SIAA have responded to the Scottish Government’s ‘Moving on’ from care into adulthood consultation. The consultation is about ensuring that young people leaving care and moving into adulthood have the right scaffolding of support available to ensure they thrive.
To ensure the package of support available to young people leaving care meets their needs, the Scottish Government committed to a public consultation on the support for young people with care experience when they become adults in the Programme for Government 2023 to 2024. The Scottish Government wants to understand how this support can be improved to ensure all people with care experience get the information and support they need during the transition out of care and into adulthood, where needed.
In our response, SIAA said that to Keep the Promise by 2030 independent advocacy must be improved for care experienced people to enable rights to participation, access to justice and increase accountability. Without clarity about the definition of independent advocacy and the resources available to provide independent advocacy for people ‘moving on’ from care into adulthood, the Scottish Government will not be successful in this aim. We have also discussed several other areas in more detail in our response, including;
- independent advocacy’s unique role in supporting people to have their voice heard
- a call for sufficient resourcing and funding to create sustainable independent advocacy organisations
- the importance of a clear definition of independent advocacy
- gaps in provision of independent advocacy that could impact care experienced people
- need for independent advocacy to enable supported decision making for disabled care experienced people
- support for Who Cares? Scotland Lifelong Rights Campaign which includes the call for independent, relationship-based, lifelong advocacy for every Care Experienced person in Scotland who needs it
- support for the ten core principles outlined in the ‘scoping’ report published by The Promise Scotland for lifelong independent advocacy