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Ms Susan Deacon, MSP
Minister for Health and Community Care
Children are our future. It is the responsibility of all of us to give them the best possible start in life and to encourage them to fulfil their full potential as adults.
Providing support services to families and children can offer prevention from child abuse. It is important that good communications and inter-agency working is part of our approach to ensure that children are protected.
This document is one of two national guidance documents being prepared by the Scottish Executive and child protection agencies to clarify and restate the roles and responsibilities of individual professions working with children. The second national guidance document, being prepared by the Education Department, is about to be commissioned. The report is in line with the primary guidance, 'Protecting Children -A Shared Responsibility: Guidance on Inter-Agency Co-operation' which was published in 1998 and complements the publication 'Scotland's Children -A Brief Guide to The Children (Scotland) Act 1995'.
This document specifically aims to provide user-friendly information for all health professionals in Scotland. It will be valuable to those who may very rarely come into contact with an abused child or children and their families. It is also an important source of advice for staff who have had more experience in this area and highlights the need for child protection training to be made available for all staff. In addressing multi-disciplinary and multi-agency working and communications, this comprehensive guidance sets out Health Board and Trust specifications, as well as the role and responsibilities of individual health care professionals who are, or may become, involved in dealing with child abuse.
This guidance should be regarded as a working document which should be readily available to all health staff in Scotland. I am pleased to commend this publication to you.
SUSAN DEACON
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