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Dundee HMIE report
23/06/2009
Responding to today's HMIE report on inspection of services to protect children and young people in Dundee, Minister for Children and Early Years Adam Ingram said:
"Following the tragic death of little Brandon Muir and the shock and concern this raised throughout the country, Ministers asked HMIE to accelerate their planned inspection of Dundee. I welcome the fact that HMIE has managed to deliver this report almost three months ahead of their usual deadline so that appropriate action can be taken as quickly as possible.
"While this report doesn't look specifically into the death of little Brandon - that is the role of the independent inquiries which are already underway - it plainly shows that child protection services in Dundee are simply not good enough and must be urgently improved.
"Clearly, everyone has a responsibility to keep our children and young people safe, including the public. However, what we and they expect is that local services are doing all they can to protect the most vulnerable. As a government, we have continued to set out that we will not protect local systems if they are failing our children and where this is found to be the case, we will expect robust and rapid action.
"Fiona Hyslop and I have already met senior representatives of child protection agencies in Dundee to seek their urgent assurance that fast and concerted action will be taken to address the issues and recommendations in today's report.
"The action plan which Dundee partners are already taking forward to improve child protection services and respond to HMIE's findings is a solid start and is to be welcomed. Measures such as the specialist child protection unit at Kings Cross Hospital, the extra staff in place and improved training procedures are encouraging and it is now for those agencies to build on that progress.
"They are aware that the Scottish Government and HMIE will be closely monitoring the implementation of that action plan to ensure that vulnerable children in Dundee are not let down by the shortcomings identified in today's report. Areas such as Midlothian have shown how a poor report can act as a catalyst to turn around poor performance and we expect Dundee to follow such examples.
"For our part, we have made clear that we will not fail to act if child protection lessons nationally are to be learned from Brandon's death. However, it is right that we await the outcome of the independent reviews so that we have a full picture of any action that may be required.
"While Scotland has the most rigorous child protection regime in the UK, allowing problems to be identified and tackled swiftly, we can never be complacent. We must continually drive up child protection standards in problem areas. Today's Scottish Government child protection conference will help us discuss with experts and professionals from across Scotland how best that can be done now and in the future."
The Scottish Government asked HMIE to bring forward publication of the joint inspection into services to protect children and young people in Dundee from September to June in light of the death of Brandon Muir.