By Bill Heaney
“I had the enormous pleasure of visiting the Hub for Success, which is hosted by Edinburgh Napier University and supported by Scottish Government Promise partnership funding.
“I met care-experienced students, who shared the positive impact that the service had on them.
“There is, as the report has undoubtedly highlighted, more work to do, which we do not shy away from. However, we should also share and celebrate where change is being felt.
“One key area in which there has been clear progress is in the number of looked-after children.
“The latest statistics show that there were almost 2,000 fewer looked-after children in July 2022 than there were when The Promise started in July 2020.
“That does not take away from the work that still has to be done, but I am pleased by some of the progress that we are seeing.”
Monica Lennon said there were major areas of concern in the report which highlights areas of progress but also major areas of concern.
She added: “To give one example, its freedom of information investigation uncovered that care-experienced children have lost more than 1.3 million school days to exclusion, despite the Promise pledging to end that exclusion. That could be just the tip of the iceberg, as several councils could not provide any data.
“We need transparency, accountability and leadership if we are to fulfil the Promise, but lack of data is a constant theme of the report.
“To keep the Promise, we have to tackle quality of data? Will he and his Government urgently review the data that is held by public authorities and report annually to Parliament? What we have here is not good enough.”
Labour MSP Monica Lennon and First Minister Humza Yousaf.
The First Minister said he largely agreed with Monica Lennon and the Who Cares? Scotland report that data collection, recording, monitoring and reporting are key to tracking progress and ensuring that change needed was delivered.
He added: “I assure her that we are working closely with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, the Promise Scotland and wider stakeholders to develop the national Promise performance outcomes framework—which will be aligned to the 2024 to 2030 plan—to track progress.
“School exclusions were mentioned to me in my meeting with the care-experienced community. A whole raft of work has been going on to reduce school exclusions to the absolute minimum where we can. I thank Who Cares? Scotland and all the other stakeholders that are working with us to deal with those challenging issues.”
Ruth Maguire (Cunninghame South) (SNP) said: “It is crucial that, in reforming the care and justice system, we uphold and promote the rights of all children, whether they are in direct contact with the system as witnesses, victims or perpetrators or are impacted because of a family member?”
The First Minister replied: “Action to improve the experiences of child victims and their families is an absolute top priority for all of us, I am sure, and particularly for the Government.
“We have engaged with stakeholders including Victim Support Scotland. Protecting and promoting the rights of all children who come into contact with the justice system is at the heart of the bill, which will be an important step towards improving outcomes for young people as we keep the Promise.”
He added: “We have formed a joint social care and social work services workforce task force, which is considering how we could deliver improvements for the workforce in adult social care and children’s social care.
“Our proposals for the national care service include the establishment of a national social work agency to support and invest in the profession by providing national leadership, raising the status of social work as a profession and considering the future needs of the workforce.”