Plan 24-30: A Collective Effort to #KeepThePromise

Fiona Duncan is Independent Strategic Advisor - the promise.

On Thursday at midday, the Plan 24-30 website will go live, marking a significant milestone in Scotland’s journey towards fulfilling this promise.

Background

The Independent Care Review, which concluded in February 2020, made it clear that no child, family, or care-experienced adult lives in a policy silo. Therefore, keeping the promise is a collective responsibility, not that of any single individual or organisation.

Development of Plan 24-30

Thousands of individuals contributed to the development of Plan 24-30. Recently, over two hundred joined online sessions hosted by The Promise Scotland to provide feedback on the emerging structure. The collaborative effort emphasised the need for a fresh approach - another traditional strategy document won’t cut it.

Shared Responsibility

To #KeepThePromise, Scotland requires a shared plan, sustained dedication and for the commitment to go deeper.

The Plan 24-30 website has been designed with this in mind, aiming to:

Inform planning and resource allocation

By providing clear, actionable insights, Plan 24-30 will help organisations devise and align their plans and allocate resources effectively.

Support collaboration and dynamic delivery

By facilitating cooperation among various organisations, Plan 24-30 will help ensure actions are coordinated and others can learn.

Measure the impact of change based on what really matters

Plan 24-30’s enduring focus will be to #KeepThePromise, driving the changes that reflect the needs and aspirations of the children, families, and care-experienced adults with progress measuring what matters to them.

Interactive and Evolving

The design of the Plan 24-30 website is interactive to allow content to evolve and adapt as change happens. This dynamic approach will help Scotland track progress in real-time and identify areas where change needs to be accelerated. It will be responsive to both positive developments and challenges.

Collective Ownership

The Independent Care Review belonged to the care community, and Plan 24-30 belongs to everyone in Scotland with a role to play.

The inclusive approach draws on lessons learned from the past.

Learning from the Past

In 2017, when appointed to chair the Independent Care Review, I met with leaders of past and present reviews across the UK to learn from their experiences, how they’d organised and delivered their work programmes, what had been effective - and what they’d do differently. Discussions covered governance and independence from government, reaching recommendations and getting agreement - and subsequent delivery. Despite so many relevant reviews and so much applicable knowledge, there was no golden ticket – no single route to success. To create the optimum conditions for the Independent Care Review to succeed for the care community, I built in all I learned (good and bad).

To inform the development of Plan 24-30, alongside research into the effectiveness of Plan 24-24, over the last couple of months, a similar analytical approach to success / failure factors of strategies has been carried out.

This included government strategies, whilst recognising the inbuilt limitations to most as they are typically specific to a single policy or system - so aren’t similar to the breadth, depth, complexity and scale of change required to #KeepThePromise.

That said, there’s no shortage of learning… Plan 24-30 seeks to addresses and incorporate the recurring success / failure factors of change:

• Narrow Focus: By considering the complexity of real life, Plan 24-30 avoids single-policy or system-driven response that don’t have a positive impact.
• Limited Data Sets: Through building on the Doing Data Differently work, Plan 24-30 encourages new data, promotes cross-sector intelligence to provide a complete picture of life and account for intersectionality.
• Inflexibility: Ensuring Plan 24-30 plan can adapt to changing circumstances, it will be responsive and stay relevant as change happens.
• Short to Long Term Focus: By sequencing change and making clear where there is urgency, Plan 24-30 aims to support long-term planning and avoid being solely reactive.
• Resource Limitations: In developing an approach to strategic investment : disinvestment, Plan 24-30 offers new ways to allocate resources in a way that helps ensure it will reach where it is most needed.
• Lack of Leadership: Plan 24-30 makes clear where collaborative working and strong leadership is required, to ensure work with, not done to, the care community.

Despite challenges, many of the success factors are already present in Scotland’s work to #KeepThePromise. The wide participation and dedication to the development of Plan 24-30 demonstrate a strong commitment.

Scotland’s COVID recovery strategy, whilst urgent, did take a wide view of how to tackle inequality and disadvantage, appreciating flexibility and creativity. But multiple, competing priorities resulted in significant reporting requirements, with bureaucracy diverting scant resources from delivery and preventing shared focus - therefore offering limited opportunities for shared learning.

Calls to action in Plan 24-30 are sequenced, with calls for streamlined reporting, and the website offering a portal for shared learning to amplify and accelerate change. 

Plan 24-30 is a testament to Scotland’s collective effort to create meaningful change. Every day, across the country, individuals and groups are making decisions that impact the lives of care-experienced individuals. By keeping the care community at the heart of these decisions, Scotland can ensure that the promise is kept.

Feedback over the last six months emphasised the need for systems, organisations, and leaders to understand their role in #KeepThePromise. This understanding will guide the next stage of the work, which I will cover in a future blog.

Meantime, I remain hopeful and grateful for the enduring commitment to #KeepThePromise. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to Plan 24-30 so far – I hope you can find time over the summer to read it.

And thanks too to all committed to support change through to 2030.