Good morning and welcome to the Education and Culture Committee’s 16th meeting in 2013. I remind all present that electronic devices should be switched off at all times.
Good morning. I start by putting on record my view, which I think is shared by the committee, that the written evidence that has been provided to us has been very helpful.
Particularly with regard to child neglect, there are many challenges to getting a consistent approach. In West Lothian, we have tried to tackle that through a programme of multi-agency training for our professionals that helps to identify some of the impact of child neglect on future development and behaviour.
How close are we getting to a situation in which consistency can be applied to the issues that you have described?
We have a much greater understanding and definition of child neglect—with areas of physical or sexual abuse, it is easier to have that clear understanding—so we have more of a shared appreciation of the potentially very serious impact that early neglect can have on children’s future lives.
Outwith those toolkits, is there a sufficient number of well-trained professionals who are able to provide the training for the people who are involved in that process?
We have many skilled and experienced professionals who work hard each day to support very vulnerable children and their families in communities, but there are challenges for all agencies. For example—my background is in social work—from managing the fieldwork teams in West Lothian, I know that retaining experienced staff is a challenge. We need to work hard to ensure that we retain that level of skill.
One of the written submissions made the point that there is a
The various agencies might have significant information that would have a real impact on how a particular child is treated, but we lack the integrated information systems that would allow us to share that information well and early enough in the child’s life to intervene at a point at which we could prevent some of those children from being received into care. There are systems in development just now and there is a lot of good practice, but we will have good practice only if we have good information. Arguably, information from health, which is my area, is not being well shared.
Is that an information technology problem, or is it to do with the management of people?
There is a significant IT problem and we need to invest in IT systems that share information. As my submission says, we have a pilot model for that in NHS Ayrshire and Arran and in a couple of other areas in Scotland, but that is a serious issue.
Is that information available and the issue is just about best use, or is there is a problem in some health areas that not enough information is provided?
There is a combination of both those issues. In some areas, we have very good information that is not well shared. We always have islands of good practice—there are some excellent practitioners out there, and I would not want to take that away from them—but there is information on things such as foetal alcohol syndrome, which we do not currently screen for. If we are not aware that a child has been affected by foetal alcohol syndrome, we might not treat that child appropriately. That type of thing needs to come into play.
Let me finish my questions by asking about that issue of getting the right culture. It has been put to us by a few witness panels that we need to ensure that the right culture is out there. What are the barriers to adopting that correct culture?
Before I answer that question, let me pick up on the information issue, which is a recurring theme in reviews of cases in which things have gone wrong. I think that there is a big issue about the way in which we train professionals on data protection. We need to give them a real understanding of what they can and cannot share.
Thank you.
I have a practical question. If a social worker, a health visitor, a headteacher or whoever is alerted to an issue, how do they then check what is happening in the other services? How does that happen practically?
In the main, people pick up the phone and have a conversation. Although there might be disagreements between services and agencies, that is not always unhealthy or unhelpful. Disagreement can lead to the challenging of perspectives and positive interventions. I can speak only from a West Lothian perspective, but agencies are picking up the phone every day and having conversations with one another, saying, “We have a concern”, “What does this mean?”, “What do you know about this family?”, “Do you have similar concerns?” and “What should we do?”.
If it is a telephone-based system, presumably it relies on people writing notes—
Yes. Clearly, a telephone conversation would be an initial point of contact. In other situations, it is important to bring people together in a formal meeting to share information and agree a support plan or what further actions are needed, to involve families in that and secure the best support for them.
If there is no IT-based system, the system relies on telephone calls and people writing notes. If something happens and then, say, you have to phone a school and the teacher is in the classroom, you immediately have delay. I think that you can see where I am going with this. A telephone-based system relies on people writing notes and keeping records. Inevitably, with the workloads that people have, things will be missed. Are we not still in the dark ages on this?
I am sure that we could have better IT arrangements in place to support practitioners’ work, but we still have to have human contact and connection.
Of course.
There is a danger in assuming that IT is a panacea. It is not, because if someone is updating a record using a computer, they still have to take time to do that. There are issues about whether a written record is less efficient than an IT record. If we had an integrated system, an updated record on a computer that could be shared with other agencies would be infinitely preferable, but at the moment we do not have such systems.
