Scottish government response to "reimagining secure care" report

11. Policy Alignment

The landscape of secure care in Scotland is informed by the UNCRC, Getting it Right for Every Child (GiRFEC) and broader care and justice reforms such as those committed to in The Promise, and the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024. Recognising and leveraging the interdependencies and synergies between these areas is crucial for developing a cohesive, effective and child-centred secure care system.

11.1 Keeping The Promise

To further support the Scottish Government’s commitment to keep The Promise, the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill was introduced to Parliament on 17 June.

The Bill aims to make changes in several key areas to improve how Scotland supports children, young people and adults who are care experienced. The content of the Bill has been informed by the recommendations of The Promise, the Government’s 2023 response to the ‘hearings for children’ report and consultations undertaken last year including the future of foster care, developing a universal definition of care experience, children’s hearings redesign and ‘moving on’ from care into adulthood.

11.2 Reducing Profit in Care

The Promise is clear that there is no place for profiting from how Scotland cares for its children and that Scotland must avoid the monetisation of the care of children and prevent the marketisation of care by 2030.

As set out in our Programme for Government, the Scottish Government will progress measures for delivering the recommendation in the Independent Care Review to reduce or remove excessive profit made from residential childcare for looked after children in Scotland. To that end, the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill includes provisions to promote financial transparency for both relevant children’s residential and foster care services.

The Bill will also strengthen the ‘not for profit’ principle by requiring independent fostering agencies in Scotland to be registered as charities. This will ensure that all surplus is reinvested into services for children and carers, and create a consistent legal and regulatory framework across the sector.

For relevant residential care services, such as children’s homes and school accommodation services, the Bill will enable Scottish Ministers to make provision by regulations to require providers of residential childcare services run by persons other than Local Authorities to publish and provide financial and other information pertaining to the operation of those services, and submit those returns to the Scottish Ministers, including in such form as set out in the regulations.

In light of that information, the Bill will also enable Scottish Ministers to introduce regulations to limit the profits of the providers of those services, in accordance with a framework to be set out in those regulations, where such profits are considered by Ministers to be excessive.

These provisions are, however, only one part of a much broader, complex package of work to strengthen children’s residential care. It will be crucial for us to give in-depth consideration of the profit issue alongside a number of heavily interlinked and complex issues such as commissioning and procurement arrangements, data collection and analysis, and workforce retention, remuneration and appropriate learning/development pathways. To achieve this, the government intends to engage with key partners through the future establishment of a stakeholder collaborative to work through these issues to ensure that the current and future needs of children who need to be looked after away from home in Scotland are fully considered. This will be critical in ensuring we take an approach that recognises and reflects the wider continuum of care for children and young people who need to be looked after away from home.

11.3 Cross Border Residential Placements

The Scottish Government made provision through the C&J Act to allow Scottish Ministers to further regulate cross-border placements into residential care in Scotland. Our intention is to ensure that placements are appropriately regulated to mitigate risk to the safety and wellbeing of each child who is placed into residential care in Scotland. We have undertaken significant engagement with a wide range of stakeholders to inform the development of a new regulatory framework. Draft regulations are due to be laid in this Parliamentary term.

Ultimately, any regulations will not – and should not – be a substitute for adequate provision for the placement of children being made available in their home nations in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The Scottish Government is clear that capacity issues and the provision of adequate care must be addressed across the UK.

11.4 Restraint in Residential Childcare

The Scottish Government, in collaboration with the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection (CELCIS) and the University of Strathclyde, plans to bring forward a piece of work in the near future which will focus on reducing restraint and directly support Scotland’s residential care workforce and potentially beyond, including secure care. This will build on work which we know has been undertaken locally in some areas, as well as under the auspices of the Promise Partnership Fund, to develop nationally consistent and available tools and resources to effectively embed reflective and relational practice as the alternative to restraint and restrictive practice, where appropriate.

11.5 Whole Family Wellbeing Funding

As part of our unwavering commitment to Keep The Promise, we are making a significant investment in transforming how families are supported across Scotland through the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) Programme. We recognise that to truly meet the needs of families, a fundamental shift in the system is required - one that focuses on supporting families’ overall wellbeing and ensures that help is available, accessible, and tailored to each family’s unique circumstances.

Crucially, this approach is about preventing families from reaching crisis by intervening early and providing the right support at the right time. The WFWF Programme is supporting this shift, and by the end of this Parliament, we will have invested over £148 million in the Programme, including £134 million directed to Children’s Services Planning Partnerships (CSPPs). This funding is helping to build local capacity and drive the transformation of family support within local communities.

11.6 Mental Health

The Scottish Government has provided just under £3.5 million in 2024-25 across the West, East and North of Scotland to support the planning and development of regional elements of the CAMHS Specification. This includes the development of a four-bed Adolescent Intensive Psychiatric Care Unit in the West of Scotland and the development of Forensic CAMHS, Forensic CAMHS into Secure Care and Intensive Home Treatment CAMHS services and regional pathways.

As part of this programme of work, the West of Scotland regional planning team have developed a regional specification supporting both the Forensic CAMHS and Forensic CAMHS to secure care pathways.

The Government is developing the National Secure Adolescent Inpatient Service for Scotland, known as “Foxgrove”. This will be a medium secure inpatient service for children and young people aged 12-18 years with appropriate forensic Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) needs.

Foxgrove, due to open late 2025, will initially provide four beds for young people who require care in an inpatient setting with medium levels of security.

These will be vital additions to children and young people’s mental health services in Scotland, providing children and young people with appropriate care and treatment in the right place at the right time.

11.7 Child and Family Mental Health Joint Strategic Board

To drive improvements forward for support for children and young people, The Child and Family Mental Health Joint Strategic Board, led by Scottish Government and COSLA, is taking a whole system approach to improving children and young people’s mental health. This includes focusing on four early priorities, which includes improving support for children and young people in crisis.

A key early priority for the Board is the exploration of a Scottish Approach to Supporting Children and Young People in Crisis.

The Framework will outline the principles of good crisis support at a local, regional and national level to support decision makers to ensure that they are providing the right support for their populations, this will include a range of sectors such as the third sector, youth work, and statutory services.

In taking forward improvements to crisis support we will ensure that our approach is trauma informed, focuses on equalities and follows a rights-based approach.

11.8 Suicide Prevention

Creating Hope Together, our joint suicide prevention strategy with COSLA, has a concerted focus on understanding and meeting the needs of people who are at higher risk of suicide. We are committed to working with key partners in the care sector, to embed and strengthen suicide prevention activity in our support for children and young people in care, as well as those in secure care, and those leaving care. We will continue to actively engage with people with care experience -including those with experience of secure care - to better understand their needs as part of this work.

Our 2024-26 delivery plan includes specific commitments to support the care experienced community, and working alongside local Promise leads, where that drives our work forward. As part of our work to improve suicide prevention in settings where we know suicide risk is higher (such as residential care settings), we are working with secure care providers to develop a suicide prevention action planning framework. This will be co-produced with organisations working in the sector.

We will also continue to work closely with children and young people affected by suicide, including those who are care experienced, through our Youth Advisory Group (YAG). This ensures our work is guided and informed by the experiences of young people who have lived experience of suicidality, or who have been bereaved by suicide. We are prioritising the YAG through our work with third sector equalities partners to deepen our understanding of the challenges they face so we can build more effective suicide prevention responses.