Meeting of the Parliament 06 November 2024
I welcome the news that the much-needed Promise bill will be introduced during this session of Parliament. That will be a relief to care-experienced campaigners, who have for years been calling for legislation to be strengthened to better support care-experienced people throughout their lives. The bill has been a long time coming since the launch of the care review and the publication of the Promise report, in February 2020.
There has clearly been some progress, which we should all welcome. I listened to what the minister said, but I wonder whether we are as close to keeping the Promise as we should be. We now know categorically that the first phase of the Promise has failed and that the objectives that were set in “Plan 21-24” were not met. The research report “Is Scotland Keeping the Promise?” makes it clear that Scotland is not keeping the promise that was made in 2020. Care-experienced children are still being excluded from our classrooms, which leads to those children having some of the poorest attainment levels in the country. While we continue to exclude care-experienced children from education, that will have a huge impact on their ability to reach a positive destination when they leave school.
We know that Scotland is in the grip of a housing emergency and that care-experienced people are twice as likely to experience homelessness. “Plan 21-24” stated:
“Housing pathways for care experienced young people will include a range of affordable options that are specifically tailored to their needs and preferences. Youth homelessness will be eradicated.”
We have to wonder how close we are to keeping that promise. It went on:
“Scotland must avoid the monetisation of the care of children and prevent the marketisation of care”.
That was at the centre of the Promise, as we know how greed in the care sector can lead to a race to the bottom to maximise profits for shareholders, and the impact of the huge cost of private care placements on local authority budgets. That has not ended. Can the minister outline what the plan is and when that will end?
Although the decision to stop sending under-18s to Polmont is to be warmly welcomed, we also know that there can be issues in secure care settings—for example, the reports of abuse and children facing what was described as a “serious risk to ... life” at St Mary’s Kenmure.
The importance of truly independent advocacy should not be underestimated, as it can have such an impact on the lives of care-experienced people of all ages. We know that being in care as a child can have lifelong consequences, but the Scottish Government almost always puts arbitrary age limits on the support that it offers. We need the introduction of a truly lifelong advocacy service, to build on the good work that is currently done by the helpline run by Who Cares? Scotland. That radical change would really make a difference.
The Promise Scotland, an arm’s-length company owned by the Scottish ministers, does not have any powers to hold Scotland to account on keeping the Promise. It does not seem to take responsibility for the failure of “Plan 21-24”, despite the millions of pounds of public money that have been ploughed into the organisation. Does the minister still believe that continuing to fund the organisation and the expense of consultants attached to it is the best value for the public pound, given the policy failures that have been outlined today?
We must do all that we can for care-experienced people, and we must ensure that the Scottish Government is doing everything that it can to keep the Promise. This has to be a promise made and delivered, or we have let down every care-experienced person who has put their faith in us. We have to say very clearly, in relation to that group in particular, that if we make a promise, we have to keep it.
15:56