I reiterate that good practice relies on individuals talking to one another. It is important that we do not regard IT systems as some kind of panacea. We are moving rapidly towards having integrated IT systems. In NHS Ayrshire and Arran there is a common system across all health professionals who deal with children, so people input information into a single IT database. With our local authority partners, we are piloting AYRshare, which is a common system, currently with input from social work and health—education is about to come online, if we can resolve some IT issues, and we are working with the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration and the police, to enable them to access the system.
I do not dispute that. IT cannot replace human beings. We have had that debate in the context of the careers service.
My colleagues and I would find that extremely helpful. Significant investment in the area would be positive.
Do the other witnesses agree? I am cautious about saying that, because I know that there have been some spectacularly bad public sector IT projects.
The situation has been a bit shambolic at times, across the country.
Is housing involved in the project?
Yes. Sorry, I forgot to mention housing; it is the whole gamut in a particular area. I have always felt—probably because of my experiences a long while ago—that housing officers probably see more than anyone else does before a child gets to school, at which point it is the teachers who see things.
For some years now, West Lothian has had a system in which information is shared across agencies. However, it is probably time to review and advance the system.
With the advent of Police Scotland last month, one IT system is being rolled out to replace eight different systems. The consolidation of the police’s IT system certainly presents an opportunity; I am not quite sure how advanced such moves are in health, but at least it is a start. As Jim Carle said, it would be a significant advantage in identifying at an early stage or predicting problems. However, it can be seen as a panacea and it is essential for practitioners to speak to one another.
I will take two very quick questions from Joan McAlpine and Clare Adamson.
First, I apologise to the committee and the panel for my late arrival.
The most recent evidence supports my belief that foetal alcohol syndrome is far more widespread than we have previously thought. Of course, we should consider not only its impact on the child but the fact that people out there who are themselves victims of foetal alcohol syndrome are now parents in their own right and are trying to bring up children with a number of challenges.
I have a very quick question that I am afraid brings us back to the technical stuff. Last week, we took evidence from two academics who talked about expert systems that would trigger certain things and prompt people to take particular action in particular circumstances. Given what you have said this morning, is it simply a data-sharing system that has been put in place or does it have an expert element? If it does not have an expert element, are you aware of any expert systems outwith Scotland that fulfil such a function?
The Ayrshire and Arran system is not what you would call an expert system in that it is not predictive; it simply shares—or attempts to share—information from a number of agencies in an effective way and the social worker or health professional performs the expert function by reviewing and pulling together that information.
I think that Bruce Perry in America has such a programme. However, from the programmes that I have read about and which he has spoken about, it seems that they ride roughshod over people’s rights. We would need to be very careful about how much information would be available, how it would be shared and who would have access to it.
I have three questions. Last year, the Scottish Government published a risk assessment toolkit that was supposed specifically to identify and respond to child concerns. I am interested to know whether the witnesses feel that that was effective, particularly in light of some of the evidence we have already been given.
Colin, can we stop there and let the panel respond? You can come back in.
I am sorry. I was too enthusiastic.
You were quite enthusiastic, yes.
The risk assessment work was undertaken by a colleague of mine in Glasgow on behalf of the Scottish Government. It is being rolled out currently.
A common threshold might not be an achievable goal in reality, and I am not sure how helpful it actually is. Each child has to be treated as an individual, and there are too many permutations or variations in the issues that impact on that child to establish a common threshold.
I agree with that. There is great value in training across agencies so that they have the opportunity to explore what definitions are, what they mean for individual children, how we make effective assessments of complex situations, and how we best plan to support children and their families. There is certainly evidence that suggests that understanding and shared awareness is positively affected by on-going multi-agency training.
The value of joint training cannot be stressed enough. One of the key issues is the development of a working relationship between professionals. The ease with which professionals can pick up the phone and speak to someone they already know, because they attended joint training, makes sharing information much more effective.
I understand the comment that each case is individual. There are all sorts of different thresholds with which people are working. As a layman, I think that there must be concern that children perhaps are at greater risk in some areas than in others, because of the variation in the thresholds.
