I welcome people to this meeting of the Education Committee. Just to show that there is life after the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Bill, we will be taking evidence on the child protection inquiry.
I thank the committee for inviting us to give evidence to the inquiry. It comes at a particularly helpful point for us, because we are one year into our three-year child protection reform programme. We have been concentrating on some key products that we have been trying to complete by the end of the first year, and are thinking about what we should be concentrating on in years 2 and 3. We have a range of ideas, but the committee's views and comments would be very welcome.
I will kick off the questions. Given some of the nasty inquiries that arise from time to time, there is a feeling that the programme is being carried out over a rather more protracted timescale than should be the case. I am interested in your views about the appropriateness of the timescale. Can we speed up the process? Are you hitting the nail on the head by tackling the key issues? You have dealt with some of those issues in the introduction, but the committee would like to push forward the process a bit more quickly. Will you give us guidance on the pressing areas on which quick action is needed?
Child protection is a key priority for the Executive. In the discussions about the response to the report "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright", which was written by a team led by Stella Perrot before she joined us as our professional adviser, we discussed the balance between short-term action and longer-term action that we felt might be more sustainable. We took some short-term action by providing support for helplines, but we felt that we needed to take enough time to talk to a wide range of stakeholders to ensure that we deliver real improvements on the ground. To make the real difference that we want to make, we need time to engage with people. Some people would say that three years is far too short a time, but we felt that anything longer would not show the urgency that we attach to the issue.
I think that the minister's letter states that the charter and the framework for standards will be produced at the summit meeting on 22 March. Will those documents come to Parliament for debate?
We are planning a parliamentary question on the day of the summit and we intend to put all the documents before Parliament. Consideration is being given to how Parliament might want to engage on the documents.
We have not yet explored that issue fully, but ministers are keen for Parliament to be involved. Patricia Ferguson is interested in how we might play the matter. The charter and framework will not be one-hit wonders; we will spend the next two years embedding them and providing people with the opportunity to talk through the issues. We also want to involve the Scottish Youth Parliament in the debate, as it obviously has a particular interest in the matter. We want to take the opportunity to make people aware of the charter and of the processes that we are going through to embed and implement it.
I want to ask about major risks. In a sense, risk assessment is a central aspect of the debate. One should try to minimise risk. What do officials consider to be the key triggers and risks of which we need to be conscious as we examine this area? Should we consider matters such as domestic abuse and parents with drug problems? What major risk areas are emerging? Is there a register of risk for child abuse?
Ministers deliberately gave the child protection reform programme a broad scope. The programme does not just focus on the child protection register. The number of children on the register is quite small. The programme also seeks to prevent children from being in need of protection. It concentrates on early intervention and follow-up support. The reform programme has quite a broad scope. It is clear that certain groups are at particular risk. Stella Perrott might want to speak about the children of people who abuse drugs and alcohol.
Resources are limited and there is a shortage of staff in some areas. If one cannot focus on the major problems and the action that needs to be taken, there is a risk that one will have a broad service that is not delivered satisfactorily at any point and does not affect the problem one is dealing with.
The three key areas of risk are drug-misusing parents, domestic violence and neglect, which is strongly associated with drug misuse. The charter and the standards will address aspects of the problems that I have mentioned, such as the expectations of children and their families about the help that they will receive and the action that agencies will take to support them. The police, education officials, social workers and health personnel will have to be involved, in a co-ordinated way, in addressing problems relating to children across a range of sectors. The risk factors I mentioned are to the fore as we develop the charter and the standards.
I want to speak about drug misuse. Research into children from families in which drugs are used was the subject of some publicity recently. I do not remember the name of the survey in question. Does Stella Perrott believe that the number of such children has increased significantly, perhaps over the past 10 years? What is the trend? What might be expected in the future in that area?
Recently work has been undertaken to estimate the number of children who are likely to be living with drug-misusing parents. My colleagues will give the committee the relevant figures in a moment. The figures referred to by Rhona Brankin were not collated until quite recently. Ten years ago, people thought about drug-misusing adults but did not consider the effects of such misuse on children. It might have seemed that there were not that many drug-misusing parents 10 years ago, but we are now talking about the second and third generations of drug-misusing people. The problem has been compounded.
The estimate for the prevalence of problem drug users in Scotland is in the region of 55,800. I am just looking through the figures to find the estimate for the number of parents among those. Between 10,300 and 19,500 children in Scotland are living with a problem drug user. That represents about 1 to 2 per cent of all children under 16 in Scotland.
That is quite a lot, is it not?
As part of the drug misuse in deprived communities inquiry in the previous session, we received evidence of the impact of drug misuse on the children of drug abusers and the role that grandparents can play. In the context of child protection, a family member can often be a source of support to ensure that abuse does not happen. Are you considering grandparents' role in providing continuing preventive support as well as the financial implications that they face in supporting children? Is that part of your remit?
I will ask Stella Perrott to comment on the detail of that. In some areas of Scotland, the children's grandparents are also on methadone. There are families in which both the parents and the grandparents are drug misusers, which compounds the problem.
Gill Ottley will give evidence to the committee next, and I know that the social work services inspectorate is doing some work on kinship care. She might be able to give you the detail on that.
Do you want to address your question to the next panel of witnesses, Rosemary?
No, I will ask it now. How do you link in with the parents whom you have identified as drug abusers? Their children could be at some risk. Is it not the case that, quite often, when the agencies try to link in with those families, they lose contact with them easily because the drug-abusing parent will pack up and move somewhere else with the children? What is being put in place to prevent that from happening or to keep track of those families? They can disappear for up to a year at a time from the schools and the communities that they were in, to re-emerge in a worse state further down the line. What kind of measures are being considered to prevent that?
I can talk more broadly about what we are doing to improve the sharing of information about children in Scotland. One of the key issues to come out of practically every review and report into child protection and child deaths is poor sharing of information about children and their families. Action to address that is one of the five priorities that the Cabinet delivery group on children and young people has identified.
I seek information about what is happening about resources, including the additional resources that are coming through at national level to support what is happening in the reform programme.
We have been delivering additional resources for children's services over and above the general grant allocations for councils and health boards. We have done that in a variety of ways. We have provided additional resources to support effective preventive work for the very young—the nought to three-year-olds—through sure start Scotland. That age group is particularly important in the context of child protection. From next year, we will increase those resources to £50 million a year. Given that, for many years, they were at £19 million, quite a steep increase has been made over the past couple of years.
I am sorry to interrupt. Could you expand on how the changing children's services fund works in practice?
