Scotland’s care ‘Promise’ still too much on paper as 2030 deadline nears, report says
A progress report on Scotland’s flagship care reform has warned that The Promise is running out of time to deliver the sweeping change it pledged, with too much of the commitment still sitting in policy documents rather than being felt in people’s lives.
The Promise, championed by former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, was signed up to by the Scottish government in 2020 with the aim of improving the lives of care-experienced children and young people by 2030.
It followed the 2020 Independent Care Review, which found the care system was “fractured, bureaucratic and unfeeling.”
The independent oversight board for The Promise said progress had been made in several areas. The passage of the Children (Care, Care Experience and Service Planning) (Scotland) Act 2026 was described as an important development, creating new rights and responsibilities. Effective partnerships, longer-term funding and flexible workers were also highlighted as positives.
But the board’s update concluded that good practice remains uneven, with reports of stretched teams, limited capacity and resources that do not match need. It also said the process of creating new legislation “exposed serious concerns about affordability, capacity and deliverability.”
Ministers are being urged to move faster, with greater urgency and a determined focus, and to prioritise more effective use of data and further investment in the sector.
‘Activity is not the same as action’
David Anderson, chair of the oversight board, said: “We have seen that progress has been made, people are working hard and they care. Great care is being delivered every day but there’s not enough progress in some areas.”
He added: “But the Promise ultimately has to be judged by whether those changes improve people’s lives. Activity is not the same as action and Scotland must show whether support is reaching people, whether barriers are reducing and whether experience is changing.”
The findings echo earlier warnings that the government’s care plan has been progressing too slowly. In 2022, Sturgeon unveiled an 80-step plan that included ending custody for under-18s and creating a national allowance for foster and kinship carers. The reforms also promised to redesign children’s hearings and overhaul governance by 2030.
Last year’s report said the plans lacked detail and direction for individual sectors, while new structures created by the Scottish government lacked clarity about their roles and responsibilities. Reports before that were also critical.
In 2024, the former first minister admitted the programme was not meeting its aims, saying it had suffered from “an implementation gap between the aspirations of the policy and the impact on children in care.” She said it would be “unthinkable” for The Promise not to be delivered.
The Scottish government said it had invested in whole family support, with plans for a new strategy before the deadline. Siobhian Brown, minister for The Promise, said the report recognised that real progress was happening across Scotland.
“Crucially, it acknowledges that we can keep the Promise by 2030 if we increase the scale of interventions and pace of efforts across the country,” she said.
Brown pointed to landmark legislation to accelerate delivery of The Promise, significant investment in whole family support, strengthened support for foster and kinship carers, the establishment of the National Social Work Agency and the end of placing under-18s in young offender institutions.
“However, we know progress is not yet experienced consistently by every child and family, and are taking action to address this,” she said, adding that the government was working towards each of the report’s recommendations.
The political stakes are high for the SNP. The Promise was designed as a defining social policy, and its slow delivery risks becoming a symbol of the gap between Holyrood’s ambitions and the daily experiences of children and families. With the 2030 deadline approaching, the report’s central message is that new laws and structures alone will not be enough: the test will be whether care-experienced people can see, feel and trust the change.