Scottish Recommended Allowance to increase in line with inflation
Financial support for kinship and foster carers will increase in 2026-27 – helping them meet the cost of living challenges and to provide more for the children and young people they care for.
The Scottish Recommended Allowance (SRA) will be uprated by 3.8% for 2026-27, which is in line with the Consumer Price Index inflation rate recorded in September 2025. This uplift – part of the Scottish Government’s work to Keep the Promise to Scotland’s care experienced young people by 2030 – will be supported by an additional £4.3 million investment.
From April 2026, kinship and foster carers will receive a weekly allowance, based on the age of each child they care for, of:
0 to 4 years: £177.68
5-15 years: £206.71
16-17 years: £283.35
The SRA was first introduced in Scotland in August 2023 to ensure all eligible foster and kinship carers receive a consistent minimum level of financial support, regardless of where they live.
Following a review of the allowance, the Scottish Government agreed in March 2026 to uplift the SRA annually in line with inflation.
Promise Minister Natalie Don-Innes said: “Foster and kinship carers do an extraordinary job in providing safe, stable, and loving homes for some of Scotland’s most vulnerable children and young people. It is only right that the financial support they receive keeps pace with the cost of living.
“This uplift is a clear demonstration of our commitment to Keep The Promise and to ensuring that carers are properly supported in the vital work they do. I am grateful to all the foster and kinship carers, local authorities, and organisations who contributed to the review of the SRA, and look forward to continued partnership working to build on the progress we have made.”
The Scottish Government provides an annual investment of £17.9 million for the allowance. The uplift for this year is backed by an additional £4.3 million.
A one-off payment of £2,000 will help every young person leaving care or continuing care from next month as they move towards adulthood.
The payment will benefit around 1,300 young people who leave care every year in Scotland. It was co-designed with input from young people with care experience to help support them as they move on from care and into adulthood and independent living, with some suggesting during consultation that it could help them with driving lessons or a new laptop to assist with studies.
The Care Leaver Payment forms part of the Scottish Government’s work to Keep ‘the Promise’ to Scotland’s care experienced young people by 2030.
The Scottish Government is fully funding the payment, and has worked in partnership with COSLA to ensure it will be delivered automatically to young people as they leave care by local authorities.
Natalie Don-Innes, Minister for The Promise, met young people with care experience who stand to receive the payment at Falkirk Champs, a group led by care experienced young people working to drive positive change for their peers.
A one-off payment of £2,000 will help every young person leaving care or continuing care from next month as they move towards adulthood.
Ms Don-Innes said: “We know that care experienced people do not necessarily have the same informal support network that other young people have during transition points in their lives, and how crucial support during their transition to adulthood can be.
“Through close-working with young people we have designed a payment that will help young people leaving care with additional financial security during this important period.
“This is yet another strand of our work to keep the Promise, alongside wider work including the transformative supports now underpinned by the Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) Bill recently passed by Parliament.”
Joseph, 13, is a care-experienced champion at Falkirk Champs who lives in kinship care with his family. He will receive the payment when he leaves care. Joseph said:
“I think the Care Leaver’s Payment is good, and I will probably use it towards driving lessons or to give me a chance to travel. I would also like to be a chef, and it could help me buy tools and equipment that would help me in my career.”
Sarah Stow, Champions Board Coordinator at Falkirk Champs, said: “The Care leavers payment is one of the many small but vital things that need to happen to help Scotland keep its promise to the Care Community.
“These young people are ours and we need to invest in their futures – I think about this payment as the nest egg a grandparent or parent might save for their loved one.
“A wee step up for our children at a time when they are ready to move forward.”
Right to lifelong advocacy and enhanced support for all care leavers
A lifelong entitlement to advocacy services for all care experienced people will ensure their voices are better heard after MSPs backed landmark legislation to accelerate delivery of ‘the Promise’.
