Chamber and committees

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The FOI information that the member referred to was a limited internal assessment based on the policy and financial landscape at the time. A full assessment of future childcare delivery options and costs will be undertaken as part of the parliamentary and budgetary process. If Ms Lennon would like to write to my office, I would be happy to look at my diary in order to engage with her.

I am encouraged that the Scottish household survey childcare report shows that, overall, 92 per cent of households receiving funded early learning and childcare were very or fairly satisfied with the quality of provision.

The latest report provides insights into both the positives that our current funded childcare offer is already delivering and the challenges that families face, in terms of affordability of childcare. That is why, next year, we will publish and consult on a blueprint for a transformed childcare offer that is focused on what matters most to families.

As was set out in the programme for government in early September, we will publish and consult on a blueprint for a transformed childcare offer in 2027. I encourage anyone with an interest, including families with twins or multiple births, to participate in that process so that proposals for the future of childcare in Scotland reflect the voices of children, families and childcare providers and of partners across Scotland’s childcare sector. It will be for Parliament to take decisions about future delivery.