Planning failures slowing delivery of the Promise to children in care

Failures in planning have marred the delivery of the Promise to care-experienced young people, a new report has found.

Watchdog Audit Scotland has said the lack of detail and direction, as well as a failure to assess resources and skills, has contributed to slow progress and accountability issues.

Limited initial planning “didn’t provide a strong platform for success”, auditor general Stephen Boyle said.

Children’s minister Natalie Don-Innes said the government was “resolute in our commitment to keep the Promise”.

But a charity has warned that “time is running out” on fulfilling the ambition to implement recommendations from the independent care review by 2030.

The Promise was made in 2020 to ensure care-experienced young people “grow up loved, safe and respected”, including following the recommendations set out in the 2017 care review.

That review concluded the care system was “fractured, bureaucratic and unfeeling”, and as a result was failing too many children and young people in care.

Recommendations included overhauling the Care Inspectorate, ensuring the children’s hearing system was trauma-informed and delivered on children’s rights, preventing under-18s going to prison or detention, and no long excluding care-experienced children from school.

Then first minister Nicola Sturgeon said the review was “one of the most important moments” of her time in government, promising to “deliver that change as quickly and as safely as possible”.

But five years on, Audit Scotland has said there is a lack of clarity on what the different bodies involved should be doing to deliver the changes, with new structures set up by the Scottish Government not providing enough information on roles and responsibilities.

Government efforts to streamline governance arrangements have been “insufficient”, it added, which has made collective accountability “challenging”.

It also said there had been “no assessment” of the requisite resources and skills for delivering the Promise by the end of the decade, nor information on how success would be defined or measured.

Boyle said: “Public bodies remain committed to improving Scotland’s care system and the lives of people who go through it. But initial planning about how the Promise would be delivered didn’t provide a strong platform for success. 

“The Scottish Government needs to work with its partners to clearly set out the action that will be taken over the next five years to deliver the Promise, and how that work will be resourced.”

The report highlights that while support for the Promise remains high, organisations have found the plans to support delivery “challenging to navigate”. “A confusing policy and legislative environment is not enabling public bodies to deliver the Promise,” it added.

It also said government had been “slow to develop a framework to measure progress”, with existing data not sufficient to assess whether the lives of care-experienced young people are being improved.

On resourcing, it said the lack of an “evidence-based assessment of resource requirements” meant organisations would struggle to prioritise investment. In 2022-23, only £148m of the committed £500m whole family wellbeing fund was allocated.

Angela Leitch, a member of the Accounts Commission which co-authored the report, said there needed to be “greater pace and momentum” from local and national public bodies, and urged ministers to clarify roles.

Don-Innes pointed to “good progress” in some of the areas outlined by the care review, including ending the detention of under-18s.

But she added: “There is more to do to keep the Promise, and we acknowledge there have been challenges to progress in the early days after the Promise was made in 2020, including the pandemic.

“Independent analysis published this year by the Promise Oversight Board outlined that the Promise can be kept by 2030 and we are determined to work with councils and partners including The Promise Scotland to achieve that.”

A joint statement from the government, council umbrella groups Cosla and Solace, The Promise Scotland, and the independent strategic advisor committed to reviewing all of the report’s recommendations.

It said: “We are taking today’s report from the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission seriously. Together, we remain fully committed to the shared goal of ensuring that all of Scotland’s children grow up loved, safe and respected.

“The report has a number of recommendations on how to help achieve this, many of which align with work underway. This includes continuing to develop Scotland’s delivery plan, ‘Plan 24-30’, and telling the Promise Story of Progress.

“We will review all the recommendations and respond accordingly, ensuring we continue to work in the best way possible for children, families and care experienced adults. In doing so, we will ensure that everyone working to keep the Promise has the clarity needed.”

Children's charity Children First said the report showed “time is running out to keep the Promise” and called for investment in prevention and whle family support.

Mary Glasgow, chief executive, said: “Real efforts have been made across Scotland over the last five years but as today’s report recognises, lack of clarity and accountability and failure to value and invest in the crucial role of the third sector are standing in the way.  

“Children can’t wait. At Children First our commitment to keeping the Promise is as strong as ever. But unless the recommendations of the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission are acted on immediately the Promise won’t be kept.”  

The Scottish Conservatives have described the report as an “absolutely damning verdict” on the government’s delivery of a flagship policy.

Children’s spokesperson Roz McCall said: “The report exposes that delivering the Promise for Scotland’s most vulnerable young people has simply not been a priority for the SNP. Their plans lack any detail, and it is astonishing that there was never any assessment put in place to define if the policy had been a success or not.

“SNP ministers are also presiding over a chronic under-funding of what is needed to meet their ambitions, despite claiming £500m would be spent in relation to this.

“The Promise was supposed to make a real difference for vulnerable young people, but in typical SNP fashion, they have monumentally failed to deliver on their warm rhetoric.”

Labour also described the report as “damning”. Children's spokesperson Martin Whitfield said: “This damning report lays bare the SNP’s shameful failure to deliver on its promises to young people in Scotland’s care system.

“The Scottish Government has a responsibility to do right by these children, but it’s clear there has been a lack of leadership and delivery under the SNP.”