I, too, speak as a layman. It is possible to look at thresholds, but thereafter we need to look at the individual child. Once the threshold is triggered, what needs to be provided? Is the question one of how quickly the parents will be able to change things for the child? There are different thresholds; the question is whether social work, education, or health practitioners can deal with the particular instance that arises. There might need to be some sort of basic trigger point; what happened to an individual child after that point would need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
I will move on to my third question.
There can be a tendency to reassess situations. Sometimes that is demanded by our processes, either through children’s hearings or court procedures, and it is not possible to take assessment activity that has happened in the past and say that that is still relevant. However, we certainly need to prevent as many reassessments, or cases being started again, as we can, because that contributes to delays in the assessments and in the critical decisions being made.
Evidence from significant case reviews shows that that is an issue on occasions. We need to equip professionals with the knowledge and confidence to rely on the work that has gone before them when they take over a case and to say, “We are not starting from fresh here; there is a history to this particular child or family”, so that they can work from the point where the previous practitioner left off.
Have you had a chance to look at the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill? Do you have any views on the extent to which that legislation might address some of the concerns that we are discussing this morning?
I should admit from the outset that I am on the group that is drafting the guidance for that bill and so, clearly, I would argue that it does address those concerns.
I think that you have to declare an interest. [Laughter.]
Everything that we are saying is being supported already by the named professional and GIRFEC process. That approach supports joint interagency working and is looking at culture, systems and practice. Over time it will have a significant impact on the work that we are doing.
In situations in which there is a reassessment, children who are a bit older—and even some children who are only eight or nine—begin to think, “Here’s someone else asking all the same questions. Nothing happened before, so why should I bother answering this time?” As time goes on, the assessment can be less and less fruitful for that reason. We must not lose focus on that because, whatever the process is, the child must be at the centre.
My knowledge of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill is not as comprehensive as it could be, but I know that some of my fellow chairs, particularly in the west of Scotland, have concerns about the obligations that it will place on them at a time when resourcing is under significant pressure. That is not to say that the principles of the bill do not take us in the right direction. As Jim Carle said, as GIRFEC becomes embedded and becomes second nature to professionals, we should begin to see a significant difference.
I want to ask about families who might fall between child protection services and universal services, in particular the health service. Health professionals are sometimes the only people who come into contact with children who are potentially at risk, so only they can identify neglect and harm.
I think that GPs are the same as any other group of professionals. We have some excellent GPs and some extremely good GPs, who will go the extra mile to be involved in a case of any type and particularly a child protection case. However, GPs are private contractors to a greater extent, and they are entitled, under the national contract that is in place, to act in the way that you outlined.
We have heard concerns about the pressure on health visitors. How big are their case loads? Are they too big?
The main concern is that health visitors should have the appropriate amount of time to enable them fully to assess the children in their case load. Health visitors work really hard and do an excellent job, but in some areas they are overburdened and do not have the time or resources to enable them to make a full assessment of every child for whom they are responsible.
We talked about sharing information. How do we share information and take an holistic approach to a child while maintaining confidentiality? Does the ethos of confidentiality in the health service present a barrier to multidisciplinary work and joint assessment?
Yes, that can be a barrier. There are groups whose professional guidance—from the colleges, for example—will not fully align with the new guidance for the Children and Young People (Scotland) Bill. We are approaching different colleges to ensure that the guidance that they issue to their members is aligned with Government policy and the bill.
What resourcing problems are agencies experiencing?
For social work, one of the biggest challenges over the past two years has been retaining experienced staff. When staff depart, the people whom we recruit to replace them are invariably newly qualified. The challenge is to ensure that we do not overburden our remaining experienced staff, so that they can do their best work, while not overexposing staff and social workers who do not have the relevant experience to work in complex and high-risk situations, because that is not safe for them, for families or for the organisation.
Where are the experienced staff going?
In statutory children’s practice teams that I manage, social workers have usually moved to social work jobs that they perceive to be less demanding or challenging on a daily basis, where they feel that they will have more opportunity to do more constructive and in-depth work.
Do they move to other authorities, or do they go outwith the local government system?
Some go to the voluntary sector or move to specialist jobs in other services, such as criminal justice. Many people leave for family reasons, too. It is not all about escaping, but there is no doubt that there are pressures on staff who work in highly complex and challenging situations.
