will advance support for foster and kinship carers and take steps to address profit in residential childcare. It provides for action in areas including restraint, seclusion and housing, alongside substantial changes to the children’s hearings system. It commits us to reviewing the impact of delays in decision making, to help to ensure that more children experience the security, stability and sense of belonging that a permanent home can provide. In recognising that listening to children, young people and their families and drawing on their understanding of their lives can secure the best outcomes, it strengthens the role of family group decision making.
Fundamentally, the reforms are about making sure that our care and support system works for children and young people, with their rights, relationships and voices at the heart of all decisions. The act’s first provisions came into force on 30 September, and implementation of the reforms is under way.
However, to be clear, keeping the Promise requires action not only from the Government but across all public services and by local government. It requires us to think differently about how we offer support, take decisions and ensure that we are pulling together in the same direction rather than working in silos.
Our workforce is fundamental to that. Every day, foster and kinship carers, social workers, residential care staff, health professionals, teachers and third sector workers provide vital support to children and families across Scotland. I thank them all for their exceptional dedication and I recognise the pressures that they face. Through the National Social Work Agency, established by this Government this year, we will provide national leadership and strengthened support to the profession.
Keeping the Promise is public service reform in action. Through early prevention and intervention, we must move away from services that wait until families reach crisis. Our approach is one where services work together around the needs of children and families instead of expecting families to navigate complicated systems themselves.
When something works, we need to understand why and help it to spread. Where progress is too slow or where a child’s experience of support depends on where in Scotland they live, we need to understand why and we need to act.
Through the Promise progress framework, we have better data and insight into where progress is being made and where improvement is needed, but, as the oversight board report makes clear, there is no point in collecting data if we do not use it to improve performance.
I see a real opportunity with our public service reform to do this better, and I implore colleagues across the chamber to work with me and the Government on sharing and encouraging good practice, and identifying where we can make improvements.
Of course, through the continued, ongoing work of Scotland’s independent strategic adviser and The Promise Scotland, we will build our understanding of what works well, and promote and provoke action as required.
The gap in consistency of service and delivery must close, and I look to partners across Scotland to continue to work together and support each other in that delivery.
There is more to do, and I do not underestimate the scale of the task ahead, but nor should we understate the progress that Scotland has made or the foundations that are currently in place. Across the country, partners are strengthening family support and ensuring that children, young people and care-experienced adults have a greater voice in decisions that affect their lives.
I announce today that, in November, we will launch a new delivery coalition—chaired by me and the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Culture and Gaelic—to bring together partners from national Government, local government, public services and the third sector, and people with lived experience. The coalition will provide a dedicated forum to strengthen collaboration, drive collective action and accelerate progress towards keeping the Promise by 2030.
The Promise can be kept, but it demands co-ordinated action. This Government remains determined to lead, to work with our partners, to challenge, and to continue to listen to children, families and care-experienced people.
By 2030, the ultimate test will be whether change is felt by the children and young people at the heart of the Promise. To get there, this Government will implement the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Act 2026; be crystal clear on the actions that we will take by 2030; and connect and drive forward the pace of change through coalition and joint working.
That is the task ahead. Together, we will accomplish it and, together, we will keep the Promise.
I will allow around 20 minutes for the minister to answer questions on the issues raised. Members who wish to ask a question should press their request-to-speak button now.
I thank the minister for advance sight of the statement. The Promise Oversight Board is clear that
“The next 6 to 18 months will determine whether the promise being kept remains possible.”
In her statement, the minister said that the Government will be crystal clear on the actions that it will take by 2030, but, if the Promise is to be kept, we need action now. What action will the minister take within the next six to 18 months to ensure that the Promise is kept?
The delivery coalition that I have just announced will be a very strong part of that. With four years to go until 2030, it is essential that we drive forward the change that is required at pace and with clear direction. The coalition that the cabinet secretary and I will chair will work alongside the independent strategic adviser for the Promise to bridge the gaps between individual organisations and geographical success, to inform a collective approach to change in policy and practice.
