Annual review of progress against our Corporate Parenting Actions.
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 the Transition Fund 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 Collaborative Corporate Parenting Group attending quarterly meetings in May, August and November 2025 and February 2026.
- We continue to communicate with local authorities on the opportunities available to young people aged 16 and above through the re-opened ILF Scotland Fund and the Transition Fund, both through written information and in-person presentations and engagement.
- Engagement with fostering agencies and Scottish Throughcare and Aftercare (STAF) has recommenced as planned during the last year and senior ILF Scotland staff attended the STAF conference on 11 November 2025.
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 to take account of these.
- We will consider the impact on care experienced young people as part of our Equality Impact Assessments.
Progress
- As part of our published Engagement and Feedback strategy work, we are focusing on how we can increase our engagement with young people, including those who are care experienced.
- Our engagement programme with young people through events at venues such as schools, colleges and community events continues as much as possible. A key focus for our engagement is in areas across Scotland that face the greatest challenges, where our funding can have the most impact.
- Our Young Ambassador Group will be relaunched during 2026 as part of our UNCRC Implementation Plan and we continue to encourage any care experienced recipients to join the group.
- We have incorporated care experience in our Equality Impact Assessments as standard.
Commitment 3
We will 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 by including it in our induction pack.
- To increase awareness of the difference the Transition Fund makes to care experienced young people, we will share experiences of recipients of the Fund and our work with other corporate parenting partners.
Progress:
- Trauma Skilled training for frontline staff was provided through two independent online modules in August and September 2025 followed by a face to face workshop on 3 September 2025.
- Staff received training on appropriate recording of information and data relating to Care Experienced young people and received awareness training on how this cohort of young people experienced services provided to them by the public sector.
- We have included a briefing on our Corporate Parenting role in our induction process to ensure all new staff are aware of our commitments.
- Our aim from the last report was to identify and publish a case study of a young person who is care experienced who has successfully applied for a Transition Fund grant. We were unable to identify someone suitable this year but will continue our endeavours in the coming year.
Commitment 4
We will ensure access to our services for care experienced young people.
Actions:
- We will ensure our promotion of the Transition Fund and the re-opened Independent Living Fund reaches care experienced young people so they are aware of our funds and what they can potentially offer.
- 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.
Progress:
- Our engagement programme involves reaching out to young people who are care‑experienced via the organisations that support them including social work transitions teams and Looked After and Corporate Parenting staff as well as through organisations that support disabled young people in for example, educational settings. We do, however, aim to engage further with care services for young people to reach more young disabled people who are eligible for the Transition Fund.
- Our staff training and induction programmes ensure that care experienced young people are well supported by knowledgeable and informed staff.
- Where an applicant to the Transition Fund voluntarily indicates on the online application portal that they are care experienced, we allocate a specific caseworker to provide additional support through the application process.
- Successful applications to the Transition Fund by care experienced young people to date increased from 13% to 15.5% for 2025 to 2026.
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 ILF 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 2027 includes planning for further engagement with care experienced recipients.
- We ask applicants to the re‑opened Independent Living Fund about their care-experienced status at the point of initial assessment. This information is recorded for young people aged 16 up to their 26th birthday, in line with the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014. To date, 36 applications have been received from care experienced disabled young people. Providing this information is optional to respect applicants’ privacy.
- We have recruited two additional Grant Support Officers to ensure that young people applying to the Transition Fund have access to consistent and effective support throughout the application process and beyond.
- ILF Scotland is a listed authority for UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 and has a legal duty to uphold children’s rights. We will continue to ensure that we build any improvements that come from our UNCRC activity into our Corporate Parenting Plan actions.
- ILF Scotland has achieved the Gold Standard Kinship Friendly Employer status – the first organisation in Scotland to achieve this. Gold standard support includes offering paid leave to all kinship carers, when they take on the care of a child, that equals the organisation’s adoption leave and pay.
