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2 policy context
2.1 The Scottish Executive is committed to ensuring that
every child has the best possible start in life and is able
to reach their full potential. Scottish Ministers have
identified their expectations and aspirations for all
children and young people in Scotland:
Children and Young People in Scotland should be valued
by ensuring that they are:
- Safe: Children and young people should
be protected from abuse, neglect and harm by others at
home, at school and in the community.
- Nurtured: Children and young people
should live within a supportive family setting, with
additional assistance if required, or, where this is
not possible, within another caring setting, ensuring a
positive and rewarding childhood experience.
- Healthy: Children and young people
should enjoy the highest attainable standards of
physical and mental health, with access to suitable
healthcare and support for safe and healthy lifestyle
choices.
- Achieving: Children and young people
should have access to positive learning environments
and opportunities to develop their skills, confidence
and self esteem to the fullest potential.
- Active: Children and young people
should be active with opportunities and encouragement
to participate in play and recreation, including
sport.
- Respected & Responsible: Children,
young people and their carers should be involved in
decisions that affect them, should have their voices
heard and should be encouraged to play an active and
responsible role in their communities.
- Included: Children, young people and
their carers should have access to high quality
services, when required, and should be assisted to
overcome the social, educational, physical,
environmental and economic barriers that create
inequality.
2.2 These principles apply across agency, service and
professional boundaries and are consistent with the
principles enshrined in the United Nations Convention on
the Rights of the Child
7.
2.3 Experiences and influences in childhood will have
far-reaching and profound effects in adulthood and later
life. Efforts to tackle key health and social problems
common in the Scottish population must begin in the early
years and continue throughout the primary school years and
adolescence. Improving child health, welfare and
opportunity, particularly for our most disadvantaged
children and young people, is a priority across all
Executive portfolios and departments.
2.4 The philosophy of
Hall 4 is consistent with the Scottish Executive's
emphasis on social justice and closing the opportunity gap
between the most disadvantaged and the rest of society.
This means that families should receive the help and
support they need from our public services when they need
it, unhindered by organisational boundaries and their care
should be based on the best available evidence about what
works. It also means that services should inform and
involve children and their families in planning their care,
and consult them about the kinds of services and support
they want.
2.5
Hall 4, and this guidance on implementation, sits
alongside other important initiatives to support children's
development and welfare, all of which seek to:
- Promote a step-change in Scotland's public health
through implementation of an action plan for health
improvement, Improving
Health in Scotland - The Challenge8, which includes a focus on intervention in the
early years and at vulnerable points of teenage
transition.
- Achieve seamless and more effective support for
children and their families through implementation of
For Scotland's Children9.
- Support delivery of integrated children's services
through national roll-out of Integrated Community
Schools, with every school becoming a Health Promoting
School by 2007, supported by implementation of
A Scottish Framework for Nursing in Schools10.
- Redesign assessment and support for children to
help them achieve their full potential through the
implementation of the Education (Additional Support for
Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004
11.
- Improve protection and help for children at risk of
abuse and neglect through a programme of national child
protection reform
12, informed by
It's Everyone's Job to Make Sure I'm Alright13 and supported by the
Protecting Children and Young People Charter14 and
Framework for Standards15.
2.6 Early evidence from initiatives such as Starting
Well
16 and Sure Start Scotland
17, tells us that a joint approach, combining active
health promotion and other targeted input for vulnerable
communities, can make an important difference to families.
The second phase of the Starting Well demonstration project
will pilot some elements of
Hall 4 implementation.
Public health nursing
2.7 Following a national review of nurses' contribution
to public health
18, new models of community based nursing are emerging
which provide a good platform on which to base review and
development of child health surveillance and promotion. The
development of public health nursing brings together health
visiting and school nursing into a single discipline with a
renewed focus on health improvement. The introduction of
public health practitioners in Local Health Care
Co-operatives, now Community Health Partnerships, has also
created a key public health focus for the development of
inter-agency partnership working, acting as a catalyst for
service change and development.
Integrated children's services
planning
2.8 The Scottish Executive has published new guidance
for the preparation of integrated children's services plans
19. This is intended to support rationalisation of local
planning activity and encourage agencies to agree
consistent improvement objectives and delivery strategies
across universal and targeted services for children and
young people. Planning for implementation of
Hall 4 should be part of the new integrated
children's services planning arrangements.