The Children (Care, Care Experience, and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill underpins delivery of the Scottish Government’s response to the independent care review, and commitment to keep the Promise. The Bill was passed in a final Stage 3 vote in the Scottish Parliament.
The Bill will extend aftercare support currently available for 16-to-26 year olds who were in care on their 16th birthday to those who had left care before that point – including help with accommodation, education, employment and wellbeing.
It includes provisions to drive reforms to the Children’s Hearing System, including remunerated Panel chairs to help reduce delays and increase capacity, to ensure the system better meet the needs of children and families.
Residential childcare providers will have to provide financial information to Ministers, and a Residential Childcare Futures Reference Group will be established.
This group will draw together partners from national and local government, social work, and organisations representing care-experienced people to ensure the needs of children and young people are foremost in residential care.
It will consider definitions of profit and provide future advice to Ministers on further regulation to limit profit.
Natalie Don-Innes, Minister for Children, Young People & The Promise said: “This legislation will deliver a very strong package of further change that will help improve the lives of people across Scotland with care experience and those who care for them. It represents a significant milestone and will accelerate progress towards keeping the Promise.
“I am grateful to everyone across the care experienced community who helped to shape the Bill, and to MSPs across the Parliament whose engagement has resulted in a legislative package that will help greatly improve the support available.
“This legislation is an essential part of our wider on-going programme of work to keep the Promise, and will help to deliver the change which the 5,500 voices that informed the Independent Care Review told us must happen.”
Discussions with MSPs from across the chamber led to Scottish Government amendments to the Bill, which will deliver enhanced support for kinship carers. These include strengthening the role of family group decision making, and making it easier for eligible kinship families to access financial, practical and advocacy support through a comprehensive needs-based assessment from their local authority.
First Minister announces funding on anniversary of ‘The Promise’
Projects that support the education and wellbeing of care experienced children and young people will receive a share of £9.5 million this year, First Minister John Swinney has announced on the sixth anniversary of The Promise.
The Care Experienced Children and Young People Fund, which is part of the Scottish Attainment Challenge Programme, was introduced in 2018-19, in recognition that care experienced children and young people require additional support for their attainment.
Mentoring and extra-curricular activities are among the range of ways that local authorities are investing the funding to support children and young people across Scotland.
The First Minister visited the City of Edinburgh Council’s Corporate Parenting Hub to meet young people supported by charity MCR Pathways and other services and assistance offered at the Hub – including through the We Matter Team and the Edinburgh Champions Boards.
Mr Swinney said: “Ensuring that all children grow up feeling loved, safe and respected is a top priority for my government and we want to continue to reduce the number of children and young people who are living away from their families.
“The Scottish Government is committed to Keeping The Promise by 2030, and we are seeing good progress across Scotland from education to justice – including a 18% reduction since 2020 in the number of children identified as ‘looked after’.
“The Care Experienced Children and Young People Fund is improving outcomes for young people across Scotland in a range of different ways – driving not only education improvements, but building broader confidence, resilience and well-being.
“The funding we are announcing today, on the sixth anniversary of The Promise, takes the Scottish Government’s total investment in the programme to just over £80 million since 2018 – showcasing how we are delivering for Scotland’s care experienced young people and helping them get the best start in life.”
Chief Executive Officer and Mentor at MCR Pathways Sharon McIntyre said: ““MCR Pathways commends today’s announcement about the continued investment in The Care Experienced Children and Young People Fund.
“It is critically important that care experienced children and young people feel the direct benefits from this significant commitment. Everyday, together, with partners, we see the real benefits of the power of personalised relationship based mentoring across Scotland.
“We work side by side with dynamic communities, Schools and Local Authorities like Edinburgh City Council, to bridge the opportunity gap for care experienced young people through consistent, encouraging trusted adult relationships.
“No two trusted adult relationships are the same, they are bespoke to each and every young persons’ needs. These relationships empower young people to believe in themselves, value their own unique talents, build ambitions for their future careers – shaping their future fulfilling lives. That way, confidence is built, self belief instilled, skills are developed and engagement in learning achieved.
