Everyone at Staf would like to congratulate the 129 candidates who were elected to the Scottish Parliament this week.

 

Staf was able to work constructively with several MSPs in the last session of Parliament to advance our objective of improving outcomes for care-experienced young people across a range of policy areas. Together, we were able to make significant progress on policies like UNCRC incorporation, financial support for care-experienced young people and implementing ‘The Promise’.  

 

While we made significant progress during the last session of Parliament, it is clear that we have a long road ahead of us before the experiences of care-experienced young people can be said to be indistinguishable from those of their non-care-experienced peers.

 

We are ready and willing to work constructively with every MSP to achieve that goal in this new session of Parliament.

 

We are ready to help in whatever way we can to ensure that young care-experienced voices are at the heart of our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic; that MSPs do their best to support care-experienced young people socially, economically and financially; and that care-experienced views are heard loud and clear in the policy outputs of the sixth session of Parliament.

We also note with congratulations that the SNP are the largest party and will likely form the next Scottish Government. We look forward to working with the Government on the SNP’s manifesto commitments to “provide a Minimum Income Guarantee for all”, to “introduce a new care leaver grant” and to “invest £10 million to establish a new care experience grant” (SNP Manifesto, 2021).

 

We believe that all decision-makers have a duty to uphold and amplify care-experienced voices and experiences, and we look forward to working with our new and returning MSPs to ensure that continues to happen.