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3 Safe children

Children and young people should be protected from abuse, neglect and harm by others at home, at school and in the community. (Vision for children 2005)

I went from one extreme to another, from having this really, really unstable environment where I could go and do as I pleased, right into this, sort of, family environment and everybody had rules. Two loving parents and they moulded me into the person I am now. (Fraser)

When my mum was drinking she'd go into her room and we wouldn't see her for three to four days and we'd just be left. My dad left when I was six, he's quite a violent man. He's been in prison for hitting women and stuff … My dad's always been a wanderer. He's never really been around to support my mum. When I was a baby her mum died from cancer and I think she found it quite hard. She started drinking when she was a teenager, which is quite young and I think that was her way of coping and then in the end that became a really big problem for her, watching her kids go into foster care. (Ross)

Keeping children safe - the background

Every adult in Scotland has a role in ensuring all our children live safely and can reach their full potential. As children grow and extend their horizons beyond their homes, organisations such as schools and youth groups have a particular role in safeguarding children. They also educate children about the risks and how these can be managed (Scottish Executive 2002c:4).

41. As society becomes more complex the range of risks to children and young people change. Children in Britain today rarely die from diphtheria but are regularly killed or injured in road accidents, with the poorest children being at greatest risk (Scottish Executive 2002c). Mobile phones can help to keep children and young people safe but can also be a source of distress to some through text bullying. A child who has been sexually abused can have a visual record of that abuse sent round the world by internet within hours of the event, and the images may still be circulating long into their adult life. The recognition of the potential risks to children and young people on the internet and in particular types of chat rooms has led to legislation and advice and guidance to parents and their children (for further information, see further reading section at the end of this chapter).

42. The safety of children and young people in Britain has been the subject of many enquiries, campaigns and legislation in the past twenty years. A growing awareness of child abuse in the 1980s led to the establishment of the telephone help line, Childline. There have been debates about the age of consent for same sex relationships between adults and young people, and the age at which young people can consent to medical treatment or receive contraception without their parents' knowledge or consent. Recommendations for changes in the laws to protect children have followed specific incidents, for example the shootings at Dunblane primary school in 1996 (Cullen 1996) and the murders of two girls at Soham (Bichard 2004).

43. The risks to children and young people in all forms of care have been highlighted by the abuse of children in residential and foster care. There has been a number of high profile inquiries, which have led to a range of recommendations aimed at improving the safety of children and young people cared for away from their families. And there have been improvements in recruitment procedures, complaints processes and staff training as a result.

44. The Kent Report (1997) was commissioned to look at ways of safeguarding children who were cared for away from home. It identified that the ethos in a home had a significant impact on the safety of the children and young people:

Reports of inquiries of homes where abuse has occurred would indicate that these homes tended to operate in a closed way, with comments from people outwith the system being discouraged … A culture that simply does not tolerate abusive behaviour is required. The more open the residential setting, the safer for children. The uppermost management in the organisation, the middle manager, and the unit manager are responsible for creating this culture (1997:8).

45. The focus on the protection and safety of children and young people in Scotland resulted in the Report of the Child Protection Audit (2002c) and the consultation on children's hearings. The 2002 audit and review found that, " children experience very serious levels of hurt and harm and live in conditions and under threats that are not tolerable in a civilised society" (Scottish Executive 2002c:10). In 2004 the Scottish Executive published the Framework for Standards for protecting children and young people (Scottish Executive 2004j).

46. In 2002 7,200 children were referred to local authorities because of concerns about their safety. This figure rose to 9,132 in 2005. Not all of the referrals studied by the audit required intervention. However the audit also suggested that the incidence of children who experience neglect and abuse is under reported because some children never come to the attention of the authorities. The child protection review team concluded that " parents' serious personal and social problems are the cause of much harm to their children" (Scottish Executive 2002c:2). And much of that harm goes unseen. Across Scotland an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 children are affected by parental drug use and 80,000 to 100,000 by parental alcohol misuse (Scottish Executive 2006a).

47. Inquiries into the deaths and/or abuse of children in foster care have on the whole received less attention although it is perhaps worth recalling that the post-war developments in childcare, which led to the 1948 Children Act, arose in part from the death of a child in foster care. ⁴ The death of Victoria Climbie in a private fostering arrangement led to one of the longest and most detailed of modern child protection inquiries, by Lord Laming in 2003.

