New care review plan ‘guiding light for next three years’

A route map towards implementing the recommendations from the Independent Care Review has been published outlining priorities for the next three years.

Thousands of people who were in care shared testimony with the review.

Its conclusions found that vast and urgent change was needed within the care sector.

The new plan, called Keep The Promise, will be split into three separate documents, with each covering a three-year period.

Plan 21-24 focuses on the period from April 1, 2021 until March 31, 2024. It provides key priorities and areas of focus under which organisations will work to achieve the required change over the next three years.

The five priorities will be A Good Childhood, which will focus on services such as family therapy and education, and Whole Family Support, which will look at both peer and community integration as well as better integrated services.

Supporting The Workforce will help organisations deal with those who may have care-related trauma. Planning will insure a national strategic plan is in place. And Building Capacity will work on things such as the redesign of the Children’s Hearings system.

Fiona Duncan, chair of The Promise Scotland, said: “Thousands of children, young people and families with experience of the ‘care system’ told the Care Review their story, often sharing intimate and traumatic parts of their life, in the knowledge that their world may not change as a result, but that life could be different for generations to come.

“These stories shaped the entire Independent Care Review and its conclusions. These stories inspired Scotland to #KeepThePromise.

“Plan 21-24 is Scotland’s route map and guiding light for the next three years. It details the first phase of change towards building a country that cares, with services that work to meet the needs of children and families, when and where they are needed.

“And if Scotland lives up to its commitment, and ‘where children are safe in their families and feel loved they stay – and families are given support together to nurture that love and overcome the difficulties which get in the way’, then those to whom The Promise is kept will know only care and compassion, not a ‘care system’ – but may never know that transformation was powered by the generosity and selflessness of all those who gave their stories in hope of change for people they may never meet.”