Scotland's Children Children (Scotland) Act 1995 Implementation Newsletter No 4

Scottish Office/COSLA conferences planned

The Scottish Office and COSLA are jointly organising a set of conferencesto prepare for full implementation of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 on 1 April.

Two sets of conferences will be organised.

One set is for council members who have the key role of determining the local authority's policies and setting priorities for the allocation of resources in implementing the Act. It is important that council members are well briefed on the provisions of the Act and that they understand its principles and objectives.

Three conferences will be held for elected members - in Stirling, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. Programmes have been prepared by a small planning group which includes The Scottish Office, COSLA, and individual local authority representatives.

Another separate set of three conferences will focus on children's services planning. These will be held on 18 March in Glasgow, 25 March in Inverness and 27 March in Edinburgh. Between ten and twelve local authorities will be invited to each conference. Each local authority Chief Executive will be invited to assemble a team of five or six individuals from the key service departments - social work, education and housing - and from outside the local authority, the NHS and the voluntary sector.

These conferences will help to bring together the different departments and different services to promote co-operation between them and give them ideas to inspire effective dynamic planning for children's services.

New Act booklet

Under the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, local authorities have a duty, so far as practicable, to have regard to a child's religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background, particularly in relation to adoption services, children looked after by the local authority and services to children in need.

The Scottish Office has therefore commissioned a group led by Mono Chakrabarti, Reader in Social Work at Strathclyde University, to write a booklet with the aim of assisting social work departments and voluntary agencies to meet their new duties under the 1995 Act.

The booklet should be available by the autumn of 1997.