Tom McGhee: It’s a challenging time for looking after children in care

The recent draft Scottish budget was indicative both of the opportunities and challenges facing Scotland’s 1,475 children and young people currently in residential care.

Thankfully, the Scottish Government maintains a strong commitment to early-years preventative spending geared to improving economic and social outcomes for our youth.

However, the budget for children and families services is in line for a 6.2 per cent real-terms cut in the next financial year. Add to this a 2.2 per cent real terms drop in the local government budget and it is clear that residential care service providers across Scotland face the challenge of doing more with less, without compromising services.

It is, therefore, of crucial importance that public, independent and third sector care providers continue to build upon existing partnership arrangements and relationships to ensure that the interests of Scotland’s children and young people in care continue to be safeguarded. Successful collaboration will play an instrumental part in improving their well-being because it opens up dialogue, showcases innovative working practices and identifies waste and duplication, leading in turn to savings that can be reinvested in sustainable services.

We know the needs of young people cannot be controlled by annualised real-terms reductions. That being the case, we must do more to strengthen partnership working, share expertise and build joint capacity across the residential care sector, so all those tasked with looking after our most vulnerable young people can withstand the economic pressures.

Our organisation’s success is based on the fact that we work in partnership, not competition, with local authority commissioners of residential care services across Scotland. Given the current economic situation facing the public sector, we are acutely aware of the need to offer best-value services that cater to the children in our care, while offering peace of mind to local authorities. The challenge will be for all providers to adopt this mindset going forward.

The future of those young people demands nothing less.

• Tom McGhee is director of residential care provider Spark of Genius.