48. Developments in child protection in the UK have followed a number of inquiries into the deaths and/or abuse of children from 1975 onwards. Some of the children who were the subjects of these inquiries had been or were looked after by local authorities. Three influential inquiry reports in the past few years have been the O'Brien inquiry into the death of Caleb Ness (2003), who was not a looked after child but whose parents were known by professionals to be misusing drugs; Lord Laming's inquiry (2003) into the death of Victoria Climbie, who was privately fostered and the SWIAinquiry into the care and protection of children in Eilean Siar (2005a). The three children at the centre of that inquiry were looked after children.

49. The O'Brien inquiry made 35 recommendations with wide ranging implications for working with children and their families. Several of the recommendations focussed on the importance of staff training in keeping children safe and recognising the challenge for staff in being able to achieve the balance between working with parents and protecting their children. For example, " the need for professional confidence to question decisions made by conferences and to say 'enough is enough'" (O'Brien 2003: para 9.3.13), a concern that social workers can form a too favourable impression of a parent, " Shirley was only too well accustomed to dealing with social workers and certainly knew how to put on a good front and say the right things" (O'Brien 2003: para 5.3.2) and further a failure to consider fully the impact of family history on present issues (O'Brien 2003: para 5.3.3). And the report concluded that often, " Teaching people to listen and to hear what they do not want to hear, or perhaps what they simply disagree with, is what is needed" (O'Brien 2003: para 5.4.7).

50. Lord Laming made 108 recommendations. He identified particular problems in protecting children, for example, the importance of staff focussing on the needs of the child and regarding these as of equal importance as the needs of the adults. Many of the recommendations addressed joint working between health, social workers and police officers. For example, national training programmes for each of the training bodies covering the services provided by doctors, nurses, teachers, police officers, housing staff and social workers (Laming, Lord 2003: recommendation 14).

51. The report into the care and protection of children in Eilean Siar ( SWIA 2005a) identified the importance of skilled communication with children, the vital part played by assessing children and their families as well as assessing kinship carers and the need for improved inter-agency communication and practice by medical personnel. The report made 32 recommendations, including that for a national centre to enhance practice in child protection and managed care networks for health professionals.

52. There is substantial research evidence that child abuse and neglect significantly impacts on the future development of children and young people (for example Buchanan 1996 provides a comprehensive international review of the impact of child abuse). Some of the young people who contributed to the review recognised that they had been challenging teenagers. An 18 year old now studying at college describes himself at 14:

I came here a wee bad tempered wee … you could say. Punching holes in the walls, kicking this, kicking that, going crazy. Slightest wee thing I didn't get I would go mental. The first thing I said when I walked into their (foster carers) house, "I'm not … staying here with a couple of old folk" but ever since then I loved it. I've always got something to do; they've always got something interesting to talk about. They've changed my life around a lot. (Darren)

Using the law to keep children and young people safe

53. The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 is the principal legislation governing the protection of children in Scotland. Other relevant legislation for specific groups of children and young people addresses disability, race and gender. Greater detail can be found in McRae (2006).

54. The Race Relations Act 1976 and its principal amendment in 2000 make it unlawful to discriminate on racial grounds defined as colour, race, nationality or national or ethnic origins. The Act refers to both direct and indirect discrimination. This has now been extended in the Amendment Bill to include 'institutional discrimination' defined in the Macpherson Report as:

The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate professional service because of their colour, culture and ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, racist stereotyping, which disadvantages minority ethnic people (Macpherson 1999:634).

Safe recruitment of adults who are responsible for looked after children and young people

55. Many of the inquiries into the abuse of children in residential care have identified the importance of robust recruitment procedures, which include enhanced disclosures and references. Local authorities and voluntary organisations have improved their policies and procedures in the past years. However, in 2004 the Scottish Executive commissioned research by the Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care ( SIRCC) to gauge opinion on how the safer recruitment of residential childcare staff who have unsupervised contact with children should be taken forward.

