Forward to the Future: what Scotland must do to sustain the relationships that matter
This week is Care Experienced Week. A week to celebrate Scotland's care experienced community and recognise the contribution it continues makes to Scotland. On Who Cares? Scotland’s website, you can learn more about this year’s theme ‘Forward to the Future’, which focuses on where the community is now and the future that lies ahead. It’s a theme that feels particularly relevant as I travel around Scotland.
In 2020, thanks to the care community, Scotland made a promise, not simply to improve what exists, but to make all the changes necessary so that everyone grows up loved, safe and respected.
Six years on, Scotland remains committed to keeping the promise.
Visiting local areas across Scotland
Over the past couple of months, I have been visiting local areas across Scotland, meeting babies, infants, children, young people, care experienced adults and families of all types, as well as the people working alongside them. I am enormously grateful to everyone who has given their time, shared their experiences and helped me understand what has changed, what is working and what still needs to happen. It will be their experiences and outcomes that will tell Scotland when the promise has been kept.
This week, I published my second report from these visits. It builds on my first report published earlier this month.
Scotland has made so much progress that must be recognised and valued. With changes that are making a real difference to people's lives, with members of the workforce determined to provide the care and support they know is needed, and leaders who are working hard to create the conditions for them to do so.
But there is also some way to go, and I am hearing about the difficulties that persist— despite considerable commitment and effort.
Strong relationships: essential to keeping the promise
Relationships are central to this.
Children, families and care experienced adults need people they can trust and rely on: support that doesn’t disappear because funding ends, or someone moves house, or a contract passes from one organisation to another, or a worker changes job.
When those things do happen, they can mean the loss of a trusted relationship, having to explain difficult experiences all over again, or being left without the support needed. It is not realistic to expect relationships to provide continuity and security if the arrangements around them are uncertain, and/or disrupted.
Strong relationships between organisations are essential to keeping the promise, enabling people to work across boundaries, make decisions together and use their collective powers and resources to provide the care and support people need.
But very often where a difficulty is experienced is not necessarily where it can be resolved.
- Some barriers can and must be addressed locally, using powers and flexibility that already exist.
- Others require organisations to make decisions together.
- Some arise from the way national policy, legislation, funding, accountability and scrutiny are organised.
Good intentions often mean that people try and find ways around difficulties, or short-term fixes— rather than removing what causes them, risking that deep-rooted barriers will persist.
So often, people have described the lengths they have gone to in order to provide the care and support they know is needed, working around arrangements they do not have the authority or power to change. The commitment of the workforce is invaluable, but is not enough to compensate for arrangements that are not fit for purpose.
Decisions taken in one part of the system have consequences elsewhere, often for people who have no say in those decisions. And progress within individual organisations does not necessarily mean that things are getting better for the people they exist to serve.
The solutions that Scotland devise must address the causes of difficulties, not just their consequences.
This is where the Promise Story of Progress is helpful, as it makes the experiences and outcomes of children, families and care experienced adults central to understanding whether change is working.
Reporting on my visits, and what I find
My first report reflected on the importance of coherent local plans, shared responsibility and relationships. This second report examines more closely why barriers persist, where responsibility for resolving them sits, and what needs to happen locally and nationally.
As I am now halfway through my visits to Scotland's 32 local authority areas, there are two further reports to come.
As I continue my visits, I am testing what I hear against experiences elsewhere and what is already known. And examining possible solutions, including where existing powers and flexibility could be used differently, and where changes to national arrangements are needed.
My next two reports will build on this and become increasingly more specific about what needs to change, who has the responsibility and authority to act, and how those changes can be achieved and sustained.
My role is to use this learning to develop advice that helps those responsible for keeping the promise make the changes needed. That advice must be informed by an understanding of what is possible, what is preventing progress and what would enable different decisions to be made.
The four reports from my visits follow a cycle of learning, insight and impact. What I learn must build on what is already known, help develop solutions and inform advice to those with the responsibility and authority to act. What changes as a result must then inform further learning.
Which brings me back to Care Experienced Week and Forward to the Future.
The promise was not a commitment to try harder within the arrangements Scotland already had. It was a commitment to make the changes necessary so that babies, infants, children, young people, families and care experienced adults could rely on the care and support they were promised.
Keeping it requires us to understand what is preventing that from happening, and to find ways of changing the arrangements that stand in the way.
2030 is the deadline for achieving those changes, not the end of Scotland's responsibility to sustain them.
The future Scotland promised depends on the decisions we make now.
You can read Local Area Visits: Learning at the Halfway Point on The Promise Scotland website. I will also continue sharing reflections from my visits through short videos on LinkedIn and The Promise Scotland's other social media channels.
About the author
Fiona Duncan
Independent Strategic Advisor - the promise
Fiona Duncan is the Independent Strategic Advisor - the promise, and advises Scottish Ministers in this capacity.