The Scottish Government

FM speech to Barnardos Annual Conference

I'm very pleased to be invited to speak to you at this landmark conference.

This is a real celebration for Barnardos - and I'm glad to be part of that.

I remember in 2000 when I was Education Minister saying at your Conference that "I had always personally admired the excellent work done by Barnardos in helping vulnerable children and young people". Then, my comments were based on instinct and observation from a distance.

Having worked more closely with you since then, and seen at first hand the impact you make, my admiration for Barnardos is even stronger today.

Values and progress

I believe that every single child should be given the chance to achieve their full potential - wherever they live in Scotland, whatever their background. Many will need a helping hand along the way. Many will have real problems. But if they need a second or even a third chance, I passionately believe that they should get that too.

Improving the social conditions and life chances of Scotland's children must be at the heart of government policy.

Six years into devolution, we have made progress:

• Child poverty has been dramatically reduced as we work towards our historic aim of ending child poverty
• We have more new and refurbished schools and standards in those schools are up year on year.
• Sure Start Scotland, is providing more support for parents and children in our more deprived communities and groups; and
• Healthy eating initiatives are changing diets and the habits which harmed the health of previous generations

In addition, we are embarked on major reforms of child protection, of how we deliver children's services and of our children's hearings system. We have a new policy direction and new laws to protect all our children.

Children may not have votes, or the loudest voices, but our obligation to them is all the greater because of that.

We have made progress but we have a long way to go. In modern, devolved Scotland we must hold no child back, but I am also clear that we will leave no child behind either.

What you are going to say

I want to say 3 things to you here today:

• I want us to celebrate this occasion. To celebrate the work you do in Barnardos. It is truly a great organisation.
• Second, I believe that the voluntary sector, like Barnardos, have to play an even bigger role in the provision of services for our most vulnerable children and families.
• And finally, I want to return to the issue of the educational standards of children in care

100 years on

When Thomas Barnardo opened his first home for boys on Stepney Causeway, he was providing a safety net for kids because there was nothing else. His vision was to leave no child behind either.

100 years ago - long before local authorities and other agencies even came into being - Barnardos was doing its bit to ensure that thousands of vulnerable young people didn't fall into destitution.

100 years ago, the health of our poor was dreadful.

Diseases like tuberculosis and rickets were widespread - and poor health, slum housing and a poor diet were a daily reality for many of those living in our poorest slums.

By 1905, when Dr Barnardo died, the worst horrors of child labour had been eliminated - legislation had put an end to the cruelty of children of 7 and 8 working on coal faces or in factories for 14 hours a day.

However, poverty levels remained high, and children were still being orphaned.

Without Barnardos, young children would have had to sleep on the streets and beg for their survival - conditions that seem inhumane to us now. But Thomas Barnardo didn't blame the kids, and he realised the importance of stability and education to help change lives.

Of course, today we live in a richer, and a supposedly more enlightened, society.

We don't have the same destitution of a Victorian London or even a Victorian Edinburgh or Glasgow. We don't have the same slums, the same disease or the dangerous workhouses that could maim young people for life before they even reached their teens.

We've come a long way.

100 years ago, 12 out of every 100 babies were born dead, while today, a baby's chances of survival are 60 times better;

100 years ago, Scottish children left school at 13 and often had to work long hours too - now, of course, all our children receive full time education until they are 16.

There's no doubt we've come a long way in building much stronger foundations for children today, and for future generations, to enable them to live happy and healthy lives and to fulfil their ambitions and aspirations.

With devolution our unemployment levels are at a historic low, and we are making solid progress in turning around historic and deeply embedded problems and inequalities.

But, we still have our problems, and our injustices.

It is a sad fact that many of our children and young people are still at risk from harm.

Drugs and alcohol blight lives, and modern innovations like the internet and mobile phones are being used to exploit young people.

We live in an increasingly materialistic and competitive society - and this itself can create pressures which impact on emotional wellbeing and mental health.

So we need to be there, to be flexible, to understand. We need to ensure that young people do not have their whole lives ruined because of the mistakes of their parents, of the state, or even mistakes they make themselves.

Voluntary sector

100 years ago, homeless and orphaned children relied on charity.

Charities were the mainstay of supporting children in need.

But that role then passed to the statutory sector as part of the welfare state developed.

Now this is changing again.

We are moving away from a reliance on state delivery towards a much more flexible model of provision.

And, within that model, the voluntary sector has got a big role to play.

It's the job of local authorities to co-ordinate services locally - to set the strategic overview. But, to actually deliver those services, they need a strong and dynamic voluntary sector that is able provide those services in innovative and creative ways.

I want to see the balance continue to shift. I want the voluntary sector to take more responsibility for the delivery of services for vulnerable children with the local authority taking more responsibility for the strategic over view of these services

The Scottish voluntary sector has proved time and again that it can respond quickly to new risks and threats and that it can provide high quality, imaginative and flexible public services.

In Scotland we are lucky enough to be blessed with a large charitable sector and a strong tradition of volunteering.

