Keeping the Promise - health and wellbeing of care experienced children and young people: longitudinal quantitative evidence review

Introduction

This evidence review was commissioned to support work on monitoring progress towards Keeping The Promise, as part of the wider work of The Promise Data and Evidence Group. The broad aim of this evidence review was to help inform decisions about how quantitative data could be harnessed to track progress and outcomes associated with the ambitions of The Promise. It assessed the availability and usability of data that can help provide insights into the health and wellbeing of care experienced children and young people in Scotland. This included routinely collected administrative data, household surveys, and Scotland’s Census. The review identified relevant datasets, summarised key findings, and highlighted limitations to inform future analyses and policy development.

This review focused exclusively on quantitative evidence. Qualitative evidence, which provides important insights into lived experience, is outside the scope of this review and is being considered through a separate Data and Evidence Group workstream. The Promise Data and Evidence Group 12 month work programme provides more information on all workstreams, including more detail on other ongoing quantitative projects.

Research questions

The research questions guiding this review were:

1. What do longitudinal quantitative surveys and related publications tell us about the health and wellbeing of care experienced children and young people in Scotland, both in childhood and into adulthood?

2. What is the quality of the evidence base?

3. Are there key priorities for policy development in terms of the health and wellbeing of care experienced children and young people?

4. Are there gaps in the evidence base that need to be filled to support work to monitor and evaluate progress around keeping The Promise to 2030?

In the conclusion section, the review provides a summary response to each of the four guiding research questions. To support this, it draws on evidence from datasets relevant to Scotland’s care experienced population (as outlined in the next methodology section). The review also assessed the quality of the evidence base and its methodological limitations. Lastly, it examined available data on health and wellbeing outcomes, including comparisons with the general population and long-term trends.