Steering Our New Strategic Plan

NEWS & EVENTS Steering our Strategic Plan

Calling all members!

The time has finally come for us here at Who Cares? Scotland to reflect on the last four years and to look ahead to our exciting future, but we need your help to do this.

Since 2018 Who Cares? Scotland has had a vision… A lifetime of equality, respect and love for Care Experienced people. When members, employees, volunteers, and friends of the organisation created our vision they also worked hard together on a Strategic Plan to help us get there.

A Strategic Plan is a document that outlines the plan and goals that an organisation aims to achieve in the ‘medium-term’. Who Cares? Scotland write Strategic Plans that last for four-five years. Our current Strategic Plan outlines who we are as an organisation and what we want to do, as well as giving us a timeline for when we want to achieve it. Simply put, it is about everything we do.

Just by way as a wee reminder, our current Strategic Plan revolves around four objectives: • Rights: We will support Care Experienced children and young people from across

Scotland to claim their rights. • Belonging: We will create opportunities with

Care Experienced people to connect with one another, understand their identity and build a strong sense of self and belonging to the care family. • Influencing: We will support Care Experienced people to be active in positively influencing their personal, social and political world in Scotland and beyond. • Pioneering: We will lead an ethical organisation with care experience at its heart.

The exciting news is that our current Strategic Plan is coming to an end, and we must create a new one that pushes us forward and holds us accountable, so later this year, we’ll be launching our Plan for the organisation from 2022 to 2026…but we need to create it first!

The future direction of Who Cares? Scotland has to be steered by Members, people with care experience, employees, volunteers and friends of the organisation. Back in November 2021, a working group was established from a team of employees and volunteers from across all areas of the organisation. This great team have brought together some amazing ideas about how we ensure we are asking all the right people all the right questions in the process of designing a new Strategic Plan. We have started gathering views from our employees and volunteers about what’s gone well over the last four years, what we could have done better, what our future priorities should be, and where we want to go over the next four years. The working group recently ran a session at our Staff Connection Days and Who Cares? Scotland employees had the opportunity to share their views and start thinking about what they want our new Strategic Plan to look like.

We are now fast approaching the most important stage of the plan – where we consult you, our members. So, in April and May, we will be approaching you online and in person through your local teams to offer opportunities for you to shape and steer the plan. You can tell us what we have done well, what you want to see more of, what you want us to change, where you want to see us go, and you can do it in a way that works for you.

We hope you can help steer us along the exciting road ahead - get your thinking caps on!