The coalition will also provide an informed route to cross-portfolio engagement on issues. Respective cabinet secretaries and ministers may be invited to attend the coalition in relation to specific issues and actions to be identified.
The final membership of the group is yet to be determined and invitations will be sent out shortly. The purpose of the delivery coalition is to achieve delivery of the Promise by 2030 and watch progress as we go along.
I thank the minister for prior sight of the statement. In 2023-24, the school attendance rate for care-experienced children fell to 83 per cent while the rate for all pupils rose slightly to 90 per cent. In 2022-23, care-experienced children were six times more likely than the general pupil population to be excluded from school, and the exclusion rate rose for the first time in 12 years. Will the Scottish Government commit to scaling up the use of evidence-based interventions, such as one-to-one tuition and peer tutoring, which have been shown to be the most effective ways to close the gap in literacy and numeracy, and will it make an urgent commitment to establish a dedicated transitions fund to support care-experienced school leavers during the cliff-edge move into further or higher education?
The £80 million Scottish attainment fund, which I mentioned in my opening statement, does exactly what Amanda Lindsay asks for.
Although progress has been made on the gap between exclusion rates for looked-after pupils and those for all pupils, which has fallen significantly in the past 15 years, care-experienced children and young people remain disproportionately affected by exclusion. That is not acceptable. Reducing that disparity is a key priority.
Can the minister speak further on what work is under way to address the challenges around the sufficiency of foster care placements, and on how the Scottish Government is listening to the voices of those in the profession and those with lived experience to inform its approach?
We recognise the challenges around foster care sufficiency and the importance of children accessing the right home in the right place at the right time. We funded Scotland’s first national foster care campaign and expanded fosterline support. Recently, I co-chaired a national round table, at which the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and partners agreed actions on recruitment, retention and placement availability. The National Social Work Agency has tested Thriving Futures training to strengthen carers’ support. Our new foster carers strategic advisory group will help to shape reform, building on consultation with foster carers and care-experienced children and young people.
I thank the minister for advance sight of her statement and echo her words about the moving nature of the one hundred voices exhibition.
The Education and Gaelic Committee has heard that, although there remains a strong commitment to keeping the Promise, care-experienced children and young people do not always see that commitment reflected in their day-to-day lives. Evidence has also highlighted continuing concerns about social work recruitment and retention, inconsistency between local areas, and the pace of change. Can the minister outline the measurable improvements that care-experienced children should expect to see over the next year? How will the Government demonstrate that those improvements are being felt by the children themselves and their families, rather than simply being recorded through policy activity?
That is the vital bit: we need the children to feel the change in their experiences on the ground. Even though a lot of work has been taken up so far, there is still a lot of work to do before 2030. The experiences as they are felt on the ground will be vital.
Ms Moodie mentioned the social care workforce. Having a sustainable, supported workforce will be fundamental to keeping the Promise. The National Social Work Agency, which was established this year, is leading national workforce planning to create a stronger picture of workforce demand, recruitment challenges and future supply. Through the Scottish social work partnership, the National Social Work Agency is working with COSLA and Social Work Scotland to develop a strategic plan, which will set out a shared commitment to strengthening the social work workforce. That delivery plan is on track for publication in spring 2027.
In July, it was reported that a 13-year-old girl requested to be moved out of a Scottish secure unit in which teenage male offenders were housed. Her plea was rejected, with her right to a single-sex space and safety ignored. This year, The Promise Scotland said:
“The way secure care is currently provided in Scotland is not sustainable.”
Does the minister agree? How many more vulnerable young people need to be placed in unsuitable accommodation?
We are laying the foundations for a more resilient and sustainable secure care system for the future. In the reimagining secure care consultation, which took place this year, stakeholders’ views were sought on a range of issues, including the nationalisation of secure care services, to see how we could improve things. Future decisions will be guided by evidence and analysis of the consultation responses. No decision has yet been made on nationalisation.
Secure care in Scotland is currently provided by four independent charity organisations, and we will continue to work closely with providers, local authorities and other partners as part of our wider programme of reimagining secure care.