The changing children's services fund is a grant that the Executive holds and which we administer from my division. It is resourced largely from the Education Department, but the Health Department also puts in a significant resource and we have resource from the Development Department, too. We tried to bring together resources from across the Executive in a cross-cutting way and put them into a single change fund.
Yes. I was just wondering about resources. We might return to the subject of the fund and how the Executive is evaluating its impact.
It has taken some time for people at the local level to get their proposals for the changing children's services fund up and running and to staff the work.
It is quite early days.
Yes, it is. We have carried out a paper evaluation that was based on the reports that we have received from each local authority area. Therefore, we have an understanding of the issues that people have raised and the activities in which they are engaged. However, we need more information. I think that it will take a couple of years before we have hard, concrete information about the outcomes that the fund is delivering. As we agreed, it is still quite early days.
Are we talking about social work staff?
Yes. We could talk a little about some of the things that the Executive is doing in that respect. Gill Ottley is the expert. As she is to give evidence later in the meeting, she can talk more authoritatively about what we are trying to do to provide social workers to fill those vacancies quickly.
I want to ask about the recommendation in "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright" on how agency resources can be pooled. The Executive's submission says that revised guidance is being developed. Can you give us more information on that?
We are developing revised guidance for children's services plans, which are our key planning documents for children's services. We hope to produce something by the summer, in time for people to take the guidance into account for the following financial year, beginning in March 2005. In the guidance, we will try to provide useful information on how agencies can consider all the resources for children's services and try to bring those resources together. The advice will be broad and will cover more than just child protection, although child protection will be a key part of the planning.
The Scottish Executive is structured in a certain way, and I understand that services are delivered differently in England and Wales. How does Scotland deliver services compared with England? What are the key differences?
If we compare the Scottish Executive with Whitehall, we see that, up to about a year ago, there were more significant differences in the structure of policy support for services than there are now. In England, they have changed how they structure their policy support for children's services and, within that, for child protection. The support at Whitehall is now much more similar to how it is here.
I really just wanted to hear about some of the key differences at Government level. Your answer has been helpful. Thank you.
Rhona Brankin has already asked most of the questions that I had wanted to ask, but a couple remain. I notice in the papers that committee members have received that particular areas in Scotland have particular problems. You mentioned staff vacancy rates. In Glasgow, the vacancy rate is 20 per cent; in other areas, all posts are filled. Will you target resources at areas where there is a long-running problem?
Of course, even though vacancies are a real problem, the number of social workers has increased significantly over the past few years, so the area is expanding. Targeted solutions are being proposed—Stella Perrott might want to run through those briefly but, as I said, Gill Ottley is the expert and she will give evidence to the committee later today.
Gill Ottley will be able to give the most help on that.
An example of what we are doing is that we provide resources to pay back part of the expenses of new social workers who enter certain areas—such grants represent a significant amount of money. We provide support for fast-track training, so that people who have specialised in different areas can enter the social work profession more quickly. We can go into more detail about the range of work in that area if the committee wants, or Gill Ottley can do so.
Perhaps I will pick up the matter with Gill Ottley and ask about the areas that have particular problems and the discrepancies across the country in that context.
The Cabinet delivery group on children and young people, which I mentioned earlier, has received briefings on the legislative proposals in England and is fully aware of the measures that are planned. To date, in Scotland, ministers have not been convinced that legislation presents the best way of changing and improving practice on the ground. The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 places duties and obligations on local authorities.
On the face of it, it sounds logical and rational to put someone in charge of the whole exercise, rather than to leave individual local areas to determine their own strategies. Do you altogether rule out such a measure or will you consider the English experience in the course of your reform programme, as your solutions for Scotland evolve?
I will ask Catherine Rainey to talk about our thinking on child protection committees, which are a key vehicle for interagency discussion. Accountability and responsibility are key—that is another theme that comes out of all the different child protection reports that we read. I suppose that the challenge is that children's services are so broad that general practitioners in clinics, health visitors, consultant paediatricians and consultants in accident and emergency departments all have key roles to play in safeguarding children. However, bringing that very broad range of people together into a single line of responsibility and accountability is a challenge. Having a children's services director and a lead councillor for children's services should rationalise some of that.
As we have said, one of the key strands that we have been considering is child protection committees, which tend to be the local interagency body with responsibility for child protection in local areas. As the boundaries of those areas are based largely on local authority boundaries, there are disjuncts with, for example, health boards and police forces. However, those elements have come together in a body to work through the problem.
I think that we will move on to Elaine Murray's questions, because they follow quite naturally from those comments.
From the questions and answers this morning and the high-profile inquiries into various tragedies, it is quite clear that one of the major problems is that people have not been working together properly. You have made many references to the way in which the Scottish Executive is trying to address that matter.
I thank you for understanding that this meeting is taking place before the summit.
Are there particular areas of good practice at the moment? Are you aware of local developments that could apply nationally?
We are already receiving responses to the letter on quality assurance that the three ministers sent, which will help by providing a picture of where people have in place robust quality assurance mechanisms that we could learn from and share more broadly.
I will follow up that point in detail. I have no interest in knowing the details of the multidisciplinary inspections today, because it is appropriate that those will be announced next week. However, I want to press you on the likely timescales. In November or December 2002, the Executive committed to the principle of multidisciplinary inspections. The Executive note says that the outline proposals will be completed by spring 2004—no doubt that will be next week—and that the pilots will be implemented from the end of 2004. I presume that by the end of the action period in 2006 we will just have the pilots, because it will take 18 months to run them and, in the absence of a statutory framework, the only basis on which to move forward is that of further consultation and agreement. On the basis of the timescales to which you are working, in what year do you believe it will be possible to fulfil the commitment made in 2002 to make available throughout Scotland a multidisciplinary framework? Will that be possible in 2007, 2008 or 2009?
The work that we will need to do in developing pilot inspections will help us to answer that question. The timescales that the ministers will announce next week are those that they have set out in the memorandum. There is a range of ways in which we can gain a picture of multidisciplinary approaches to child protection. One is to have a one-off audit and review similar to the one that formed the basis of the report "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright". That would be a one-off snapshot; it would not provide a baseline or a way of measuring progress over time and it is unlikely to be able to provide a sufficient basis for comparing areas. Our proposals are all encompassing and much more long term.
It seems to me that a number of choices are involved. In 2002, the Executive said that it would create an all-Scotland multidisciplinary framework for inspection in child protection. I am happy for you to contradict me but, given the timescale that you are outlining, it seems impossible for the framework to be in place before 2007 at the earliest. That is because we have chosen to take the pilot and non-legislative route.
