Meeting of the Parliament 28 January 2014
I thank David Stewart and all the members of the Public Petitions Committee for their comprehensive work on child sexual exploitation. This is a debate that stretches beyond the chamber and I welcome the important contribution that their report makes to that wider debate as well as Barnardo’s determination to bring that public debate before Parliament.
Almost exactly a year ago, I spoke at a Holyrood child protection conference at a time when stories of abuse and exploitation of the most vulnerable members of our society were starting to be heard—stories of children and young people being exploited for their simple need for love and affection; and stories of those who could not speak to anyone about what they were suffering too often denying what was being done to them and rejecting the very support and protection that could end their misery.
As every member will have felt the first time they heard about what happened in Rotherham or Rochdale, or about what Jimmy Savile did, I felt a mixture of horror, anger and sadness and, above all, the overwhelming need to act and to act quickly. That is why I set up the ministerial working group on child sexual exploitation, with the aim of harnessing rapidly the collective need to address the issue, using the expertise of the services that work most closely with the victims of child sexual exploitation: local authorities, the Crown Office and the police, inspection bodies and key children’s organisations such as Children in Scotland, Aberlour and Barnardo’s. The group reported to ministers in December, and I have asked it to continue monitoring the work in Scotland on child sexual exploitation.
The group endorsed much of the work that is already under way in Scotland but, like the Public Petitions Committee’s report, it saw that more could be done and that there was absolutely no room for complacency. Perhaps most important, the group recognised that child sexual exploitation is not a stand-alone issue that can be fixed through a series of eye-catching initiatives. Sexual exploitation is one of the most vile forms of child abuse and one of the most pernicious attacks on a child’s or young person’s wellbeing. For those reasons, we need to ensure that we have in place the strongest approach to child protection and to supporting our children’s wellbeing.
Over the past few years, that has been our ambition on child protection. We have modernised our unique children’s hearings system through new legislation. We undertook a major review of our child protection procedures and produced new child protection guidance, which we are further refreshing with a dedicated section on child sexual exploitation. We developed Scotland’s first comprehensive risk assessment toolkit to help professionals to identify signs of abuse and neglect. We are working with Barnardo’s on dedicated tools to better identify sexual exploitation.
At the same time, we are putting in place a unique and internationally lauded approach to placing children’s and young people’s wellbeing at the centre of service design, planning and delivery. I am sure that I do not need to tell members about getting it right for every child, nor about how, under the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill, all children and young people up to the age of 18 will have access to a named person, who will be able to pick up and act on the signs of potential abuse. For children and young people with particular needs and vulnerabilities, services will now have to plan and work together to support them through a child’s plan.