ILF Scotland’s Corporate Parenting Action Plan 2024 to 2027 – Update of Progress at April 2025

Commitment 1

We will continue to develop existing relationships with other Corporate Parents to make sure that ILF Scotland remains alert to the needs of care experienced young people to inform our policy and practice.

Actions:

• We will continue to participate in Who Cares? Scotland’s Collaborative Parenting Network and attend quarterly meetings.
• We will continue to work closely with local authority social work departments to ensure staff are aware of our funds and how they might direct and support young disabled people to apply for funding.
• We will continue to communicate with key fostering agencies and with STAF (Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare Forum).

Progress:

ILF Scotland continues to participate in the Who Cares? Scotland network, attending quarterly meetings.  As part of our communication with local authorities regarding the re-opening of the ILF Scotland Fund, through written information and in-person presentations, we provided information on the Transition Fund and the opportunities available in both funds to young people aged 16 to 18.  

Engagement with fostering agencies and STAF was limited this past year due to financial spending controls.

Commitment 2

We will assess the requirements of care experienced young people to ensure we meet their needs.

Actions:

• We will continue to engage with care experienced young people to increase our understanding of their needs to help us better shape our services.
• We will consider the impact on care experienced young people as part of our Equality Impact Assessments.

Progress

ILF Scotland’s feedback strategy is being finalised for implementation in 2025 to 2026 and this will include how we plan to increase our engagement with young people who are care experienced. We have had to balance our programme of engagement events with our capacity to support funding to the Transition Fund, which continues to be in high demand. We keep this under regular review.  

We continue to encourage a care experienced young person to join the ILF Scotland Young Ambassador Group.

We revised our Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) templates to include care experienced young people as part of our ongoing EQIA process.

Commitment 3

We will continue to develop staff awareness of corporate parenting across our organisation.

Actions:

• All ILF Scotland staff and Board members receive training and awareness sessions that outline the principles of corporate parenting, our responsibilities, and the ILF Scotland action plan.
• New staff joining ILF Scotland have an understanding of corporate parenting through the information we provide in our induction pack.
• To increase awareness of the difference our funding makes to care experienced young people, we will share experiences of recipients of the Fund, with their permission, and about our work with other corporate parenting partners.

Progress:

Corporate Parenting training sessions were delivered by Who Cares? Scotland in October 2024 for all staff and Board members. Additionally, our induction process includes a briefing on our Corporate Parenting role to ensure all new staff are aware of our commitments. We are keen to publish a case study of a young person who is care experienced who has successfully applied for our funding.  

Commitment 4

We will ensure access to our services for care experienced young people.

Actions:

• We will ensure our promotion of our funds reaches care experienced young people so they are aware of what it can offer them.
• We will continue to engage with care experienced young people through events such as Care Leavers Transition days.
• We will fully support care experienced young people to successfully complete the application process for the Transition Fund and provide assistance to local authority social work colleagues where needed to make an application to the re-opened ILF on behalf of a young disabled person who is care experienced.

Progress:

Successful applications to the Transition Fund by care experienced young people remains at 13% of overall numbers for the past financial year. We have engaged with care experienced young people in a variety of ways but aim to engage further including with residential care services for young people to reach those who are eligible for the Transition Fund. Where an applicant indicates on the application that they are care experienced, we allocate a specific specialist caseworker to provide additional support through the application process.

We are beginning to receive applications to the re-opened fund from young people who are care experienced and will monitor this throughout the coming year.

Commitment 5

We will consider where we could improve our services and processes for care experienced young people.

Actions:

• We will engage with care experienced recipients for feedback on our services and identify areas for improvement.
• We will implement systems to identify whether applicants to the re-opened 2015 Fund are care-experienced and analyse this data to assist us with future planning.
• We will work with other Corporate Parents and care experienced young people to identify how we can improve our plan, services and processes.
• We will review our corporate parenting approach and report on progress against the actions in the report annually.

Progress:

Our Engagement and Feedback strategy for 2025 to 2026 includes planning for further engagement with care experienced recipients.

We are recording the number of care experienced young people we are visiting as part of their application to the re-opened ILF. We are developing our portal to capture the number of applications on behalf of care experienced young people for the re-opened ILF Fund. We will monitor these numbers to assess further engagement and potential improvements.

Note: ILF Scotland is a listed authority for UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 and will ensure that we include ongoing improvement as part of implementation of this project in our Corporate Parenting