Route map: Relationships

This route map was last updated in December 2025 with all information that is known about work underway and still required. It is not yet fully populated and work continues to identify what still needs to happen. Route maps are shared planning tools to support delivery of the promise and as progress is made and the rest of the route becomes clearer, this route map will continue to be updated.

Where is Scotland now?

Relationships are at the core of a supportive and compassionate approach to care. However, embedding and sustaining strong, lasting relationships requires complex change which cannot be engineered through processes alone. Within the relationships route map, progress continues, yet there is still heavy reliance on system-level solutions to meet children and young people’s needs. Policy and practice improvements help, but cannot replace genuine, stable relationships. Planning and delivery must better protect relationships that matter to children and young people, while supporting their agency. Persistent workforce recruitment and retention challenges disrupt stability and addressing the pressures this causes is crucial.

Where does Scotland need to be by 2030?

All of the promise's calls to action have been grouped into delivery-focused outcomes that make clear what Scotland must deliver to keep the promise. The route map then identifies who must take responsibility for action by when for each outcome. This means the outcomes are fully aligned to what children, young people, and care experienced adults said must happen and the actions required are in a format that supports delivery, accountability, and monitoring.

The outcomes in Relationships are:

Scotland’s understanding of risk recognises the danger of disconnection, including the risk of removing children and young people from loving, stable relationships. Decision-making balances protection from harm with the right to lasting, supportive relationships. Every child and young person is supported to sustain relationships that matter to them - with family, brothers and sisters, carers, and trusted adults - wherever it is safe to do so. Workers have the time, trust, and reflective support to prioritise relationships.
Where families wish to stay connected but it is not safe to do so, systems ensure details are maintained so that reconnection remains possible if a child or young person wishes. Recording practices reflect the value placed on brother and sister relationships as a right and source of wellbeing. Decision making relating to brothers and sisters is accurately recorded and reviewed.

The route map to get there

The National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland was published in September 2021 and subsequently revised and updated in 2023.

In 2024, the National Framework for Child Protection Learning and Development in Scotland was updated to align with the 2023 guidance, supporting the workforce to build the skills and capacity required to implement these changes effectively. The guidance reflects a shift away from narrow, reactive approaches to child protection—focused primarily on responding after harm has occurred—towards a more preventative and holistic model. This approach places greater emphasis on early support, family and community wellbeing, and addressing underlying issues such as poverty, housing insecurity, and neglect. In doing so, it closely aligns with a core aim of The Promise: ensuring that children grow up “loved, safe and respected”.

In July 2021, legislation came into force placing a duty on local authorities to keep siblings together when they cannot live at home with their family, wherever this is possible (The Looked After Children (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2021). Where siblings are unable to remain together, those responsible for their care have a duty to nurture and maintain sibling relationships. To support implementation of this legislation, the Scottish Government published National Practice Guidance in 2021.

Staying Together and Connected National Implementation Group: Executive Summary Report, published June 2023

Work has continued to embed the GIRFEC approach across all services that support children and young people. This is intended to ensure that children who need support have a Child’s Plan that is tailored to their individual needs and sets out the support required to help them achieve positive outcomes.

The Scottish Government has been working with NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to develop an in-person trauma training course for caregivers. The course will be delivered over two sessions, with follow-up reflective coaching. It is designed to support kinship and foster carers, as well as adoptive parents, to provide trauma-informed care for the children they look after.

Initial small-scale testing of the course, Thriving Futures, took place in March 2025 in West Lothian with a group of foster carers. The course materials have since been refined in response to feedback from this testing.

In August it was announced that the “Scottish Government are commencing an update of the 2012 National Risk Framework"". IRISS has been commisisoned by the Scottish Government to lead on this work who will be reaching out to partners through various routes to involve them in updating this crucial tool. Iriss has since convened engagement sessions involving over 100 practitioners from across the country with the purpose of beginning an inclusive, multi-agency dialogue to reimagine how risk assessment and child protection is delivered in Scotland.

The New Horizons initiatives developed through the Community of Practice for Siblings and bring together local areas and national partners to advance key areas of work that better support sibling, sibling-like, and friendship relationships. These areas include kinship care and housing; the use and communication of local data; and decision-making processes.