I wonder whether that is a question for the minister to answer in due course, rather than a question for the officials.
It is a factual question. When will the Ofsted multidisciplinary framework be up and running? People who operate in the area probably know the answer to the question. We could ask the Scottish Parliament information centre, but it seems to me that we have made a number of choices—
Yes.
We are aware of the work that Ofsted is doing on developing its proposals for the inspection of children's services and we have been talking to it about that. I do not know when it expects the provisions to be fully rolled out and working, but we will certainly write to you if we can find out the answer. There might not be a date by which it can say that the provisions will be up and running. I know that Ofsted is developing separate proposals for a further multidisciplinary approach to inspection of child protection—it is working on that at the same time.
It would be helpful if you could come back to us on that.
We have heard evidence about the importance of early intervention in child protection services. Will you kindly outline in some detail the ways in which the Executive seeks to promote early intervention and to support agencies in ensuring that it is a priority?
I talked about sure start Scotland, which is one aspect that happens to fall within my division. In that project, we work with vulnerable families with nought to three-year-olds in deprived areas and we provide a range of support through local authorities, such as support with parenting, centre-based support and outreach support. In rural areas, there is sometimes no centre, but support workers go out to families.
I will not go into detail on standards, but we have certainly focused on getting children the help that they need when they need it. That is a major area that we considered in developing the standards and we want those standards to be implemented.
On the sensitive subject of Soham, are you satisfied that information about people who have been convicted of serial child abuse or violence against children can be legitimately picked up and passed on to interviewing authorities when they carry out selections for schools and others who work with young people?
We have worked closely with colleagues in the wake of the Soham report. Our minister, Peter Peacock, asked for a review to answer precisely that question, and officials in both our department and the Justice Department are working on that matter at the moment.
Is it possible that legislation might be required in that regard?
I do not think that I am in a position to answer that at the moment. I do not want to prejudge the current review.
It seems that you are not in a position at this stage to assure the committee that information about the serial abuse of children will automatically be passed on.
We have a range of processes and procedures for trying to ensure that people who are working with children are safe and that information is provided about people who should not be working with children. Ministers have nevertheless requested a review in order to be quite sure that we consider everything that we have found out from the Soham case and to ensure that we have plugged all the loopholes that we can.
Are there any indications as to how long the review might take? Do you know when the minister might be able to come back to Parliament on the matter?
I am not aware that the minister has put a timescale on the review, although I know that people are working on it at the moment.
The timescale partly depends on the outcome of the Sheldon inquiry, which is also going on at the moment. Its findings will need to be taken into account.
The timescale is important in the context of our inquiry. Would you feel able to write in with some indication of the timescale of the review once you have cleared it with the minister?
Yes.
I am sorry—Catherine Rainey was about to continue.
You mentioned information getting through to employers where necessary. Bob Ovens from the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, together with his team, will no doubt talk about the police dimension. If people ask for disclosure, somebody's conviction of a criminal offence will show up in it. Employers would be aware of that.
Would that cover an individual who had been up for a rape charge four times and who had been acquitted each time, but whose conduct had been less than exemplary? Would that sort of information be passed on?
That could be part of the softer information that the police would hold. I would think that the committee would want to cover that matter with ACPOS.
I accept that a review is being carried out, but I note that the letter that the minister sent to local authorities and other bodies in November does not cover the particular issues of the Soham case. Aside from the review, the matter might have been followed through in a different way, but has the idea of a sort of checklist been pushed to the various agencies involved so as to ensure that all the relevant information is being conveyed across the board? Are you satisfied that that is not being hindered by data protection legislation or other issues? I believe that the issue of data protection was raised in England.
Part of the purpose of the review is to find out what needs to be done and what extra guidance or support agencies need. I am sure that Bob Ovens will be able to talk about the police's reaction. People in local agencies will not be sitting on their hands waiting for the outcome of the review.
How will you know whether the child protection forum is successful?
The combination of quality assurance and the child protection inspection is the key way of knowing that. The child protection inspection will be independent—in particular, it will be independent of the reform team. It will show us where we are. We have a baseline under the "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright" report. However, that does not provide enough information to compare across geographical areas, given the number of children in the various samples. As I said, the inspection regime and the quality assurance supporting it will provide the best way for us to know whether we are improving services for children in need of protection.
When will you know that?
That comes back to the previous question about how quickly we will move on from the pilots to having a fully fledged child protection inspection regime. A number of implementation options are being considered but, as was mentioned, ministers are still developing their thinking around the different models.
You will appreciate the concern that, although that is all well intentioned, it is a bit vague. We will not know the answers until you have addressed quality assurance and had your inspections, which may be some time off. Following Adam Ingram's questions, you explained why you are not pursuing a legislative programme similar to the one that is being pursued down south. It will be up to this committee to make a judgment on whether that is appropriate, but you have explained your thinking as to why that is the case.
It is not the case that we will not get any information until the child protection inspection regime is up and running. We will get the responses to the quality assurance letter by May. We have already received some of them. If we pilot child protection inspections from the end of the year, we will start to receive information during the following year.
I have a brief point that follows on from that. Resources for social work, including the lack of social workers, have been a concern. Clearly, that problem will not be solved overnight—there must be an on-going programme. Are you looking to deal with the lack of social workers by making the best use of professional resources, finding alternative ways of doing the job and determining what social workers should be concentrating on? In other words, out of the monitoring that you are doing and the information that is coming forward, is the issue being tackled in an effective way, not just in the longer term, but now? Social work resources are one of the key issues, particularly as we read in one of the reports that domestic abuse cases are routinely being referred to the reporter, which is increasing the load.
Very much so. Gill Ottley might be able to give more detail, but I will cite one example that picks up on Adam Ingram's point about geographical areas. The social work services inspectorate has worked closely with Glasgow City Council to examine how it structures its social work resource and how to get more people into core, front-line social work activity through using the managerial and supervisory staff in slightly different ways. That is one on-going example.
I have a question about the voluntary sector, which has been highlighted as being important. What role does the voluntary sector have in the reform programme? What further action does the Executive intend to take to ensure that the voluntary sector is fully involved and supported in the child protection agenda?
I will ask Catherine Rainey to talk in a moment about the importance of our engagement with the community as a whole, and the voluntary sector within that. We see the voluntary sector as being a key partner in the reform programme. A representative from the voluntary sector—Romy Langeland, who is the Aberlour Child Care Trust's chief executive—is a member of our child protection steering group, which involves a range of people from external agencies; she provides a voluntary sector perspective.