You said that some staff move for professional reasons. We have heard in evidence that there is less time for the remedial work that social workers want to get involved in. There is less time to help people, as opposed to being the big bad social worker who does something bad to people. Is that a reason why people move on? Do they think that there are better opportunities to do the work that they are trained to do, as opposed to the side of the job that is not very nice?
That can be a feature. People can want an opportunity to do more intensive and, as they perceive it, therapeutic work. However, many people remain in post who are very skilled, who have practised effectively over the years and who work effectively with other agencies. There is mutual trust between professionals who know each other and work well to support families.
What flexibility do you have to help you to retain experienced staff whom you do not want to leave? Is there such flexibility?
Yes. We have created flexibility by increasing the number of social worker posts. That has enabled highly experienced social workers to have more time to focus on the more positive and direct work with families that they appreciate. Some of the other work has been moved to the newer social workers who can manage it. We have created more capacity, in the hope that that will stabilise our recruitment position and help us to retain our more experienced and qualified staff.
Is pay an issue?
I do not think that it is the main issue.
The Association of Scottish Principal Educational Psychologists talked in its submission about a forthcoming shortage of educational psychologists. When I was a member of West Lothian Council, the administration cut educational psychologist posts. The Scottish Government says that there is no longer a shortage of educational psychologists, but that is not what the association says. Do panel members think that there are such shortages?
I am not aware of any.
I am not aware of any. If we are to distinguish between children with significant behaviour problems and children who have a mental illness, there is probably a need for a more robust role for educational psychologists and an argument for increasing the workforce. However, I am not aware of issues.
Is that because that is not your field of expertise or because you do not think that there is a problem?
Educational psychologists are directly involved in all the multi-agency groups with which we work and in the locality groups under the integrated children’s services plan. We work quite heavily with educational psychologists. I am not aware of specific issues.
In my experience in teaching, the waiting times for appointments with educational psychologists were huge. Is that still the case?
It is much less the case than it was when I was in practice. I have not looked at the national situation, but we do not have that issue locally.
That is interesting. At last week’s meeting, Brigid Daniel said:
As a panel member, I would expect to look at various things if we were to make an order for a child. If there was an addiction problem, we would expect the parents to sort that out, although we cannot put that in an order. If the problem was something else, we would expect education or social work services to deal with that if they could do so. We are talking about whatever is needed at that point for a family.
A lead professional should be involved with every child and family to co-ordinate the work that needs to be done to ensure that children can safely return home to their families or their parents in a reasonable timeframe. That work should be clearly outlined, defined and measurable, so that people know when the targets have been met and when the child can return home.
That is part of the issue that we are investigating. There might be a temporary fix: the child goes back and then everything starts again. That gets to the crunch of what we are looking into.
In West Lothian, most of the children who become looked after away from home probably do not return home quickly. Such a lot of work is done to support families and children living at home in their own families that, when the decision is taken that children should no longer remain at home, a more permanent form of arrangement is likely to be needed. We are eternally grateful to the kinship carers in West Lothian who look after so many of our looked-after children and provide good care and the possibility of positive outcomes for those children.
Neil Bibby mentioned health visitors’ case load. What would a typical social work case load be in West Lothian for a children and families social worker?
A social worker works with about 15 families. We tend to take a view of families, as opposed to individual children. Some social workers work with fewer than that; that depends on the level of complexity and on their experience.
That is interesting. I think that it was said that the case load in Glasgow is 30 to 35 families.
I think that it is. As the chairman of the child protection committee in Glasgow, I would say that that number is not indicative of the number of children involved, for example, as Jo Macpherson said. When the family group is very complex, the number of cases that a social worker carries is likely to be significantly fewer.
The submission from the health commissioners suggested that there is not so much cross-boundary working together by organisations. To get that form of strategic planning, what would be the best way forward? Would it be to work with community planning partnerships and ensure better working together in that way? What is the panel’s view?
I think that community planning partnerships are located within the boundary, if you like, but the issue that we have is from the boundary into boundaries. As always, community planning partnerships certainly have a role to play in supporting the professionals, but the issue is at a slightly higher level than that. In this context, we are talking about community planning partnerships ensuring that their professionals have in place a health needs assessment for every child who is going to be transferred from a unit in a health board or local authority area to another area.
