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METHODOLOGY

Contextual studies

Documentary analysis

Documents for analysis included Steering Group meeting minutes, reports, speeches, and communication logs or internal memos on the progress of individual projects. Literature and publications about the reform programme (available on the Scottish Executive's website), were also taken into account. We looked in particular, at how decisions were made and by whom, what discussions concentrated on, and if and how the focus of the reform programme changed over time.

Children's Charter

Dundee's Children and Young Person's Protection Committee ( DCYPPC) has distributed copies of the Children's Charter to all children in Dundee via schools. For an evaluation of the DYPPC we had previously held focus groups with young people in a secondary school and attended three parents' groups to investigate views about child safety and protection, and knowledge of the Charter (1). We re-used the data from this previous evaluation to inform this study.

Social workers in community care and criminal justice settings

'Children at the centre' is a Scottish Executive funded project. It is delivered in partnership by the Centre for Child Care and Protection (Dundee University) and Scottish Training on Drugs and Alcohol ( STRADA) (a partnership between Department of Adult and Continuing Education, the University of Glasgow Centre for Drug Misuse, and Drug Scope, a UK wide policy and practice organisation). It trains criminal justice and community care social workers in child protection alongside child and family social workers. On completion in March 2007 the project will have trained nearly 3000 social workers in all local authorities in Scotland. To provide insight into the impact of the CPRP upon social workers in all specialisms we analysed the child protection concerns that social workers in adult services identified at the beginning of the course.

Media coverage

We examined print media coverage of specifically Scottish child protection issues for the year December 2005 to November 2006 using The Scottish News Archive (http://liathach.televisual.co.uk/access/scotland.html). This covers:

• The Scotsman
• The Herald
• Scotland on Sunday
• Sunday Herald
• Evening News
• Dundee Courier
• Daily Record
• Press and Journal
• Sunday Mail

We included all types of items including news reporting, features, editorials, and letters. We read each item and noted any specific references, or allusions, to the reform programme as a whole, or any of its sub-projects. We considered whether items appeared to have been influenced by activities of the reform programme, and also noted items where the reform programme could have been relevant, but was not mentioned. We found 240 items relating specifically to child protection in Scotland for the year up to November 2006 that were then collated into categories.

Strand A: The processes used to set up and manage the CPRP

Interviews and focus groups

61 semi-structured qualitative interviews were carried out and recorded with

• PA's;
• members of the CPSG; and
• policy makers within the Scottish Executive.
• The interviews addressed the following issues (for full schedule see appendix 1):
• How the policy leads saw their role in taking forward the child protection reform programme and its key objectives.
• Whether, in their view, the reform programme was an effective process by which to meet the original objectives agreed by the policy leads.
• How the makeup of the CPSG was established and PAs selected.
• For each sub-project -
  • what informed the selection by the policy leads of the particular methods for each sub-project, and
  • their views on whether they worked.

Two focus groups were held with a total of 12 people and tape-recorded with:

• members of CPCs;
• representatives of Drug and Alcohol Action Teams; and
• service leaders from social work, police and health.

The focus groups considered the objectives of the reform programme, the successes and shortcomings of the reform programme, and its impact on policy, practice and children (see appendix 2 for full topic guide).

The interviews and focus group tapes were transcribed and an in-depth qualitative analysis was carried out that looked for key themes and sub-themes.

Strand B: The impact of the CPRP on policy and practice

Survey

The bulk of the data for this strand was collected in two sites of study centred around health boards. Sites were chosen to represent a spread of urban and rural demography. A questionnaire with a mix of open and closed questions addressed the following issues:

• whether the reform programme influenced child protection policy and practice amongst relevant professionals;
• what changes child protection professionals perceived as having been influenced by the CPRP;
• whether the programme built on existing good practice;
• whether awareness of child protection issues was increased by the activities of the CPRP (a copy of the questionnaire is shown in Appendix 3).

The questionnaire was distributed widely via senior staff in each study site. It is not possible to establish the exact number of questionnaires distributed because they were cascaded via email to groups of staff. The police had been subject to a large amount of recent communications in both areas so the questionnaire was only sent to a few key members of the forces. The questionnaire was also sent to existing distribution lists held at Dundee University and Barnardo's. The following professions received the questionnaire:

• Police
• Health professionals (nursing and medical)
• Social workers in all specialisms
• Scottish Children's Reporter staff and panel members
• Teachers (pre-school, primary and secondary) and special schools
• Local Authority staff
• Voluntary Organisation staff.

373 questionnaires were returned and all the data was transferred onto an Excel database. Closed question answers were collated and descriptive statistics produced. The figures were broken down in various ways to show different professional responses. Data from open questions was examined for recurring themes across the range of professions. The narratives were also coded according to profession in order to highlight any difference in impact of the CPRPs by discipline.

Focus Groups

Three focus groups were held and tape-recorded in three different local authorities, with a total of 21 participants:

Participants were asked to consider what aspects of policy and practice were influenced by the CPRP, whether the CPRP built on existing good practice, and whether the changes would lead to better outcomes for children (See Appendix 4 for full topic list). Data was examined for recurring themes in conjunction with the data from open questions in the questionnaire.

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