“On this poignant 6th anniversary of The Promise, collectively we are deeply committed to working towards Scotland becoming the first to commit to a life changing Trusted Adult Guarantee for every care experienced young person in Scotland.”
Councillor James Dalgleish, Education, Children and Families Convener said: “I warmly welcome additional funding for projects that support care experienced children and young people.
“We are committed to doing all we can to support children and young people who are care experienced in Edinburgh, acknowledging their experiences and providing the appropriate support to ensure they grow up loved, safe and respected so they can realise their full potential.
“We were pleased to welcome the First Minister John Swinney to our Corporate Parenting Hub in the heart of Edinburgh, showing how care experienced children and young people in the city have helped to create a welcoming space where they can meet, make friends and have fun.”
Amendments to Children (Care, Care Experience, and Services Planning) Bill
Plans have been unveiled to strengthen the legal rights for eligible kinship carers and make it simpler and clearer to access support for them and children they care for.
Promise Minister Natalie Don-Innes introduced proposed Scottish Government amendments to the Children (Care, Care Experience, and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill as stage two considerationof the legislation got underway.
The proposals would introduce a legal right for eligible kinship carers to be offered, and to request, a comprehensive needs-based assessment from their local authority, so families know what help they can ask for, how it will be considered, and can expect greater consistency across Scotland.
The move, if passed by MSPs, would make it easier for families to access financial, practical and advocacy support, by ensuring needs are considered in the round and linked to existing support routes.
The Bill already includes measures to enhance care and support for children in the care system, or who have left it. It forms a key part of the Scottish Government’s work to implement the recommendations of the Independent Care Review, known as The Promise.
Ms Don-Innes said: “Kinship carers provide vital stability for children within their family network, and comprehensive needs assessments will enhance families’ access to financial, practical and advocacy support, while improving local partners’ ability to tailor supports to meet their needs.
“These amendments are about ensuring that children growing up in kinship care are properly supported in line with The Promise. They aim to improve consistency and transparency while retaining local flexibility, so families have clearer routes to support regardless of where they live.
“Progress continues to be made across Scotland on keeping The Promise and this Bill is an important aspect of our work to ensure all children and young people receive the compassionate and considerate care they need throughout their care journey. I look forward to engaging further with Members across the Chamber as the Bill progresses.”
Eligible kinship carers can already access a range of support, delivered through councils and national services. The needs-based assessment would consider the specific circumstances of the child and family, with a view to maximising access to appropriate existing supports.
Proposals to provide consistent and fair support for families caring for children unable to live with their parents have been published.
Kinship care – where a child lives with a relative, close family friend or other trusted person rather than their parents – is now the most common placement away from home for looked-after children in Scotland, accounting for 35% of such placements.
Views on a draft Vision for Kinship Care will be sought from organisations and individuals in a public consultation launched today.
The draft Vision sets out a consistent baseline of support, proposed for all kinship families across Scotland. It focuses on improving accessibility and transparency around financial support, strengthening advice and advocacy services, and ensuring children in kinship care can access independent advocacy support, while allowing local partners to tailor delivery to families’ needs.
Kinship carers, children and young people helped shape the draft Vision as part of the Scottish Government’s work on ‘The Promise’ – which commits to ensure that all care-experienced young people grow up loved, safe and respected by 2030.
The consultation on the draft Vision will be open until the end of February 2026.
Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise Natalie Don-Innes said: “Kinship carers make an extraordinary contribution to our society, often stepping in at a moment’s notice to provide care and stability for children within their family network.
“Their contribution is vital to wider efforts to keep The Promise, and they deserve our recognition and support.
“Kinship families face numerous complex challenges, including financial pressures, and it is crucial that they are able to access the right help when they need it.
“Through our draft Vision for Kinship Care, we want to work with kinship families and partners to shape a system of support that is fair, consistent and grounded in children’s rights, aligned with our commitment to Keep The Promise and tackle child poverty.
