The Promise Progress Framework

The Framework has been developed by COSLA, The Scottish Government and The Promise Scotland, with input received from key stakeholders including Public Health Scotland, the Improvement Service, CELCIS, Who Cares? Scotland, the Care Inspectorate, Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. These stakeholders make up The Promise Collective, a group of organisations who provide a strong framework of partnership working and sharing of information and activity underway across organisations. 

It has been developed in line with a set of five agreed key principles. 

1. Insights, not targets, driven 
   To help all those with a responsibility towards keeping the promise understand where progress is being made, the Framework is intended to be used and contextualised within organisations’ own settings, enabling a richer understanding of the data and the development of shared accountability across Scotland. 
2. Focused on use and burden reduction 
   The Framework brings data from multiple sources into one place to aid understanding.  Rather than setting up any new reporting requirements, the Framework uses existing data sources, reducing the need for new data collection and bringing data from multiple sources into one place to aid understanding.  
3. Non-exhaustive 
   The ten Vision Statements have been chosen based on available data from multiple sources, however, indicators are intended to evolve and expand as data improves and understanding deepens, alongside other sources of data, and research. 
4. Aligned 
   Through alignment with pre-existing frameworks, the Framework places data about care experienced children and families within the context of the wider population of children and families wellbeing at community level (the Children, Young People and Families Outcomes Framework) and national level data (the National Performance Framework).  
5. Expansive 
   The Framework collates indicators from health, inspection, social work, poverty, education, and justice data to chart progress towards outcomes.  Wherever possible, data which has been collected since at least 2020 is used to measure progress. It integrates data from multiple sources and in many forms at different levels, using care experience markers where available.

Find out more about the milestones and next steps for The Promise Progress Framework below and in the data and information route-map.

The dashboard which launched in September 2025 contained the same data published in the initial report in December 2024. Users are invited to explore the layout and interactivity of the dashboard, and provide any feedback to this initial version of the dashboard.

 By December 2025 all indicators will be updated to reflect data that has been published throughout 2025, and the dashboard will be improved based on the feedback received.

Moving forward from December 2025 the Promise Progress Framework will be updated regularly to include the most up to date data.

Updates to the Promise Progress Framework require robust quality assurance. The Scottish Government already have a way of doing this, which has been used on other dashboards, such as the National Performance Framework. It allows for scrutinising, quality checking the development of indicators and applying qualifiers, such as direction of travel.

To support applying this process to the Promise Progress Framework, a Promise Technical Advisory Group is being formed and will be chaired by the Scottish Government’s Chief Statistician.

As well as this, The Promise Data and Evidence group, established in March 2025. This brings together a network of analysts from across sectors and organisations to review the data and evidence landscape, identify activities to improve data infrastructure, and support research priorities that enhance understanding of progress. The work of the group will support the development of the Promise Story of Progress. Their latest work programme is available here https://www.gov.scot/publications/promise-data-evidence-group-12-month-work-programme/. 

One of the main evidence gaps highlighted in the Promise Progress Framework is the need to better understand differences in health outcomes and healthcare access for children and young people with care experience.

To address this, Public Health Scotland is leading a project to see if linking existing data can provide a sustainable way to regularly track health, mental health, and healthcare measures for children and young people with care experience.

The project is based on the commitment to “do data differently,” following the principles of the Promise Story of Progress. The aim is to avoid creating new reporting requirements by making better use of existing administrative data. This will make it possible to report new insights regularly without creating extra work for services.

The Promise Data and Evidence Group recently released the first annual workplan, which gives more detail about the project, including aims and planned milestones. The workplan is available online here

How the care experienced community are feeling the impact of change must be at the heart of how success is measured and The Promise Progress Framework will be used as the frame to gather data and information on their experiences to ensure impact of change is understood.

Achieving this at a national level across the ten vision statements requires an approach that balances the need to collect insights that guide what needs to happen next, while limiting asking the same questions of the same people over again. As part of the next steps in the development of The Promise Story of Progress, there is a need to explore a variety of ways of collecting this information including social research and support from organisations who work directly with the care experienced community. 

To start, the 'What Matters' questions have been created, based directly on what children, young people and families told the Independent Care Review was important to them. These questions are intended to help root Scotland’s understanding of what ‘good’ looks like through experience, rather than what 'good' looks like to the 'system'. 

To answer this question within The Promise Story of Progress, at its launch in December 2024, The Promise Progress Framework has multiple national indicators and data sources mapped to its outcomes to guide a high-level understanding of national progress. Each indicator is populated with data back to 2020 where possible so change over time since the promise was made can be understood. 

The use of multiple outcomes and indicators means it is possible to use the data to help tell a story of national progress, taking multiple factors and contexts into account. When taken together, this helps Scotland understand the direction and pace of the change it is making.

It is key to understand not only whether an indicator is showing a change in direction or trend, but also whether this change is causing unintended consequences elsewhere in the system. Contextual indicators are a way of checking whether what is seen in core indicators is an accurate reflection of what is really going on in the ‘system’. The indicators blend multiple types and sources of data, including health, inspection, social work, poverty, education, and justice, to chart progress towards outcomes.

The Promise Progress Framework is a national framework that is shared by all those with a responsibility for keeping the promise. While reporting will be produced centrally by The Promise Scotland, Scottish Government and COSLA, there is work across organisations and groups to ensure the best data and evidence available is used to interpret the national picture.

Feedback on this first iteration of the Promise Progress Framework will be key. Views of stakeholders and partners would be highly valued. To do this please email: plan2430@thepromise.scot 

The vision statements and outcomes in The Promise Progress Framework set the frame for organisational understanding. While national-level indicators are important for aligning activity they do not interpret the reasons behind this change and the resulting impacts. Therefore, a broader evidence base is required to examine how processes at local and organisational level are affecting change. 

Work at the organisational level is key to developing better understanding but also to support an improvement in how change is experienced by those for whom the promise was made. This work requires different kinds of data, evidence and information than what is needed at the national level. 

As part of the next steps in the development of The Promise Story of Progress, the mechanism for how improvement work at the organisational level can feed into and inform the national picture will be developed, building on the work already underway through Plan 24-30.