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Minister for Children and Early Years, Adam Ingram, yesterday welcomed recommendations from the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care (SIRCC), aimed at improving residential care for Scotland's young people and announced plans to create a high-level group to help drive them forward.

Representatives from key partners organisations such as COSLA, care providers and the NHS will be invited to sit on the group, which will focus on the following priority areas for action:

• driving forward as part of Getting it right for every child the cultural change required to make residential care the first and best placement where it meets a child's needs, rather than being the last resort.
• ensuring those working in residential care are equipped with the right skills to support children with complex needs.
• driving forward strategic commissioning of children's services to maximise cost-effectiveness and improve outcomes for children, starting with a dedicated resource based in COSLA to develop a national approach to the commissioning of secure care
• further tackling the disparities in educational outcomes for looked after children
• improving the health and well being of children in care, through the newly appointed lead Directors for Looked After Children within each NHS Board

Adam Ingram said:

"Improving outcomes for looked after children is one of this government's priorities and that's why we asked the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care to lead this work to examine the challenges facing the sector and make recommendations for change.

"The review did not conclude that more children should be in residential care but did highlight that it can be the right choice for some. We need to work together within and outside Government to ensure that the right care is available for those young people. This work will be taken forward alongside our Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC) approach which aims to address many of the underlying reasons why children end up in care in the first place.

"Scotland is facing significant economic challenges but the cost of failing to invest in high quality care is one we can't afford for our young people or society as a whole. Fortunately, what the NRCCI reports show is that by focusing on more effective planning and commissioning of care and throughcare, we can enable significant savings to be made in the short to medium term, while also delivering better outcomes for young people."

In Spring 2008, Ministers asked the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care (SIRCC) to lead the National Residential Child Care Initiative (NRCCI) to respond to a number of challenges faced by the residential childcare sector, including the fact that more young people with complex needs were being placed in residential childcare, many residential childcare staff were still unqualified, the current commissioning arrangements were unsatisfactory and children and young people had a mixed experience of residential childcare.

Through three main working groups, the NRCCI has been considering how to ensure the supply of residential childcare services matches the needs of children and young people, what skills and qualities are required of our residential childcare workforce and how to ensure more effective commissioning of residential childcare services. A further group was established under the auspices of NRCCI to consider the immediate challenges facing the secure estate. The Securing Our Future Initiative published its report in February 2009, with Government and COSLA responding in April.

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