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The Promise Progress Framework

The Promise Progress Framework sets the frame for all questions in The Promise Story of Progress to be answered. At its launch in December 2024, it contains the national indicators required to answer the question 'how is Scotland doing in its progress towards keeping the promise?'

The Promise Progress Framework

The Promise Progress Framework contains an initial ten vision statements taken directly from the promise, chosen because of the availability of multiple sources of meaningful data.  Each vision statement has an associated set of outcomes that reflect the overall ambition of what keeping the promise will look and feel like.

The national indicator set in The Promise Progress Framework at launch provides organisations with a structure to aid their own reporting on how they are feeding into Scotland’s overall aims. The intention is not to set up new governance and reporting structures where unnecessary, but for organisations to identify alignment, complementarity, or gaps with the work they do, the data they have, and how they use it.   

The separation of the provision of data and information from organisational reporting will help foster broader shared accountability beyond individual organisations. This information is both vital to verify that change is happening across Scotland, and to support the creation of a learning system to understand which activities are having a positive impact and where learning can be drawn.  


Download the first iteration of The Promise Progress Framework to ‘Understand how Scotland is doing in its progress towards keeping the promise.

The Promise Progress Framework

The Framework has been developed by COSLA, The Scottish Government and The Promise Scotland, with input received from key stakeholders including Public Health Scotland, the Improvement Service, CELCIS, Who Cares? Scotland, the Care Inspectorate, Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. These stakeholders make up The Promise Collective, a group of organisations who provide a strong framework of partnership working and sharing of information and activity underway across organisations. 

It has been developed in line with a set of five agreed key principles. 

  1. Insights, not targets, driven 
    To help all those with a responsibility towards keeping the promise understand where progress is being made, the Framework is intended to be used and contextualised within organisations’ own settings, enabling a richer understanding of the data and the development of shared accountability across Scotland. 
  2. Focused on use and burden reduction 
    The Framework brings data from multiple sources into one place to aid understanding.  Rather than setting up any new reporting requirements, the Framework uses existing data sources, reducing the need for new data collection and bringing data from multiple sources into one place to aid understanding.  
  3. Non-exhaustive 
    The ten Vision Statements have been chosen based on available data from multiple sources, however, indicators are intended to evolve and expand as data improves and understanding deepens, alongside other sources of data, and research. 
  4. Aligned 
    Through alignment with pre-existing frameworks, the Framework places data about care experienced children and families within the context of the wider population of children and families wellbeing at community level (the Children, Young People and Families Outcomes Framework) and national level data (the National Performance Framework).  
  5. Expansive 
    The Framework collates indicators from health, inspection, social work, poverty, education, and justice data to chart progress towards outcomes.  Wherever possible, data which has been collected since at least 2020 is used to measure progress. It integrates data from multiple sources and in many forms at different levels, using care experience markers where available.

Find out more about the milestones and next steps for The Promise Progress Framework below and in the data and information route-map.

How the care experienced community are feeling the impact of change must be at the heart of how success is measured and The Promise Progress Framework will be used as the frame to gather data and information on their experiences to ensure impact of change is understood.

Achieving this at a national level across the ten vision statements requires an approach that balances the need to collect insights that guide what needs to happen next, while limiting asking the same questions of the same people over again. As part of the next steps in the development of The Promise Story of Progress, there is a need to explore a variety of ways of collecting this information including social research and support from organisations who work directly with the care experienced community. 

To start, the 'What Matters' questions have been created, based directly on what children, young people and families told the Independent Care Review was important to them. These questions are intended to help root Scotland’s understanding of what ‘good’ looks like through experience, rather than what 'good' looks like to the 'system'. 

To answer this question within The Promise Story of Progress, at its launch in December 2024, The Promise Progress Framework has multiple national indicators and data sources mapped to its outcomes to guide a high-level understanding of national progress. Each indicator is populated with data back to 2020 where possible so change over time since the promise was made can be understood. 

The use of multiple outcomes and indicators means it is possible to use the data to help tell a story of national progress, taking multiple factors and contexts into account. When taken together, this helps Scotland understand the direction and pace of the change it is making.

