Child Protection Review
The next item of business is a debate on motion S1M-3748, in the name of Cathy Jamieson, on the review of child protection, and two amendments to that motion.
The new year is traditionally a time to look back and reflect, but also a time when we make our resolutions for the future and signal the changes that we want to make for that future. At the beginning of this new year, I want to signal a new start to ensure that children in our country are better protected from abuse, harm and neglect.
In the past few weeks, many of us will have enjoyed spending time with our own children or with the children of family and friends, giving them special treats and presents. However, we will all have heard about children from families throughout Scotland who are not in such a fortunate position. We will be acutely aware of those children who are not being brought up in a supporting, loving and caring environment—children who are suffering harm from those who are closest to them. I am sure that members will want to join me in thanking everyone who worked over the holiday period looking after children in need of support: children's social workers and care workers, nurses and health professionals, police officers and voluntary sector workers.
I have made this point before in the chamber, and I will make it again: child protection is not just the concern of social workers. Effective child protection necessarily involves a wide range of workers, with each one doing an extremely difficult job in seeking to strike the right balance between ensuring that children do not come to harm and avoiding wrongfully interfering in private family life. That is not an easy balance to strike, as we know from our deliberations on the Protection of Children (Scotland) Bill. We also know that the consequences of each and every decision that is made can be monumental for the child.
The recent report of the child protection audit and review, "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright", discusses the many well-motivated and committed professionals who are working well in difficult and stressful circumstances. The report notes people's willingness and the effort that they put into doing a good job in supporting vulnerable children. It notes real progress and improvement over the past 20 years.
However, the report also makes for grim reading and there is no cause for complacency. It contains some very worrying findings, which we cannot, should not and must not ignore. It shows clear evidence that many children are living in conditions and under threats that are simply not tolerable in a civilised society—and those are carefully judged words.
Listen to the words of the children themselves, as they were reported to ChildLine Scotland:
"Dad held a knife at my throat."
Another child said:
"Mum hits me with dog leads."
Another said:
"I don't want to go home, he said he'd batter me and my mum wouldn't stop him. I want to live in a home."
Those are real experiences suffered by children in Scotland today. The findings from the review team's audit covered 188 children who had experienced a wide range of abuse and neglect, and they highlight some further harrowing examples of children living in dirty, cold homes, suffering from a series of untreated accidents and injuries; of children who have been sexually abused; and of children who have suffered due to their parents' alcohol or drug misuse.
A central theme in the report is the need for the range of agencies involved in child protection to join up more effectively to deliver better outcomes for children. The report makes it clear that there is duplication of effort, with energies being diverted into meeting system requirements rather than towards putting the needs of the child first.
Very worryingly, the review team found that more than 50 per cent of the children covered by the audit are not being adequately protected or cared for. That is not something that anyone could fail to be concerned by. Everyone involved in child protection—teachers, health visitors, social workers or local authority or national health service managers—will agree that we can and must do better.
When we discussed children's services more broadly in December, I outlined briefly the ways in which we will drive forward progress on the child protection agenda. I want to talk about those action points in a little more detail today. First, we are establishing a three-year reform programme for child protection services. The programme will establish clear practice standards, develop the role and responsibilities of child protection committees and build capacity to deliver. I have already indicated that we would consider legislation to put child protection committees on a statutory footing, and I repeat that commitment today. A child protection summit, involving senior local authority, health, police and voluntary sector representatives will be held on 18 February to help us to take that forward.
Secondly, we are establishing a team of experts from relevant agencies to work directly with local agencies in implementing the reform programme and tackling poor performance. The team will have top-level backing from the Executive.
Thirdly, we will establish a tough new inspection system to ensure that the reforms are delivered. The system will follow a multidisciplinary approach, bringing together expertise from a range of existing agencies.
Fourthly, we will develop a children's charter, which will be drawn up in conjunction with children and professionals and will set out the support that all children have the right to expect to protect them from harm.
Fifthly, we will provide resources to support work that benefits vulnerable young people directly. I have announced funding of £500,000 to ChildLine Scotland to enable it to open a new call centre and thereby to expand significantly the service that it will be able to offer.
The most effective child protection work is the work that is done before families reach a state of crisis and children are harmed. We will maintain and expand support for effective early intervention—in particular, support for very young children and their families. Bill Aitken is not present, although he was courteous enough to let me know that he would miss this part of my speech. I was very disappointed to read the comments that the Tories made in response to my announcement yesterday on funding to improve support for parents who are having difficulty with their families and require additional assistance. I may have time to come back to that point later, as I am sure that Bill Aitken will want to respond to it in his speech.
