“Scotland has an ambition to be the best place in the world to grow up’ so that children are loved, safe, and respected and realise their full potential.”
The Care Review 2020
Here are St Margaret’s we are very proudly committed to “Keeping
The Promise for our children and families.
We do this by trying to deliver a trauma informed and adoption competent service every day.
Our Promise development work has seen us create and deliver a St Margaret’s Promise Action Plan across our whole service, which our team of staff and volunteers are fully committed to delivering.
When considering applications from adopters we also ensure they share our values and understanding of ‘The Promise’ for our children. This is now a crucial part of our selection process.
Relationship based practice is also at the heart of all our work within St Margaret’s. Our social work team are experienced, knowledgeable and compassionate professionals who are relationship focused in their work, and who most importantly care about the families they work alongside and about delivering ‘The Promise’ to the children they support.
A summary of our Promise Development work
Adoption continues to have an important role in providing permanent, loving, nurturing homes for children who need these. Here at St Margaret’s, we believe adoption must continue to be supported in policy and planning and that we must continue to work on modernising adoption across Scotland.
More can be read about this below:
Towards modernising adoption in Scotland: A focussed mapping review
As a member of the Scottish Adoption Task Force we are also working to ensure that we are helping shape the adoption landscape in Scotland in line with ‘The Promise’.
We have integrated The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
UNCRC within our daily practice and are developing areas of our service to improve meaningful participation with those with lived experiences in our strategic planning and change work.
‘The Voice’ of children is at the heart of all we do. We believe Children must be listed to and meaningfully and appropriately involved in decision making
We also believe in compassionate and caring decision making based on the needs of children and that Children’s Rights should be defended and promoted by all within and around the service.
We understand that Scotland must support adoptive parents to provide a loving and permanent home for children whilst recognising the importance of children understanding their birth identity and maintenance of relationships. We work tirelessly to ensure these relationships are protected, especially in care planning for siblings.
At St Margaret’s, we are an active member of Stand Up for Siblings, a nationwide partnership aimed at improving and changing legislation, policy, and practice for siblings.
Stand Up for Siblings We are also working on our own sibling and family connections project to promote this work.
Our management team have taken part in the Scottish Government Trauma
Transformation Programme and one of our goals is also to ensure the services we provide to families, our staff and volunteers, are fully trauma informed and based around their wellbeing and emotional welfare needs. Another central component to ‘The Promise’.
We have also created a new and extensive Post Adoption Family Support Service, to ensure the scaffolding of help, support and accountability for families is ready and responsive when it is required. This includes a range of therapeutic services, education services and origins support services to children, families, care leavers and those who have experiences of historical adoption.
In St Margaret’s we fully believe in the messaging from ‘The Promise’ that all our children should grow up feeling loved, safe and respected. Even if these children are now adults who need our care and support. We therefore offer lifelong support, as we recognise the lifelong nature of adoption.
We will continue to work hard to do everything we can to keep this Promise to our children, their siblings and family networks. It is work we are truly passionate about here in St Margaret’s.
If you would like to know more about the work we are doing to “Keep The Promise”, please get in touch. We always welcome views and ideas on how we can improve our work.