The report concluded that:

A few interviewees expressed their concern that an atmosphere of complacency has crept into recruitment practice and the evidence from this survey suggests that the majority of organisations do not have a systematic approach to the full implementation of the toolkit or any other package, which promotes safer recruitment practice. Many interviewees think that there needs to be leadership from the Scottish Executive and an endorsement from ADSW and CoSLA to promote safer recruitment procedures for residential child care staff (Hunter et al. 2005:44).

56. The Scottish Executive in 2006 plans to introduce safe recruitment guidance for staff working in childcare and with vulnerable adults. Looked after children and young people can play an active part in recruiting staff who will work with them. In March 2006 Save the Children and the Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights published a resource pack for employers, which set out how young people can be involved in staff recruitment.

57. The Protection of Children (Scotland) Act 2003 led to the setting up of a central list of people disqualified from working with children. ⁵ This list is composed of people who have been dismissed by an employer or who resigned before they would have been dismissed and who in the opinion of the panel are unsuitable to work with children. Some people who have been convicted of offences, which make them unsuitable to work with children, are referred directly to the list by the courts. Further work on identifying adults who may be unsuitable to work with children is continuing following the proposals in the Bichard Report (2004). ⁶ However, lists are only part of safe recruitment policies, which should be based on robust procedures, which are always followed up, for example telephone contact to confirm the identity of the applicant and the content of their references. The Care Commission will carry out themed inspections in relation to safer recruitment expectations included in the Scottish Social Services Council Code of Practice for employers and in the relevant National Care Standards. The first such inspection will take place during 2006-07.

58. The selection of foster carers by local authorities has routinely involved greater scrutiny than that of residential child care staff. They are visited at home, undergo medical checks and are required to obtain an enhanced disclosure through Disclosure Scotland. Many authorities also visit referees at home and discuss the suitability of the applicants. The registration of foster carers is regularly reviewed and updated. However the most rigorous selection can never exclude all unsuitable people and some children have been abused in foster care.

59. The placement of children with relatives is discussed further in chapter 6, which considers the findings of Aldgate and McIntosh (2006). The report into the care and protection of children in Eilean Siar ( SWIA 2005a) identified the importance of local authorities assessing relatives who wish to be recognised by local authorities as kinship carers.

Helping children and young people to keep themselves safe

60. Parents routinely make decisions about how much freedom their child can have, for example in terms of going shopping with friends or staying overnight at their homes. People who care for looked after children and young people have a wider range of matters to consider including for example, the wishes of the child's birth parents and the legal status of the child or young person.

61. In 2003 the Social Work Services Inspectorate ( SWSI) undertook a survey of local authorities' practices in allowing children and young people to stay overnight with friends. They found different practices by authorities, some always required a Disclosure Scotland check on the host family, and others did not. Some allowed foster carers and residential staff the discretion to decide if the child could go, others did not.

62. Many local authorities were asking for clear guidance from the Scottish Executive. Who Cares? Scotland had also asked for guidance as this is an important topic for young people looked after away from home. A draft of guidance was prepared by SWSI in 2004 and was passed to the Looked After Children and Young People's Division in the Scottish Executive in January 2005. No further consideration of this work had taken place by May 2006. The draft guidance suggests that there should be an expectation that where at all possible looked after children and young people should, with adequate safeguards, be able to lead as ordinary a childhood as possible. Therefore each looked after child or young person should have a care plan, which takes account of their individual needs for social contacts including overnight stays with friends, which can be planned in advance.

63. We found that looked after and accommodated children sometimes feel they are treated differently from other children. Young people who took part in Celebrating success (Happer et al. 2006) told us about wanting to stay with friends overnight but not being able to until Disclosure Scotland checks had been carried out on their friends and family. They found this embarrassing and a barrier to their spending time with friends:

One thing I disagree with is police checking if you are staying with your friends. I have got friends and I have known them for quite a while and I trust them. It annoys me when I have got to get a police check with them because then I feel embarrassed. (Tanya)

64. Many children who become looked after may have missed out on parental guidance on personal safety. For some children the risks to them lay within their family. In addition as a possible consequence of changing schools, children may not have taken part in classroom activities. There are complex issues for children who have experienced abuse and/or neglect in learning from 'self protection' programmes. Rather than informing children and young people of risks, the programmes may reinforce feelings of not having been cared for, or lead to self-blame for abuse.