We will build support for effective joined-up working across the range of children's services, including the support that we offer to the children of parents who misuse alcohol and drugs. We will shortly issue new guidance, entitled "Getting our priorities right", for people who work with families in which parents misuse alcohol and drugs. That will help to ensure that professionals keep a clear focus on the needs of the children in a family when working with drug-abusing or alcohol-abusing adults, so that those most vulnerable children do not fall through the gaps in the system.
We need to ensure that we deal effectively with all forms of risk and abuse. Earlier this week I announced a second stage of our internet child safety campaign, highlighting the potential dangers to young people of giving out personal details over the internet and indicating how to avoid being targeted by potential abusers.
We know that in Scotland one child in nine runs away or is forced to leave home before the age of 16. Running away puts young people in danger, but may often be a sign of underlying problems in a young person's life. Children who are sexually exploited through prostitution may not always be visible on our streets, but we know that such exploitation is taking place here in Scotland. I want to make it very clear that adults who use child prostitutes are abusing those children and deserve to have the full force of the law used to stop them. Young people who have been exploited in that way need and deserve our support.
At the end of December, we issued the interim report of the working group on young runaways and children who are abused though prostitution. The working group considered the support that is needed for children and young people, guidance for professionals and effective early intervention to prevent abuse and exploitation before they happen. We have invited comment on the report. However, there are actions that I want to progress immediately.
The majority of young people who run away leave from their family home. However, young people who have spent time in care are more likely to run away than young people who have only lived at home in families. Nearly half the young people in residential or foster care have run away at some point in their lives. It is important that young people have access to advocacy services that can explore their reasons for running away and help prevent repeat episodes.
Who Cares? Scotland is an organisation that is uniquely placed to provide that advocacy service, as it has workers throughout Scotland who provide support to young people in care, including in residential settings. I am pleased that we have been able to identify funding of £60,000 this year and in each of the next two financial years to allow Who Cares? Scotland to develop and secure the services that it provides to very vulnerable looked-after young people.
Because we do not know how many young people and children are sexually exploited through prostitution in Scotland, and because we need better information about what works best to support them, I am pleased today to announce that we will provide £57,000 for a feasibility study, led by Barnardo's, that will identify effective services for young people who are abused through prostitution. The study will focus especially on ensuring that young people do not always end up in secure accommodation, which may not be the best place for them, and that there are appropriate alternatives.
For some time, people have been concerned to find other ways of supporting young runaways. I am again pleased to announce that I have identified up to £600,000 to develop work on refuge provision. I have asked officials to progress discussions with Aberlour Child Care Trust to build on its work with young runaways in the "running; other choices" project. Those targeted resources are specifically designed to help our most vulnerable young people. Importantly, the funding will be used to provide the kind of services that vulnerable young people have said that they need and want. Those young people will continue to be involved in developing the services.
Will the minister give way?
I am almost finished.
We are not just listening to young people, but hearing them loud and clear and acting on their concerns.
Presiding Officer, I am disappointed to say that I will not be accepting the amendments. I hoped that we would be able to have a consensual debate and that members would not take the debate as an opportunity to try to score party-political points. I hope that I have set a tone for the debate that all members will be able to follow, and that members will focus on the needs of the most vulnerable young people in our society.
The Executive has done a lot in the past four years. Of course there is a lot more to do and I believe that MSPs are uniquely placed to continue that work and to raise the profile of the issue across Scotland. I hope that we will have everyone's support in seeking to make a real improvement in protecting Scotland's children over the next three years and beyond.
I move,
That the Parliament notes the findings of the report of the Child Protection Audit and Review, It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright; expresses concern that, despite examples of good practice in child protection across Scotland, many children and young people are still at risk of abuse and neglect, and supports the Scottish Executive's plans for a sustained programme of reform, building on effective inter-agency working, and its continued emphasis on closing the opportunity gap for Scotland's most vulnerable young people.
From the outset, I say that we welcome the review and its recommendations. It can only be good that the issue is being debated and addressed at a national level.
However, we have to ensure that this opportunity to tackle the problems in child protection brings about real and lasting improvement in what has become a long-standing issue. It is almost 11 years since the inquiry into multi-agency child protection in Orkney. Lord Clyde's inquiry report significantly influenced subsequent child care law, most notably the Children (Scotland) Act 1995. In the past decade, a great deal has been done at a local level to improve practice, to revise procedures—including interagency procedures—and to initiate joint training. However, without a national framework, direction and advice from the centre, we ended up with different systems and procedures in place throughout Scotland. Those systems were totally dependent on resources and local priorities. That was not what Lord Clyde envisaged and it certainly was not what Scotland's most vulnerable children deserved. It is, however, the context for this latest review.