“This Vision builds on the Scottish Government’s previous work to update kinship care guidance and roll out the Scottish Recommended Allowance, further strengthening the rights of kinship families.
“I encourage everyone with an interest in kinship care to share their views and help us shape a final vision that delivers real improvements for children and families.”
Mary Glasgow, Chief Executive, Children First, Scotland’s national children’s charity said:“The draft Vision for Kinship Care is an important step in recognising the scale of support needed for kinship families to thrive and upholding every child’s right to family life.
“We welcome the Minister’s commitment to ensuring that kinship children and their families have all the easily accessible, tailored practical, emotional, financial and legal advocacy and support they need to stay safe and well together.
“As providers of the Kinship Care Advice Service for Scotland, we are determined to help every kinship family to succeed. Families can contact our friendly, expert team every day of the year by calling 0808 800 0006 for free or by visiting www.kinship.scot.”
Joanne McMeeking, Head Improving Care Experiences, CELCIS, said: “Kinship care is at the heart of families and communities, enabling children to stay connected and feel loved.
“The Scottish Government’s ambition with this proposed vision for kinship care in Scotland, acknowledges the unique challenges for kinship carers and their families and is both timely and essential.
“By focusing on widening access to support, with sufficient resources and a realistic deliverable plan, the proposed vision has the potential to improve the experience of kinship families.
“This would resonate with Scotland’s commitments to both The Promise of the independent care review and upholding children’s rights. We look forward to working with others on the development of the vision.”
Plans to improve Scotland’s care system have been slow to come together after not enough early delivery planning by the Scottish Government and COSLA.
The Promise, a national commitment to improving the lives of care experienced people by 2030, was made by the Scottish Government in 2020.
Organisations and individuals remain dedicated to achieving that goal. But five years on, there is still confusion about what different bodies should be doing to deliver the changes needed.
Plans to date have lacked detail and direction for individual sectors. New structures set up by the Scottish Government to help deliver The Promise have lacked clarity about their roles and responsibilities.
And Scottish Government efforts to streamline The Promise’s complex governance arrangements have been insufficient. This has contributed to slow progress and made collective accountability challenging.
From the outset, there was no assessment of what resources and skills were needed to deliver The Promise by 2030, or how success would be defined or measured.
A framework to measure progress was agreed in December 2024 but further work remains. The Scottish Government is working on national data, which is not currently good enough to assess if services are improving the lives of care experienced people.
Stephen Boyle, Auditor General for Scotland, said: “Public bodies remain committed to improving Scotland’s care system and the lives of people who go through it. But initial planning about how The Promise would be delivered didn’t provide a strong platform for success.
“The Scottish Government needs to work with its partners to clearly set out the action that will be taken over the next five years to deliver The Promise, and how that work will be resourced.”
Angela Leitch, a member of the Accounts Commission, said: “Despite public bodies working hard to support local and national change to the services underpinning Scotland’s care system, greater pace and momentum is now needed.
“Local bodies need to work with their national partners to clarify roles and responsibilities, and prioritise the work needed to achieve The Promise’s aims.”
Commenting on the latest report on the Promise by the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission, Mary Glasgow, chief executive of Children First, said: “This report makes it clear that time is running out to keep the Promise.
“Investing in prevention and whole family support is the best way to stop children going into care in the first place. No child should be taken into care because support isn’t available.
“Real efforts have been made across Scotland over the last five years but as today’s report recognises, lack of clarity and accountability and failure to value and invest in the crucial role of the third sector are standing in the way.
“Children can’t wait. At Children First our commitment to keeping the Promise is as strong as ever. But unless the recommendations of the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission are acted on immediately the Promise won’t be kept.”
Proposed changes to the services and support provided to people who are in, or have experience of, the children’s care system are set to be scrutinised in Holyrood.
MSPs from the Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee have launched a call for views on the Scottish Government’s Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill.
