New strategic plan
I’m really pleased to be able to share Parenting Across Scotland’s new strategic plan for 2026-2031. Developing the plan has taken the best part of six months and involved engagement with our Board and Members, a review of all our work with parents, carers and partners and fair a bit of navel gazing and horizon scanning by Arran and myself.
We’ve given ourselves a five-year time frame for this plan. This timescale was not agreed without discussion and debate. In precarious times such as these, how can we possibly know what the future will be like in one year, let alone five years? But if we are pressing funders to think in the longer term (and we are), we really need to practice what we preach. Meaningful change takes time and so five years feels correct in this regard.
Those with a keen PAS eye may also notice a change to our vision - ‘A Scotland where every parent, carer and family thrives’.
The new vision is shorter and snapper, which will certainly make things easier for me when I’m out and about. But this new vision is also broader in scope as it focuses beyond ‘the best start in life’ of the previous vision. PAS will always have an emphasis on the early years, as they are so fundamentally important, but our work also now includes parenting with adult children, and every other stage in between. This new vision is more inclusive of the variety of parenting experiences we endeavour to reflect.
In the published plan we outline what we think this vision means for families – it means lives free from poverty and disadvantage, where support is available when needed, where human rights are upheld and where the views of parents and carers inform decisions about their lives.
We have also explicitly named our values in this strategic plan. Anyone who has known PAS over time will have understood the organisation’s long term commitment to inclusion, collaboration, compassion and grounding our work in evidence. There is nothing new here in that regard. Having our values named and written explicitly in this plan, however, will help us to reflect on how we apply them to our strategic decision making going forward, particularly when we face challenges or tough decisions.
The plan’s outcomes outline the changes we want to achieve in order to achieve our vision. Our work will focus on gathering the views and experiences of parents and carers, informing and upskilling the workforce, influencing policy and practice, and of course, ensuring PAS is sustainable in the long term.
And what do we mean by the ‘workforce’? A previous iteration of this outcome focused on upskilling ‘practitioners’ working directly with families. But we want to think more broadly than that to include all people in Scotland who work in areas that impact the lives of families and/or who work directly with or for families in the public, private and voluntary sectors. Decision makers are an important target for us here as well.
All told, it’s an ambitious plan for a small organisation like PAS. But we want to be ambitious, for the sake of the families we advocate for. And it is amazing what small organisations can achieve, particularly when they collaborate with others. There are many unknowns about the next five years and there will undoubtedly be many challenges to face. But we’ll do our best to make room for hope, creativity and new ideas too.
Access the strategic plan here>