That ties in with a comment that was made about early intervention. One strand of work that we aim to roll forward in years 2 and 3 will involve public awareness and involvement in child protection. I hope that that will be less about battered faces and more about the fact that children should enjoy a happy, healthy and safe environment. That approach will involve telling people where they need to go to relate problems that they think are occurring and how to become engaged and play a part. The voluntary sector is very much involved in helplines, such as ChildLine and ParentLine Scotland. The sector is a key partner in developments.
Would you consider expanding voluntary sector projects? For example, the Brenda House project provides support for families—mothers and children—in which mothers have drug abuse problems, which is the subject of great concern. Often, the fact that treatment cannot be obtained continues the problem and often, mothers will not go for treatment because they do not want their children to be placed in care. Expansion of that project and of similar innovative projects that can be grasped and run with would be a great help. Is such expansion being considered? Is recommending further funding and expanding of such projects a possibility?
When we brought together funding from a range of places in the Executive into a single unified fund for the voluntary sector's children and families work—this is the first year of that fund—we also put additional resource into the fund. Additional resource is available this year and next year. Demand for the resources that we can make available for such activities always massively outweighs supply. I know that voluntary organisations also approach local authorities and health boards about work that is specific to their areas. We have been able to provide some additional resource.
We know that the key players are social workers, the police, the health service, education and the voluntary sector. You have talked about quality assurance. I am slightly unclear about inspection: I know that an announcement will be made, but how does the Executive ensure quality in all those different players in an integrated way?
That is an important question. At the moment, each of the players that you mentioned has, or is developing, mechanisms for quality assurance and inspection. There is the mechanism for inspection of schools, we have the SWSI's thematic reviews, and the SWSI does an annual report on the state of social work services in Scotland. NHS Quality Improvement Scotland is developing its approach to children's services and quality assurance in health, but that is at quite an early stage. The police have their own inspectorate and their own way of inspecting the range of services, including what they provide for children. Prisons have the same.
Thank you. There are a couple of issues that you will get back to us on in relation to Wendy Alexander's question and on the Soham review timescale. We will be grateful for that.
I also have a question on the timescale of an issue that has not arisen so far, which is information-sharing and information technology procedures. Recommendation 15 of the Executive's report "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright" suggests that there should be
Professor Baldwin is leading a working group that met yesterday and discussed the development of an overall framework for assessment. We want by the end of the year to have something on which we can consult. The work is very complicated and difficult, given the wide range of agencies, but we want to issue something by the end of the year. We are pleased to have Professor Baldwin's support because she is one of the experts in the area.
We must draw this part of the meeting to a close as we have other witnesses to see. I thank the witnesses, who have been helpful. We look forward to getting, in due course, the other information that we have requested.
We heard from the previous witnesses that there is a key summit on 22 March. Was the committee informed about the date of the summit? Have we received an invitation to it? If we had known previously that the summit was taking place, we might have wanted to revise our timescale for hearing from the Executive officials; they were obviously restricted in what they could tell us. We could have been better informed if we had heard from them next week rather than this week.
I take your point. We were informed of the summit because it is mentioned in the minister's letter, but I do not think that we took particular account of it in planning the timescale. Such issues will always emerge. It is a question of having witnesses at the right point. The reality is that we are where we are and will be able to pick up many issues from other witnesses and from the minister in due course. Our progress will not be hindered particularly. We have today received quite a lot of information about where we are going. The summit is not an overriding issue—there is a three-year programme and it is one of a number of things that will happen.
Would you like me to address a particular subject? The last time I was here, I think I started by telling the committee something about the inspectorate. Do you want me to repeat that?
Possibly not. Many issues are emerging about the integration of inspections, for example. You may wish to discuss such themes. You might—dare I say it?—want to discuss risks that I discussed earlier. I would be grateful for your guidance on a number of such issues. We can go to questions after that, if you want.
A number of the issues that emerged in the previous evidence session are certainly dear to my heart. I was particularly taken with the discussion that you just had about children of drug-misusing parents, which is one of the biggest priority areas that we need to tackle. Some 1,000 babies were born to drug-misusing mothers in 2001, which is one in every 56 to 57 births in Scotland. Between 40,000 and 60,000 children in Scotland have a drug-misusing parent and between 10,000 and 20,000 children in Scotland currently live with a drug-misusing parent. That is a significant problem for us.
Thank you. Does anyone else want to add anything from a different perspective?
My theme is slightly different, but I would like to tell the committee a little about HMIE's current inspection work in this area. As we look forward to the emergence of multi-agency inspections, it is important that we take account of the present activities of the different inspectorates and that we build on, integrate and extend those activities. We are not starting from a blank sheet.
I am sorry to cut you short, but we obviously want to ask questions. Is there much else that you want to say?
I will read a contrasting extract from a report, which says:
That is all right—your comments are helpful. Would Dr De Caestecker like to add something from the Health Department's point of view?
As you heard earlier, the national health service is an integral part of the child protection reform programme. In addition to that, when conducting the recent inquiries into child deaths and the audit and review that led to "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright", we grouped the main priority issues for the health service into three themes: accountability, information sharing and training. Those seem to be the main issues that we need urgently to address. We have discussed that with chief executives and chairs of NHS boards and trusts.
Members of the committee were visibly shocked by the figures and the background that Gill Ottley outlined about drug abuse in parents. We all had some knowledge of the issue, but the stark figures are extremely worrying. I will push the risk buttons further and ask whether there are any other risk areas that we should be conscious of. Such areas are the starting points; the coordination and so on comes later. On what should we focus? What other risk areas should we be interested in and knowledgeable about?
One of the emerging factors in our inquiries is that social work departments are struggling to cope with what they call chaotic lifestyles and chaotic households. Often, drug misuse is a feature of those households, but they can also involve single parents who might have a number of children by different partners who come and go. Social work departments find it hard to sustain intensive support over long periods in such cases. Particular features of such situations mean that it is quite hard to deal with the impact of the range of agencies that are involved. The children might be being referred to health professionals or attending school but, as Linda De Caestecker indicated, information sharing among agencies is not good. Risk factors might be flagged up to one or more agencies, but it is not always the case that all the information is known to one professional at one time, which would allow a thorough assessment to be made of the risks to the children who live in that household. There is a clear need to improve information sharing, but such difficulties are a particular feature of chaotic households.
