In 2016 Laura Beveridge bravely told her personal journey through care with TEDxGlasgow. Three years on, after a commitment from Scotland’s first minister to conduct a branch and root review on Scotland’s care system, the results have been delivered. We spoke to Laura about the Promise and this is what she had to share.

Present with my brother, the launch has been very emotional! The review results are incredible and going to make lifelong impact for so many alike brothers and sisters, who, often get split up with no contact. A favourite part is a call out for a foundation principle to no longer separate families unless it is not safe to do so.

One main area reviewed is Voice. Absolute core to the review is changing how we listen to young people, previously it's been a tick box exercise, with no action taken, or other agendas driving decisions. Often there’s an imbalance in power, as seen in Children’s Hearings where the child's voice is overshadowed by professional opinion.

It's important for me that we ensure standards for participation are conducted when stories are shared by young people. I've felt for years as a young campaigner that tokenism has been behind the practices of focus groups. Now we’re setting a new standard, moving towards a safer, cared, and loved presence for voices being respected.

Time for early intervention for family support.

This principle is for children to be thought about in the context of their family at the earliest stage, with a focus of connection on wider relationships to prevent children going into the care system.

An example that struck me was of a mother with two children who had been taken into the care system early on in life. When her third child was due to be born a distant relative was found, and happy to do kinship care for this little baby, who now remains in the family and still has contact with their mother. Sadly two of her children missed out but using common sense, situations like this in future will now be different.

Personally, I reconnected with relatives in my twenties and my aunts have said they're devastated, as if they'd known they would have looked after me. Every family will have different needs and the next stage of the review will look at implementation to get the 10 principles of early intensive family support right, looking at strengths and assets based decisions for children.

People have used talks like mine to start a conversation.

The TEDxGlasgow talk is something that is easily shared. I think we do that with talks and ideas often, I share them myself when I feel I’ve really connected and want to share or raise awareness of something.

The most powerful talk related feedback I’ve had was from a young person. Now out of the care system and living with a flatmate, the young adult was struggling to find the words to share their experience of living in care.

One night she sent her flatmate the link to my talk and after watching it, both were in tears. It was a way for that girl to communicate what she had been through in a really simple way.

I’ve also seen the Masters Social Work program at Strathclyde University have added my talk into their training, helping newly qualified people get real insight, and think differently about things like using the use of the word sibling instead of brother or sister.

Creating a momentum of change.

At school I wouldn't speak up, so doing a talk was terrifying to me but the support I got from my TEDxGlasgow experience, and especially from my speaker coach Iain who helped boost my confidence a lot.

The whole experience is still helpful to me today, and being part of the review, the last few years have been really eye opening. My TEDxGlasgow talk helped years of campaigning and to push action in a different way, supportive of the movement and helping all political parties sign up to the review.

I'll never forget the announcement from Nicola Sturgeon in 2016 agreeing to a full care system review. At that time I still held the anger I’d shared in my talk that children and young people were struggling through the care system.

Positively, change is happening. Scotland’s future now offers a very different care experience to what I had. We now have realistic ways to change the care system, resetting the balance of power for the care experienced community, with more effective spending of money throughout the care system too.

Powerful stories are being told in the report with a growing bank of evidence, great collaboration by local authorities and third sector organisations learning from each other. We want to get to the point where we listen to children on their own terms, and there's a lot of legacy from the review that I never want to be lost.

A lot of change is going to happen and we now have a fantastic vision and plan although there is a lot of work yet to do.

Caring to Keep Our Promise