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INTRODUCTION AND POLICY BACKGROUND
Introduction
Giving children the best start in life and improving the life chances of children, young people and families at risk will make a major contribution to delivering the solidarity and cohesion that we want to see in Scottish society. The Children's Hearings system has a substantial contribution to make to the delivery of the Government's Purpose.
Through Getting it right for every child we are seeking to achieve changes in the cultures, practices and systems of services affecting all children. For those whose activities impact on children, Getting it right for every child is developing an approach which will promote how to work in a way which delivers improved outcomes for children and young people. Earlier this year we announced our intention to focus on giving all children the best start in life. The framework we announced in March is intended to develop what needs to be done to support early years work and early intervention.
We are also acting to improve a wide range of services focussed on children in need - improving outcomes for looked after children; developing a more coherent approach to addressing the problems of children affected by substance misuse; providing support for kinship care; through Preventing Offending by Young People: A Framework for Action, we will strengthen all aspects of the youth justice agenda from prevention through to high risk and will carefully consider the Prisons Commission's recommendations on the ways we might deal with our young offenders in the future.
The Children's Hearings system sits at the centre of this network of policies and services, providing the gateway into support and services for those children who are most in need and may require compulsory measures of care and support. Within this context, the Scottish Government's overall objective is to introduce a coherent package of measures which will strengthen and modernise the Children's Hearings system and enable it to continue to play a central role in improving the lives of vulnerable children into the future.
Why change?
When local government was reorganised in 1996, the structure of the Children's Hearings system was partially reformed. The Children's Reporters were taken out of local control and placed within a Non- Departmental Public Body - the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration. The children's and Safeguarder panels however moved from a regional basis (12 children's panels, 12 Children's Panel Advisory Committees ( CPACs) and 12 Safeguarder panels) to 32 Children's Panels, 30 CPACs and 32 Panels of Safeguarders.
This caused a considerable increase in bureaucracy as each children's panel required a chairman and at least one deputy, the number of CPAC members had to be significantly increased and separate processes had to be created for each panel of Safeguarders. In short, the change generated bureaucracy, reduced flexibility and added nothing to outcomes for children.
By any measure the Children's Panel is Scotland's largest tribunal. On a daily basis children's hearings take life changing decisions affecting vulnerable and troubled children and their families. Yet the support for Panel members varies enormously between the 32 local areas.
A critical result of this is that there is wide variation in the volume and quality of in-service training available to volunteer Panel members at present, creating inequalities across the system which can adversely affect the quality of panel member practice. Local Panel members have a right to expect the best possible training and continuing support, to help them deliver the high quality decisions needed to deal with the increasingly complex cases which are brought to Children's Hearings.
We want the decision-makers - Children's Reporters and Panel members - to be supported. The system rightly places a high value on the contribution of the community in taking decisions about children. However, too often the behaviours generated by an over-dependence on local support and the absence of underpinning standards mean this value is undermined. We think the current structures are over-complex and have unclear accountabilities. Both of these factors work against sustained leadership either locally or across the system.
Other tribunals operating in Scotland have a dedicated supporting national body and we think this is the right way forward for the Children's Hearings system.
What must remain
The three overarching principles governing the operation of the Children's Hearing system are that:
- the welfare of the child is the paramount consideration;
- the child's views must be taken into account where major decisions are to be made about his or her future;
- no supervision requirement should be made unless to do so would be better for the child than making no supervision requirement at all.
These core principles remain at the heart of our proposals.
We also intend to retain the position of Reporters and of the Principal Reporter, and we remain committed to the involvement of unpaid trained volunteers, representative of Scotland's communities, as the Panel members who make the decisions at local Children's Hearings.
We wish to ensure that the Children's Hearings system continues to be best placed to make its particular contribution to the well-being of Scotland's communities. Our proposed reforms will provide consistency within the system and a strong focus on quality assurance, whilst retaining local delivery and the involvement of volunteers with an understanding of local communities and the needs of those living within those communities.
Crucially, our policies, programmes, frameworks and reforms will together ensure that professionals and volunteers working in the Children's Hearings system are well-placed to decide when a compulsory intervention is necessary and what measures of care should apply to address needs and behaviour.
By building on the strengths of the current system and ensuring that it focuses more firmly on improving life chances for the children and families with whom it works, the Children's Hearings system can contribute to securing the transformational change which is now needed.
Our Priorities
Our priorities are to:
- ensure that the professionals and volunteers who make up the Children's Hearings system are able to focus their particular skills on the needs of children, through changed structural arrangements which provide clear accountabilities, reduce bureaucracy and remove unnecessary administrative burdens;
- demonstrate the high value the Scottish Government places on children referred to the system by providing Reporters and the volunteers in the system with better support;
- improve the effectiveness of the system through procedural change, making it more agile and less bureaucratic;
- work with communities to help them to understand and support young people whilst protecting the safety and peace of local neighbourhoods.
How will we do it?
Our proposals to strengthen and modernise the Children's Hearings system require legislative changes to secure the structural reforms we seek. They also require changes in practice, which can be taken forward without recourse to legislation.
Subject to the outcome of this consultation, we intend to introduce a Bill to establish a new national body, bringing together the functions currently carried out by the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration, 32 Children's Panels and associated bodies, the Scottish Government and local authorities, and to ensure that children's rights are properly upheld within the Children's Hearings system.
We will also take action to improve practice in the interim. Some of this is already underway. We have already set in place a project to bring forward changes to the frequency of hearings, 2 and another to improve the continuity of Panel members when a decision is deferred from one hearing to another. 3 These developments will be rolled out throughout Scotland in the course of 2008, following specific training for all involved.
We will continue to support these efforts to bring about change within the existing system, whilst pressing forward on further activity to deliver improvement in the short term, in advance of our planned structural reforms.
Real change will require commitment and leadership from all those involved in delivery of the Children's Hearings system. The Scottish Government already meets formally with other partners involved in delivering the Hearings system, and will continue to do so.
In addition, we intend to establish a Strategic Project Board, chaired by the Minister for Children and Early Years, to oversee the development of the legislation and advise the Scottish Government on the implementation of the new system. The Project Board will include representatives from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities ( CoSLA) and SCRA, a Children's Panel representative and other key stakeholders.
We will also work with local authorities, through existing community planning arrangements, to ensure that the views and voices of community groups, families and children inform the reform programme.
The details of our proposals for structural reform and practice change are set out below.
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