Audit Scotland publishes report on delivering the promise
Today Audit Scotland has published its latest report— Improving Care Experience, Delivering the Promise.
The report contains a number of recommendations on how to progress work to keep the promise, including recommendations for The Promise Scotland, and Fiona Duncan, the Independent Strategic Advisor.
We released a joint statement in response to the report, with Fiona Duncan, the Scottish Government, COSLA and Solace.
In that statement, we said:
Keeping the promise will transform the lives of Scotland’s families, children, young people in care and care experienced adults, now and for generations to come. It is an ambitious, long term change programme, requiring unprecedented levels of collaboration across different systems, organisations and sectors.
The unified commitment around the promise is vitally important, and reflected in the unusual step of issuing of a joint response to this report.
Scotland has a responsibility to all those to whom the promise was made, to ensure that the pace of change is increased and delivery is felt in people’s lives, every day. This requires person and family centred approaches to how Scotland provides care and support.
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. We remain steadfastly committed to working in partnership to keep the promise.
Fraser McKinlay, chief executive of The Promise Scotland, added:
At The Promise Scotland, our work is focussed on supporting improvements which can change the lives of some of Scotland’s most vulnerable children and young people.
So we welcomed Audit Scotland reporting on how Scotland can deliver the promise. As an organisation we will make sure to review all the recommendations.
The report highlights a number of areas where there is a need for more clarity, or an increased pace and scale in the work to deliver the promise. Changes have been made through this year to Plan 24-30, and a significant development to all 25 route maps will be published in December. Work is also being progressed at pace around the Promise Story of Progress, with more information added to track progress across Scotland, for organisations working to keep the promise and the impact on the care experienced community. This is coming in December and will continue up to 2030.
There are also specific recommendations on clarity and impact for The Promise Scotland. We are taking steps to address this, with a new website to make it easier to understand the roles and responsibilities of organisations responsible for keeping the promise. We have also made improvements to our method of monitoring impact.
Going forward, the organisation must also remain agile. The promise has to be kept by 2030, and we are the only organisation solely dedicated to ensuring it is kept. So we will always need to be ready to change and adapt to work on whatever is most effective to ensure the promise is kept within a defined time period.
It is important that all those working to keep the promise, and those to which the promise has been made, understand what is happening around the recommendations raised in this report, so on our website we have set out in more detail what we are working on.
Read Audit Scotland’s report here.
Learn about the different roles and responsibilities organisations have around keeping the promise.
We are looking at the recommendations for The Promise Scotland, and will publish an update tomorrow, which looks at the steps we are taking.