It is key to understand not only whether an indicator is showing a change in direction or trend, but also whether this change is causing unintended consequences elsewhere in the system. Contextual indicators are a way of checking whether what is seen in core indicators is an accurate reflection of what is really going on in the ‘system’. The indicators blend multiple types and sources of data, including health, inspection, social work, poverty, education, and justice, to chart progress towards outcomes.

The Promise Progress Framework is a national framework that is shared by all those with a responsibility for keeping the promise. While reporting will be produced centrally by The Promise Scotland, Scottish Government and COSLA, there is work across organisations and groups to ensure the best data and evidence available is used to interpret the national picture.  
 
Feedback on this first iteration of the Promise Progress Framework will be key. Views of stakeholders and partners would be highly valued. To do this please email: plan2430@thepromise.scot 

Download the pdf ‘How is Scotland doing in its progress towards keeping the promise’

The vision statements and outcomes in The Promise Progress Framework set the frame for organisational understanding. While national-level indicators are important for aligning activity they do not interpret the reasons behind this change and the resulting impacts. Therefore, a broader evidence base is required to examine how processes at local and organisational level are affecting change. 

Work at the organisational level is key to developing better understanding but also to support an improvement in how change is experienced by those for whom the promise was made. This work requires different kinds of data, evidence and information than what is needed at the national level. 

As part of the next steps in the development of The Promise Story of Progress, the mechanism for how improvement work at the organisational level can feed into and inform the national picture will be developed, building on the work already underway through Plan 24-30.

The promise is clear that the experiences of those in and around the ‘care system’ must be at the heart of how success is measured.  For this reason, understanding progress must include a focus on how people are feeling the impacts of change.  

This requires an approach that balances the need to collect insights while limiting the burden on people with care experience, or those who work within the ‘system’.  Work will be undertaken to explore a variety of ways of collecting this qualitative information, including drawing on the work of social research and the support of organisations who work directly with the care experienced community. 

As part of ongoing iteration of Plan 24-30, improved guidance and examples of uses of the ‘What Matters’ questions will be produced based on feedback and testing of the questions for different purposes.  

Only qualitative, experiential evidence will verify the direction of travel presenting in the national-level indicators.  Without this, there is a danger of conflating improvement in outcomes with an improvement in experiences, which may not always be moving in the same direction.  

Consultation with the care experienced community on the Framework will be led by the Independent Strategic Advisor for The Promise, Fiona Duncan and The Promise Scotland as part of ongoing work to develop and work collectively on Plan 24-30.

Engagement will also continue through The Promise Collective and directly with individual organisations to develop examples of how the Framework can be used locally to both inform and be shaped by work underway.  It is expected that additional outcomes and indicators will be added to the Framework as collaborative efforts to build a better understanding of progress continues. 

To support the direction of this work, a Research Implementation Group, chaired by the Chief Social Policy Advisor for Scotland, will:  

  • act as a quality assurance group in the development of quantitative data where data gaps have been identified in the core outcomes and indicators.  

  • provide direction on the methodological approach to gather qualitative evidence which will complement the Promise Progress Framework.  

This Research Implementation Group will have representation across Scottish Government, The Promise Scotland, COSLA and key stakeholders from across the 'system'. It will identify opportunities for the care experienced community to be represented in existing research, and champion the inclusion of a care-experienced strand to relevant upcoming research projects.  

The group will work with The Promise Scotland to ensure that the Scottish Government is not duplicating similar qualitative research which is taking place across sectors.  Not all qualitative evidence needs to be gathered through bespoke research projects and the Research Implementation Group will be positioned to advise on how other existing forms of evidence, including case studies, academic research and focus groups may help to contextualise and interpret the national-level indicators. 

KEY MILESTONES  

In December 2024: 

The first iteration of The Promise Progress Framework will go live. Hosted on the Plan 24-30 website as a ‘Scotland-owned’ tool for understanding national progress in the first instance. Initially the data will be presented in a downloadable pdf and this will also be available on the Scottish Government and COSLA websites. 

By Spring 2025:  

Initial feedback will be sought and gathered on The Promise Story of Progress and The Promise Progress Framework. The results of this feedback will be used to iterate and improve the work.  

By Summer 2025:  

The Promise Progress Framework will be developed into an interactive dashboard hosted on the Plan 24-30 website.  

Throughout 2025:  

The mechanisms required to answer the organisational and care experienced community level questions in The Promise Story of Progress will be developed.