Hansard

I entirely agree with Mr McArthur. Although I was highlighting acute need, I will return to that point and the need for quick support, early intervention and speedier decision making in making that support available to families.

I return to the issue of resources and the way in which they shape our actions. It troubles me to see how often the decisions about children who might be in need of care reflect the facilities or options that are open to the public authorities rather than the needs of the children themselves. I would welcome the minister’s comments on the extent to which that is still happening. For example, public authorities that have access to residential care homes seem to be more likely to place children in residential care than those who do not have that option on their doorstep.

Many of us will have seen the adverts, which seem to have been more frequent in recent weeks and months, asking for foster and adoptive families to come forward. Although on the one hand that might highlight a shortage of such families, I take the emphasis on recruitment as a positive sign. Again, however, it is rather worrying to hear about the experiences of families, particularly those who are looking to adopt.

Those of us who have dealt with fostering or adoption cases will know that, in the majority of cases, the children who are up for adoption have a range of needs and challenges. Even when children as young as two or three are taken into care, the damage that has been caused by poor attachment in infancy can often play out in behaviours in the child’s teens or later years. There is now so much evidence that reveals the importance of the first few months, let alone the first few years, of a child’s life, but our systems for helping families who are in need seem to be incredibly slow and cumbersome.

I have previously cited examples in my own constituency, in which the authorities have indicated their intention to move a child from his or her parent and have lined up an adoptive family, and the whole process has taken not months but years. In that time, what damage has been done? Removing a child from his or her family is not something to be done in haste, but neither does it help anyone to drag out these decisions.

What can we do? I think that we all recognise how difficult it is to know exactly when and how far to intervene. We do not want to design policy around the worst examples, but surely we can agree that quicker decision making is more likely to produce more effective results. Families need to be more actively supported. People need to be offered help to become good parents, and not just inspected every now and then to see whether things are all right. It is all too easy for the fly and the sly to deceive the health visitor or the social worker. Those families are rarely evil; they are just incapable. When it is possible, we need to help them to look after their own children properly.

Putting the child at the centre of our thinking is what GIRFEC is all about and it is a good approach. I emphasise that there are aspects of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill that are to be warmly welcomed, and I echo the point highlighted by Jayne Baxter earlier about the extension to young adults leaving care of the right to ask for support. However, I have already expressed my doubts about the named person approach taken in the bill, which could divert resources away from where they are most needed. I am not convinced that legislation by itself will do much good if we strip local authorities of the resources needed to provide the support.

Is there not an irony about, or at least a contrast between, our shared agreement across the Parliament on the committee’s report and the simultaneous knowledge that social workers are so hard pressed and so stressed with their case load that they scarcely have time to make the visits or have the room to make the balanced judgments that we all seek?

We should acknowledge that those working in child protection get mixed messages. The reaction to shocking cases of child abuse is often to point the finger of blame at social workers, and then to respond with many well-intentioned recommendations, but the net effect is sometimes to encourage those working in the sector to become ever more risk averse. They become more aware of the need to protect themselves from prosecution, rather than concentrating solely on protecting children from harm.

There was a good and thought-provoking article in The Scotsman recently by Stuart Waiton, who argued that the bureaucratisation of adult-child relationships has undermined our ability to exercise personal judgment. I believe that the answer lies not in ever more formal procedures or processes, whether clumsy or streamlined, but in creating an atmosphere where good judgment is at the centre of decision making, where social workers and other carers are encouraged to step in to support, not to condemn, and where good examples are heralded and lauded rather than bad examples simply being pilloried.

We know that we can never get it absolutely right and that there will always be examples that shame us all for their human cruelty, but if the report can tip the balance towards helping children with earlier and quicker intervention to help parents and, where necessary, to remove children, it will have been worth while.