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Section Three: Referrals and Safeguarders
- Referrals to the Children's Hearings system
Participants agreed that children and young people should only go to a Hearing if there was a very serious problem either with their behaviour or with their family. However, it was thought that the definition of a serious problem would be dependent on each individual child or young person and their specific circumstances.
The majority of children and young people who had direct experience of the Children's Hearings system felt that the referral system worked well in its current form:
"It's fine just the way it is now, you go for the right things, you don't need to change that" Young Person - Event 3
A small number of the children and young people involved in this consultation had previously had a safeguarder appointed to them (six children and young people). The general opinion of these children and young people was that, the role of the safeguarder was not beneficial to their experience of the system. All children and young people felt that it was "just another person that asked questions" and as such, "just another person they had to repeat the same information to":
"Too many questions" Young Person - Event 5
"It's just another person and it dinnae help and they just ask you the same things as everyone else" Young Person - Event 5
All children and young people wanted to have someone who knew and understood them, whose role it was to represent their views and preferences. A number of young people felt that a better alternative to the safeguarder would be
"an advocate whose role is to get your views and your advice on what is best for you" Young Person - Event 1
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