Audit Scotland recommendations: What The Promise Scotland is doing
On Wednesday October 8, Audit Scotland published their report, ‘Improving care experience, Delivering the Promise.’
Their report had some key reflections on where they felt delivery was at currently, and some recommendations on what they feel should happen now.
These reflections and recommendations included some on work The Promise Scotland is involved in, or leading on. 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 these.
We have provided updates on these areas below:
What the report said
In the next six months, The Promise Scotland must provide support to the Scottish Government and COSLA in their work to identify the resources needed to:
- keep the promise
- clarify responsibilities for reporting
- identify opportunities to streamline governance
- ensure all data work informs the Promise Story of Progress.
What is happening
The Promise Scotland will provide support to all work which can help increase the scale and pace of change needed to keep the promise, making sure the right resources are in place. In these areas, we will ensure that decisions remain rooted in the 5500 voices of the care community and the workforce who fed into the promise on what changes are needed.
As noted in the report, we have provided information on how to improve governance around the promise. You can read this here, and we will continue to support and advice around this.
There is more information further down this update on the work to progress data work and the Promise Story of Progress.
What the report said
There needs to be more clarity in plans to deliver the promise, with Plan 24-30 made more detailed and easier to navigate.
What is happening
Plan 24-30 is different to other plans. It is hosted on a website so it can capture the actions of those responsible for leading and implementing change, track progress in real time, and ensure the many paths towards 2030 are aligned and reinforcing one other.
At the time, that was a difficult message to convey to an over-stretched workforce who just wanted – needed in many spaces – something familiar, easier to understand, that told them what to do.
But Plan 24-30 couldn’t be a traditional plan. Things change too often, dependencies emerge, capacity comes under challenge, and later parts of the journey only become clear once others have been completed. A PDF cannot handle that complexity or flexibility.
As an example, if this was a traditional static plan, it could not take into account the changes that may happen as part of the introduction of the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill. But as a website, Plan 24-30 and its route maps can adapt based on what happens.
Since the launch of Plan 24-30, we have continuously invited feedback to help improve the site both in design and navigation, including:
- Adding animated videos to explain different sections and make Plan 24-30 easier to use and understand where to navigate to.
- Adding new filters to the home page, to make it easier to navigate for users, based on the sector they work in, or if they’re interested to find out more.
- Adding the reports from the Independent Care Review to the downloads section, making the link between what its findings said must happen and the plan to turn these into reality.
- Editing every theme so the sections on ‘Where Scotland needs to be by 2030’ link directly to the actions in The Promise Report, to make navigation between Plan 24-30 and The Promise Report easier.
Alongside this, and throughout this year, there has been significant work ongoing to give clarity and detail to the plans. By the end of this year, this will produce route maps that outline, for as many years as is possible:
- the starting position
- the destination
- the key commitments that are underway and the milestones that must be reached to get from the starting position to the destination, along with any dependencies that are emerging as progress is made
- who is responsible for taking forward each commitment and work to reach each milestone
- how we’ll know we’re making progress.
Find out more in an update on the Plan 24-30 website.
We are supportive of the recommendation for Children’s Services Planning Partnerships to utilise the route maps.
What the report said
There needs to be more clarity around the roles of The Promise Scotland, the Independent Strategic Advisor and the Oversight Board.
What is happening
It can be confusing when trying to change a whole system with so many different parts that depend on each other to know who is responsible for what.
As the report points out, changes have already been made. The Oversight Board had a name change, and now has its own website. The Promise Scotland website has been completely redeveloped to make it much clearer how we support people to keep the promise.
To help wider confusion around roles and delivery, we have mapped out who’s responsible for what on our website— looking at promise specific organisations and roles, national organisations and roles which are accountable for keeping the promise, local organisations, and the plans and reports which back all their work up.
Find this information on our Keeping the Promise page.
The roles of the Independent Strategic Advisor, The Promise Scotland, and The Oversight Board
At its simplest, the difference between the Independent Strategic Advisor, The Promise Scotland and The Oversight Board is:
- The Independent Strategic Advisor advises on the work that needs to be done
- The Promise Scotland support those working within 'the care system' to make this change
- The Oversight Board reports on whether the work is being done, if the pace of change is fast enough and if the promise is being kept
What the report said
It is important that the Promise Story of Progress starts to show what is happening across Scotland. There also needs to be more information on what to expect on the question regarding the impact felt by the care community.
What is happening
It is vital that Scotland knows if the promise is being kept, that changes are happening, and that the impact of those changes is being felt. It would have been ideal for the Promise Story of Progress to start tracking progress earlier, to show where change is happening, and where work needs to be targeted. With our partners in the Scottish Government and COSLA, we are now working quickly and thoroughly to answer all three questions in the Promise Story of Progress.
- does the care community feel the impact of the promise being kept.
- how is Scotland doing in its progress towards keeping the promise, by updating the Promise Progress Framework.
- how are organisations doing in their work to keep the promise.
There are a number of reasons that this work didn’t start sooner. This was partnership work, and everyone had to be aligned on the right way forward. But for The Promise Scotland, as a new organisation we weren’t fully staffed until autumn 2022, with work starting in 2023, and took 18 months to fully develop the best process and method to track complex whole system change.
