KEEP OUR PROMISE

Ex-FM claims progress on vulnerable children ‘too slow’. Labour says continuing to let down kids is 'scandal'

- BY PAUL HUTCHEON and CHRIS McCALL

NICOLA Sturgeon has warned John Swinney's Government to raise its game in helping the most vulnerable children.

She said everyone had to be "brutally honest" about the progress in keeping a "promise" she made to care-experienced young people.

The former first minister said: "A promise is not kept until it is delivered."

Sturgeon made The Promise five years ago to the day after an independent review into children in care.

Commitments to vulnerable young people included ensuring they will be able to stay at home with their family where it is safe to do so.

Another part of The Promise, which has to be delivered by 2030, is that young people will feel loved, safe and respected if they need to go into care.

But implementation, which involves government and councils working together, has been patchy.

Swinney was Sturgeon's deputy when she was FM and the pair remain political allies, but she has fired a shot across the bow of his government.

In an article for the Record, she wrote that the government had "shown leadership" on the care-experienced student bursary and ending the incarceration of young people in Polmont.

She welcomed a new allowance for foster and kinship carers. But she added: "In order to deliver The Promise, we must see an increase in the scale and pace of change. Continuing as we are is not good enough.

"Of course we should rightly celebrate the steps forward that have been taken but we must also be brutally honest about the areas where more progress is needed.