In 2025/26, the Scottish Government provided £445,558 in funding to Adoption UK Scotland for its PATHways service. This funding supports adoptive parents, as well as long-term fostering and kinship families, who have been identified as requiring additional therapeutic support. PATHways offers early and tailored access to psychological and peer support, helping to strengthen caregivers’ capacity to create nurturing environments in which children and young people can manage challenges and flourish.

In mid-2024, the Scottish Government refreshed its guidance on Continuing Care to increase uptake and ensure that more young people are able to remain in care for as long as they need, until they feel ready to move on.

The Community of Practice for Siblings has developed into a valuable national network, bringing together practitioners and people with lived experience to strengthen shared understanding and improve practice. Within the Community of Practice for Siblings, there is growing recognition of the importance of friendships. This has highlighted the need for friendships to be prioritised and actively supported, alongside sibling and sibling-like relationships.

The Community of Practice for Siblings will work collaboratively with the Scottish Government to identify actions arising from the Community’s work and to consider the implications for implementing Staying Together and Connected: Getting it Right for Sisters and Brothers. This collaboration will include reflecting on learning from the New Horizons initiatives developed through the Community of Practice for Siblings, as well as identifying key actions that require national government support.

In early 2026, further small-scale testing of the trauma training course for caregivers is planned with groups of adoptive parents, foster carers, and kinship carers. This testing will support further refinement of the course materials to better meet the specific needs of each carer group.

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) and the Scottish Government will continue to work closely with stakeholders and carers as the course is refined, and will consider next steps for further testing and development of this resource during 2026/27.

The Scottish Government will consider the findings from Phase 3 of the Permanently Progressing study, led by the University of Stirling, to identify learning and inform potential improvements to policy and practice.

There are no milestones identified for this year yet. Once progress is made in earlier years, the work required in this year will be clearer and milestones will be added here.

Who needs to work on this:

Scottish Government, Child Protection Committees, Iriss, Community of Practice for Siblings, NHS Education for Scotland, COSLA, local authorities

Other route maps this links to:

Intensive family support

Where children live

Stability

Rules, processes and culture

To see which calls to action from the promise sit under this outcome, click here.

The Scottish Government is providing £96,679 in grant funding across 2024/25 and 2025/26 to the Association for Fostering, Kinship and Adoption (AFKA) Scotland. This funding will support the development of three national good practice guides on permanence in kinship care, foster care, and adoption.

AFKA will launch its new Good Practice in Permanence Guides — designed to support consistent, effective practice in contact, birth family support and permanence across kinship care, fostering and adoption — with a series of launch events planned around Scotland and online in February–March 2026.

The Scottish Government will continue to work with local authorities to consider how we understand better the reasons why siblings aren’t placed together and this will form part of CLAS data collections in future years.

The Scottish Government will work with those involved in the New Horizons initiative, alongside other partners, to consider how nationwide CLAS reporting can better capture the underlying reasons why siblings, or those with sibling-like relationships, may not be living together.

Implementation of new local tests of change arising from the New Horizons initiative will continue, with learning shared across the Community of Practice for Siblings and more widely.

To support effective delivery, a collaborative review of the different recording platforms and systems used nationally by Local Authorities and Health and Social Care Partnerships will be required. This review should consider the extent to which existing systems are fit for purpose in reflecting and recording the relationships that matter most to those with experience of care, and how well those relationships are being supported. Working with partners, consideration will then be needed as to whether national action is required to ensure a more consistent and fit-for-purpose approach to recording key aspects of children’s, young people’s and families’ lives.

Learning from innovative approaches, such as My Care Record, which empower people with lived experience to have greater control over their own personal data, should be shared, with actions identified to support progress.

Co-designed tests of change should also be developed to improve how the story revealed by richer data is understood and communicated within Local Authority areas.

The Scottish Government and partners, including the Community of Practice for Siblings and those involved in the New Horizons tests of change, should review progress in relation to both national CLAS reporting and local approaches to decision-making and recording. This review should identify areas where further action is required.

There are no milestones identified for this year yet. Once progress is made in earlier years, the work required in this year will be clearer and milestones will be added here.

Who needs to work on this:

The Scottish Government,Local Authorities and Health and Social Care Partnerships, The Community of Practice for Siblings