Nicola Sturgeon has broken her promise to Scotland’s young people

Fresh from publishing one of the most talked-about political memoirs of recent years, Nicola Sturgeon has announced that she’s working on a novel, a “counterfactual political thriller”. It seems an obvious next step for the former first minister – who is still a sitting MSP – given her love of books and close friendship with one of the country’s most successful crime writers, Val McDermid.

And yet to her critics, Sturgeon has been operating within the realm of fiction for many years. Consider her contention that a double rapist can become a woman just by saying he is, for example.

During her time in office, the former SNP leader made a number of commitments that failed to come to pass – securing a second independence referendum or her “defining mission” of reducing the poverty-related educational attainment gap, to name but two.  

But for a section of the population, those with experience of growing up in care, it is the failure to deliver on a pledge made in 2016 to effect radical change in the sector that has been the biggest letdown.

Addressing her party’s conference that year as care-experienced young people held up paper hearts in the audience, an emotional first minister announced a “root and branch review” of the system, telling delegates: “This is not something that any country has done before – we will do it here in Scotland first.”

Published in 2020, the Independent Care Review found evidence of siblings being separated, sexual abuse, overworked and stressed staff, and children who actively sought out restraint “as it was the only time they felt human touch”.

The report painted a picture of a “fractured, bureaucratic and unfeeling” system and led to The Promise, a commitment that by 2030 the report’s 80-plus recommendations would be implemented.

Earlier this year, The Promise’s oversight board said that despite 2025 marking the midway point, Scotland was “not halfway in progress”. And last month, MSPs taking evidence on a proposed children’s bill which will make changes to the care system were told in no uncertain terms that progress has been limited since Sturgeon made her conference speech in 2016.

Duncan Dunlop, a former chief executive of Who Cares? Scotland, gave a scathing assessment of the bill, calling it a “sham” and likening the care system to a clapped-out vehicle, saying the proposed legislation was an attempt to fix “a hubcap on that burnt-out car”.

“It was nearly nine years ago when the first minister said in front of thousands of people that we would rip up this system if we needed to do so,” Dunlop told MSPs. “We had that commitment and what have we had since? This is supposed to be the marquee bill… it was meant to represent that transformation of children and young people’s care.”

And a joint report published today by the Accounts Commission and the Auditor General said progress towards fulfilling The Promise had been slow, hampered by plans which lacked “detail and direction”.   

Sturgeon and the SNP’s soaring rhetoric has not been met with the same action on the ground.

While there’s been limited improvement made to the lives of vulnerable children over the past decade, there’s certainly been plenty of talk. I first wrote about the idea of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) back in 2019 as it became the latest fixation of Scotland’s public sector, adopted by organisations ranging from the Scottish Government to Police Scotland.

There is no denying that childhood trauma can have a profound impact on people’s lives. I sat through many evidence sessions of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry where people now in their 60s and 70s recounted how sexual, physical and psychological abuse endured while in the care of religious institutions, private schools, or the State as children had stayed with them decades later, casting a long shadow over their lives. Many survivors went to their graves never receiving justice for the horrors and indignities inflicted on them.

But the discussion of ACEs and of making Scotland an “ACE-Aware Nation”, is typical of a country and a political system where we talk a good game without ever doing the hard graft needed to make a difference. For cash-strapped public bodies during a time of austerity, paying lip service to the idea made it look like they were actually doing something.

Many experts cautioned against such an approach, that it was overly deterministic and risked telling vulnerable people that they were nothing more than the product of what happened to them in childhood.

The authors of an academic paper, The Problem with ACEs, which was submitted to an inquiry held by a House of Commons committee, said “alarm bells should ring” when advocates begin talking in evangelical terms about the concept.

“These are often social problems which have been occurring and been responded to by policymakers and politicians for at least 150 years: crime, drunkenness, mental health problems, violence,” the paper said. “This is not to say that nothing can or should be done but that there is no such thing as a magic bullet intervention.”

Just like tackling child poverty or the educational attainment gap, improving the lives of children in care is hard. As with those other issues, Sturgeon and the SNP’s soaring rhetoric has not been met with the same action on the ground.

Sturgeon will appear at a fringe event at this weekend’s SNP conference to discuss The Promise. With five years still to go, it can still be met, although the signs do not look auspicious. By then, the former first minister will have exited the stage, perhaps to become a full-time novelist.

If there is a happy ending for those to whom she promised so much, it is still to be written.