Participation

The importance of planning participation: developing a statutory definition of care experience

July 31, 2024 by Digital Engagement Team No Comments | Category Children & young people, consultation, Our work

The Digital Engagement Team were lucky enough to catch up with Sean from Keeping the Promise on the importance of planning when it comes to public participation. 

Sean shared how he is planning the upcoming consultation on the term “care experienced” and connecting with other teams to co-ordinate consultations around similar topics.  

We often showcase the outcomes of public engagement activities on our blog but in this post we will show you where the work begins. 

Read on to find out what Sean had to say! 

The idea for the consultation 

Scotland’s promise to children and young people who have experienced the care system is that they will grow up loved, safe, and respected. For over three years, the Independent Care Review listened to care experienced children, young people, and families. It told us what we must do to make sure our most vulnerable children feel loved and have the childhood they deserve.  

The voice of those with care experience was at the heart of the Independent Care Review and shaped the recommendations set out in The Promise. It is so important that these voices tell us how to move forward. This is why we are planning more engagement through consultations and events to continue listening and using these voices to develop policy that keeps the Promise. 

Children and young people taking part in the Independent care review said they wanted a clear definition of “care experienced”. The Promise tells us that care experience is a term that has special meaning to those who identify with it. However, it is not a legal term and there is not a universally understood definition. 

As well as giving people a feeling of identity there are existing supports, rights and entitlements available to people with care experience, particularly care experienced young people. However, at the moment there isn’t one cross sector definition which is commonly understood and captures all of care experience. 

The planning process 

We identified early in the planning process that across our Directorate, there are a number of public consultations and engagements planned over the next few months. We knew that there’s going to be crossovers between each of the areas to be consulted on and by bringing these closer together it would help build the understanding of how these consultations work together and avoid tiring people out by asking the same questions to the same people. 

While each consultation will need to follow the legal process, we can connect the development and engagement around each. 

Here’s a list of the consultations that have launched or are planned over the remainder of the year to look out for: 

• Moving on: support for care leavers: opened on 11 July 

• Children’s hearings redesign: opened on 26 July 

• Developing a statutory definition of care experience: planned launch in September 2024 

• The future of foster care: planned launch in Autumn 2024 

To be able to work together and stay on top of all the different pieces of work we formed a Consultations Lead Group, which meets fortnightly, to coordinate planning and delivery activities across all 4 of the upcoming consultations.  

Key considerations for our consultations 

• commissioning a programme of engagement through the Children and Young People Participation (CYPP) Framework: The CYPP Framework was developed as part of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) implementation programme to respond to the growing need for children and young people’s participation in decision-making and policy development. The Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise, Natalie Don, has encouraged the need to ensure that the reach is a broad and diverse as possible and the Participation Framework will help us achieve this by linking organisations who have networks of care experienced people across Scotland and to build as big a reach as possible.  Learn more about the Children and Young People Participation Framework Agreement. 

• hosting traditional SG Open Public Engagement Events and Stakeholder Events: A calendar of public and stakeholder engagement events is being developed by our consultation leads. This will  help us collaborate between the consultations and to facilitate events and identify ways to make engagement with stakeholders across consultations/topics more efficient. 

• considering funding organisations to facilitate bespoke events/activities: We might want to engage with organisations outside the CYPP Framework, to facilitate bespoke events or activities associated with an individual consultation.  

• costs: We also expect that by working together and coordinating our different consultations and engagements well we will be able to potentially save on funding, including the costs of engagement and participation, communication activities and analysis.

Above all else, it is important to us that we are moving the conversation forward and making real progress on the commitments to the Promise that have a positive impact on people’s lives. 

Using the Children and Young People Participation Framework Agreement 

The CYP Participation Framework Agreement was so useful and lets us identify, recruit and engage with pre-approved contractors, Barnardo’s and Who Cares? Scotland, that have the skills and expertise required to design and deliver bespoke, high-quality participation activities with children and young people. 

The experience and the reach within the care experience community that the pre-approved contractors have provides the opportunity to design a programme of engagement that we would not be able to otherwise. 

An added benefit to using the Children and Young People Participation Framework Agreement has been the opportunity to work with the CYP Participation Framework Manager and colleagues in the Directorate through the Consultation Leads Group. Being able to share our knowledge and skills within our connected policy areas has been so valuable to supporting the big picture of what these consultations are trying to achieve. You can read about the work of the team who manage the CYPP Framework Agreement in the blog post Meet the Scottish Government Children’s Rights Unit. 

Call to action 

We are still planning our engagement activities, therefore if there’s any stakeholders that you think we should be engaging with, please let us know. 

The 4 consultations are scheduled to launch between July – September so look out for them on the Consultation hub and on Twitter for announcements. You can also sign up to the Scottish Government’s consultation newsletter to be notified about new consultations. 

If you’d like to know more about public participation in policymaking then read our other blog posts on the Participation blog. 

Tags: children and young people, participation, planning

Comments