Financial Transparency and Profit Limitation in Children's Residential Care: business and regulatory impact assessment

Section 2: Engagement

2.1 Purpose of Engagement

The Scottish Government will consult for-profit residential childcare services, not-for-profit services and local authorities in relation to the Bill provisions and, subject to Parliament’s agreement, their future implementation with due consideration and care.

In depth consideration of profit alongside a number of interlinked issues will be crucial - including commissioning frameworks, workforce recruitment, retention and learning and development, as well as forecasting future needs of children and young people to respond to future demand. A programme of engagement is planned to supplement public consultation.

2.2 Internal SG engagement/ engagement with wider Public Sector

We will be engaging on an ongoing basis with:

• Social Work Scotland Residential Subgroup
• The Office of the Chief Social Work Advisor
• The Resilience Division
• The Public Service Reform Team
• The Children and Young People’s Mental Health Division
• Business Relationship Division
• The Adult Social Care Fair Work and Pay Team

2.3 UK/ Devolved Administrations

There are regular and ongoing meetings with UK and Welsh Government colleagues. These have been invaluable in learning more about their provisions and any impacts. Learning from these conversations is informing the Scottish Government approach.

2.4 External stakeholders to be engaged:

• Private and not-for-profit providers of residential childcare
• The Promise Scotland
• Who Cares? Scotland
• COSLA
• Social Work Scotland
• CELCIS
• Members of the National Leadership Group for Children and Families - this group comprises of senior leaders from national and local government, children’s social work services, health, learning, justice, the third sector and other partners. They aim to identify opportunities for better join up of major transformational change programmes, identify and address implementation gaps and make the best use of national and local resources to avoid overlaps and duplication.
• Trade Unions
• Scotland Excel

2.5 Engagement required to gain information on pricing

The Scottish Government is continuing work to examine the Scotland Excel framework and fees in more detail as we know, from engagement with local authorities, that the prices charged on the face of the framework often do not reflect the final costs of a placement charged to local authorities. We are also working to understand the amounts local authorities have been paying for placements in order to analyse this alongside charging data, with a view to understanding the nature of “profit” across children’s care home services and school care accommodation services in Scotland.

2.6 Business / Third Sector engagement

There will need to be engagement with private and not-for-profit providers of residential care. This will take the form of ongoing meetings, workshops, and a formal consultation on Citizen Space.

2.7 Public consultation

This partial BRIA is being published alongside a public consultation on the bill’s financial transparency provisions on Citizen Space.