Independent Care Review
Clare Simpson, Parenting across Scotland Manager, and a member of the Review’s Edges of Care group, said:
“This is a significant day for Scotland’s families. The Care Review puts support for children and families front and centre of its report, recognising that, where it is possible and safe, families are the best place for children to grow up, but that families need more support.
It recognises that poverty is a major factor in determining which children will stay with their families and which children will be removed. Children in the most deprived 10% of neighbourhoods in the UK are more than 10 times more likely to be taken into care than the least deprived 10%. We need to tackle the rising tide of poverty that is engulfing too many of Scotland’s families and work together to ensure that all families have the same chance to thrive.
It is clear that while the care system itself needs wholesale change, we should be providing families with the support they need so that fewer children enter the care system in the first place. It offers sound and compassionate principles of family support to inform this.
For over three years, the Care Review has worked with and listened to the voices of the experts in Scotland’s care system, those who know it best - the care experienced people who have been through the system and the families whose lives have been affected by it. It has come up with hard-hitting findings. It is time for politicians and society to listen and to act.
The Review is published today but this is not the end - it is only the end of the beginning. There is more work to be done - action and resources need to follow so that Scotland can move towards better supporting our children and families in order for Scotland to truly become the best place in the world for children to grow up.
Parenting across Scotland pledges to stay involved, and to take the work of the Care Review forward: we will continue to push for families to be better supported so that fewer children need to go into care in the first place – we will #KeepThePromise.”
You can access all the reports here