It seems almost like the Soham situation but on a wider basis.
Yes.
Another circumstance in which health visitors will work more closely with families is if the mother has a mental illness, particularly if she has post-natal depression. We know that such families are more at risk. Health visitors will work more closely with families who have little other informal support or extended family.
Schools in all types of areas experience issues of that kind, which are no respecters of income, class or any other such variable. However, such issues can often be concentrated in situations of family stress if there is already poverty or a culture of drugs, drink or domestic abuse in the home.
The written submission that we received from ACPOS says that domestic abuse incidents are automatically referred to the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration, but I am aware that domestic abuse was not mentioned in the other submissions. Is it a major stress area?
Yes. Domestic violence is clearly another risk area and an area of concern that often accompanies multiple other issues. The combination of issues is usually what causes most difficulty and most stress. However, domestic difficulties are clearly a feature.
My question is very simple. Are you satisfied that sufficient safeguards and guidance are in place for the checking of references before organisations, particularly schools, take on people in positions of trust as janitors, teachers and so on? More generally, is there sufficient checking of all those who work with children?
The position varies a bit with the different categories of staff who come into contact with children. All teaching staff are now checked with Disclosure Scotland through the General Teaching Council for Scotland. However, that is not retrospective, so it does not cover teachers who have been practising for a long time. Education authorities check non-teaching staff with Disclosure Scotland when they are appointed. Also, a number of volunteers, such as parents, come into contact with children and that contact should be supervised, but whether such volunteers go through disclosure checks is not consistent across the country. Some education authorities insist on the checks, but some do not.
Should there be a pattern of guidance to ensure that appropriate checks are in place?
Essentially, that is a political question. Speaking as an individual, I think it sensible that there should be the greatest possible reassurance that everybody who comes into contact with schoolchildren has been checked. Common sense suggests that the answer is yes.
You may require ministerial approval to answer this request, but it would be helpful to the committee if you could describe in writing for us what form appropriate guidance might take if the committee were minded to recommend that there should be appropriate checks on references before key appointments were made that involved looking after children, if those appropriate checks are not already in place.
Okay.
Is that not also part of the ministerial review group's remit?
The matter is relevant to the committee's report.
I want to pick up on the convener's question about the scale and scope of the problem. From what we have heard, it seems that there is a need for more research to try to get a better handle on the matter. Do we have accurate information and figures from the various agencies that work in the field? Is research currently being undertaken into the matter?
There has been some research, but I have never yet read a piece of research that did not recommend that there should be more research. Clearly, we need more information in some areas. I would certainly like more information about children who live with drug-misusing parents. Neil McKeganey, of the University of Glasgow's centre for drug misuse research, who was talking about the problem in the press last weekend, has developed expertise in that area.
It might be useful for the committee to have some information about any current research and figures on the issue that are available.
The minister announced that training on child protection will be a mandatory requirement in social workers' post-registration training and learning. A group has been given the task of establishing how much training will be given. There are issues involved in deciding what child protection training is. Clearly, specific information about matters such as human growth and development and communicating with children is very useful, but social workers also need to know about such matters as risk assessment, risk management and therapeutic work with children who have been abused.
The Executive has asked each NHS board to develop a training plan on child protection issues and to consider the different levels of training, from basic awareness-raising training for every member of staff up to more specialised training. Interagency training also takes place, which is usually organised through the child protection committees.
Training is important because the issue is difficult and involves strong emotions and uncertainties for anybody who is involved. Given that teachers come into contact with children and know them well, they ought to have training on awareness of the signs that something is going wrong in a child's life. Teachers ought to be clear about the procedures that they should follow when that happens. We find that it is helpful for the training to be delivered in a multi-agency context because that develops the shared understanding that we want and breaks down some of the existing barriers, such as different professions having different ways of looking at things and different levels of trust.
We have heard that child protection training is or will be mandatory for social workers. Will it be mandatory for teachers or people who work with young people in schools and nurseries?
It is not mandatory at present. The amount of training is increasing significantly, but it is not mandatory.
Are there any plans to make it mandatory?
Not to my knowledge.
Are there any plans to extend HMIE inspections in schools to cover joint agency work such as that done by joint support teams? The most vulnerable young people are often dealt with in a multi-agency setting and HMIE should pick up on that work. Joint support teams should be extended into the primary sector so that there is multi-agency input throughout the education sector that is under scrutiny by HMIE.
As authorities and projects have taken up more multi-agency working and as multi-agency working has become such a significant issue in child protection and in children's services more generally, we have considered ways in which to extend what we do to take account of that. Those considerations may be partly overtaken by the discussions that have been held about whether we ought to have a multi-agency inspection team to inspect children's services. In certain parts of our work such as inspections of integrated community schools, we place a lot of emphasis on links between agencies. However, at present, those inspections cover not the whole system but a sample of it. In those inspections, we consider how agencies plan together, share information, assess need and agree on the steps that ought to be taken.
I assume that you would be able to monitor the recommendations that are made by joint support teams and whether those are implemented appropriately. That is an important issue.
I agree completely. We would evaluate that.
I have a question for Gill Ottley. Next month, the Executive will publish the results of a review of its policy on drug abuse. Given the information that we have received from you today, which has been a shock to many of us, do you think that the report will have relevance for child protection? Many of the services for drug abusers have an impact on their children. For example, there is family support, which is funded sporadically and comes and goes—it is not mainstreamed, if you like. In many communities there is a lack of rehabilitation facilities where drug abusers would have a daily point of contact with key workers who could also pick up on the family support elements. If there are matters of relevance in the report, how will you move forward on that? If the report is not relevant, will you come back to say that we have to consider the key area of treatment and family support for drug misusers?
I know that there has been a review of rehabilitation services within the Executive and certainly there was a line in the remit about services for children and families. I have not seen the outcome and I have not seen the drafts, so I cannot comment on the extent to which the report will touch on the issue, but I hope that it will do so.
When the report has come out, I would certainly like to get feedback on the implications that it may have.
In the previous evidence-taking session, we heard about issues relating to multi-disciplinary inspections. I was interested to hear from HMIE about how you inspect the child protection policies of schools. Clearly, that is a complicated matter because there are different inspection procedures in different professions. You have had some experience of doing integrated inspections in the pre-five sector. We know that the minister will make an announcement next week, but what are the issues and problems that need to be addressed? What views about how the rather complicated task might be carried out did your respective professions present to the Executive in response to the consultation?
