Scottish Ministers have published ‘Caring for our children and young people: An update on Scotland's Corporate Parenting 2018-21’, detailing how Scotland’s corporate parents have delivered on their duties to support children and young people with care experience.
Putting this second national report on corporate parenting before the Scottish Parliament in line with their duties under Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, the Scottish Government provides an overview of corporate parents’ activities over the last three years. The report aims to become a useful learning resource for corporate parents and it:
- includes the Scottish Government’s activities, and the activities of local authorities, universities, colleges, health boards, and national bodies;
- considers the factors that enabled and inhibited organisations in advancing their corporate parenting activities, before setting out what corporate parents view as their future priorities into 2021-2024;
- assesses the impact of Scotland’s corporate parenting activities on our care experienced children and young people, using nationally available statistical indicators to do so; and
- concludes by considering the key learning from this review of the 2018-21 corporate parenting activities and setting out some key areas for future development and improvement as we continuously seek to better support care experienced children and young people.
The reporting period covers the COVID-19 pandemic which has impacted on all aspects of society, including the public bodies, agencies and services who are the corporate parents of Scotland’s children and young people.
Alongside the report is a review of corporate parenting plans has been published analysing how the plans (a specific requirement of the Act) of 85 different corporate parents have been created and developed. This is intended to also identify areas for improvement that corporate parents can learn from when developing and drafting future plans, by highlighting ‘Learning Points’ and ‘Spotlights’ that extract a selection of the good practice examples.
