About The Oversight Board
Part of: The Oversight Board
Members of The Oversight Board
The members of The Oversight Board bring both expertise and lived experience of care to their role checking up on the promise.
Oversight Board: Reports and minutes
Read publications from The Oversight Board around Scotland's progress in keeping the promise.
What must change
Find out the specific actions that Scotland must take in order to keep the promise.
The Oversight Board
holds Scotland to account
by checking if
the promise is being kept.
It reports on
Scotland's pace and progress
in keeping the promise.
The Oversight Board isn't part of The Promise Scotland
The Oversight Board and The Promise Scotland are two separate things:
- The Oversight Board exists to check up on whether Scotland’s keeping the promise, and
- The Promise Scotland exists to support people and organisations as they work to keep it.
The Promise Scotland is a distinct organisation, which employs staff and which exists in law. But The Oversight Board isn’t: it has no staff, and has no legal status.
Instead, it’s a body of people from relevant backgrounds, who have the combined:
- skills,
- knowledge, and
- experience
to fulfil the function of reporting on Scotland’s journey as it strives to keep the promise.
Its make-up reflects the Independent Care Review’s governance, with at least 50% of its membership having lived experience of care.
And it’s supported by staff from The Promise Scotland, and The Promise Scotland covers its costs.
Plan 21-24 helps it track Scotland's progress
Plan 21-24 sets out what Scotland should do by 2024 to #KeepThePromise.
The Plan was created by The Promise Scotland and reviewed by The Promise Oversight Board.
And it’s this Plan and programme which The Promise Oversight Board use to keep track of Scotland’s progress. Between them, they help:
- show what targets need to be met for Scotland to #KeepThePromise,
- show who needs to meet which targets for Scotland to #KeepThePromise, and
- highlight the speed with which these targets are being met.
It has no special legal powers or status in law
The Oversight Board can say what organisations need to be doing in order for Scotland to #KeepThePromise. But it can’t force those organisations to do anything, because it has no power in law.
What it can do is to highlight where the promise isn’t being kept, and where organisations are able to do things differently. When organisations could work together to #KeepThePromise, then the Board’s able to highlight that, too.
So The Oversight Board’s work isn’t just about holding organisations accountable.
It’s about encouraging them to work together, to build something that’s focused on the needs of children, young people and families.
And it reports publicly on what its monitoring finds
The public reports are sent specifically to Scottish MSPs, and are available on this website.
Through its reports, it aims to demonstrate to care experienced people whether work taking place to #KeepThePromise is on track.
So the Board acts as a link between Scotland’s organisations and the care experienced community, as those organisations work to #KeepThePromise.