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Plenary, 03 Dec 2009

03 Dec 2009 · S3 · Plenary

Item of business

Getting it Right for Every Child

Constance, Angela SNP Livingston Watch on SPTV

On balance, I agree with the Aberlour Child Care Trust's conclusions on the evaluation of GIRFEC so far. It states in its briefing that much has been achieved but that there is still a job of work to do.

When it comes to Scotland's children, there is never room for complacency. The GIRFEC pathfinders give a significant early indication of better outcomes for children. As Margaret Smith has acknowledged, the number of children on the child protection register has fallen; reports are being submitted on time; children are seeing their supervising officers within target times; and the length of wait for adoptive and permanent placements has fallen.

The HMIE report is very much welcome, as it has provided us with the clearest and most comprehensive picture of how child protection services throughout Scotland are performing. It is based solely on the first reports, as opposed to any of the follow-up reports, in which sense it is slightly behind the times. Nonetheless, it has established a baseline from which to test progress.

I noted with interest how the 30 councils had performed across the 18 quality indicators—graded from excellent to unmet—which gave a total of 540 possible grades. There were only 12 grades of excellent and, at the other extreme, 13 of unmet. The bulk of the grades—438—were very good, good or satisfactory, straddling the middle of the range. That is a good start, but we should be aiming for excellence. We should aspire for good, very good and excellent because, to be blunt, even satisfactory is not good enough. It would not be good enough for my son if he were ever in need of care and protection. Why should we not aspire to and achieve the best child protection system in the world? The question remains: how do we do that? We talk about outcomes, but what we actually mean is how we can keep more children safe and how we can improve their prospects.

I recall the findings of the report "For Scotland's children", which said that the children who were most in need of services were those who were least likely to receive them. Although there are issues around difficult-to-engage families, there are also issues around difficult-to-access services. One of the positives to come out of the GIRFEC pathfinder pilots is the fact that the families have reported benefiting from and appreciating the support and care that has been provided through a one-team approach. Of course, we need to look through the eyes of a child to shape the services, but there is no getting away from the fact that, as adults, we must take the responsibility to do what is in the best interest of each child who is at risk.

The importance of universal and core services should never be underestimated. Public pressure and media scrutiny can result in politicians grabbing for the new trend, fad or initiative despite the fact that, in times of crisis, it is more important than ever to invest in and replenish bread-and-butter services. I cannot think of Baby P and others like him without getting angry. His injuries should have been obvious because they were so appalling and were sustained over time. It is correct and proper to focus on the high-profile, extreme cases to learn lessons, but the danger is that professionals and services can focus so much on the extreme cases that they neglect or miss the more numerous situations in which the symptoms and signs of abuse are far less obvious—more subtle but just as damaging. Our focus must be on prevention as well as on investigation.

It should not surprise us that risk assessment is the area that we need to improve the most. Risk assessment is complex: it requires skills, knowledge, experience, instinct and good old-fashioned common sense. It is multifactorial, interdependent with and underpinned by the achievement of other quality indicators, the obvious one being the timely sharing of information. To date GIRFEC has built the foundations for such assessment and, when fully implemented, it should deliver consistent assessment across professional and local authority boundaries and provide a shared language and understanding of risk.

Yesterday, we debated violence against women and many of us commented that gender-based violence is a cause and consequence of women's inequality. We described it as a human rights violation. I agree 100 per cent with Children 1st that there should be zero tolerance of violence against children in all its forms. Similar to the work on domestic violence and abuse, we need to challenge some of our cultural values and assumptions about children. Children need the safety and security of boundaries, consistency and routine. I have never subscribed to the view that children should be seen and not heard—many members who have met my two-year-old will say, "Just as well". We should take pride in raising our children and young people to question, challenge and change their lot in life.

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Plenary, 03 Dec 2009

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