65. When a child becomes looked after their individual needs for 'self protection' should be assessed and included as part of their care plan. We have not been able to find any materials intended specifically to meet the needs of looked after children. Such materials would help foster carers and residential staff to have guidance and appropriate tools to help the child in their care to understand and feel more confident about their personal safety and who to tell if they are afraid or worried.

66. Organisations which help safeguard the rights of young people looked after away from home, such as Who Cares? Scotland, admit that maintaining meaningful contact with large numbers of children in individual foster homes presents real challenges. All looked after children in foster or residential care should be able to contact an adult outwith the home who can help them. Modern technology offers more opportunities, for example text messaging. These developments would benefit from the support and encouragement of the Scottish Executive.

67. The comments by the young people who took part in this review illustrate the importance for children and young people living away from home of having a means of contacting a social worker or asking for help. Childline does valuable work, but we know that sometimes children cannot get through to an advisor. When they become looked after, all children should be given a pack which includes information about how to make a complaint, contact details for their social worker and his/her line manager and stamped addressed post cards, which they can use to request a visit from their social worker or send any other written messages. The needs of disabled children, who may not be able to use a mobile or independently post a post card, deserve special consideration.

Providing safe care and control

68. The Children's Safeguards Review (1997) found that:

Agencies and their staff have become more careful about the way in which they use touch. Staff become so wary of touch and of emotion, and so defensive about them, that they create a sterile care climate (Kent 1997:23).

Local authorities and other agencies have introduced 'safe caring' policies to ensure children and adults are clear about inappropriate or harmful contact. These are necessary but can contribute to professionals feeling anxious about what physical contact is permissible. Some units have found creative ways to introduce the children to safe and appropriate touching.

In one children's unit the children and young people were offered massage and aromatherapy provided by a trained person who visited the unit weekly to give sessions which helped the children to relax. On a separate day the staff were also offered sessions. The result was that the children and young people enjoyed the sessions and were able to experience safe physical contact. Staff felt valued and cared for by their employer.

69. The Scottish Executive, together with SIRCC, has published good practice guidance to assist practitioners in working out policies and practices for restraining children and young people. Holding Safely (2005) emphasises the importance of creating a positive and supportive ethos in every residential setting. It stresses the need for young people to be partners in their care plans, and emphasises the importance of effective training, supervision and management for staff. National Care Standards set out the provision of care young people living in residential settings are entitled to expect, against which the Care Commission inspects services.

70. Young people living in residential care are among the most vulnerable and need very skilled staff to care for them. As an overview on residential care by the Department of the Health (1998) describes:

Who is recruited, what they are asked to do, how equipped they are to respond, how they cope with stress, how well they work with each other as well as with outside professionals - all these factors will come to bear on their practice and, as a consequence, on the well-being of the residents (1998:36).

71. The Care Commission in A review of the quality of care homes in Scotland (2004) identified positive aspects of residential care for children and found that difficulties arise when staff do not have sufficient time to spend with the children.

72. In Celebrating success (Happer et al. 2006) children and adults gave examples of feeling safe in residential care:

I just felt secure. I felt safe. I felt no matter what I was, whether it was happy or sad or angry, they were always there to help me. (Tara)

In all the studies commissioned for this review, we found that the relationships children have with their carers matter greatly to their well-being and development.

73. One young person, aged 18 at the time he took part in the study explained why he found being in residential care preferable to foster care. He said:

The staff are great … they're really good. What's good is not telling everybody your life story and them saying you will never make a career for yourself, or that you're never going to look after yourself. The carers group, they just teach me … not to lose my temper and that's what I am doing now … Some people, like foster carers don't really give a toss - they don't, because they're thinking you're just another person. But children's homes are much better. (Thomas)

74. Staff who care for looked after children and young people have a responsibility to report any concerns about the behaviour of another member of staff to their line manager. All residential units should have a clear 'whistle-blowing' policy, which is available to all staff, including temporary or agency staff and students who have a placement in the unit.

Disabled children

75. The needs of disabled children and young people and their families are not different from those of other children, young people, and their families. However, disabled children can face increased risk of abuse in many settings (Westcott and Jones 1999). They ought to be over-represented in child protection systems but the research suggests that they are significantly under-represented (Morris 1998b). Their increased vulnerability stems from a number of factors, including social attitudes. In addition, disabled children tend to be more isolated, to be more dependent, and to have less control over who touches their bodies and they may be less likely to be heard and believed.

