Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP) is committed to keeping our promise to Glasgow’s children.  The Promise, or Pinky Promise for young children, is Scotland’s plan for changing and revamping the care system to ensure our children and young people grow up loved, safe and respected.

In 2016, the Scottish Government announced a review of the care system in Scotland. Over the next three years, the Independent Care Review Team heard from over 5,500 care experienced children and young people, adults and professionals working in the care system to get their views on the care system. In February 2020, the team produced a report called ‘The Promise,’ which set out what needs to change in the care system to ensure children and young people grow up loved, safe and respected. All of Scotland’s political parties pledged to #KeepThePromise to Scotland’s Children.

The Promise, written in a plain child-friendly language, has five key foundations:

• Voice – children must be listened to and involved in decision-making about their care, with all those involved properly listening and respond to what they want and need
• Family – where children are safe in their families and feel loved, they must stay together and families given support to nurture that love and overcome difficulties which get in the way
• Care – where living with the family isn’t possible, children must stay with their brothers and sisters where safe to do so and belong to a loving home staying there for as long as needed
• People – the children that Scotland cares for must be actively supported to develop relationships with people in the workforce and wider community, who in turn must be supported to listen and be compassion in their decision-making and care and
• Scaffolding – children, families and the workforce must be supported by a system that’s there when it’s needed. The scaffolding of help, support and accountability must be ready and response when it’s required.

Our HSCP welcomed The Promise as this aligned with the transformational work that we’ve already been doing as part of Glasgow’s Family Support Strategy to improve how we look after Glasgow’s children and young people. It gave us the chance to evaluate what we’d been doing, to figure out what we’re doing well, what wasn’t working and what we needed to change. Using the principles of The Promise and the results of our self-evaluation, we pulled together ‘Glasgow’s Promise’, which is our plan for how we, in Glasgow, will implement The Promise. We’ve identified 100 actions that will help us meet it.  But we aren’t just doing this ourselves, we have a multi-agency approach and everyone involved (Police, Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration, third sector organisations etc) have committed to implement Glasgow’s Promise. 

We’ve set up a Care Experienced Board who will meet regularly to oversee how we’re implementing Glasgow’s Promise.  The Board has identified a number of ‘Promise Keepers’ and they have a number of allocated ‘actions’ to take forward as part of Glasgow’s Promise. This follows feedback from the children and young people who wanted names of individuals so that we can hold people to account and track progress. The Promise Keepers will work to ensure that the 100 actions we identified are implemented.

We have identified three key actions, in addition to those in Glasgow’s Promise, that will help us with the engagement, development and participation of children, young people and their families to contribute to our vision:

• we’re going to recruit three Participation Workers and they’ll work with the young people to consult with them on our progress and what we need to do. We’ll encourage anyone with care experience in their family to apply for these posts
• we’re creating a website, glasgowpromise.org.uk, where anyone can go to find out more about our promises. We’ve involved children and young people to help create this website and
• develop a child / young person friendly version of Glasgow’s Promise.

We’re also looking at how we can use social media to get our message across but also communicate with those who are care experienced (both current and previously).

Mike Burns, our HSCP’s Assistant Chief Officer for Children’s Services, said: “our collective integrated Children’s workforce is fully committed and determined to #KeepThePromise. This is completely aligned to our learning and our experience around meeting the needs for our children and young people in Glasgow. It not only gives us the permissions to change the way we support families, but more importantly challenges us to secure better outcomes and positive destinations for all. The aspirations in the Promise around early help and prevention are fundamental to our Family Support Strategy and our desire to ensure that the city cares for all our families. The Promise must act as a radical lever for change ”.

We’ll keep you updated on how we progress with Glasgow’s Promise.