As you say, we have a fair body of experience of integrated working with the care commission in the pre-five sector. We have also worked with the social work services inspectorate and with, for example, representatives from health and housing. We have worked with different inspectorates for different purposes.
From a social work point of view I echo what Chris McIlroy said, because we already have quite a bit of experience of multidisciplinary work. We inspect adoption agencies and secure care schools with representatives from health, the care commission and HMIE. Our annual report has become much more multidisciplinary and we work with professionals from other disciplines. The more thematic national reports, such as "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright", of which we have produced almost one a year for the past three or four years, have all been multidisciplinary. We are gaining experience, but we have to overcome complexities such as differences in cultures, remits, levels of resourcing, accountability arrangements and methodologies. The social work services inspectorate is quite small compared with HMIE and the professional staff within it consist of 16 professional social work staff and one occupational therapist—I have four inspectors in my team—so there will be resource issues if we extend our inspection remit.
The statistic that one in 56 births is to a drug-misusing parent is staggering. Do you expect each child to be on a social worker's case load? What other support would the parent receive in the immediate aftermath of the birth?
It is difficult to say whether all such children would be on a social worker's case load. They should be, but we know that some children who are on the child protection register and some children who are looked after are not allocated a social worker. That situation needs to be remedied. I would like to think that all children born to a drug-misusing parent are on a social worker's case load and have had a full assessment of the risk posed to them, but we cannot guarantee that at the moment.
Every child is on a health visitor's case load. We have recently issued guidance for consultation and will be publishing the final guidance in the summer. We are considering a change in the child health surveillance and screening programme. Research has shown that universal development checks for all children are not always the most effective way of identifying abnormality; parents identifying it is much more productive. By reducing the number of routine checks, we will free up a lot of health visitors' time to provide additional support to the families most in need and to provide more intensive support, such as that provided in the child health demonstration project in Glasgow, to the most vulnerable families, such as those with drug abuse problems.
We heard evidence previously that there was a severe problem with the recruitment and retention of health visitors and public health nurses. What impact will that have and what steps are being taken to remedy it? You are making a judgment by saying that you want to target resources rather than spread them more widely, but does that not have an impact on preventive work that may take place?
A number of issues are involved. First, the report "Nursing for Health" considered changing the role of health visitors to let them make more of a public health impact and to attract more people into the specialty. Additional funds are going into training to attract more people into that work and 200 additional training places in Scotland have been provided. We also have to consider skill mix. A number of projects around the country, such as the national health demonstration project, are looking at employing health support workers, who might be lay workers recruited from the community, staff nurses and nursery nurses to work with health visitors, so that there is a team of people who can provide families with additional support.
I have discussed on previous occasions the essential support given by those who provide kinship care to the children of drug-misusing parents. Such people need to be supported, but they often face financial barriers. What actions are being taken to ensure that there is a more robust policy on kinship care generally? I refer in particular to children who live in homes where drug misuse is common.
We need to know more about this area before we can formulate a clear policy direction. To that end, the SWSI recently agreed with the Open University that one of its professors would join us on secondment and she started last month. We hope to know much more as a result of her research into kinship care, which will continue for the next six months. We hope to ascertain the extent to which kinship care is being used by local authorities, to learn about the kin who are being used and to acquire details of the involvement of children who are placed with kin from drug-misusing households.
The evidence of our constituency case loads is that there is a gap between what local authorities know and what is happening on the ground. It is essential that certain organisations, including those representing grandparents, are contacted.
We are casting our net wider than issuing questionnaires to local authorities, for that reason.
It might be worth while in due course to ask the Education Department for some feedback on that research. Given its timescale, that research will probably be outwith the scope of the inquiry, but the issue is important. We have touched on financial support and such matters in that context. I would be happy if the officials would take note of my request.
I will be happy to let the committee see the specification for the research that is under way.
That would be super.
I would like to direct my remarks to Gill Ottley. We are aware of high-profile cases of shortages of social work staff in certain areas of Scotland, such as east Glasgow, where children who are the subject of a supervision order may not see a social worker for long periods of time. That is in contrast to other areas, including my own, where there may be problems, but not of the same nature or scale. Do you have any evidence to help you to describe to us the nature and scale of the problem across Scotland? How patchy is it? How extensive are the problems of recruitment and retention and the shortages of social work staff? Have the measures that have been put in place so far been effective in addressing the problem?
You are right to suggest that the level of service is patchy across Scotland. Circumstances are changing quickly as local authorities offer various incentives and start to examine salary structures and scales. It cannot be doubted that staff have moved in recent months. Shortages are being experienced in parts of the country where problems were not reported before Christmas. There has been a degree of churn. A report produced recently by the Scottish Social Services Council stated that the problem is worse in children and families teams. There are some suggestions that social workers are being enticed into some of the new initiatives that are around, partly as a result of increased Executive funding.
Thanks very much. That was a comprehensive answer. I am delighted to hear much of what you say.
Yes, there is some evidence that children and families teams have higher vacancy levels than do other areas of social work. We badged all the places on the first tranche of the fast-track scheme so that people who completed that first tranche would undertake to work in children and families areas. The incentive scheme will allow us to badge areas that are suffering from particular shortages, so we will be able to say which jobs attract the incentive payment. In doing that, we will have to be careful that we do not simply encourage more churn and rob Peter to pay Paul. We do not want to create a massive influx into one area and cause problems in another.
I want to return briefly to a point that all members have commented on. In your opening statement, you gave powerful evidence on the growing problem of children who are born to drug-abusing and drug-misusing parents. It is quite clear that that is a growing problem, and we need to refocus our efforts to tackle child protection issues. You flagged up the difficulty with the policy issues between adult support and child protection, and I am glad to hear that that is being addressed. I have only anecdotal evidence, but I believe that there is often neglect in families affected by drug misuse, whereas abuse is often fuelled by alcohol. The scale of the alcohol problem in Scotland is far greater than the scale of the drug problem. Will you put in perspective the child protection risk that is associated with drugs, compared with the risk that is associated with alcohol or other factors?
There are serious problems associated with alcohol misuse too. There is no doubt that alcohol misuse and drug misuse are both major issues in child protection.
Earlier, Robert Brown mentioned the trigger factors that flag up the need for you and other agencies to pay particular attention to certain families. Drug misuse is clearly one such factor, but how does it compare with alcohol misuse? Is it a more important factor?