Does Jo Macpherson have anything to add?
I do not.
What did Jim Carle mean when referring to a higher level? How would you be able to interact at a higher level?
The new inspection process that the Care Inspectorate has recently piloted includes health services and is picking up issues. In North Ayrshire, in our area, the inspectorate looked at children with a health needs assessment who had moved into the area and found that the assessments were quite poor.
Neil Bibby has a brief supplementary question.
I will follow up on resources, specifically in Glasgow, which Donald Urquhart said has a particular problem with health visitors. We have heard that social workers’ case load is possibly higher in Glasgow than in, for example, West Lothian. Do areas such as Glasgow that have a particular problem or high numbers of children in care have sufficient resources? Is enough emphasis placed on such issues in money being diverted to areas such as Glasgow?
I am the independent chair of the Glasgow child protection committee and I am not as closely involved in the financial issues in terms of the settlements for Glasgow City Council and NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, so I am probably not in the best position to respond to your questions. However, at yesterday’s child protection committee meeting, we discussed the amount of work that has gone on in relation to looked-after and accommodated children and the amount of additional investment that the council has committed to reducing the number of children in residential care and diverting them into kinship care or foster care. A significant amount of resources has been channelled towards that, which has been diverted from other areas of the local authority’s budget.
Thank you very much. I thank all the panel members who have come along this morning to give us evidence.
We have our second panel of witnesses today for our inquiry into decision making on whether to take children into care. I welcome to the committee Carolyn Brown, who is an area depute principal psychologist and is from the Association of Scottish Principal Educational Psychologists; Dr Helen Hammond, who is a paediatrician; and Detective Chief Superintendent Gill Imery of Police Scotland. Good morning to you all and thank you for coming.
We have taken evidence on the different methods for referring to the hearings system, and it was noted in evidence that 80 per cent of non-offence referrals to the hearings system are from the police. Last week, one of the academics who gave evidence—Brigid Daniel—suggested that the hearings system needs to be reserved for cases in which compulsory measures are necessary. What are your opinions on that? Do the police really continue to refer children to reporters in such large numbers, in comparison with other agencies? Why do so many of those referrals not reach the hearings stage?
I can certainly answer the first part of your question, on the motivation behind referrals from police officers. Members will appreciate that first-line officers have an insight into people’s lives and homes that many agencies do not. Officers are trained and encouraged to identify vulnerability, and the grounds on which they refer range from children being in a household in which there has been a domestic incident, to a parent having been arrested for a crime, to its being apparent through attending an address for an unrelated issue that there is neglect in the home, to the way in which the home is set up; for example, there may be no food or adequate heating or clothing for the children in the house.
I know that you cannot answer the second part of the question, but does that indicate any issues with the referral process in the first place? In other words, are police officers correct in saying that children should be referred to the children’s reporter? Should the children be referred elsewhere? Is the fact that the number of referrals does not equate to the number of hearings indicative of an issue in how referrals are being made?
I think that it is. I should clarify that the numbers relate to referrals to all agencies, but there is something in there about trying to separate out the lower-level concerns; I am not talking about things that meet the threshold for child protection per se. Colleagues on the previous panel referred to GIRFEC. Police Scotland is very committed to getting it right for every child and to working with partner agencies across the country to do that. The introduction of a named person in a school or health environment to deal with lower-level concerns is really positive. We could start to differentiate between concerns that are very early indications of what might manifest as problems later on, and quite chronic issues that are pressing and which need a response now. I suppose that we are all motivated to try to invest in the former in order to avoid the latter.
Under the GIRFEC framework, there are multi-agency groups in some areas in Scotland—in some areas they are called young offender management groups—through which the police and other agencies work to divert certain youngsters to interventions that are more appropriate than a children’s hearing. For instance, if a young person has been charged by the police, some kind of drug intervention, work in school or other approach might be more appropriate.
I will come on to questions about sharing information. Detective Chief Superintendent Imery talked in a previous answer about the possibility of having two tiers of referral. Will you expand on how that might work?
