How best to navigate the new roadmap?
As someone who contributed to discussions on the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill as it progressed through the Scottish Parliament, I followed its passage closely. When the Bill was passed in March earlier this year, my initial reaction was positive. Any legislation that seeks to improve the lives of children and young people with care experience in Scotland is welcome.
At the same time, however, as an adoptive parent and foster carer, I have been left with a sense of missed opportunity. For me, the Bill, now an Act, does little to address the lack of adequate support and protections for adopted children and their families in Scotland.
Driving and staying the course
Nevertheless, the Act does introduce a significant number of amendments to existing legislation in Scotland designed to strengthen support and services available for children and young people with care experience. These changes matter, and you could say that the Act provides a roadmap for the journey ahead.
However, a roadmap alone does not guarantee that children and young people living in kinship, foster or residential child care will be able to reach the destination that is right for them.
It cannot anticipate obstacles, diversions or changing circumstances along the way. Nor does it address the more ambitious reimagining of Scotland's care system that is needed to tackle longstanding inconsistencies in how children, young people and their carers experience support. The challenge is that implementation will not begin from a blank slate. It will build on systems and structures that have evolved over time and that, despite many strengths, can often be complex and fragmented.
I am also left wondering whether parliamentarians and policymakers could have drawn more fully on the wealth of experience made available to them during the Scottish Parliament's Education, Children and Young People Committee's scrutiny of the Bill, which included an open call for views that ran from 27 June to 15 August 2025. Based on the responses the Committee had permission to publish, 32 submissions were received from individuals with care experience and people who have supported a child or young person with care experience. A further 85 responses were received from organisations, public bodies and academics.
With the legislation now in place, attention must turn to implementation and ensuring its intended benefits are felt by children, young people and families.
Implementation requires more than a roadmap
If the Act is the roadmap, then people with lived experience, in all the shapes and forms that lived experience takes, are among the most important guides for the journey ahead. To give implementation the best shot at success, parliamentarians, policymakers, local authorities, corporate parents and other partners must make the time to continue to consult with children, young people, families, carers and practitioners.
As implementation progresses, people with lived experience can help parliamentarians and corporate parents understand not only whether the Act is being delivered as intended, but whether it is making a meaningful difference to people's lives. Do children and young people feel more listened to? Can families access support more easily? Do carers feel better equipped to provide stable, nurturing care? Do care experienced young people feel a stronger sense of belonging and confidence about their future?
In addition, clear and practical guidance that sits alongside legislation will be essential. A roadmap is only as useful as the directions that accompany it and the signs that help people navigate it. Too often, guidance that leaves room for interpretation can result in children and families having very different experiences of support depending on where in Scotland they live, rather than on what they need.
Consistency matters
Consistency matters because rights should not depend on geography. Children and young people should be able to expect the same understanding of their rights and access to support, wherever they live. Children, young people and carers should be able to move across local authority area boundaries, without facing disruption to support or having to navigate a completely different system. Clear guidance that offers little room for interpretation is key to achieving this.
To navigate the route ahead, in addition to clarity, practitioners will need confidence and capacity. To make that possible, improvement work must be adequately resourced, providing the support needed to translate ambition into meaningful change.
Yet there is also an important tension to navigate. Legislative change takes time to embed, while the world around us continues to evolve. Children and young people's needs, family circumstances and wider social challenges do not stand still. Even the best roadmap cannot remain static.
The challenge is to build a system that provides a clear and consistent route while retaining the flexibility to respond to changing conditions. We need a system that treats children and families fairly wherever they live, while continuing to take signals from children and young people experiencing care today. Listening to those travelling the route in real time will help us understand where adjustments are needed and where innovation can improve the journey for those who follow. That balance will be critical. Otherwise, we risk continually creating detours around problems rather than addressing their root causes.
Investing in the journey to improvement
Of all the provisions within the Act, I believe the strengthening of continuing care and aftercare support for young people preparing to leave kinship, foster or residential care has the greatest potential to change lives.
For too long, care experienced young people have been expected to become independent far earlier than their peers. Most young adults can rely on family support well into their twenties.
Through my experience as a foster carer, I've seen first-hand how much young people continue to need support and guidance as they move into adulthood. The expansion of aftercare support to a wider group of care experienced children and young people, by introducing a right for those who were previously ‘looked after’ but left care before the age of 16 to apply for aftercare up to age 26, is therefore hugely important and a welcome step forward.
The significance of aftercare support goes far beyond practical or financial assistance. It is also about belonging. When young people leave care, they can lose not only a ‘placement’ but also critical relationships, stability and a sense of family. Continuing care and aftercare support helps maintain those connections and provide support when it is needed.
In many ways, these provisions recognise that the journey into adulthood is rarely a straight road. Most young people rely on encouragement, reassurance and support when they face setbacks or difficult decisions. Care experienced young people deserve the same. Done well, Continuing Care and aftercare support can provide the stability, continuity and sense of belonging that help young people continue towards their goals, at a pace that is right for them.
But legal rights are only meaningful if they can be realised in practice. We need enough foster carers, suitable accommodation, advocacy services and skilled practitioners working together across systems, with young people's needs at the centre, to provide the support these provisions promise.
And so, the task at hand now is for parliamentarians, policymakers, local authorities, corporate parents and other partners to work alongside children, young people and families, to turn promise into practice and ensure this Act becomes known not for what it set out to do, but for the real differences it made. How the journey is experienced and who is involved is as important as the destination.
The views expressed in this blog post are those of the author/s and may not represent the views or opinions of CELCIS or our funders.
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