Alcohol is a drug and in terms of the harmful effects that Scotland suffers from drugs, alcohol misuse is probably Scotland's biggest problem. Drug misuse focuses people's minds because it is illegal. Often, alcohol misuse and drug misuse are not distinct—they often feature together in families, and there is multi-drug misuse.
A concern was raised about local authorities outbidding each other for staff. The committee might want to come back to that, because we do not want resources to be sidetracked into stimulating churn, as it was described.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I welcome our third panel, from the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland. In particular, I welcome Deputy Chief Constable Robert Ovens of Dumfries and Galloway constabulary. He is mentioned in the report as being the key bod in this context. I also introduce Chief Inspector Kate Thomson, who is also from Dumfries and Galloway constabulary.
We are grateful for the opportunity to address members today. My involvement is outlined in the paper that we have submitted. ACPOS does business by having lead officers across the range of policing activities. Child protection comes within one of the portfolios for which I have responsibility. As is mentioned in the submission, child protection is linked with domestic abuse, sex offences and other offences against women, so there is a relationship with other areas. I work at the strategic level on how the police service in Scotland links with our colleagues south of the border and how we work with the other agencies and organisations that the committee has heard from today.
After Soham, are you satisfied that information will get through to those who are about to choose persons who will be acting in a position of trust in relation to children, either in schools or in other capacities? Will information on previous convictions or child abuse get through?
There are clear arrangements for how that information is dealt with and processed. As was mentioned earlier, Disclosure Scotland operates within the Scottish Criminal Record Office and discharges that responsibility. There are robust and appropriate arrangements in place to deal with such information in Scotland, but lessons are there to be learned.
Will that cover situations in which persons have been charged on more than one occasion and have been acquitted, but there is still a bit of a cloud over their actions?
The system in Scotland for handling information about persons who have been charged and convicted in court is quite clear. Behind that, there are what we call intelligence systems. Someone who has been charged might have been acquitted or not convicted, or their case might not even have proceeded to court, but the police might have raised an intelligence submission in relation to the matter and might have put it into our systems.
Is each case weighed on its merits?
All pieces of intelligence have to be weighed on their merits. There is legislation setting out the arrangements, and we have to add weighting and make decisions about whether it is proper and lawful to hold the information and whether it can be put into our systems. From that, we determine how long the information will stay in our system. There is not a blanket policy in Scotland on how intelligence is held in the system. A determination is made in respect of each case. If a second piece of intelligence is added, that might further influence whether the original piece of intelligence is held for a longer or shorter period. A picture is built up on the basis of whatever additional pieces of intelligence are put into the system.
Are there concerns about data protection legislation impeding you from carrying out duties in that connection?
Since the passing of the Data Protection Act 1998, the introduction of new provisions on intelligence and the establishment of Disclosure Scotland, there has been considerable dialogue with the data protection commissioner. Advice has been offered on those new provisions—and I am not referring to the Soham case.
So in all cases in which an individual could be a threat to children, information on them is likely to be passed on.
Such information is likely to be submitted as intelligence. From that, because of the threat to children, a flag should be created at the Scottish Criminal Record Office, so that when a disclosure check is made, that factor is taken into account. However, I should add a caveat to that: there are different levels of disclosure check. I was referring to the checks that are made for an enhanced certificate, as opposed to a basic certificate. In any event, the advice in respect of people working with children or other vulnerable groups of people is quite clear: the checks should be at an enhanced level.
The Scottish Executive has prioritised a number of areas under the child protection reform programme. Are its priorities the right ones, or could some areas have been given a higher priority, for immediate attention?
As you may or may not be aware, I sit on the steering group that deals with the advice that is proffered by the review team, so I can comment on that. Part of the steering group's work was to consider what the priority areas were. I sat round the table, discussing with colleagues from whom you have already heard this morning the areas of highest risk, where we considered it necessary to carry out the initial work. We agree that the proposals are in the right areas. It would have been nice to do everything at the same time, but the reality was that some things needed to be prioritised.
I want to press you slightly on the disclosure of information, because I am not sure that I fully understand the set-up. We follow what happens in relation to convictions and acquittals in which there might be an element of risk behind the scenes. However, what about situations in which people provide information about something and the police have a good idea that someone has been involved in an offence, but there is no charge or court action because nothing can be proved? Does that kind of thing get into the registers?
Yes, it does. It might help if I give an example. If an individual is seen hanging around a children's playpark and the belief is that they are doing so for what is not a proper reason, an intelligence submission would be created for that individual. If information about such an individual came from an anonymous telephone call and we could not verify the information, we would still create an intelligence submission, but it would be classed as low-grade information. However, if the intelligence about such an individual came from a police officer, we would know that both the information and the source were credible and that no malicious intent was behind the information. Such intelligence would be classed as highly credible and it would go into the system as such. The intelligence would then be flagged up within the Scottish Criminal Record Office because it was relevant.
That is helpful.
We probably have to work out what happens after that. You would flag up a check for disclosure that would trigger a further check. However, we do not know what happens at that stage. Can you help us with that or would it be better to take that up with those who are involved in the disclosure arrangements?
I have only superficial expertise in that area, but I can take you through it and you can indicate whether what I say is sufficient. The disclosure unit is a facilitation unit. When an inquiry comes in, the disclosure unit makes checks in the system. That means that the unit checks for previous convictions in the Scottish Criminal Record Office systems. If the checks uncover intelligence—
That would be soft intelligence.
Yes. The unit would see that the intelligence was flagged up and it would then go to the relevant police force. Each police force operates a disclosure unit, which is responsible for pooling the information that is flagged up within the arrangements, considering that information and preparing a report on it. That report then goes to a senior officer, who decides whether the information needs to be disclosed to the organisation that made the inquiry. I do not know whether that explains the process. The issue is about evaluating how the intelligence on an individual relates to the particular inquiry on them that an employer or organisation has made and assessing whether the intelligence should be disclosed to the employer or organisation.
We might want to follow that matter up with other agencies if it is still an issue.
Yes, we should do that.
First, we considered our internal processes, particularly administration and information management. The fact that files tend to be complex and have a lot of information was highlighted. Unless whoever consults them reads them in depth, they could miss relevant information. Therefore, we wanted a clear, understandable summary of the information on an individual at the front of a file to ensure that, if someone could not go through the whole file—which is not always practicable—they could be made aware of the key issues.
