THE Promise was made to Scotland’s most vulnerable children and young people in 2020. It was in response to an Independent Care Review which had made it clear that the existing system for care-experienced children and young people wasn’t working.

It was an eye-catching title, possessing drama and urgency. It would work well as the title of an emotionally-intense Hollywood rollercoaster about a mother’s search for her long-lost daughter.

It also offers a snapshot of how politics in Scotland is pre-programmed to enrich a gilded class of bureaucrats even as they’re being tasked with improving the lives of the marginalised and disadvantaged.

The Promise Scotland has become one of those curious organisations that characterise the SNP’s approach to addressing deep-rooted social evils.

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Its website carries a suite of simplistic declarations with which it’s impossible disagree and, crucially, impossible to measure. “You will grow up loved, safe and respected. And by 2030, that promise MUST BE KEPT.”

How love, safety and respect can be measured within a 10-year period when many of the social evils that stalk children and young people are either ignored or subject to chaotic policy-making is never explained.

We’re also told that The Promise Scotland “exists to support people and organisations across Scotland to keep this promise”. And that The Promise Oversight Board will “check if enough’s happening to #keepthepromise”. It’s the sort of shape-shifting, indefinable covenant that looks crucial and important for a single news-cycle before disintegrating into dust.

No measurements; no consequences; no means of delivery – just a virtuous pledge, the memory of which will have been wiped clean by the time 2030 comes around.

The Promise Scotland, like so many other such government-created virtue hubs, immediately began spending the seven-figure sum deposited in its account by the Scottish Government.

Staffers were hired and a contract, worth a reported £100K, was handed to Charlotte Street Partners, the lobbying firm with many connections to the SNP Government.

“Hello, this is The Promise Scotland.”

“Aye, what’s happenin’?”

“We need you to publicise our goals.”

“No bother. Does 100 grand seem okay?

“Brilliant.”

“Can you give us an idea of what it will entail?”

“Aye, we’ll do some strategy for you.”

There’s a reason why Charlotte Street is so successful: they are good at what they do, but we’re also entitled to ask if some of the staffers at the new organisation might have been tasked with calling round the local authorities without out-sourcing it to an expensive PR outfit.

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This model of delivery will be familiar to those who work on the front-line of Scotland’s war on drugs. Some like FAVOR UK (Faces and Voices of Recovery) have looked on in despair as a swollen sector of researchers and academics, drawing deeply from the seemingly-bottomless pit of government funding, have failed to prevent Scotland each year coming top of the European league for addiction deaths.

Until they were shamed into doing so recently, rather than fund rehab beds they chose instead merely to keep a lid on the crisis. They don’t believe that addicts can ever be cured fully of their addiction.

Three years after the launch of The Promise Scotland, the SNP back-bencher Nicola Sturgeon has criticised local authorities for their patchy delivery of The Promise. A leaked report indicates that half of Scotland’s councils are failing sufficiently to track how well the key pledges contained in The Promise are proceeding.

Ms Sturgeon said: “Put simply, this paper shows progress is not happening quickly enough and I hope it acts as a wake-up call and pushes many of our councils to significantly up their efforts.

“Of course, we must get it right but we must get it right as soon as we possibly can. The changes we are seeking for our care system cannot come quickly enough for those in care or at risk of care.”

The MSP has skin in this game. It was she, in her previous job as First Minister, who launched the initiative amidst much hand-wringing and meaningful picture opportunities. Yet, the urgency of improving the lives of these vulnerable and profoundly-damaged young people had been flagged up several years previously.

In May, 2012 the Education Committee of the Scottish Parliament published a report that found that children in care were lagging behind educationally and that their life chances were blighted as a result. The committee was so disturbed at what it found that it conducted a second enquiry looking at whether there was sufficient intervention to help children in care.

It reported back in September, 2013. Why Ms Sturgeon, her ministers and her advisers chose to wait seven years to act on its findings have never adequately been explained or scrutinised. It surely can’t have been because they’d have preferred during this period not to have advanced any initiative that had emerged while her now-reviled predecessor was in charge.

Those local authorities being criticised for failing to make sufficient progress on delivering The Promise can reasonably point to the small matter of an 18-month long pandemic that immediately followed this initiative. This was a period when all the social and cultural inequalities evident in Scotland throughout Ms Sturgeon’s reign were laid bare.

In 16 years of SNP government, the rates of child poverty – around 25% – have never been adequately addressed. Health inequality and early mortality rates in our most disadvantaged communities remain disproportionately high. Reducing the educational attainment gap – the signature pledge of Ms Sturgeon – has been quietly ditched. All of these factors contribute to the crisis in the social care of traumatised and care-experienced children and young people.

This time last year, Who Cares? Scotland expressed concerns about the speed of implementation of The Promise’s key objectives. They indicated that the timeline for implementing The Promise was “unclear” and that effecting it was taking “too long”. Members of the charity also say it is unclear who is responsible for making the changes to the care system.

Louise Hunter, Who Cares? Scotland chief executive, said: “It’s vital that we don’t run the risk of older care-experienced people becoming a forgotten generation."

The issues surrounding The Promise Scotland bear many of the hallmarks of the Sturgeon era: long on style and proclamation and virtually devoid of substance.

In his first 100 days as First Minister, Humza Yousaf has failed to de-couple his cabinet’s aspirations from the failures and missed opportunities of his predecessor.

If he wants to avoid his tenure at Bute House being the shortest in history he needs to ditch the empty platitudes and start surrounding himself with grown-ups.