Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 30 March 2022
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, as I am a serving councillor on East Lothian Council.
I also mention that I might need to leave before the end of the debate, Presiding Officer. I think that I sent you an email about that.
I am delighted to see the publication of the keeping the Promise implementation plan, which will help us to meet the challenges that care-experienced young people face. It is great to see that the Scottish Government remains committed to keeping the Promise, and it is great to see the cross-party support for it. As has been mentioned, the implementation plan is all about creating a system that places love and relationships at the centre of the lives of every child and family who need support.
Last week, I attended a parliamentary reception for STAF—the Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum—which was hosted by Paul O’Kane. It was a fantastic event at which we heard from people in the sector, care givers, those with lived experience and the Deputy First Minister. The passion about getting this right was clear among everyone.
The Scottish Government has shown that supporting care-experienced young people is a top priority. One example of that is the care-experienced students bursary, which provides a higher rate of student support funding that is being made available to care-experienced students in higher and further education. I will touch on that again later.
It is clear that all our ambition is to support care-experienced young people from the start, through their most formative years and beyond.
I want to talk about an experience that I had with an organisation called inclusion in East Lothian education, which was set up by parents whose kids have been excluded from school on a long-term basis. Some of those kids—in fact, quite a large majority of them—end up in the care system. I asked members of the group what the best help for them would be, and they all said family support. Family support is, of course, one of the five main priority areas for the Promise.
I am delighted to hear of the introduction of the new whole family wellbeing fund. It will provide funding of at least £500 million over this parliamentary session, which will enable the building of universal holistic support services that will be available to children across Scotland. Such services need to be designed locally, with clear input from carers, and, if they can, they should prevent young people from entering care in the first place. The recently announced Scottish attainment challenge framework states that each local authority should, as one of its objectives, support investment in services for care-experienced children. Local design of services must be multi-agency, with input from those with experience of care.
The whole family wellbeing fund will help to reduce the number of children and young people who are living away from their families, which will help to reduce the need for crisis intervention and will contribute to improving people’s lives across a wide range of areas—including, but not limited to, child and adolescent mental health, child poverty, alcohol and drug misuse and educational attainment.
The programme for government included the introduction of a new care experience grant, providing a £200 annual payment over 10 years to young people with experience of care.
The introduction of the bairns’ hoose model, which is a child-friendly environment that provides trauma-informed recovery, by 2025 is also very welcome. That is a key initiative. The key aim of the model, as we know, is to reduce the number of times that children have to recount their experiences to different professionals. When I spoke to the parents from the inclusion in East Lothian education group, they raised that issue with regard to some of their kids. Obviously, it is great to see that Scotland is modelling that on initiatives in Nordic countries.
We all recognise that children and young people with care experience have poorer outcomes and they often need additional support for employment opportunities. The care-experienced children and young people fund of £11.5 million to support the educational development of care-experienced children and young people up to the age of 26 provides help to local authorities.
The young persons guarantee aims to ensure that each person aged between 16 and 24 has the opportunity for a job, an apprenticeship, a place in further or higher education or on a training programme, or a volunteering place.
Four minutes is a short period in which to talk about such an important issue. The Scottish Government’s wraparound approach is informed by those at the centre of services. It is important that the Government remains committed to driving forward the transformational change that is required to make Scotland the best place to grow up in, where all children are loved, safe and respected and can realise their full potential.
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