A lot seems to be riding on waiting until we have a national solution. You will know from the current reports, one of which is about fast-tracking children's hearings, and other reports from throughout the country, about the speed at which police provide children's panels with reports and so on. In the report on fast-tracking, there is concern about the implications of data protection. Is exchanging information with children's panels an issue for you? There is also the issue of variability throughout the country, as some police authorities are much better than others at providing timely information. You talked about the police's main role being investigation; I may be mistaken, but I thought that protection was one of its main roles. Is there an issue in the here and now that can and should be addressed? How do we ensure that we have standards that can be met throughout the country?
There is clear guidance on submissions to the children's hearings system. Audit arrangements are key to that. I am sure that the committee is aware of the statistics, so it can compare forces and identify which ones are the best. The process that we have in ACPOS—and part of my role—is to raise awareness and to ensure that, at a very senior level within each of the police forces in the country, there is responsibility for doing the audits and the checks. That is why we developed the matrix, of which we provided you with a summarised copy. That assists chief officers, who then go back to their forces and examine all the issues that they need to satisfy themselves about.
My question follows on from the response that you gave to Fiona Hyslop about training child protection officers in detection skills or for investigatory qualifications. Your submission talks about the problem of child protection being viewed as a soft area of police work and not being given priority within the police structures in terms of officers' careers or commitment. What success are you having in addressing that and ensuring that child protection is viewed as a serious career option and a priority area?
We have had to work hard at that and it would be wrong for me to say that we have completely overcome the issues. Kate Thomson can perhaps add to this. Not that long ago—15 years or so ago—we saw child protection primarily as work that policewomen would pick up and deal with. That was the context, and there was an equality issue in relation to how policewomen were viewed by the organisation. We have obviously worked hard to address that and the types of work that officers do but, sadly, that was the historical view.
It is fair to say that there have been massive changes, even in the past three or four years. We are starting to see a big turnaround. It is sad that it has taken catastrophic events—even for the police service—for those changes to happen, but child protection is increasingly an area in which officers want to work.
That is reassuring.
Kate Thomson can say more than I can about the practicalities. I hope that we can give you some reassurance.
The answer to Kenneth Macintosh's question is that he was describing the utopia that we want to reach. However, if one takes on any multi-agency work, particularly in the area of child protection, it can be difficult to get there.
I would like more information about training. I am interested in parity of esteem in child protection issues. Is child protection part of core police education, either before people enter the service or while they are in the service? To what extent has interagency training been developed? Would a greater level of support from the Executive be helpful in that regard?
Again, we will answer that question jointly, because Kate Thomson can tell you more than I can about multi-agency training, as she has been heavily involved in that area in the past.
The only issue that I will raise with regard to multi-agency training is that, in the past, work has been done in isolated pockets and has been dictated by the local area. Everyone would like there to be a generic programme that would inform local multi-agency training across the country and would build on the training that everybody receives in their own organisation. That would help to reinforce the messages from social work, education and other partner agencies, such as the health service, that people pick up during their training. It is important to ensure that the messages that are received do not conflict with one another—we have found that to be the case in the past. The multi-agency training at a local level should not tell people anything new; it should bring them up to date and encourage them to work out the basic principles that they will need to follow in order to work together while retaining their own identities.
I am encouraged by what you have told us about the significant improvements with regard to the status of child protection work and the priority that has been given to it by the police over the past three or four years. That said, the report "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright" indicated that resource constraints affected child protection referrals and had an impact on the depth of investigations and the development of the skills that are needed to undertake those investigations. Is the initiative that you are taking with detective training meant to address that particular problem? Are there any other areas in which resource restraints impact on your child protection work?
You are absolutely right to identify the issue of resourcing. Having clearly identified child protection as a high-risk, high-priority area, we must make decisions about resourcing. Obviously, we must first understand what the resource requirement is in order to deliver the service that we say that we want to provide. Then we must make clear decisions to ensure that we hold to that resource level. As you will appreciate, discipline in the police as an organisation means that we can dictate ultimately where resources go, although we must do so in partnership with the police authorities, the Executive and the communities that we serve.
Do other agencies' resources impact on you? For example, we have heard that there could be shortages of social workers in an area. Does that mean that extra work would fall back on the police in that area?
I do not think that there is a black-and-white answer. My answer would be no, although Kate Thomson may correct me about the practicalities.
I would like to return to the previous question and to build on what Mr Ovens said. Part of the resource issue relates to the management of units' work loads. The issue is not simply about having bodies to deal with the work, but about managing case loads, which is vital.
I want to take up another resource issue that the submission touches on, but that nobody has mentioned so far. It relates to medical examinations. You have identified what seems to be quite a serious problem of limited availability of suitably trained people. People are put off by the court process, the low value that they give to the work and so on. Is anything being done to tackle that by taking people on to the force's payroll, rather than having independent contractors?
Various measures are being taken. For example, an initiative is being undertaken in Glasgow in the hope of creating a centre that will be a one-stop shop for all medical needs. It is clear that care needs and investigative needs are separate. One cannot lose sight of victims' care needs. Work is being undertaken with other agencies to create that centre. If that works well, it is hoped that it will be replicated in other areas—it will probably evolve into a model for urban areas. However, Scotland is a rural country, and as the model is less likely to be replicated in rural areas, people would have to travel from rural to urban areas. Service provision must take into account people who are traumatised, children and others, so there remain issues to be considered in that respect.
That matter is important.
I will return to an information technology issue. The ACPOS submission is right to say that information technology
The answer to the first question is yes, as we are involved in the Executive's work on information sharing. I have met the individual who leads that work—Vijay Patel—and he has met colleagues of mine. He has been informed, so we are involved in that work. That omission in our submission was unintentional. Such work provides the route to resolving the situation.
I accept the need for a UK framework, but you will understand that the committee becomes nervous if the Executive says that its main way of pulling stakeholders together is through the framework, yet ACPOS produces a submission that does not mention that framework. I do not expect you to know straight off whether ACPOS has a representative on the Baldwin working group, but perhaps Mr Patel or somebody else could write to us about whether there is an ACPOS or other police presence on the group.
I am sorry—I did not catch the name of that group.
The Executive says:
We have been asked to provide a representative to be a member of that group. In any case, I am a member of the steering group that sits above that group, and of the group that received the paper to which you referred. I am sorry for not catching that question the first time.
I am conscious of the time. Rhona Brankin has asked for a response on one point about the models for child protection committees. Will you give us your views in writing on the best way of tackling those matters? Recommendation 5 of the child protection review concerns those committees.
It would also be useful to find out how police services are addressing structures to deal with child protection issues.
Many questions have been asked and we could go on for a long time. The session has been useful and we are grateful for the witnesses' input.
Meeting closed at 12:57.