About The Promise Oversight Board
Part of: The Promise Oversight Board
Members of The Promise Oversight Board
The members of the Promise Oversight Board bring both expertise and lived experience of care to their role checking up on the promise.
Reports and minutes
Read publications from the Promise 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 Promise Oversight Board
holds Scotland to account
by checking if
the promise is being kept.
It monitors, tracks and reports
Scotland's progress in
keeping the promise.
The Promise Oversight Board isn't part of The Promise Scotland
The Promise Oversight Board and The Promise Scotland are two separate things:
- The Promise 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 Promise Oversight Board isn’t: it has no staff, and has no legal status. 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 needs to do by 2024 to #KeepThePromise.
It outlines 25 actions which people and organisations need to take for the promise to be kept. Together, these make up a programme of change.
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 Promise 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 Promise 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.
It reports publically 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.
But it's kept up to date through the Feedback Loop
To check if Scotland’s doing enough to #KeepThePromise, The Promise Oversight Board will use the Feedback Loop.
This is being developed by The Promise Scotland, and it’s centered on what matters to children and families. It will bring together:
- the work organisations across Scotland are doing to #KeepThePromise,
- the work organisations across Scotland need to do to #KeepThePromise,
- the work The Promise Scotland is doing to support these organisations , and
- how changes in Scotland impact all of this work. For example, the coronavirus pandemic has affected what organisations have managed to do to #KeepThePromise. It’s also affected what needs to happen in order for it to be kept.