Chamber and committees

Does the member recognise the impact of a decade of damaging austerity cuts, Brexit price rises and economic mismanagement on children and families across Scotland? Will she join me in calling on the UK Government to scrap the national insurance tax hike, reverse its cuts to universal credit and raise pensions and benefits—which are reserved matters—-rather than impose real-terms cuts?

I assume that Oliver Mundell is not forgetting about many of the cruel social security cuts that have been presided over by his colleagues at Westminster, including the recent cut of £20 to universal credit, which is resulting in more parents struggling to put food on the table and feed their children.

I hear what Pam Gosal says. She feels distressed when she hears about children whose lives are impacted by poverty. Will she join me in condemning her Tory counterparts at Westminster, who have imposed that poverty on many of the children and families in Scotland?

“Challenges”?

I hear what Stephen Kerr says about targeting money to low-income families, but does he recognise that many of the Scottish Government’s actions to support low-income families, such as increasing the Scottish child payment, are undermined by his colleagues at Westminster when they raise benefits by 3 per cent and cut universal credit?

I am concluding.

I look forward—this is important—to engaging with more of the care community over the coming months and years to ensure that our national policy intent is felt on the ground, and that our actions continue to take us in the right direction.

The Scottish Government’s ambition is for every child in Scotland to grow up loved, safe and respected so that they can reach their full potential, regardless of the circumstances in which they are born. The independent care review told us that that ambition is not the reality for some of the children and young people in our care.

On 5 February 2020, parties across the Parliament committed to come together to keep the Promise and agreed that we would need to work together to transform how we provide support, and improve wellbeing and lives.

We know that the pandemic hit those in care and at the edges of care hard—perhaps harder than most—and the emergency nature of our response meant that we had to prioritise. However, the comprehensive plan that we published today will enable us to make up for lost time and, alongside our Covid recovery strategy and our plans to tackle child poverty, it will put us on track to keep the Promise by 2030.

Before I progress, I thank all the carers, workforce, agencies and stakeholders who work hard to provide the best environment for our children and young people in care. The work that they do each and every day and the love that they show helps to improve many lives. As we move forward, we will value their ideas and energy in helping us to achieve the change that the Promise has told us that we must make.

In publishing the Scottish Government’s implementation plan “Keeping the promise to our children, young people and families” today, we are setting out more than 80 actions that cut across nearly all ministerial portfolios, demonstrating the breadth of activity that is required and that we commit to undertake.

The plan is clear that the Scottish Government cannot keep the Promise on its own. It requires collaboration, crossing boundaries and doing things differently, which will—as it should—take us out of our comfort zone at key points. It also requires services, organisations, leaders and all of us, including all of us in Parliament, to adopt a person-centred approach that places children and families at the heart of everything that we do.

We as the national Government must lead from the front. Although operational change rightly must take place at a local level, the Scottish Government, in partnership with the Scottish Parliament, holds a number of the key levers to change and the implementation plan will help to enable organisations across Scotland to take forward the work that they need to do to keep the Promise.

I will make a little bit of progress before taking Mr Whitfield’s intervention.

We continue to work closely with The Promise Scotland, and I place on the record my thanks to Fiona Duncan and the team for continuing to drive forward the work that we all require to do to fully realise the conclusions of the independent care review. We look forward to continuing to work together on the journey to 2030.

I do not believe that there has been a late publication. It is my understanding that parliamentary business managers had previous sight of the document.

The plan sets out actions that are financial, that require policy change, that require the introduction of guidance, that are legislative, and that, ultimately, require us to change our approach. Key to the change is movement from being reactive to providing preventative support. Our commitment to investing £500 million during the current parliamentary session through the whole family wellbeing fund, which begins with £50 million in this financial year, is a large step forward in that.

That investment will deliver service transformation and redesign. It will enable the building of universal, holistic support services, which will be available in communities across Scotland, and give families access to the help that they need, where and when they need it. Importantly, the investment will not fund business as usual, and we will set out further details on how it will be distributed by May.

Unfortunately, there are points at which being in care extends to our young people engaging with the justice system. If a child’s liberty requires to be restricted or deprived, we are clear that that should happen in a setting that is child friendly and rights respecting, with trauma-informed staff. With that, we will end the placement of 16 and 17-year-olds in young offenders’ institutions without delay. We will fund care-based alternatives to custody and consult on new legislation. Today, we have launched a consultation to explore how we can best provide the support that children need in difficult circumstances. That is shifting the approach from one of punishment to one of love and support.

It is paramount to ensure that the voices of our children and young people are heard in all the decisions and actions that affect them. Advocacy has a clear role to play in that, and we will support The Promise Scotland to scope a national lifelong advocacy service for care-experienced people and their families. Recommendations will be presented to the Scottish ministers for consideration by the end of 2023.

We look to our workforce to provide the right support in the right way. In considering what the Promise refers to as “the scaffolding”—the people and infrastructure that make the care system work—there is a need for equality in support and service and consistency in training. In that regard, we will consider establishing a national social work agency and will set out in due course our decision on how the implementation of the national care service will relate to children and families services and to youth justice.

