Spotlight on … Keeping The Promise

SCRA’s is committed to working with our partners and transforming the Children’s Hearings System in line with the Independent Care Review and The Promise.

Our work focuses on rights, participation, trauma-informed practice, and systemic redesign to better support children, young people and families and being the best Corporate Parent we can be.

So what has been happening?
We have been working with some amazing groups of Hearings-experienced children and young people, including local champions boards and Our Hearings, Our Voice. Working together and genuine co-production has been key to some really successful initiatives and projects.

• We have been testing ideas across different parts of Scotland (many came from children and young people).
• Then we have been reviewing the results to see if they have made a difference.
• Where they have led to improvements, we are introducing them on a larger scale.
• We have also had tremendous support and buy in from our staff across the country.

Here’s some of the highlights:
Development, launch and implementation of our Keeping The Promise Language that Cares Guide. A huge thank you to the young people from Our Hearings, Our Voice in helping us roll this out to our staff across the country.

Introduction of child friendly scheduling to provide children and young people with more control over their Hearing – including where and when. Thank you to all the children and young people in Ayrshire, Fife, Paisley and the South East of Scotland who took part.

Creation of new easy read letters for children, young people and their parents to make sure they can be easily understood. We worked with so many people to get these letters right, including a speech and language expert to ensure the new letters are accessible and inclusive.

Taking Control of my Hearing scrapbook: this involved pro-actively inviting children and young people to a Pre-Hearing visit. To support their preparation, children and young people were also sent their own ‘scrapbook’ designed for and by young people from Our Hearings, Our Voice.

Referral Patterns and Planning: this project involves using data to drive improvements to ensure timely and proportionate referrals to the Reporter.

Learning Leads: this multi-agency project has been developing standardised training for partners on referrals and system roles. The first training packages will be launched in the autumn 2025.

Early Engagement on Grounds: this project has been exploring relational working practices, rights-based approaches to establishing grounds and its impact on children and families. Further work will continue into 2025/2026.

Has this made a difference?
We think so, yes. We are making sure that everything we test is fully evaluated, so we know it is definitely making a difference.

Our Research Team are undertaking an in-depth piece of research where children, young people and their families can tell us if and where they have seen changes and improvements.

We know there are still improvements to be made, but by working together with our partners across the Children’s Hearings System we will Keep The Promise.