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Money and commissioning

Scotland in 2024

Challenges in resource allocation, particularly in adequate funding for local authorities, have impacted the effectiveness of implementation. Sustained financial support across the sector is critical.

Local Authorities receive a single financial settlement allowing for local decision making at the discretion of councillors. They must consider how to prioritise cross-team working to #KeepThePromise. Despite this, Scottish Government's policy silos create fiscal limitations, not just in accessing investment but in bureaucratic burden of reporting requirements.

Across Scotland, local plans show targeted efforts to address community specific needs, yet the absence of a cohesive investment strategy may result in fragmented approaches that fail to address root causes. There are examples of positive developments in service design and delivery, but lack of alignment with a broader investment strategy can impede effectiveness. This disconnect underscores the need for cohesive investment planning that integrates sector-specific initiatives into a comprehensive framework for child protection, care and support.

Challenges in implementing cost modelling initiatives reveal barriers to achieving alignment in budgeting processes, which can hinder effective resource allocation and planning.

Efforts to enhance data maturity for informed decision-making represent a positive step towards improving accountability and outcomes. However, the absence of a comprehensive investment strategy guiding data use and interpretation may limit the full potential of data-driven insights in shaping policy and practice.

Money and commissioning

Where does Scotland need to be by 2030?

By 2030, Scotland will be taking a different approach to how it invests in children and families. Children in Scotland will not feel the monetisation of their care (Pg 77) and the money Scotland spends on its ‘care system’ will be invested in effective services that meet the needs of its children, young people, families and care experienced adults.

This means:

  • Prevention will be the primary focus of services and therefore also of investment. Acute and crisis services will be phased out (Pg 111). An approach to systematically disinvest in the services and processes that are no longer meeting need will be in place to ensure funding is available for investment.
  • There will be no place for profiting in how Scotland cares for its children (Pg 111). Scotland will be avoiding the monetisation of the care of children and the marketisation of care will be prevented (Pg 111). Regulatory bodies will scrutinise any presence of profit to ensure that funds are properly directed to the care and support of children (Pg 111).
  • Services within the ‘care system’ will not profit from care. Any presence of surplus funds generated within any part of the ‘care system’ will be directed to the care and support of children and young people. There will no longer be targets associated with adopting children and young people, including financial and profit based targets (Pg 75). Processes of regulation, scrutiny and commissioning will support the removal of profit from the care system.
  • Strategic planning will reflect the needs of children in local authorities and the challenges in the management of places and sustainability of settings of care will have been discussed and addressed (Pg 111).
  • Services will have changed according to need to get away from a systemisation of care (Pg 111). A process to identify investment and disinvestment opportunities across the whole system will have been undertaken with a strategic approach to funding embedded into organisational and budgeting processes across Scotland in place. That process will have involved organisations working together to align and pool budgets to enable investment. There will have been a decisive shift in emphasis towards early intervention and prevention across all services. As the number of children and families requiring a service reduces, the service will become obsolete or be refined so that it meets current and future need (Pg 111).
  • Children and their families’ voices will be heard and taken into account when Scotland commissions services so that they are the centre of decision-making (Pg 110). The views and voices of people who services work alongside will be actively involved and included in the work to shape, create and evaluate them.
  • Scotland will ensure public service planning, commissioning strategies and procurement are attuned to the needs of brothers and sisters to promote those relationships and prevent separation (Pg 62).
  • When services are meeting standards and making a positive impact, ensuring stability will be key to funding decisions. Longer-term commissioning, grant programmes and contracts will be the norm, rather than the exception (Pg 112).
  • Commissioning of services for children and families will not be undertaken on a ‘cost and volume’ basis, but instead will be based on principles that underpin relational working and longer-term partnerships, breaking down silos, systems and organisational interests. Levels of payment will not determine where and who are the best people to care for a child (Pg 78).
  • Wherever in the best interest of the child, and when it reflects their needs and wishes, the focus of caring for Scotland’s children and young people must remain the responsibility of Local Authorities in Scotland, and children and young people will remain within their communities.
  • It will be widely acknowledged that accepting children and young people from outside Scotland is a breach of their fundamental human rights. As such, Scotland will no longer sell care placements to Local Authorities outside of Scotland (Pg 110).