I thank the minister for advance sight of her statement.
On 15 October 2016, I led care-experienced people into the Scottish National Party conference to hear Nicola Sturgeon commit to ripping up the care system. She said that we would not have to wait for change, but a child who was aged five then is now 15. The minister talked of commitments to action to drive change and implement legislation, but those children have been hearing these empty promises for years. The statement contains ad hoc actions that the Government has patched together as positive signs of progress, but they do not amount to ripping up the system.
Before the Promise, the SNP Government created the looked-after children strategic implementation group, but it was quietly discontinued as it achieved little impact. Does the new delivery coalition mark the quiet discontinuation of the strategic adviser—the Promise Oversight Board—or is it an example of more public relations that will add to public sector clutter, which Audit Scotland cautioned against only last year?
I am proud of what Scotland is doing in trying to deliver the Promise, which we will do by 2030. That commitment has been made, and we have four years to go.
There has been progress. We have passed landmark legislation that provides significant packages of reform to support the Promise. We have committed £154 million to transform family support, and that figure will go up to £200 million by March next year. I could provide a list of things that we have already done. The delivery coalition will look at the pace of progress and at the challenges to ensure that we deliver the Promise by 2030.
I call Patricia Gibson.
Thank you, First Minister—sorry, Presiding Officer.
You would think that she would know. [Laughter.]
A range of organisations are involved in helping to deliver the Promise and, inevitably, each has its own separate and discrete data. That can sometimes act as a barrier to care-experienced young people accessing the support that they need as they grow up, develop and move from one local authority area to another. What consideration has the minister given to having a more streamlined and effective shared data collection system—bearing in mind data protection requirements—to ensure that care-experienced young people can more easily access the support that they need, regardless of where they move to in Scotland or how their circumstances change?
Care-experienced young people should not have to repeat their stories or navigate disconnected services to enable them to access support. Having better national data could help to identify unmet need and gaps in provision, but that must be accompanied by effective information sharing between services, particularly when young people move between services and need further support. Children’s services planning and the wider public sector reform agenda provide opportunities to strengthen co-ordination. Our focus must be on ensuring that having such information helps young people to get the right support at the right time, while protecting their privacy and rights.
The Scottish Government’s own figures show that pupils in care are seven times more likely to leave school with no qualifications at Scottish credit and qualifications framework level 3 or above. That statistic relates to academic year 2024-25, which was a full 10 years after the Scottish attainment challenge was launched. Will the minister specify how a delivery coalition—or anything else that the Government is about to do—will help such kids to get a qualification in maths or English?
That is why we are already investing £80 million. We want to keep those children in school so that they can have better outcomes.
The delivery coalition has four years to go and has a widespread portfolio, with a lot of work happening in national and local government and in the third sector. There is a lot of work for the delivery coalition to look at, and that is what we intend it to do. Keeping the Promise is all about achieving better outcomes for our care-experienced children.
During the Education and Gaelic Committee’s recent pre-budget scrutiny work, I asked our witnesses, including those trying to deliver the Promise, whether they saw public service reform as an opportunity to deliver it. Support for care-experienced young people across the nation has been bitty for too long. Does the minister agree that PSR offers an opportunity to deliver services in the places where they are needed, and when they are needed, to support families?
Keeping the Promise is public sector reform in action. Our focus is on reducing complexity, improving collaboration across services and shifting the focus towards prevention and early intervention. Those are central aims of our public service reform programme, and—through whole family support, strengthened planning in children’s services and the wider reform agenda—we are building more joined-up services around the needs of children and families, helping them to access support earlier and reducing reliance on crisis intervention. The forthcoming implementation strategy for the Promise will set out the actions that the Scottish Government will take to keep the Promise by 2030.
The minister repeatedly refers to meeting young people, listening to their experiences and placing their voices at the heart of decisions. The oversight board accepts that participation activity is taking place but says that Scotland still cannot sufficiently demonstrate that lived experience is genuinely influencing decisions. How does the minister propose that we actually measure how experience translates into action?
