Welcome to Staf's Strategic Plan 2019-2022.

Over the next three years we will continue to work relentlessly to ensure that 'the wellbeing and success of young people leaving care across Scotland is indistinguishable from that of their peers in the general population'.

For this vision to become a reality, we need to ensure that care leavers and those who support them (our members) have the time, space and emotional capacity to build long-lasting, loving relationships.

Only by creating the circumstances in which such relationships can flourish will we be able to realise the full potential of our skilled and caring workforce and enable care leavers, working with the communities they live in, to become the new leaders of sustainable change.

However, the change will have to ripple through all aspects of our complex system and ensure that young people, regardless of where they live, have access to the right support at the right time. Such whole system change will require community-led care experience to work hand-in-hand with the development and implementation of national policy. We need to establish a relationship-based, trauma-informed commitment to ensuring the voices of our young people and practitioners are heard and the high ambitions of our national policy are realised for all.

And while we need to maintain a focus on the transition to adulthood, we will place a renewed focus on the issues of poverty, education, employment, housing, justice and health.

We have a strong foundation to build on, whether celebrating best practice locally and regionally or considering the broad range of supportive Scottish Government policy and legislation alongside the ongoing Care Review, and a commitment to fully implement the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Staf's strategy is based on creating a platform for our members and young people to further influence policy, culture and practice with a view to developing a system which puts relationships at its heart by creating opportunities for our members to connect, network and learn from each other.

Our values are simple: We listen, We care, We love; and we will use these throughout the lifetime of this strategy to direct our work.

Read the Strategic Plan 2019-2022 Summary here