There were decisions on where to prioritise work, as a new team. We knew from the Independent Care Review that specific areas needed to be addressed urgently, as they were having a significant impact on the lives of children and families— such as the redesign of the Children’s Hearing System. So initial team focus went towards this.
Since the Story of Progress launched last year, the partners involved have been working to answer the three questions. In September, a new dashboard launched, to make the Promise Progress Framework easier to navigate and use.
By the end of this year, methods will be developed and updates will be published. There will also be an update to the promise Progress Framework, which brings together national data to answer how Scotland is doing.
Responsibilities around the Promise Story of Progress
COSLA, The Scottish Government and The Promise Scotland are responsible for telling the Promise Story of Progress, with each body taking on a different question.
The Scottish Government are leading on answering the question “How is Scotland doing in its progress towards keeping the promise?“ by updating the Promise Progress Framework.
COSLA are leading on answering the question “How are organisations doing in their work to keep the promise?”
The Promise Scotland are leading on answering the question “Does the care community feel the impact of the promise being kept?”
This involves working with organisations from different parts of the ‘care system’ to see if the data they already hold can help to answer the question, without placing extra burdens on the workforce in collecting data; or on children, young people, care experienced adults and families in having to share more.
We have been gathering existing information that has been collected since 2020. This will help us learn more about how the care community has experienced change so far, specially related to the promise, around:
- what’s working,
- where the gaps are, and
- how people are experiencing change.
The data collected has been mapped to the ten vision statements in the Promise Progress Framework.
The next stage will be to see how to carry out sustainable wider engagement.
What the report said
There must be better use of existing data, to fill data gaps, improve consistency of recording, and improve information sharing.
What is happening
At The Promise Scotland, we are working to find a way of doing data differently— so that everyone has the information they need to be able to keep the promise. This is about making sure that data used for decision making focuses on what children, young people, care experienced adults and their families have said matters most to them.
It is not necessarily about collecting more data, but about looking at collecting the right data.
This work is in three main parts:
- The Promise Story of Progress, using a variety of data to be able to tell if the promise is being kept. This will be updated in December.
- The Data Map, which is being developed to improve organisations’ understanding of the types of data held internally and externally, helping to fill gaps, find links, avoid duplication and save time for the workforce. This will launch in December
- The information sharing project, led by the Data for Children Collaborative, which will drive organisational change related to information sharing. This will launch in the winter.
What the report said
The Promise Scotland has led a series of outputs. It has had to be agile, detracting from its planned work and ability to demonstrate significant impact.
What is happening
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.
This means that we are uniquely positioned to advise on the policy and legal changes needed specifically to keep the promise, to be able to bring the workforce together, to solve problems which stop the promise from being kept, and to enable Scotland to plan what it needs to do and when.
This involves supporting the workforce to make the changes needed and helping Scotland to monitor progress.
You can find out what we have been working on over the last 18 months in our review here.
As the report highlights, our work supports longer term change which means tracking impact will take time. But have reviewed our monthly monitoring processes, to improve how we capture impact.
As well as being agile, there are key longer-term projects which will form a core part of our work, which will continue to 2030. This includes supporting the sector around the Plan 24-30 route maps— to make sure the journey to 2030 is known and understood, and that those who are responsible for commitments can keep them and reach the milestones along the way. This will be key in ensuring public sector reform.
The other project is the Promise Story of Progress. For reform to happen it is key that everyone working to keep the promise knows what is progressing, and what is not.
What the report said
The report asks for a clear set of protocols which set out how the Scottish Government will respond to recommendations made by the Independent Strategic Advisor, and asks how the Independent Strategic Advisor and Scottish Government will ensure their strategies on prevention are aligned.
What is happening
It is important to maintain effective, collaborative relationships and open communication with Ministers.
In the summer, the First Minister re-appointed Fiona Duncan to the role of Independent Strategic Advisor to 2030. The process included discussion on how the post needed to evolve and what is needed to drive the change demanded by the Independent Care Review.
The role has three functions: Strategy, Delivery and Relationships.
Since then, Fiona drafted an 18-month Work Programme and shared it with government, with the plan to publish it later this month - a timeframe to allow for the finding of the Audit Scotland and Accounts Commission report to be considered.
It sets out how to ensure effective engagement between herself and the First Minister, Cabinet Sub Committee, Minister, and government officials – plus all political parties, local government, and those working across all the sectors that need to operate differently for the promise to be kept.
Progress against the milestones in the Work Programme - and the insights generated - will inform Fiona’s engagement, including with the First Minister and the Cabinet Sub-Committee. Regular communication with the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise will continue on key issues, including, wherever necessary, with other Ministers.
Having a clear structure set out in the Independent Strategic Advisors’ Work Programme is intended to make sure that Fiona’s advice is considered and responded to.
In addition to providing advice on how to keep the promise to children and families who experience the care system and care experienced adults, Fiona is also focused on prevention. She works with government on issues such as a strategic investment: disinvestment approach, identifying, evidencing and quantifying how multiple government policies often affect the same groups of people - who, as a result, have to interact with multiple public service systems simultaneously. This work demonstrates how cohesive policies and pooled budgets would realise improved public services that better meet the needs of the people they are designed to serve. Taking a strategic approach to mapping policy (and system), data, scrutiny (and legislative), risk and financial relationships between provision and prevention aims to strengthen prevention and reduce the likelihood of system failure demand.