Integrated Assessment Framework
2.9 The Scottish Executive will shortly be consulting on
a draft
Integrated Assessment Framework for Scotland's
Children20. As children grow and develop they routinely have
contact with numerous professionals in health and
education. Some children and young people have particular
health, learning or other needs which require assessment
and support from a range of different services and
agencies. The Integrated Assessment Framework is intended
to ensure the consistency and quality of assessments by
introducing a common structure for assessing the needs of
children and young people.
2.10 The aim of the Integrated Assessment Framework is
to provide a means by which all services for children -
universal and specialist - will be able to gather and share
appropriate information, assess needs, plan and co-ordinate
services for individual children. Core information
collected for all children will connect with specialist
assessments necessary to meet the needs of those children
and families requiring additional support. The Integrated
Assessment Framework will ensure that the child's
experience is maintained at its centre and that account is
taken of strengths, achievements, and the personal
resources of the child and family as well as needs and risk
of harm. This is considered further in the
Identifying and Targeting Support section of this
guidance.
2.11 As part of the Integrated Assessment Framework
development work, the Scottish Executive is working with a
number of professional groups, including health visitors,
to establish common methods for recording information to
ensure consistency and promote quick transfer of
information within organisations and to other appropriate
agencies when it is required.
Improving support systems for children in
need
2.12 The Scottish Executive Review of the Children's
Hearings system
21 has identified that although there are measures that
can be taken to improve the Hearings system, the impact on
the lives of children would be significantly greater if the
wider network of support services was improved. There are
concerns that at present, children are not receiving
support when they need it, and that many are referred to
the Children's Reporter when more effective local action
would have been more appropriate.
2.13 As
For Scotland's Children22 notes, "we do need a much more robust approach to
putting children and families at the centre of the service
network. That will be facilitated by treating all services
for children as part of a Children's Services System and by
all staff perceiving themselves as operating within that
single system". The Scottish Executive will shortly be
consulting on phase 2 of the Hearings Review, including
options to strengthen individual agency and collective
responsibility for identifying and addressing children's
needs.
2.14 This will link with, and build on, the work to
develop an Integrated Assessment Framework, outlined above,
and with the developments underway within the child
protection reform programme.
Community Health Partnerships
2.15 This guidance is published as Community Health
Partnerships (
CHPs) are beginning to take shape across
Scotland.
CHPs will have a significant influence
on the organisation and delivery of person-centred locally
integrated services. They will be a focus for integrating
primary and specialist health services at a local level,
will help advance and deliver the health improvement
agenda, and will influence the deployment of resources.
They will also have a lead role in the delivery of services
for children and young people at a local level.
2.16 Statutory guidance
23 has been published to support the establishment of
CHPs. Supplementary advice
24 has also been issued on how
CHPs should inform local approaches to
the integration of children's services. The guidance and
supplementary advice recognise that one model does not fit
all, and that approaches will develop to fit local
circumstances.
Participation and involvement
2.17 In 2001, the Scottish Executive published a
framework for Patient Focus and Public Involvement (
PFPI)
25, charging
NHS Boards with the development of a
local framework for sustainable patient and public
involvement, identifying how the
NHS Board would involve patients,
carers, staff and the public in decision making at every
level of the health service. The aim is to achieve a
service where people are treated with respect, treated as
an individual, and involved in decision making at all
levels of planning and delivery of health services in
NHSScotland. The principles of the
approach are that patients and the public are treated as
equal partners in decision making.
2.18 The involvement of children and young people is
also seen as being a key element in providing and
developing services to meet their needs. The United Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child (
UNCRC) underpins the legislative and
cultural progress in involving children and young people in
making decisions. In particular, Article 12 of the
UNCRC gives children the right to
express their views freely in all matters affecting them
and states that these views will be given due regard. The
UNCRC was ratified by Great Britain in
1991 and in Scotland, the Children (Scotland) Act 1995
incorporated its principles by giving children and young
people a right to express their views on a range of
decisions which affect them.
2.19 Parents, carers, and where appropriate, children
and young people, should be involved in local
Hall 4 implementation planning.
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