76. More is now being written about disabled children and young people who spend much of their lives away from their families (Hawthorn in Crimmens and Milligan 2005). There is still little written about their experiences from their point of view (Morris 1998b). Foster carers of a disabled young person who contributed to the review told us about the importance of including him in all family activities and in offering him the opportunity to take 'safe' risks.

77. Some disabled children are isolated from commonly used forms of communication, such as speaking or writing or texting. Disabled children are able to keep safe if particular attention is given to ensuring safe adults can understand their mode of communication. Aitken (2000) sets out four key themes in communication. These are that disabled children have someone with whom they can communicate, a reason to communicate, something to communicate, and importantly a means. Further discussion can be found in Pease Creating a Communicating Environment (2000).

Secure care

78. Children and young people are placed in secure care when they are a risk to themselves or others, or have committed a serious offence. These are usually relatively short placements, the average being just under five months. A child or young person can be placed in secure accommodation through two different routes. Most are placed through the children's hearing system. Children and young people remanded or convicted of a serious offence in court may also be placed in secure accommodation. The children's hearing must ensure that specific legal criteria are met before they include a condition authorising a child to be kept in secure accommodation. Currently the final decision to place a child in these circumstances rests with the chief social work officer of the local authority responsible and the head of the secure unit.

79. For some children the decision to place them in secure accommodation will be directly related to the nature of their offending and the subsequent decision of the sheriff. The sheriff's decision will be informed by a social enquiry report provided by a social worker. A very small number of young people serve the first part of a long sentence in a secure unit before being transferred to a prison when they are old enough. Time spent in secure care could offer an opportunity to help young people understand their past, and provide short-term therapeutic services.

80. Secure accommodation needs to be targeted at those children for whom it is most appropriate. We heard of local variations in the seriousness of a child's circumstances resulting in them being assessed as needing secure accommodation. Although there are some local arrangements for screening referrals there is no national mechanism. The development of a national strategy for the admission of young people to secure provision would have three functions, to ensure equitable treatment of children and young people, to monitor admissions and to gain a national picture of the challenges presented by a small but significant group of young people. There are a number of projects in Scotland designed to prevent young people being admitted to secure accommodation and prison and they could contribute to a national strategy.

81. There are currently five secure care centres in Scotland, which have a maximum of 93 children at any time. Scottish local authorities place about 5% of young people who are subject to a secure order per year in secure care in Northern England. In this instance the placing authority should negotiate and develop a placement agreement with the provider. As the young person is a long way from home, they are likely to be helped to settle in better, if they have continued contact with their family or adults who have cared for them. As part of the care plan consideration should be given to help siblings and adults important to the young person visit them.

82. The demand for secure care places varies between local authorities. In 2005, four authorities averaged one or less admission per 10,000 children, whereas two authorities had a rate of admission more than three times the national average. This may suggest that local authorities have variable needs for placements and may reflect differences in thresholds for admission, policy and practice.

83. Following consultation and research on secure care in Scotland, Scottish Ministers announced in March 2003 that the Scottish Executive's strategy would be to modernise the secure estate to deal effectively with young people who offend, as well as those who need secure care for their own protection. This modernisation programme includes increasing the number of places from 93 to 125, developing programmes of work for children who offend, building three new secure care centres and providing a secure care centre for girls. The first of the new centres opened in March 2006, two further units will open later in 2006.

84. All young people leaving secure care need a suitable placement. Unfortunately it can be difficult to find appropriate placements for young people. Once they are no longer looked after local authorities do not have a statutory responsibility for them. One local authority told us they were planning to provide 24 hour supported accommodation to young people who have been assessed as having a high level of need.

85. In 2003, Audit Scotland's report, Dealing with Offending by Young People made recommendations on evaluating the cost effectiveness of secure care and reviewing the commissioning process. The Scottish Executive Education Department has commissioned research on the outcomes of secure care. Getting it right for every child (Scottish Executive 2005d), which lays out a number of changes to children's services and the children's hearing system proposes that all agencies involved in an action plan agreed at a hearing should be required to implement it. Further, getting it right for every child will require agencies to have in place an agreed action plan for which they are seeking compulsion. A hearing must be satisfied that the plan will meet the needs of the child and should ask for it to be reviewed if it does not, but the hearing will not be able to recommend its own option for implementation. These changes are being proposed to make sure that actions are likely to genuinely meet the needs of the child. It will stop agencies agreeing a course of action but then failing to implement it, and should encourage consideration of alternatives to secure accommodation, such as electronic monitoring or intensive supervision.

