In May 2023, Scotland published its national Bairns’ Hoose Standards — eleven standards adapted from the European PROMISE Barnahus Quality Standards, developed with Healthcare Improvement Scotland and the Care Inspectorate, and shaped by the voices of children and young people with lived experience of child protection and justice systems.
It was a landmark moment. For the first time, Scotland had a written blueprint for what Bairns’ Hoose should look like in practice — covering everything from the quality of the physical environment to the rights of children to participate in decisions about their care.
Two years on, it’s worth asking: where are we?
From standards to practice
The publication of the Standards marked the beginning of a Pathfinder phase that has grown to encompass ten partnerships across Scotland, spanning urban, rural, island, and cross-boundary contexts. These partnerships — including North Strathclyde, Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Tayside, Fife, and the Outer Hebrides — are testing how the Standards translate into practice within very different organisational and geographic settings.
In the Programme for Government 2025-26, Scottish Ministers committed to testing the Bairns’ Hoose approach across these ten areas, with an incremental national rollout planned from 2027. A national Blueprint — drawing on learning from the Pathfinder phase — will guide that expansion.
Our evaluation work at the University of Edinburgh has been part of this process from the beginning. Through our evaluations in North Strathclyde, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, and the Sycamore Centre in Edinburgh, we’ve seen both the power of the Standards and the complexity of implementing them.
What the Standards have enabled
The Standards have provided a common language and a shared framework across very different local contexts. They have helped partnerships articulate what they’re working towards — not just in terms of service provision, but in terms of children’s rights. The grounding in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child gives the Standards a normative weight that goes beyond operational guidance.
They’ve also provided a basis for honest self-assessment. The Standards Self-Assessment and Readiness Tool, introduced during the Pathfinder phase, has allowed partnerships to identify where they are making progress and where gaps remain.
What the Standards can’t do alone
Standards describe the “what.” The harder question — and the one that the Pathfinder phase is designed to answer — is the “how.” How do you achieve co-located, trauma-informed services when agencies operate under different governance structures, funding streams, and legislative frameworks? How do you embed a child-centred approach within a justice system that was designed primarily around the needs of adults? How do you sustain recovery support when funding is short-term?
These are not questions the Standards themselves can answer. They require the kind of contextual, formative learning that evaluation provides — understanding what works, for whom, in what circumstances. That’s why the combination of national standards with local testing and independent evaluation matters.
What comes next
The next phase is pivotal. The learning from all ten Pathfinder partnerships will feed into a national Blueprint. Our role as evaluators is to ensure that this learning is grounded in evidence — not just professional consensus, but the experiences of children and families who are at the centre of this work.
The Standards set the ambition. The question now is whether Scotland can build systems — and sustain the political will and funding — to deliver on it.
Dr Mary Mitchell leads the Bairns’ Hoose evaluation at the University of Edinburgh.