| 3 social work |
|
| Child Protection Management |
| 3.1 Children are placed on a Child Protection
Register when a Social Work Department considers that their safety and welfare require an
inter-agency protection plan. Information on such registers in Scotland and the procedures
applied can be found in the Statistical Bulletin "Child Protection Management
Information" (Series SWK/CP). |
|
| Referrals to Reporters and
Children’s Hearings |
| 3.2 In the Children’s Hearings System,
children are referred to reporters on various offence and non-offence grounds. Tables 3A1
and 3A2 show the numbers of children involved over the years, and the grounds for
referrals, along with initial action taken, in the most recent statistics. |
|
| No Formal Action Cases |
| 3.3 As a single referral to a Reporter may
cover more than one non-offence ground or offence, some of which may be acted upon but
others not, it is described as a "no action case" only if all the grounds for
referral (or all the offences alleged, in the case of offence referrals) are not acted
upon. |
|
| 3.4 Prior to 1987, the initial actions’
a Reporter took, on a referral in respect of individual grounds for referral, were not
recorded; neither were the reasons for no action being taken recorded for individual
grounds. As a result, there was a slight under-estimation for these years in the overall
extent to which Reporters decided to take no further action upon grounds for referral. |
|
| Other Services for Children |
| 3.5 Forms of residential care and pre-school
day care for children are highlighted in tables 3A3, 3A4
and 3A5. |
|
| Community Care |
| 3.6 Since 1980, there has been a shift in the
pattern of care for adults, from hospital-based care to various forms of support in the
community. The NHS and Community Care Act (1990), implemented in 1993, sought to legislate
for the transition to community-based forms of care, such as residential care homes, day
centres, and home care provision. Section
3B highlights different types of care provision and
various trends in provision for older people and the adult client-groups. |
|
| Staffing and Expenditure |
| 3.7 Tables 3C1,C32
and 3C3 show changes, over the years, in staffing and expenditure levels in various
aspects of the work of Social Work Departments.üú |
