Scotland is to launch a new delivery coalition in November to speed up work intended to improve the lives of care-experienced people before 2030.
Siobhian Brown, the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise, will jointly chair the group with Màiri McAllan, the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Culture and Gaelic. It is intended to bring together national and local government, public services, voluntary-sector organisations and people with lived experience.
The announcement places the coalition at the centre of a push for more joined-up delivery. Its role is to strengthen collaboration, drive collective action and connect work that is already taking place across Scotland. The aim is not simply to create another meeting, but to help make sure that useful practice can travel between places and that gaps in support are identified sooner.
A forum intended to speed up change
The coalition is expected to provide a dedicated forum for work that crosses organisational and policy boundaries. It will sit alongside existing independent advice and scrutiny, with a stated focus on bridging differences between organisations and between areas where progress has not been even. Ministers and cabinet secretaries with responsibility for particular issues may be invited to take part as actions are developed.
Its final membership has not yet been settled and invitations are due to be issued shortly. No budget, formal terms of reference, meeting timetable or list of participating bodies has been published. That means the announcement should be understood as a commitment to create a delivery mechanism, rather than evidence that a completed structure is already operating.
The distinction matters because care-experienced children, young people and adults can encounter several services at once. Support may involve family help, education, health, housing, justice, social work and community organisations. Better co-ordination can make those systems easier to navigate, but it will depend on decisions by the organisations involved and on whether changes are felt consistently in everyday life.
The 2030 commitment
The coalition is tied to The Promise, Scotland’s commitment to overhaul the way children, young people and adults with care experience are supported. The commitment followed the Independent Care Review, whose conclusions were published in 2020. It set out more than 80 recommendations across five foundations: voice, family, care, people and scaffolding.
The central ambition is that children and young people should grow up loved, safe and respected, with the opportunity to realise their potential. Scotland committed to implement the review’s conclusions in full by 2030. With four years remaining, the new coalition is being presented as a way to increase the pace and coherence of delivery rather than as a replacement for the responsibilities already held by councils, public bodies and other partners.
Recent work has included a £2,000 Care Leaver Payment and a national minimum allowance for eligible foster and kinship carers. More than £30 million has been invested in Bairns’ Hooses, which are intended to offer child-centred support to children who have experienced or witnessed harm. Since 2018-19, more than £80 million has also been provided through the Scottish Attainment Challenge for mentoring, outdoor learning and related activity.
Other measures include guaranteed university places for care-experienced applicants who meet entry requirements, alongside a £9,000 bursary. The Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Act has been passed, and placements of children in young offender institutions have ended. These steps describe policies and commitments already made; they do not establish that every child or family has the same experience of support.
What will show whether the coalition is working
The test for the incoming group will be whether it helps convert commitments into reliable improvements, not merely whether it convenes a broad range of organisations. Its remit points to several practical questions: whether local progress can be shared, whether barriers between services can be addressed, and whether people with lived experience have a meaningful role in shaping decisions.
The Government has said it will set out clearer action towards 2030 and use coalition working to connect and drive forward change. The forthcoming launch should provide the first opportunity to judge how the group will work in practice, who will take part and how progress will be monitored. Until those details are published, the coalition remains a significant delivery proposal with a clear deadline, but its eventual impact cannot yet be measured.
