Hansard

When I saw that a debate on GIRFEC was scheduled for this afternoon, I wondered why we were having another debate on the subject just short of three months since our previous debate. Certainly, this afternoon's debate stands in marked contrast to this morning's rather more lively kick-around on education policy. Nonetheless, the debate has been valuable and, if anything, might prove to be more important in the long run than our debate earlier today.

We have heard some excellent speeches from different sides in the debate. In particular, I was struck—as I always am—by Duncan McNeil's speech, which brought to our attention some startling and sobering statistics about the high mortality rate among young children who are under referral. His comments should be a wake-up call to us all, but I particularly want to hear from the minister, when he winds up the debate, what action he intends to take to address the issues that have now been brought to the Government's attention.

The Highland pathfinder report was mentioned by several members—Mary Scanlon went into it in some detail—including the minister. In his opening speech, he set out some of the pathfinder project's successes, especially the important outcome of a reduction in the number of children on the child protection register. From my reading of the report, a key success of the Highland pathfinder project has been the reduction in bureaucracy, which has allowed professionals to spend less time writing reports and attending internal meetings and has freed up more time for direct work with children. Another outcome is better information sharing, with a move away from using paper records, which are terribly time consuming and hard to access, to keeping electronic records. That has also reduced the burden on staff. Therefore, I very much welcome the minister's commitment to implement the GIRFEC programme throughout Scotland on the back of the successful pilot in the Highlands.

The important role of midwives and health visitors was mentioned by the minister and by several members, including Dr Ian McKee, who highlighted the important role that they play in dealing with low-birth-weight babies. On Monday, I met members of NHS Tayside's community midwifery service at Perth royal infirmary. I should perhaps declare an interest, in that my family has recently—albeit not as recently as Mr Hepburn's family—utilised the midwives' excellent services. From my encounter with them, I discovered an extremely interesting point about midwives' level of contact with families—both mothers-to-be and new mothers—in the home. Given that GPs now perform very few home visits and none at all out of hours—the situation has moved on considerably from perhaps a generation ago, when many GPs were familiar, through home visits, with the environment in which their patients lived—the few health professionals who still visit people in their homes include midwives and health visitors. That contact with families in the home enables those health professionals to identify, at an early stage, likely problem areas and potentially vulnerable groups.

We have heard a great deal about the importance of early intervention. Mary Scanlon mentioned the consequences of the neglect of children under two, which is a crucial factor in poor health outcomes later in life. Given that we understand the importance of early intervention, we must be able to identify the problem areas, which is why midwives and health visitors play such an important role. As my Conservative colleagues have said on a number of occasions, we support additional investment in health visitors and think that we should protect the investment in midwives, on whom more and more responsibility is being placed. They are doing a vital job, but they need to be properly resourced.

There has been some discussion of children's hearings, about which Karen Whitefield and Elizabeth Smith raised concerns. I agree with Ross Finnie, who welcomed the withdrawal of the Government's initial proposals on the children's hearings system. We look forward to engaging with the Government when it brings new plans to update and reform that system.

I was struck by the excellent points in the briefing from Children 1st, which I read in advance of the debate, two of which I want to highlight. First, it states:

"The Scottish child protection system does not need more strategies or tick boxes around child protection. Instead it needs the resource, training and confidence to allow professionals to make good, supported decisions that are in the best interests of the child."

In other words, we must focus on resources and training. Secondly, there needs to be

"Stable and adequate funding for the voluntary sector, particularly for services which provide therapeutic support after abuse".

We all know—because we have debated the issue many times—that serious times are coming for the public finances and that serious cuts will have to be made. The temptation, particularly at local government level, is to let the voluntary sector bear the brunt of those cuts in the first instance. That is what often happens, because councils want to preserve core services and direct employment. Children 1st asks us to ensure that we do not put the voluntary sector in the firing line and that we safeguard the vital services that it provides.

We will support the Government's motion and the Labour amendment, which makes the important point that the HMIE report showed that

"almost half of the 30 councils inspected were assessed as weak or unsatisfactory in relation to the assessment of risks and needs".

That was referred to by Karen Whitefield and elaborated on by Hugh Henry. We must put that right. I hope that we can now begin the process of ensuring that our councils are up to the job of protecting our most vulnerable children.