Safety from other young people

86. Work by Childline and other organisations has found that many young people feel unsafe from their own age group. Bullying has received increasing attention and policy initiatives in schools, but less attention in foster care and units for looked after children. The Review of the Management Arrangements of Colyn Evans ( SWIA 2005) noted that Colyn Evans had shown sexually harmful behaviour from an early age. At the age of 15 he was sent to a residential school, which offered specialist support for young people with entrenched, and concerning sexual behaviours ( SWIA 2005:6).

The report concluded that:

This case has highlighted the difficulties of managing a young person displaying sexually problematic or aggressive behaviour safely in an open residential setting … there is a need for a national forum to consider the difficulties posed in managing young people with the range of difficulties posed by Colyn Evans ( SWIA 2005:31).

The Scottish Executive in February 2006 set up a Youth Justice Improvement Group with different work streams, one of which is looking at resources for young people who show sexually harmful behaviour.

87. It is important to note that many children and young people who have been sexually abused do not act out their experience with other children and young people. But some who have not had help with their experiences may do so. Farmer and Pollock (1998) found in a study in England that during the placement, which constituted the focus of the study, one in five of the victimised young people sexually abused another child and a similar proportion of children who had already sexually abused a child repeated this behaviour. This was mainly the abuse of other residents in children's homes, the grandchildren of foster carers and other fostered children and siblings. The study concluded that:

In spite of these risks there was a tendency for caregivers and social workers to normalise these sexual behaviours and to develop high thresholds before action was taken. This was particularly true for sexual behaviour that occurred outside the care setting, such as indiscriminate sexual activity and prostitution (1998:63).

88. Although this study was undertaken in 1998 in England, recent reports in Scotland ( SWIA 2005a and SWIA 2005b) suggest that little progress has been made on understanding, care and help for children who have been sexually abused and/or are sexually harmful to other children and young people. These reports found that professionals lacked knowledge and skill in working with sexually abused children and with children and young people who acted in a sexually harmful way to others.

89. Farmer and Pollock (1998) found that the best outcomes were achieved for those young people who were encouraged to explore their difficult experiences and feelings both in therapeutic relationships and in their everyday life in care. The group of young people in their study who received the least help were those involved in prostitution.

There was a real scarcity of ideas about how to engage and contain them apart from secure units. All the same it was clear that a rapid response was needed in order to try to influence the child's choice of associations before the behaviour became entrenched and before other children had been drawn in. Remoteness from the child's networks appeared to be one important ingredient of a good placement (1998:65).

90. The Scottish Executive is currently (May 2006) consulting on how the deaths of individual children in Scotland, and significant incidents which involve serious neglect, harm or injury should be handled by agencies at a local level and by central government. Deaths of looked after children are reported by local authorities to SWIA. SWIA leads a multi-disciplinary team, which assesses the management of the case by local authorities and other agencies and identifies where there are appropriate lessons to be learnt at either a local or national level.

Safety for young people leaving care

91. Young people leaving care benefit from careful preparation. Dixon and Stein (2005) found young people who had developed their social skills and had an adult they could turn to in a crisis if needed were more likely to cope successfully with leaving care.

92. The Scottish Care Leavers Mentoring Project was funded by the Scottish Executive to support the establishment of six mentoring projects for young people leaving care, in partnership with local authorities and voluntary agencies. Each project would recruit volunteer mentors from the local community, who would be linked to a young person. The young person and mentor would work together for 9 to 12 months. An evaluation of the projects found that a unified sense of purpose, ownership and commitment had helped to overcome many of the problems they faced (Kendrick, Hunter and Cadman 2005). However the complexity of developing new projects for disadvantaged young people was a substantial challenge and the concept of mentoring was not easy for many young people to grasp or engage with. This project was in the early stages by the end of the evaluation and the benefits to the young people could not be assessed fully in the timescale.

