Participation and engagement
Where is Scotland in 2024?
Participation and engagement is at the centre of all work required for Scotland to #KeepThePromise. Despite this, four and half years on from the conclusions of the Independent Care Review, there are still organisations that need to significantly develop their approaches to participation and engagement to be more purposeful and inclusive, both of people and families with regards to their support, as well as more generally, with regards to the organisation’s operations and service design.
There continues to be a commitment to meaningful participation and engagement. However, there are also several barriers preventing progress at pace. These include, but are not restricted to: the workforce reporting a lack of time to plan and carry out meaningful participation and engagement activities, and to build the trusting relationships required for these to be effective; too few dedicated participation and engagement toolkits that offer age and stage appropriate approaches, therefore a lack of skills, knowledge and confidence; and structural barriers that fragment conversations into siloes. Organisations report a need to improve and diversify the range of ways that children, young people, and families can participate and engage, to ensure they can redesign processes and services to improve ways of working.
23 Local Authorities have established Champs Boards. Existing Champions Boards, plus dedicated participation activity (supported through co-design activities), have been the principal mechanisms to ensure integration of ‘voice’ within policy and practice areas. This has included activities such as local Keeping the Promise conferences, held across a range of localities. In some areas, groups have been re-established; in other areas, they have had to renew their focus. The level of demand being placed upon Champions Boards has been noted by some of the Boards and their Local Authorities, who report that the return to meaningful activity post-pandemic has been inconsistent across Scotland.
There are concerns about the risk of participation fatigue, which can be assessed through effective participation and engagement, and partially mitigated if all activity reflects what matters to children, young people, families, and care experienced adults - as opposed to what matters to the 'system', or a service or policy area.
More attention is required to ensure meaningful participation and engagement of children and young people who have faced significant trauma in their life, of babies and infants, of children and young people with additional support needs or a disability, of those for whom English or Gaelic is not their first or preferred language, and of families experiencing poverty in remote, rural and island communities.
Better attention and consideration must be given to interrogating and integrating evidence around these groups' experiences within Scotland’s ‘care system'. To do so requires investment in specialist skills.