Keeping The Promise in Midlothian
What is The Promise?
In 2016 the First Minister instructed a root and branch independent review of the Care System in Scotland. Running from 2017 to 2020 the review listened to over 5,500 voices, over half of which were children and young people who have experience of the care system. The independent review concluded that Scotland needed transformational change to support and improve the lives and wellbeing of our children, young people, adults and families across Scotland.
Promise Scotland
Promise Scotland was established in March 2021 and exists so that Scotland can keep its promise.
Our Promise
The Midlothian partnership's current focus is delivering on the commitments and actions identified in Our Promise to Care Experienced Children and Young People (CECYP) in Midlothian 2022-2030 as part of our implementation for Plan 21-24.
Plan 21-24 identifies five priority areas for all partners in Midlothian to focus on. These are:
- A Good Childhood
- Whole Family Support
- Planning
- Supporting the Workforce
- Building Capacity
The priority actions will all be built on the foundations which are critical and must be at the heart of Midlothian’s plans and priorities for children and their families. These foundations are:
- Voice
- Care
- Family
- People
- Scaffolding
Keeping The Promise in Midlothian
Our Promise to Care Experienced Children and Young People in Midlothian 2022 – 2030 document outlines our main activities for partner organisations across Midlothian. We have already started this change journey for all our communities, but we know there is much still to be done across the partnership.
Our future priorities include the implementation of our Promise Guarantee which strengthens our existing commitment to care-experienced young people by offering work experience and a guaranteed interview to care-experienced young people interested in working with the council. Our elected members and senior officers have also offered a number of mentoring and ‘shadowing’ opportunities to young people and care leavers wishing to know more about the respective roles.
Our plans and activities are ambitious; we make no apologies for this as our children and families deserve no less.
Our Promise Lead is Claire Brookes, who helps co-ordinate our activities across the partnership. If you have any questions or comments you can email her at:
The Group Service Manager is Jo Foley. You can email her at:
Our progress
As we progress with our work to Keep The Promise in Midlothian, we will update this page so you know what is happening across the partnership.
Keeping the Promise in Midlothian is governed by The Midlothian Community Planning Partnership.
We are listening
Ongoing participation and engagement with children, families and professionals is a significant foundation of our work to keep the promise in Midlothian. Participation with care experienced children and young people is currently done with our established Champs Group. But we want to widen the ways we listen to our CECYP.
For example, we recently sent an animated invite asking young people from Beeslack High school to help create a child friendly promise animation.
You can watch the animation below. We are proud of the young people who were brave enough to share their stories and contribute to what their understanding of the Promise is and what it means to them.
The dragon in the clip is representative of ‘not judging a book by its cover’, the young person who created it wanted it to be known that care-experienced children and young people don’t need a label and shouldn’t be judged because of their care experience.
The song was also sung by two young people who attended the animation group.
With thanks to the young people from Beeslack High School who created this.