Creating safe environments

93. Children and young people's esteem and behaviour can be enhanced by good quality surroundings, furniture and decoration. Where possible children and young people should be able to choose the décor in their own room and make suggestions about the rest of the unit. The Care Commission already assesses the quality of living conditions for children, including residential homes and day centres. A joint report by the Care Commission and HMIE (2004), identified the components of a safe environment in residential schools. It found that, in the best examples, careful attention had been paid to creating a physical environment which combines safety and security with a 'homely' and comfortable atmosphere.

Safe adventure

94. The law defines the age at which children may take certain kinds of decisions and act independently of their parents or care, for example:

95. Getting the balance right between safety and risk-taking is difficult for any parent. Looked after children may have been previously exposed to inappropriate risks, have carried responsibilities beyond their years, or have had little experience of adults being in control. Because of this, it may be harder for them to learn to make their own judgements about what is safe.

96. A recent study of the outcomes of different interventions to improve young people's behaviour (Becker 2006) found that adventure could help. Although there is little robust research evidence that shows activity and adventure has absolute or relative effectiveness, studies of a wide range of groups of children, including those who offend, have found it to be beneficial, in that it improved self-esteem and reduced anxiety. Fox and Avramidis (2003) concluded that activity and adventure represented powerful tools for reducing disaffection and promoting inclusive practice.

97. The young people who took part in this review valued opportunities for cultural, leisure and sports activities. Many looked after young people do not get the chance to enjoy these activities. Time well spent (Aldgate and McIntosh 2006) found that although the young people enjoyed their leisure, relatively few took part in community activities. This could be a lack of knowledge or confidence in how to get involved. Careful attention to this aspect of the care plan for all looked after children would ensure that their leisure needs are always considered and opportunities for them to take part developed.

What we can do to keep children safe.

i. Train staff so that they are knowledgeable and confident in using the law appropriately to help make sure children are safe from harm and abuse. Employers need to make sure staff are trained in good record keeping, gathering relevant information and giving evidence in court.

ii. Have rigorous policies for the recruitment and assessment of staff and carers and a clear 'whistle blowing' policy. Guidance on staff recruitment issued by the Scottish Executive will be valuable to all agencies.

iii. Make sure staff are well trained and knowledgeable about boundaries and the use of restraint.

iv. Help children and young people develop skills to keep themselves safe.

v. Make sure that adults who work with disabled children have the ability to communicate effectively with them.

vi. Ensure all children who are looked after, including those who are accommodated in secure care, are consulted about and helped to plan their future.

vii. Help young people leaving care to live safely and independently by carefully preparing and consulting them. Support for them should continue for as long as they need it.

viii. Provide safe environments for looked after children to play and learn. Looked after children often need planned and special encouragement to make use of local resources.

ix. Provide attractive and well-maintained physical environments. Children and young people who live in attractive and well maintained family homes, schools or units feel valued and responsible.

x. Encourage children and young people to participate in safe adventure which can enhance their confidence and skills.

Key issues:

• children and young people and local authority staff who care for them consistently told us that they wanted up-to-date guidance on overnight stays for looked after children and young people
• staff and carers who are trying to help children who have been sexually abused would benefit from up-to-date training and materials, which they could use in their work
• the changes in the provision of secure accommodation create an opportunity to develop a national strategy on the allocation and priority of places, the funding of secure placements and the range of support options for young people both in and on leaving secure care
• the accreditation and quality assurance of specialist programmes
• children and young people told us that being restrained appropriately and safely was a major concern for them. Holding Safely ( SIRCC 2005) would lead to more consistent practice if it was followed up with national/regional seminars and workshops.

Further reading

Communication for disabled children - Pease, L, (2000) Creating a Communicating Environment

National Childrens Bureau (2006) Tell them not to forget about us!

Palmer, T. and Stacey, L (2004) Just One Click, Barnardo's, Essex

Websites

Scottish Institute for Residential Child Care www.sircc.strath.ac.uk

Safe recruitment pack www.savethechildren.org.uk

Fostering Network, 0141-204-1400 www.fostering.net

Bichard Inquiry www.bichardinquiry.org.uk

Barnardo's (Just One Click) www.barnardo's.org.uk

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