Plan to implement Independent Care Review findings expected by end of year

A plan to implement the findings of the Independent Care Review (ICR) will be created before the end of the year, chair Fiona Duncan has announced.

Speaking at Holyrood’s event, KeepThePromise: Transformational Change for Care-Experienced Children and Young People, Duncan set out the next steps for implementing the findings of the ICR, with a plan expected to be drawn up by the end of December and put before an oversight board - named the The Promise - made up primarily of care experienced people, by January for approval.

Established as a ‘radical blueprint’ for improving the lives of care-experienced children and young people in Scotland, the ICR took in the views of 5,500 people from across the care system, including 2,500 children and young people with lived experience in care.

It then published six reports, with 80 specific changes to “transform how Scotland cares for children and families”.

As part of the process of implementing the recommendations, Duncan outlined plans for The Promise to hold a series of webinars with different partners over the course of October, alongside the publication of a new document setting out priorities for implementing the 80 calls to action.

She said: “There will be a very intense period of engagement over the coming months with all of the people who made a commitment to keep the promise, and some of the people who didn’t make a commitment to keep the promise but do have to change shape to keep the promise, in order to figure out what their role and responsibility is.”

In October and November, Duncan said, The Promise will start working alongside organisations to create their change plans, before consolidating the discussions into an overall plan to implement the ICR’s recommendations. 

Recruitment is underway for oversight board The Promise, she said, which should be finalised by December. The proposal will then be put before it for approval by January next year.

Speaking via video link, she said: “There has to be a point that Scotland stops asking questions of some of the children and young people, and families, that have suffered the greatest level of adversity and trauma in their lives in order to understand how Scotland can get better. It’s time for action now.”

She added: “People ask me what The Promise Plan looks like, and the best analogy I can make is that the thing we call a care system, which is not a care system, is made up of an awful lot of moving parts, and some of those moving parts need to change shape. Some of those moving parts are in the wrong place and some of those moving parts are not complete because they don’t have the voice of the care community at their heart. So those parts have all got to understand their role and their responsibilities, many of them have got to change shape and then they have all got to come together as a big jigsaw puzzle to create a different picture of what good looks like for Scotland’s children and young people.”