In this area, which used to be the Lothian and Borders Police area, child concern forms were piloted in an attempt to capture lower-level concerns that would not meet the threshold for a child protection referral to the reporter, so that there could be intervention at an early stage. We are in the process of transition to the new service, and we are taking good practice from all over Scotland, so Police Scotland is looking at rolling out child concern forms as part of our approach to vulnerability in communities. Now that we have amalgamated the forces, we have a fantastic opportunity to get the best of all worlds and to ensure that there is a consistent response throughout Scotland, so that communities receive the same level of service, wherever they are.
The previous panel and witnesses at last week’s meeting said that there are in some cases difficulties to do with sharing accurate information, particularly for health professionals. What are the barriers to effective information sharing?
As always, it comes back to training and communication. In truth, there should be no barriers to information sharing. In this country we have come an awful long way in overcoming inhibitions about sharing information. Data protection is oft blamed for inhibiting such sharing, but the legislation makes it very clear that information can be shared to prevent crime and to protect people—especially children. I am not for a moment saying that that works everywhere to the same extent.
You said that there is willingness to share information, which might be true, but we have heard concerns about people’s ability to do so, partly because people come from very different professions and the system is not unified. Do you have comments on information technology or other concerns that the previous panel talked about?
There are challenges to do with systems that do not speak to one another. We have that challenge in Police Scotland, which has legacy systems from eight police forces, all of which held information in different formats, to varying degrees. Part of the work on identifying vulnerability that I am talking about is the creation of a vulnerable persons database that we can all share and contribute to. That is the situation within one agency and I am sure that it is replicated with other colleagues.
Health has often been seen as the big culprit in not sharing information. We have come a long way in the past 10 to 15 years in terms of GMC guidance, the guidance that medical defence unions give to practitioners and so on, so people are much clearer now not only that they may share information but that they have an obligation to share information—certainly in child protection situations.
Concerns have been expressed in evidence, including the concern that it is very difficult to get professionals to agree on definitions of neglect. To what degree does that lack of agreement on the extent of neglect compromise the work that you do?
I think that people understand—certainly health professionals are clear about neglect. There is an issue of varying thresholds; in a city such as Edinburgh, practitioners who work in certain parts of Edinburgh probably have a higher threshold for what they think amounts to neglect than do professionals who are working in more affluent areas.
Is that a problem?
It is a problem because it leads to a lack of equity and consistency. Again, once we are working more regularly in a GIRFEC way—in an interagency way—across Lothian, applying the same principles and pathways, that should improve. However, there has been a problem with varying thresholds.
You have highlighted the issue in Lothian, where you believe GIRFEC can change things. Are some local authorities better at working in a GIRFEC way and at ensuring that we do not have that problem, while in other local authorities that problem is more prevalent?
In Lothian, I work across four different authorities, but I am not clear about the situation across the whole of Scotland so I cannot answer the question.
The situation is complex, as has been established in various written submissions. You have to look at it in a number of different ways. There is a lack of standardisation of resources among the professions and a lack of standardisation of procedures. On the procedural element and the structures that local authorities and health boards have in place, we are working towards that, from a GIRFEC point of view. There has been some success on that, but I agree with Dr Hammond that there is still work to be done.
Would you defend a policy to include health visitors in the key groups that can address the issue at the very earliest stages?
I will leave that question for my health colleague, but it seems as though there is a good argument for that.
The past 10 years has seen a shift away from health visitors having direct contact with very young children towards their having other roles and responsibilities, which has been an unplanned result of pulling back on regular surveillance of children.
Dr Hammond said that in different areas of Edinburgh there are different thresholds or different views of what constitutes neglect. One of the issues that we have heard about throughout the inquiry is hidden neglect, or “middle class neglect”. For example, parents who are professionals might be more articulate in challenging you and the assessments that you make. Will you tell us about your experience of dealing with such situations and the challenges that they throw up?
It is more difficult to identify neglect of that sort. Sometimes we identify it when a child is physically not growing. Sometimes we see it in the child’s social and emotional development, if they are experiencing emotional deprivation in a very busy household. Such issues are very difficult to address. It comes back to our understanding of the breadth of neglect, and to training and knowledge of the research literature.
