An Open Letter in reply to Social Work Scotland

Social Work Scotland represents leaders of children’s services in local authorities.  On Monday 29th June 2026 they issued a statement that their children’s care was in crisis, with an acute shortage of foster placements, claiming that this had led to social workers taking children home with them and two-year-olds being put into care homes rather than foster care.  

They say that Scotland's care system is facing a placement crisis. We believe that this is a crisis of prevention which leaves families and social workers on the frontline, without local resources and pours money into care, legal costs and the courts instead. PAR believes that prevention should be a statutory duty and not an optional extra. 

7th July 2026

Dear Social Work Scotland, 

We are writing in response to your recent statement sounding an alarm about the Scotland-wide acute shortage of foster carers and residential places for children. As a charity working on the front line to support families with children in care or at risk of care, we acknowledge that that shortage of places is a reality. However we know from the experience of this work that behind that shortage, what is taking place is a failure of prevention, not a failure of provision. 

Through our work supporting parents and carers across Scotland, we see repeated examples of families asking for and needing help, only to be told they do not meet thresholds for support.  But when circumstances do deteriorate, instead of help, they are offered only investigation, surveillance and the threat of removal of their children.

Here is just one example out of many:  

Earlier this year at a Children’s Hearing, a mother in crisis, overwhelmed and depressed, was given an ultimatum of eight weeks to “sort out her life” or have her children removed. The PAR advocate present asked what help the local authority could give as no help had been offered before the family was referred to the Hearings. The social worker and her senior said that there was no available direct service and that they had no budget to pay for one, they could only make referrals to existing external services and hope they could offer some help. However, they acknowledged care placements for the children would incur costs running into tens of thousands of pounds, and that this would have to be found. At a subsequent Hearing, no help for the mother having been forthcoming, the children were duly removed. 

We recognise care is sometimes necessary, but we know far too many times there has been nothing done to support a family in need of help, and instead just the threat of “child protection” and care. Social workers, who are working without time, resources or budgets to do anything effective, can feel that the only safe thing to do is to remove the children. While social workers are not trusted with budgets of even a few hundred pounds to authorise food, bedding, transport, they can take the enormous decision to remove children. So they do. The costs of not funding prevention are enormous.

UK data shows that the average residential children's home placement costs around £318,400 per child per year. That is roughly equivalent to funding six or seven full-time family support workers.

Meanwhile, almost half of Scotland's residential children's homes are now operated by private providers, many ultimately owned by investment funds whose primary legal duty is to generate returns for investors. The priorities of the Company Act come before those of the Children (Scotland) Act in Scotland. 

Social Work Scotland is looking through the wrong end of the telescope:

• What if families could access meaningful practical help before being separated?

• What if local authorities had a duty to invest in supporting families with the same urgency they currently invest in the consequences of not offering support?

• What if we invested more heavily in neighbourhood-based community and family support?

The skills already exist untapped within communities. The voices of families and carers deserve a much more central place in this conversation. Within every area there are untapped sources of knowledge and experience and time not least an army of Waspi women now having to work instead of as previously using retirement to help their families and communities, there are foster carers, nursery workers, community workers, and of course the families themselves - parents, aunties, uncles and grandparents, all have knowledge and strengths if we create the right structures to support them in creating solutions.

Policy has been developed about families rather than with them. Laws, processes and policies designed without the people they should be designed for are in effect designed to fail. 

Those who have experienced Children's Hearings, separation, residential care and child protection processes. They have experienced at firsthand what works and what does not work, what harms and what helps their family. 

We therefore invite Social Work Scotland to broaden the conversation they want to have beyond the immediate placement shortage and beyond spending even more money on failing care services.

Alongside addressing today's emergency, let us work together to answer a more important question: How do we move from investing in care to investing in families and communities?

We know some children need to be looked after outwith the family but that could and should be a rare occurrence. We need fewer children coming into care - not because we don't have places for them but because there is support to keep families together.  If Scotland succeeds in that, we will not simply solve a capacity problem, we will improve children's lives, strengthen families and make far better use of public money. 

This is not about criticising those working tirelessly within a system under immense pressure.  We are in that system too and we are also tired. We recognise that the current model is failing too many children, families, communities and professionals alike. We believe Scotland has an opportunity to rethink how it supports families before they reach crisis and would welcome the opportunity to contribute constructively to that discussion.

We would welcome the opportunity to meet with Social Work Scotland, Chief Social Work Officers and the Scottish Government to explore how a family friendly community-based prevention-first approach could become a central pillar of Scotland's future children's care strategy.

Yours sincerely,

Parents Advocacy and Rights (PAR)

Link to Social Work Scotland's statement 12/06/26