Route map: Stability

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?

Stability is essential to keeping the promise and ensuring every child and young person in Scotland experiences a safe, secure and stable childhood. Yet fair and consistent delivery remains difficult due to significant systemic challenges. Decisions about where children and young people live are too often driven by capacity pressures, staffing shortages, organisational risk, or limited wraparound support, rather than needs. To make meaningful progress, national and local planning for care provision must be strengthened. Scotland needs a more strategic approach to ensuring sufficient, appropriate care is available so the system can provide support throughout childhoods.

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 Stability are:

When it is not safe for children and young people to remain at home, they live with consistent caregivers in safe, loving environments that meet their needs. Children and young people do not experience unnecessary moves, and relationships that matter to them are protected and sustained.
When moves or transitions are unavoidable, they are carefully planned, relational, and informed. Support wraps around families and carers, and children and young people have time, information, and relationship support so that transitions do not feel rushed or unsafe.

The route map to get there

The Scottish Government, through the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill, has committed to strengthening planning processes and to considering further options relating to permanence planning.

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. The guides focus on Building & Nurturing Connections (family time with birth relatives), Supporting Birth Families, and Supporting Families in Permanence.

Review evidence from the BeST study on stable placements and early permanence, identifying where its findings can be embedded into practice to strengthen decision-making and improve long-term outcomes for children and young people.

Scottish Parliament should explore potential amendments to the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill to support the ‘dual registration’ of carers who can provide both foster care and adoptive care, where this is in the best interests of the child.

Scottish Government, CELCIS and COSLA should work together to ensure that, wherever practicable, babies and infants who cannot live with their parents are placed with carers who are dual registered as both foster and adoptive carers. This will help ensure that, if they cannot return home, they can remain with the same primary carer. This work should include consideration of necessary legislative changes and strategies to address recruitment and retention challenges within the foster carer workforce.

Good practice in Permanence: Association for Fostering, Kinship and Adoption (AFKA) Scotland will publish the series of permanence guides.

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.

The Children’s Services Planning Cycle (2028–31) should consider and incorporate actions arising from the national evaluation of placement stability outcomes.

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, CELCIS, Social Work Scotland, COSLA, Local Authorities