It is very difficult to pick up that sort of neglect. The sorts of difficulties with which the youngsters present follow through to schools. A great deal of evidence gathering and a great deal of skill are required. It also goes back to the point about information sharing. There is an issue about balancing children’s rights with parents’ rights under the legislation, which can be damaging to young people in the circumstances to which you refer.
Can you explain that a bit further?
In relation to the legislation on additional support needs, the more articulate parent may make a case that is more to do with meeting their needs than the child’s needs. That might relate to placing a child in a special school when that is not really required.
The police insight is into children who come from more troubled backgrounds. The insight that the police as an agency can have into children who might meet the threshold for care is skewed towards households to which we would be more likely to be called. The issue of hidden neglect, which occurs behind a façade of professional affluence, is much less likely to come to the fore, from a police perspective.
Are professionals robust enough in challenging such parents?
Those of us who have had a lot of experience probably are. However, I worry about the next generation. It takes a lot of experience, knowledge and understanding to be able to manage such situations. A strong multi-agency, multidisciplinary team approach is also needed. In those cases, we need to share the evidence and understanding that we have and make a plan together about how to address the situation. Families in those circumstances can be very difficult to tackle.
That is right, and it takes up a lot of resources and time.
We have received evidence that many kinds of assessments are done by different professionals at different times. There seems to be a strong indication that professionals tend to go through a process of reassessment of what the previous professional has done, without taking into account the judgment, experience and skills of that other professional. Is there any way to stop things going back to scratch every time? That seems to be a waste of time, and it could delay things for the child.
I do not think that professionals do go back to scratch on every occasion. There are a lot of good examples of very effective joint professional working. The structures and processes to provide the capacity for professionals to work together have to be in place, and co-ordination mechanisms are required in local authorities to ensure that the information is being shared.
The Association of Scottish Principal Educational Psychologists makes the point:
That is right. I do not know whether my colleagues wish to comment about that. As we have already mentioned, there are pockets of very good practice and there is a national risk assessment tool, and we are working towards a national framework that captures all that, but we are not there yet. That is exemplified by what we experience on the ground as regards some young people—but not all.
What needs to be done to improve that?
We need to do a number of things. We need to develop an overall national framework that incorporates specific data gathering around the extension of looked-after protocols. In local authorities, more and better predictive data needs to be used with regard to the resources that we actually need. The risk is that, when we are working together to identify neglect, any resource shortfall in the local area could impact on the identification process.
Strategic resource planning is also mentioned in the written evidence from the Association of Scottish Principal Educational Psychologists, which states:
You have already heard from other people that there are significant pressures across most services. I think that that is true of everybody. I do not particularly want to make this a platform for educational psychologists but, in the written evidence, I draw attention to the fact that educational psychologists are in a difficult place at present in terms of staffing. In 2001, when the Currie report was sanctioned by the Scottish Government, it was deemed that there was a crisis in the educational psychologist provision across Scotland. At that point, the provision was just under 380 full-time equivalent psychologists. It is now 388, and the difficulty is that we have had our funding cut.
Would you say that there are not enough staff for multi-agency decision making? Is the result of that for children in care that one agency drives an agenda and the others acquiesce? That could happen if, for example, educational psychologists do not have the necessary resources or time.
There is a risk of that. I do not want to go on about educational psychologists, but they have a unique role. They work at all levels of the system, which is critical to contributing to planning for young people in care. We are aware that it is difficult to recruit psychologists to rural services as it is. The answer is yes, basically.
My next question is on GIRFEC and, for want of a better phrase, the postcode lottery, given that there are different policies in different areas and they have different impacts. GIRFEC has been with us since 2006 and it has been further developed since then. What is preventing GIRFEC from working properly?
The issue was getting all the protocols, pathways and training in place, and now it is about resources. To follow on from the comments of my educational psychology colleague, I add that the world of paediatrics is under great stress at present. It is extremely difficult to recruit, particularly to the community paediatrics part of paediatrics and to child protection and services for vulnerable children. That is a huge issue. Although, in a sense, the paediatrician plays a relatively small role in the big picture, they are important. I go back to what my colleague said about confronting some very difficult situations. In giving medical evidence to courts and so on, paediatricians play a crucial role.