I think that I have answered that question. We know what children are experiencing and feeling on the ground. We have made progress in the past four or five years, but we have more to make and we will measure that.
Since coming into this post six months ago, I have had much engagement with young people and have listened to their voices. I know that that happened prior to my coming into this role, and it will continue.
If we are to deliver the Promise by 2030, there must be a resolute focus on delivery. Will the minister outline in more detail how the Scottish Government’s public service reform programme, which was mentioned in her statement, could support efforts to streamline services and shift the focus further towards prevention and, crucially, partnership working?
As I said in a previous answer, keeping the Promise is public sector reform in action. The Scottish Government will continue to provide whole family support and will strengthen children’s services planning. The forthcoming implementation strategy will set out the actions that the Scottish Government will take to deliver the Promise by 2030.
Many young people who are in kinship care are themselves providing unpaid care for a family member who cannot cope without their support. Those young carers face multiple and complex barriers to accessing the relevant support. Young carers are often hidden and their struggles can be overlooked. Will the minister outline what actions the Scottish Government is taking to ensure that young people with multiple needs are not missed and that they can benefit from the full implementation of the Promise?
During the summer, I met many kinship carers and children and had many discussions with them, some of which were quite harrowing. I must be honest about their experience, which has enabled me to understand why we must do better and must deliver the Promise.
We know that kinship carers provide vital care and stability for children, often at short notice and in really challenging circumstances. We recognise that families’ experience of accessing support can vary, depending on individual circumstances and legal arrangements. The Scottish Government has set out our vision for kinship care, which includes a broader approach to improving support for kinship families, while recognising that financial assistance is only one aspect of the support that carers may need.
We have also established a kinship care strategic advisory group to work with partners and kinship families to prioritise practical improvements, including more access to information, better co-ordination of services and more support for carers to evidence their caring role. That work continues.
I am dealing with constituents who have fostered three children over the past five years. The relevant social work department is now said to be considering moving the children to a permanent home. That is causing an undue level of distress to the family—particularly to the children, who consider their permanent home to be their foster placement, where they are well integrated into the local community. No final decision has been made in the case, and I have written to the relevant local authority about it, but will the minister say what work can be done through the Promise to ensure that children’s voices and rights are paramount when considering such permanency arrangements, especially when the children concerned have already been in a placement for such a long time and are integrated into the family there?
I recognise the distress that uncertainty about a child’s future home can cause, particularly when they have developed a really strong, loving relationship over many years.
I cannot comment on individual cases, but there is clear evidence that children thrive when they have a safe, nurturing and permanent home. The best interests of the child must always be at the heart of permanence decisions, with their views, relationships and sense of belonging being fully considered.
Our good practice in permanence guides reinforce that children’s rights should be central to decision making. As part of keeping the Promise, we are reviewing delays in permanence decisions and strengthening advocacy rights for care-experienced children and young children.
Three years ago, Natalie Don told the Education, Children and Young People committee that there was a workforce plan. Two years ago, the SNP Government promised that it would publish the plan in autumn 2024. However, last month, David Anderson told the Education and Gaelic Committee that a workforce plan had not yet been delivered, even though the oversight board for the Promise had called for it two years prior to that.
Workforce is a critical factor in this. What responsibility does the minister accept for the delay? When will the plan finally be delivered?
As I mentioned previously, in March we launched the national social work agency to strengthen and support social work across Scotland. Through the Scottish social work partnership, the national social work agency is working together with COSLA and Social Work Scotland. The partnership is currently developing a strategic plan that will set out our shared commitment to strengthening the social work workforce.
As I have said, the accompanying delivery plan will highlight the agreed actions and will be published in spring 2027.
That concludes the ministerial statement and questions on keeping the Promise: progress and delivery to 2030. The fact that Stephen Kerr got to ask a question proves that, even if members are not on a list of speakers, if they take the chance to press the request-to-speak button and there is time in hand, they will be taken.
Hear, hear.
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