FOI Request - Spend on The Promise Scotland
Request 101003201904
Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Scotland 2002, I am requesting the following information:-
1. Details of how much your authority has spent on delivering The Promise to those with care in each year since the inception of The Promise Scotland.
2. Detail what the money has been spent on.
3. What tangible results have been delivered for the care experienced community.
Response 24-01-2023
Update 27/01/2023 with further information:
1. Moray Council is committed to implementing the system wide changes outlined in the Promise. This requires a time and resource commitment from all council departments. The current annual Moray Council budget is £258,473,452 , of which £18,150,368 relates to Children’s Services. The following additional funding has been successfully secured to deliver specific improvements in relation to the delivery of the Promise:
CORRA- £50k of funding over one year. It has been used to recruit a Promise Project Lead and a Promise Engagement Officer. Reporting to the Moray Council GIRFEC and Promise Lead Officer, these posts are dedicated to facilitating the implementation of the Promise across the Children's Services Partnership.
Scottish Attainment Challenge - £151,900 to support improved educational outcomes for looked after and care experienced learners.
Scottish Attainment Challenge Funding has also been used to run a participatory budgeting session for looked after and care experienced children whereby they identified how funding should be allocated to them individually to overcome barriers to engagement with Education and community life
Moray Council is a partner in a successful CORRA bid, led by the NHS. The purpose of this £100k funding allocation is to support the design of intensive family support. It used to fund a part-time post to coordinate the development of Intensive Family Support using a blended approach of Quality Improvement methodology and Service Design. This funding is also being used to purchase specific specialist support to aid the development of this work.
Ringfenced funding within Sports and Leisure Services to overcome barriers care experienced and looked after children face when trying to access sports and leisure activities.
In addition, Education department have allocated funding for the recruitment of a Virtual Head Teacher who has dedicated responsibility for looked after and care experienced children of school age. This post is currently being advertised.
Since the inception of The Promise Scotland, the housing service have spent 22k every year.
2. As above; for housing, the money is spent on Out of Hours housing support to enable young care leavers to move direct from care into their own accommodation.
3. The work which has been undertaken has delivered a number of improvements, some of which are more difficult to quantify at this stage. They are the core foundations on which we will build success e.g. increased awareness and understanding of the Promise, improvement in language, a range of practice and process improvement initiatives and redesign of delivery of services. The more specific tangible results include:-
- Increase in the number of children looked after at home
- Reduction of incidents of restraint in residential children's homes
- Reduction in the number of placement move
- Improvement in diversion of care experienced young people from entering the criminal justice system
- Very active Champions Board who are shaping services and influencing service design and practice
- Better Meetings Project. A project whereby children and young people have identified how their meetings can be improved and are working with those responsible for their meetings to design and deliver improvements. This work has been recognised at a national level and findings are being used to shape the redesign of the Children's Hearing System
- 74 looked after and care experienced children engaged with and benefited from a participatory budgeting exercise. Young people identified what they needed individually to overcome barriers to engagement with Education and community life. Funding was allocated to them accordingly from existing council funding
- the Scatter Flat Initiative for Care Leavers project has had tangible success with a number of care leavers moving from care to independent living in their own tenancies.
1.& 2. Moray Council is committed to implementing the system wide changes outlined in the Promise. This requires a time and resource commitment from all council departments. The current annual Moray Council budget is £258,473,452 , of which £18,150,368 relates to Children’s Services.
The following additional funding has been successfully secured to deliver specific improvements in relation to the delivery of the Promise:
Corra - £50k of funding over one year for 2 part time posts to support the implementation of the Promise
Scottish Attainment Challenge - £151,900 to support improved educational outcomes for looked after and care experienced learners.
In addition, Moray Council is a partner in a successful CORRA bid, led by the NHS. The purpose of this £100k funding allocation is to support the design of intensive family support.
3. Moray Council is committed to implementing the recommendations of the Promise and this requires all departments to focus their existing resources to achieve this. We will continue to apply for additional funding to progress specific areas of improvement.