One barrier is the structure in Scotland, where we have 32 local authorities, 14 health boards and previously eight police forces. Police and fire are the first agencies to have undergone that kind of radical restructuring, but there is definitely an issue about the extent to which we can achieve consistency as one part—and, actually, the smaller part—in such discussions. By the time an issue gets to us, it is too late and everything else has not worked. The police are only a tiny part of the whole context, but they are the only part of our response to communities in need that is being reorganised.
I have a brief supplementary for Ms Brown on what she said about the difficulties that the 2001 report threw up for educational psychologists. What is your view on the response to that 2001 report? I am surprised to learn that more educational psychologists were not recruited as a result, given that there was probably more money around then than there is now.
At the time, more educational psychologists were recruited and the courses were fully funded. In the survey data that ASPEP collects, which we have given to the Scottish Government, we have basically seen a fall in the number of educational psychologists in Scotland, which was much higher five years ago than it is now. Off the top of my head, I cannot quite recall the number, but it was way over 400. Over the past three years, there have been significant cuts across Scotland, so that is why we are back to square 1.
You have partly answered this, but we heard competing evidence this morning from Mr Carle, who said that there was no issue, as far as he was aware, with the provision of educational psychology. However, we have heard a completely different perspective from you. Certainly in my experience of teaching in schools, there were huge waits for initial appointments, delays and all that kind of thing. Is that the reality on the ground at the moment?
I heard Jim Carle’s evidence, but I would refer back to my point about the lack of standardisation across Scotland. It may well be the case that there are more educational psychologists in Ayrshire, but that is perhaps for those authorities to comment on. However, certainly, on the ground, most psychological services in Scotland are reporting that they are struggling. The data that we have collected shows that at least 60 per cent of services are reporting that they are having difficulty meeting all their statutory requirements.
To be fair, it was not just Mr Carle who said that. Mr Findlay asked all four members of the first panel about that, but none of them thought that there is a particular issue with educational psychologists. It is interesting that your opinion is clearly at odds with the opinion of those four witnesses.
I take that point, and I heard that. That is understandable because, obviously, those witnesses might see educational psychologists turning up to the meetings that they have prioritised. On Neil Findlay’s point about the waiting list in schools, psychologists have always tried deliberately not to have waiting lists, but there is no doubt that they are having to prioritise meetings and not turn up to things or start to have waiting lists.
We all have heavy workloads, as the second item on our agenda verifies but, if our work is delayed, no one is harmed or injured. However, if your workload and that of the professionals with whom you work get so large, people are harmed or injured—that is the reality. Are the professionals with whom you work struggling with the amount of work that they are having to take on? We are trying to establish what the case load of professionals is. How many people would, say, an educational psychologist have on their case load?
Again, that is variable across Scotland. Psychologists tend to work on an area basis, with clusters of schools and population. Some psychologists work to 6,000 per psychologist; others work to less than that. It is complex because of the range of services that psychologists offer, which go from casework to being part of strategic planning groups and research. I do not want to take up the committee’s time, but I am happy to give you more information about psychologists’ workload.
That is why you are here.
If you want to write to us with detail, we would be happy to accept that.
I would be happy to do that if it would be helpful. We have a workforce planning report that I would be happy to send to the committee.
Thank you.
What about other professionals with whom you work? You deal with those people day in, day out. Are certain professionals or sections struggling, or is it just everybody who is under pressure?
Are you talking just about psychologists?
No—I am talking about the professionals whom you work alongside in any discipline.
The answer is yes. I back up what has already been said to the committee, which is that professionals generally are working under pressure. One role of psychologists is to support school staff. We provide quite a lot of support even just to headteachers in dealing with the pressures that they feel they are under. It is fair to say that the pressure is throughout the system.
Would any of the other panel members care to comment on that?
I think that that is right—the pressure is across all disciplines. Certainly in health, people are feeling the pressure and having to prioritise in a way that they would not have done previously. For example, a paediatrician will now go to a child protection case conference only if there is a specific reason to do so, because we just do not have time. That is not in children’s best interest. Carolyn Brown is right that the situation is the same across the board.
I thank the panel for attending. The session has been helpful. If any of the panel members wishes to send us additional information, we would be most grateful for that.
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