The work of government has always been supplemented by our voluntary sector.

And I believe this can be a powerful coalition - much more powerful than government on its own - in taking care of, and transforming the lives of, our vulnerable young people and many others.

Charities like Barnardos help build community life, they create opportunities - and they deliver vital public services, to some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

The strength of charities and volunteering is not just that they work for the benefit of others or that they give up their time for free - their strength lies in the ethos and the values they enshrine.

In the case of Barnados, those values have held good for over 100 years.

Our challenge is to imbed those values in all we do and have every one delivering.

All doing your bit to deliver a seamless journey for our looked after children. From childhood - to adolescence - to confident adult.

I am not complacent about how difficult this can be, but I am determined to do all we can to make it happen.

Education and looked after children

The focus should and will always be on delivering the best possible outcomes for looked after children.

But, at the moment, there can be no doubt that those outcomes are not good enough and we need to do significantly better .

Almost 12,000 of our under 18s are in some form of care but we know that:

• ·too many are reaching adulthood without going into further or higher education, training or work.
• too many - almost a quarter - aren't receiving aftercare support from councils after they leave care; and that
• far too many - almost one in six - end up experiencing a period of homelessness after they leave care

In modern, devolved Scotland we just can't accept the low attainment and the significantly poorer outcomes that we see time and again in young people leaving care.

We have a particular obligation to those children and young people leaving care as they are particularly vulnerable.

They often have limited control over that transition, and the world seems confusing to them.

We have to do more to bridge that gap.

We have to do much, much more to stop our children from entering into a cycle of poverty and despair.

But, as you know, this is not a new problem.

It is four years since we first identified these problems in our Learning with Care report in 2001- and, since then, we've set a clear direction and provided new regulations for local authorities to help them prepare our looked after youngsters for adulthood.

We've backed this up with the highest levels ever of investment.

Over the last four years our focus on improving the outcomes for looked after children has not lessened.

But, not only have we not seen the full results we'd like, we aren't even getting close and this simply is not acceptable.

We need to significantly gear up our actions, we need to try new approaches, we need to see more innovation and more local commitment to break out of the cycle of where we are.

And we cannot afford to wait, because if we wait another four years, then children who are 12 years old today, will be in the same situation as 16 years old leaving care are today - and that is not acceptable.

I know the Education Minister, Peter Peacock, has been in discussion with Hugh MacKintosh about helping bring the insights and experience Barnardos has in working with looked after children into how we develop policy and action to improve educational outcomes for this group of young people.

We will also be seeking the views of foster parents and looked after children themselves about radically gearing up our actions.

We will be bringing into the Executive new expertise to help us drive forward this agenda with our local authorities.

But I need our local authorities to do more and I am looking for a commitment from each and every one of our local political leaders to make sure this issue gets more and more high level attention.

And we are prepared to back good ideas and new approaches.

Peter Peacock wrote to local authorities at the end of last year about the issues and stressing the need to be aspirational for these young people.

We committed new funding for a two year pilot programme of educational support, making available another £6million pounds.

Only 18 of our 32 local authorities even applied - that of itself seems incredible, given the scale of the problems facing this group.

Of that 18 only seven were approved, and I am determined to press council leaders and others to make sure the education of looked after children is taken as seriously as most parents take the education of their own children. Children in care need to be treated as part of our family.

Conclusions

As politicians, we can provide the vision and the direction - as well as the funding and resources - but it is you on the ground who have to make things happen.

Organisations have to abandon artificial barriers and work together to deliver the services that those vulnerable youngsters need.

Everyone in the chain has got a job to do - whether it is the GP or the housing officer, the voluntary organisation or the local authority, the individual or the social worker.

We must all work together and shoulder the responsibility of taking care of these young Scots.

But, I believe passionately and absolutely that we should keep putting our youngsters first.

Every young person in Scotland deserves to be given a chance.

A chance at school, and a chance to stay on at school and go to college or university. A chance to be entrepreneurs or a chance to train for a modern apprenticeship. A chance just to enjoy the things that are now available to every other youngster in Scotland.

And, yes, a second chance or a third chance if they need it too.

We have to encourage all young Scots - whatever their background - to have ambitions, to nurture those ambitions in their hearts and in their heads and really believe that they have got a chance to achieve them.

No young Scot should think that they are 'born to fail'.

Providing more chances and raising aspirations is often easier said than done.

There are children in Scotland for whom it is much harder to fulfil ambitions.

But there is no young person who cannot be helped, no young person who is beyond our reach, no young person who cannot be helped grow into a happy, successful adult.

For well over 100 years, Barnardos has been inspiration for us all.

Time and again you have shown that you can act to help those youngsters in our society who have been let down by the adults in their lives. That you can pick them up, and give them hope of a better life.

We have heard testament to what Barnardos can do just a few minutes ago.

But, as we look to the next 100 years, we all have to ensure that every child has a sure start and has a chance to meet raised aspirations.

To ensure too that no child is left to live in poverty or is denied the love and respect that all need and deserve.

Congratulations. Thank you. And good luck