The Scottish Government

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FOREWORD

Removing a child of any age from their parents, whether for just a brief period or with a possibility of permanence away from home, is an enormous step and places a huge responsibility on both the local authority as the corporate parent, and on the carer of the child.

The Scottish Government and local government want to strengthen and support those families which may be struggling to care for their children. In 2008, the Scottish Government will publish an Early Years strategy which will set out its proposals for ensuring that every child gets the best start in life. One of the aims of this strategy will be, over time, to reduce the number of children who need to be looked after away from home.

Nevertheless, we know that some children will continue to live away from their birth families. If this has to happen they need an alternative warm, loving, nurturing and sustained home environment. As politicians with newly-found responsibilities we have been repeatedly impressed by those who take on the responsibility for such children. Some of them have chosen the route. Others are pressed into the role by circumstance, but what they all have in common is their desire, sometimes fierce, to do the best they possibly can for the children and young people in their care. In order to do that they look to Government at a national and local level to provide them with clear direction and support. This demands that we take seriously our role as corporate parent.

The purpose of this kinship and foster care strategy is to demonstrate the commitment of the Scottish Government and local government, firstly to the children and young people concerned and secondly, to those who care for them. It takes forward the major challenges identified by the consultation exercise earlier this year and summarised at Annex B.

We aim to achieve this by developing work in two key areas:

1. Delivering a child-centred approach to kinship and foster care

Ensuring children and families receive personalised care, which meets their complex needs over time, requires a range of kinship and foster carers with skills to provide care in a flexible way. This could be a carer providing support to the child within their family home, a planned short-term break or a permanent care arrangement. There may also be many more people willing to become kinship or foster carers, if the care can be designed in a way which meets the child's needs and also the experience, skills and circumstances of the individual carer.

Children living away from home need safety, security and stability throughout childhood, and support in sustaining relationships that will continue to be significant to them as adults. We are determined to help end the drift and uncertainty that characterises the experience of too many looked after children. We share a joint view that all the plans and services for children looked after away from home should focus on achieving permanence - whether by returning to the birth parents or with permanent kinship or foster carers, or through a stable residential placement, or adoption. Our implementation programme for permanence orders will aim to reduce the number of placements experienced by a looked after child and will help provide the stability they need to thrive. This strategy does not deal directly with adoption, but is developed within the context of the implementation of the reforms contained in the Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007, which strengthens this key strand in the spectrum of care for looked after children.

We are also committed to strengthening the residential care sector. Many children move between foster and residential care - indeed many older children prefer residential care. We are confident many of the principles of this strategy will apply to the improvements which can be made in residential care - principally, the importance of providing a range of care settings for children to thrive and flourish in an environment that is safe and tailored to their needs.

2. Supporting high quality kinship and foster care

Most children in kinship and foster care receive an excellent standard of care, but the results of the consultation have confirmed that considerable improvements can be made to the current arrangements for the recruitment, training and support of carers. We think there is scope for greater mobility between various care settings; for transferring existing skills to become a foster carer, and to move from being a foster carer to other career opportunities. But the right package of support needs to be available from local authorities and other providers. National and local systems also need to be flexible to support this mobility and to ensure that all carers are valued and empowered to play a full role in designing and delivering the level and range of care which the child requires.

This strategy is ambitious. We both want to see it fully and successfully implemented. The partnership approach we are adopting represents a new style of working for the Scottish Government and local government, and reflects our shared commitment to achieve national and local priorities. We intend to consolidate and extend recent developments in kinship and foster care to achieve a transformation in the range and quality of choices and opportunities for children who need to be looked after.

This strategy sets the joint vision. We will work together in close partnership with children who are looked after away from home, their families, their kinship and foster carers, local authorities, voluntary and independent care providers and others to make that vision a reality.

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