These statements and the page numbers referenced are taken from the promise report, published when the Independent Care Review concluded in 2020.

Where does Scotland need to be by 2030?

The route map to get there

Focus must be on the fact that money is not always focused on the right things and budgets are decreasing, leading to overstretched services and increasing numbers of families in poverty. There are clear tensions in what Scotland says it wants for its children and families, and what it is doing with the resources it has. For progress to be made, work must prioritise resolving this to ensure the money that is spent is clearly aligned to need and impact across the 'care system' and all adjacent systems.

The work of the Independent Strategic Advisor to develop a systematic approach to investment and disinvestment will be concluded.

With support from a group from across sectors and disciplines, plus members of The Promise Scotland and Scottish Government this work will include identification of areas of focus for application of the model. The areas of focus will be evaluated, and the model refined and developed with the intention it will be built into setting the 2025/26 Scottish Budget.

The Promise Scotland will convene a roundtable with those who hold responsibility for the commissioning and funding of services within the ‘care system’, particularly residential and foster care services. The collaborative process will develop and agree a plan to remove profit-making from Scotland’s ‘care system’ by 2030.

Every organisation responsible for designing or commissioning services for children and their families will have a clear, documented, process in place that shows how they have engaged and listened to voices and views at every stage of the work.

Using research already available and underway, an improved model of commissioning services will be developed that facilitates pooling resources and longer-term funding.

The improved model of commissioning will be adopted by all organisations responsible for commissioning services in and on the edges of Scotland’s ‘care system’. The phasing out of ‘cost and volume’ commissioning will be underway.

The actions outlined in the Voice foundation are fully embedded at every stage to progress actions on Money and commissioning.

What is helping?

The Cabinet Sub-Committee on The Promise, which has met twice so far and is chaired by the First Minister, provides a necessary forum for collective decision making at senior political level with an early focus on prevention and philanthropy. Money and commissioning must be one of their priority issues and the Cabinet Sub-Committee should ensure the change required to investment of public funds is progressed at pace.

The four nations Memorandum of Understanding concerning cross-border placements ensures continued focus at national levels to work to meet the objective of exploring suitable placements in the child’s own country before a child is placed in Scotland, wherever that is in the child’s best interest.

The focus on further regulation of cross-border placements of children and young people into Scotland from England, Wales and Northern Ireland within the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024, including the enhancement of regulatory powers.

Scottish Government’s current approach of block-buying empty Secure Care beds as a preventative measure is a short-term support but must not become the longer-term solution. Secure care is among the most intensive and restrictive forms of care and depriving children of their liberty must not be adopted as a longer-term solution in the absence of more suitable alternatives.

The Welsh Government’s introduction of the Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill and its focus on removing profit from its ‘care system’ provides a learning opportunity for Scotland. Making connection with Welsh colleagues to understand implementation will ensure learning can be applied to Scotland.

Research, including a short-term piece led by Scotland Excel, commissioned by the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund team, to identify changes to commissioning and procurement practices that inhibit pooling of resources or longer-term funding provides an opportunity to inform implementation and delivery of improved commissioning practices. There are examples of short-term small grant funding supporting change: whilst this has a role in supporting tactical changes, it does not deliver longer-term systemic change. To be effective, however, a minimum of three-year funding terms is required.

Who must act?

Local Government

Local Government
Public Bodies

Public Bodies
Scottish Government

Scottish Government
Scrutiny

Scrutiny
Voluntary sector

Voluntary sector

Here is what matters to children and families

Money is spent in a way that means I can have support that fits around what my family and I want and need at that moment in time, rather than our needs having to fit around for what is already on offer across different services and organisations.

Find out more about the what matters questions here.

Also connected to this theme

Documenting decisions
Listening
Participation and engagement
Where children live
Leadership
Rules, processes and culture
Governance
Legislation
Scrutiny and inspection

Mapping

This is how Plan 24-30 relates to other frameworks and plans

Independent Care Review conclusions  Plan 21-24 priority area
the promise pgs.110-111 Building capacity
the money  Planning
follow the money Supporting the workforce

 

 

UNCRC GIRFEC
Articles 3; 4; 20; 26 Respected
Concluding observations 9b; 11a-e; 16a-b; 17a; 38a-b Responsible
  Safe
  Nurtured



Plan 24-30 foundations