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Section 1: Purpose and Background
Purpose
As required under Section 1 of the Joint Inspection of Children's Services and Inspection of Social Work Services (Scotland) Act 2006, this Code of Practice provides general guidance on matters relating to the joint inspection of child protection services. It sets out the Joint Inspection process and provides a full explanation of how personal information will be accessed and handled in full compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and the principles of the European Convention on Human Rights. Under Section 1 of this Act the joint inspection team will have regard to the Code of Practice in the conduct of their joint inspections of children's services
Background
In March 2004 Ministers announced there would be a new multi-disciplinary children's services inspection team led by HMIE. Its first task would be to undertake inspections of child protection services in all 32 local authority areas and to put in place integrated inspections for all services for children, by 2008. The inspectorates and agencies involved are Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education ( HMIE), Social Work Inspection Agency ( SWIA), the Scottish Commission for the Regulation of Care (Care Commission), Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary ( HMIC), the NHS Quality Improvement Scotland; ( NHSQIS) and, to a lesser extent, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland ( HMIP).
In order to provide the Joint Inspection team with the powers it requires to work jointly and, in so doing, to access and share information, the Joint Inspection of Services for Children and Inspection of Social Work Services (Scotland) henceforth defined as "the 2006 Act" was passed in January 2006. This Act, together with its regulations and this Code of Practice provide the framework for the conduct of Joint Inspections of Children's Services and the lawful exercise of powers to access and share information by members of the Joint Inspection Team.
A number of organisations and individuals were consulted by the Scottish Executive's Children and Families Group and gave evidence to the Education Committee when it considered the proposed legislation. Where possible, this draft Code of Practice has been amended to take into account some of the evidence or comments received.
Joint inspection of services for children will look at three levels of service: the strategic level of leadership and planning; the delivery level of systems and processes; and service receipt level including the experience of and impact on the individual child.
The process of joint inspection requires access to information in the individual records of the child or young person - held by health, social work, police, education, youth justice and others - to assess how services are working together, and to evaluate experience and outcomes for children. For the purposes of the 2006 Act, a child is defined as a person under 18 years of age. The joint inspection team will not seek to recover adults' personal records. Paragraph 12 on page 8 provides further detail on how the inspection team will consider the parental or caring context of the child.
For child protection inspections, a sample of children and young people's cases will be at the heart of the inspection. The sample will include cases where early preventative action has taken place, cases where protective interventions have recently occurred and cases where longer term outcomes for children and young people can be identified.
Inspectors will:
- read a range of case records;
- interview key staff involved in some of the cases;
- interview as many children, young people and families as possible provided they are willing to meet with inspectors;
- observe children's hearings, case conferences, reviews and work undertaken by practitioners.
This Code of Practice sets out how personal information will be accessed and handled during the process of joint inspection of services to protect children and young people, in compliance with ECHR and Data Protection Act 1998 requirements.
A separate Code of Practice on the joint inspection of children's services more generally is still under development and will reflect the outcomes of the current consultation on "Developing A Common Approach to Inspecting Services for Children and Young People" ( HMIE, October 2005).
HMIE have recruited Associate Assessors to augment the team of inspectors and to provide specialised skills or knowledge to complement those of the permanent or seconded inspectors. Associate Assessors are experienced professionals who have had recent successful experience in child protection, including management experience within the agencies providing children's services. They will take part in the inspection of child protection services. These Associate Assessors will be employed under contract to HMIE and will have corresponding contractual obligations and responsibilities, for example the same confidentiality requirements as permanent team members. They will have to declare any conflict of interest, for example where they work in an area where inspection is taking place as permanent team members have to do at present.
Following consultation, for the purpose of the child protection inspections a set of quality indicators has been tested and adopted during two pilot inspections. These were further refined on the basis of the pilot inspections and have been published. 'How well are children and young people protected and their needs met? Self-evaluation using quality indicators HMIE 2005 www.hmie.gov.uk.'
The whole inspection process is designed to gather evidence in relation to each of the indicators. Inspectors gather evidence from a range of sources, and based on the evidence, evaluate practice in relation to each indicator.
The report which follows the inspection focuses on the experience of children, young people and their families of the collective range of services they have had involvement with. It does not report or evaluate separately individual services. The report will include examples of practice, where appropriate, to demonstrate why an evaluation is particularly strong or weak.
The inspection report does not refer in any identifiable way, to individuals, or small groups of individuals, professionals, volunteers, or children, young people or families. This process is discussed in more detail at page 4, and paragraphs 19 and 20 on page 9. Because of the nature of the work, and the level of responsibilities, evaluations of strategic management may make reference to key posts within the organisation, but not to named individuals. Evidence from all case records are anonymised in all inspection evidence templates.
Inspectors will sign for records indicating date of receipt of delivery. Inspectors will also sign and date an individual health record whenever they access them.
The inspection material is subsequently destroyed in line with HMIE's records management policy. This happens immediately after the inspection. One summarised and anonymised record of evidence is kept for one year after the publication of the report. That evidence record is then destroyed.
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