Supporting our children and young people means that we must understand, be empathetic to, and be aware of how their experiences might trigger reactions, so it is vital that the workforce is trauma informed. By April 2023, we will publish a long-term delivery plan for further work to embed and sustain trauma-informed workforces and services.

To underpin all the actions that we have set out and to make all the changes that we need to happen a reality, we will introduce a Promise bill by the end of the current parliamentary session. In 2021, we set up the Promise oversight board, the role of which is to hold Scotland, including the Scottish Government, to account. I am grateful to the members of the board for taking on that task and I welcome the scrutiny that they will bring.

To enable us to track progress, we will establish a new Promise collective, which will support alignment and cohesion of activities. That group will ensure alignment across funded delivery and improvement initiatives, and it will provide a single line of sight to the outcomes that are being met.

I have given a flavour of the significant and transformational actions that the Government will take forward. Much more detail is set out in the plan—I could comfortably speak for much longer to set out the detail that is included in that substantial and comprehensive document.

Before I close, I would like to say a huge thank you to those in the care community and to reaffirm my commitment, and the Scottish Government’s commitment, to keeping the Promise. We will bring forward change as quickly as possible. Today’s publication is for them—it is the start, and we want to work with them on the journey of change so that all children grow up loved, safe and respected and able to reach their full potential.

I move,

That the Parliament welcomes the publication of the Keeping The Promise Implementation Plan, published on 30 March 2022, recognising the additional challenges that have emerged since the Independent Care Review reported its conclusions in February 2020 and therefore the even greater importance in setting out actions that the Scottish Government must take to Keep The Promise to care-experienced children and young people and their families; believes that, to Keep The Promise, delivery must be undertaken in partnership with local government, The Promise Scotland, the third sector, NHS boards, and the care community across Scotland to enable progress towards keeping more families together through person-centred wraparound support at the right time and providing the right support to reduce the number of children in the care system where it is safe to do so; agrees that Scotland must shift the focus of its actions from reaction to prevention; recognises that where the care system is the right place to be, the experience of children and young people who do enter the care system must be based on love, relationships, compassion and consistency, and commits to work together across Scotland and on a cross-party basis to Keep The Promise to and with the care community, so that all children grow up loved, safe and respected so that they can realise their full potential.

Not at all. I thank Mr Whitfield for putting that on the record. I am grateful to him for doing so; it was very gentlemanly and collegiate of him.

As members have noted, our approach to supporting our care-experienced people must be holistic. It must recognise the importance of family and, where support is provided, it must recognise the needs of the individual, the situation that surrounds them and what is important to them. Love and nurture should be at the core of our approach, so we must ensure that they are integral to the many areas of work and different parts of Government that are spanned by our actions.

The whole family wellbeing fund—which has been referred to by members—presents an opportunity to do things differently. By not funding business as usual, we can further the shift of investment from reaction to prevention.

The wider financial and policy supports that are set out in the plan will assist our carers and families who are engaged with the care system. They will support our care-experienced people in education and employment—education has been mentioned by several members this afternoon—support our care leavers and provide support for family wellbeing that will, in turn, help to keep families together and to reduce the challenges that they face day to day.

Through the Promise, we have received clear direction on what needs to change quickly. The commitments that are made in the implementation plan to bring an end, without delay, to placement of 16 to 17-year-olds in young offenders institutions, as well as action to address use of restraint in care settings, are a clear response to that.

I take on board some points that were made by Jamie Greene and I hope that he will consider contributing to the consultation that has been launched today, because he obviously has some key points that we would be keen to hear.

We will work with The Promise Scotland as we make progress on that journey. Again, I thank it and welcome its agreement to progress the work on advocacy, access to information and governance, and to work to support alignment and cohesion of delivery of initiatives and activities through a new Promise collective. However, we are clear that we cannot do this alone: we must join up our policies, our finances, our actions and our implementation, and we must work together to bring the transformational change that is needed.

I was very pleased to get a message during the debate that said that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has put out a statement welcoming the implementation plan.

I was delighted to join, as part of care day last month, a Who Cares? Scotland event. Several members, including Paul McLennan and Meghan Gallacher, mentioned Who Cares? Scotland. I was part of a panel with South Lanarkshire champions board and North Lanarkshire champions board, and I chatted to children, young people and their families about the Promise. That brought home to me the importance of working together, listening to the voices of care experience, and placing them at the heart of policy making and system and service design. I have to declare an interest: I am a South Lanarkshire constituency MSP. I was particularly pleased to hear about how well Who Cares? Scotland thinks the Promise is being embedded by North Lanarkshire Council and South Lanarkshire Council in delivery of services through listening to children and young people who are in their care.

We are committed to building genuine partnerships with our local government colleagues, COSLA, The Promise Scotland, delivery partners, the third sector, partners across health, justice and education, and all our stakeholders who have an interest in improving the lives of our children and young people throughout Scotland. We welcome the opportunity to do so.