The Bill forms part of the Scottish Government’s response to the recommendations made in the Independent Care Review known as “The Promise”.
Proposed changes include an expansion in the right to apply for aftercare, wider access to advocacy services for care-experienced people and the creation of a national register of foster carers.
The Bill also proposes changes designed to avoid people or organisations making excessive profits from the care of children. It would set limits on the profits that can be made from children’s residential care and require fostering services to register as charities.
Changes to the Children’s Hearing System, which the Scottish Government describes as offering legal protections to children who are in need or at risk, are also proposed in the Bill. In a move designed to strengthen accountability, the Bill also sets out that, in future, all Integration Joint Boards will have responsibility for children’s services planning, alongside local authorities and health boards.
The Committee now wants to hear from care-experienced people, parents, carers, foster carers, kinship carers and adoptive parents, and others, to share their views on the proposals.
The call for views is open now and will close to responses on 15 August 2025. The Committee plans to hold evidence sessions with stakeholders in autumn.
Douglas Ross MSP, Convener of the Education, Children and Young People Committee, said: “In 2020 the Independent Care Review set out a series of promises to Scotland’s care experienced children and young people.
“We have kept a constant eye on progress towards meeting those promises and it is clear, from hearing from care experienced young people and those supporting them, that there are many challenges still to overcome.
“The Committee will look closely at this Bill, listen to the views of everyone affected by it, and assess whether it will bring about the changes needed to ensure that all care experienced children and young people can enjoy the childhood they deserve.
“If you are care experienced, or work to support care experienced children and young people, please share your views on the proposals in this Bill.”
Funding of over £4 million to establish new secure care houses has been announced by the Scottish Government.
The funding will allow for restored capacity and enable a different approach to be developed to ensure children with the greatest need are able to access intensive support. Additionally, this investment will support the creation of three four-bed secure houses, as well as a further four-bed contingency resource.
There are currently 82 contracted secure places provided by four independent charitable organisations in Scotland – Rossie, Good Shepherd Centre, Kibble and St. Mary’s Kenmure.
Children’s Minister Natalie Don-Innes said: “It is imperative that we continuously improve how we care for those children who have the greatest need of support.
“We also need to address the challenges currently facing the secure care system, and this funding will ensure that both these aims can be met.
“Scotland is rightly proud of our unique, welfare based and focused approach to care and justice for children and young people. We want to build on that tradition and the current strengths of the system, while embracing a future vision for change as set out in the ‘Reimagining Secure Care’ report. And with that change, it is important that we maintain a resolute focus in ensuring that children and young people’s needs and rights remain at the heart of this process.”
This follows the publication of the Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice’s (CYCJ) report on ‘Reimagining Secure Care’ which outlines a transformative vision for the future of secure care, and broader children’s care, in Scotland. The Scottish Government has responded to this report.
It is well acknowledged that too many care-experienced children and young people are not receiving the vital care and support they need to thrive in education, a point further reinforced in a recent report from the charity Who Cares? Scotland for the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland.
This highlighted the need for a whole-school approach to supporting care-experienced children, as well as a requirement for a statutory right to independent, relationship-based lifelong advocacy for all care-experienced people who need it. This aims to ensure that these individuals are aware of their rights and can make informed decisions about their lives.
The latter is eminently achievable, as the Scottish Government’s recent Programme for Government outlined that a Children and Young People (Care) Bill will be forthcoming.
This legislation aims to further support The Promise, produced by the Independent Care Review in 2020, and which is Scotland’s pledge to care-experienced children and young people that they will grow up loved, safe, and respected.
With the Promise Bill now part of the government’s legislative programme, it is time for this fundamental right, as committed to in The Promise itself five years ago, to be enshrined in law.
Too many individuals are currently missing out on the advice and support they desperately need, often when they need it most.
Scotland has an opportunity to lead the way, and the Bill provides the opportunity to deliver action on advocacy.
