A new online hub has been launched to strengthen support for care experienced children across Scotland.
Enquire, Scotland’s national advice service for additional support for learning, has launched Navigate, a new platform designed for use by adults who live with, care for, or work with care experienced pupils. The hub provides “clear rights-based information, real-life stories, and practical tools” that can be used to help “break down barriers to learning”.
According to Enquire, the goal of the new service is to “make it easier for care experienced children and young people to get the consistent support they are entitled to at school.”
Enquire is managed by the charity Children in Scotland and funded by the Scottish Government.
The new Navigate hub has been developed following engagement with communities across the country, as well as being informed by Enquire’s free helpline for families. The organisation worked directly with care experienced pupils, as well as carrying out surveys and collaborating with various partner organisations, with this research identifying attendance, exclusions, and access to co-ordinated support plans are key areas for improvement.
As a result, the Navigate service has been organised into three main sections.
‘Care-experienced rights’ focuses on providing accessible information and guidance. For example, it includes information explaining why being care-experienced is regarded as an additional support need, and help to understand the ways in children may be unlawfully excluded from education.
‘What can I do?’ offers a number of practical, ready-to-use tools, including a system for drafting emails asking for more support at school. It also provides advice on areas such as making meetings more comfortable for young people, and supporting children to return to school following a period of absence.
‘Real-life stories’ includes case studies and examples derived from lived experience, with several having come directly from care experienced young people.
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Navigate has been made possible thanks to support from the Keep the Promise Fund, which has distributed around £5m to 29 different projects intended to support care experienced young people.
Scotland’s approach to helping looked-after children is outline in a policy known as The Promise, which was first issued by former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon in 2020 following a three-year investigation and major report.
The ‘promise’ is that all children would ‘grow up loved, safe and respected’ by 2030, with the hope that having contact with the care system would no longer have a huge and overwhelming negative impact on the lives of young people.
However, the most recent Scottish Government figures show that attendance and attainment rates for care experienced pupils have fallen across the last two years, while a promise to end the exclusion of these young people from schools has not been kept.
Even in areas where progress has been made, enormous gaps remain between those who and do not have experience of being in the care system.
Nicola Killean, the Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland, says that looked-after children “are not being supported to thrive in education.”
A major report released earlier this year also alleged that care-experienced children’s rights are regularly being breached, particularly through the use of exclusions that are falsely “labelled as support” for young people.
Ms Sturgeon herself has admitted that the progress made so far is “not good enough.”
Mark Patterson, Senior Advice and Information Officer, told The Herald:
“We know that too many care experienced learners face barriers in education that prevent them from thriving. Navigate has been shaped by young people’s voices and real-life experiences. It’s designed to be practical, accessible and to help the adults around a young person work together more effectively.”
The Navigate hub is now live at: enquire.org.uk/navigate