My impression is that social workers' responses to the review have ranged from lukewarm to openly hostile. Part of the reason for that seems to be that the document is reasonably good at stating what the problems are—poverty, drugs misuse and too few resources—but is then quite superficial about how to act on those problems. One example is in the conclusion to the section on resources, on page 151, which lays out clearly the current problems but then makes very vague recommendations. It is almost as if two different people wrote the findings and the recommendations. When the document starts to talk about children's services plans, it seems as though people have run out of ideas.
The references to the number of children who are not protected, or who are only partially protected, dominated the press coverage and shocked the nation when the document was launched. Given that the information came from auditing actual case notes, I hope that the review team fed details of the cases back to the relevant local authorities and to the police force as evidence for the claims and, more important, to ensure that practice was improved immediately. After all, it was children and their safety that were being audited, not just statistics or social work practice. As the minister said, many of those children are living in conditions and under threats that are not tolerable in a civilised society.
Some of the report's findings might be considered to be unsurprising given that, in recent years, there has been a significant rise in referrals from the reporter to the children's panel in respect of child care and protection. The numbers of children on the child protection register are also rising, as are the numbers of looked-after children. All that has taken place at a time of increasing staff shortages and unprecedented numbers of vacancies. We also know that there has been under-resourcing of children and families work over the past 10 years or so. The latest figures confirm that local authorities plan to spend a third more than the total that the Executive provides for children's services through grant-aided expenditure. The system is under considerable pressure.
The report acknowledges that social work plays a pivotal role in child protection. It says:
"Outcomes for children were found to be highly dependent on social work doing well."
It should be patently obvious that if the child protection process is to be improved, the issues that critically undermine the work of the social work profession are the ones that must be addressed. To protect children, it is not sufficient only to have adequate numbers of staff; qualified, experienced staff are also necessary. We must have a competent and qualified work force that is knowledgeable about the complex tasks that are involved.
The report says that good practice occurred in those cases in which the
"provision of help to parents and children was given as and when it was needed; there was a … timely response and early thought and preparation; and the source of the risk was properly addressed."
We would like such good practice to be followed in all cases, but it is obvious that that does not happen.
The social work profession also needs the Scottish Executive to promote and value its role. In spite of the fact that, for many years, there has been pressure for a national framework to raise standards, for improved interagency training, for the upgrading of the social work qualification and for measures to tackle recruitment and retention, only in recent months have such pleas to address the problems that undermine social work begun to be heard and acted on.
The report identifies another crucial resource that is not always available and which requires some investment—foster carers. It should be noted that the National Assembly for Wales has recently embarked on a review of foster care; that a national strategy for foster care services is being developed in Northern Ireland; and that the choice protects review in England has led to the Secretary of State for Health's allocation of £113 million to local authorities for the expansion and strengthening of fostering services. There have been no similar developments in Scotland so far and there is dissatisfaction and concern that even phase 2 of the on-going adoption review gives little prominence to fostering. The minister would do well to give some thought to that.
As the minister stated, the Executive is committed to a number of initiatives and to an action plan that is designed to improve performance. The Scottish National Party welcomes the additional funding that the minister has outlined today. Among the measures that have been identified are the special helpline, the children's charter, a tougher inspection regime and a three-year programme of different activities. Jim Dickie, who is the president of the Association of Directors of Social Work, criticised that three-year time limit. He argued that it had taken the Executive and previous Governments twice as long as that to invest in the service. It is a bit much for the First Minister to tell social workers that they have three years to get it right before other people are put in charge, given that his Administration has had more than three years and has not got it right yet. I presume that he will consider it fitting when he, too, is replaced.
The fact that the problems are long term and difficult to resolve means that they require a long-term response. If we are ever to improve our work in child protection and to improve the integration of services, there must be sustained investment and committed support for the mainstream infrastructure.
I move amendment S1M-3748.2, to leave out from "and supports" to end and insert:
"condemns the Scottish Executive's failure to deal effectively with this problem despite almost four years in government in Scotland, and commends a response based on effective, committed and sustained support of mainstream, front-line child protection services, in both financial and political terms."
I apologise to the minister and to Irene McGugan for missing part of their speeches, although I explained my absence to them beforehand.
The report of the child protection audit and review did not make pleasant reading. Some of the cases that were referred to were harrowing. It almost makes one despair to read of parents who are prepared to treat their children in ways varying from malign neglect to callous brutality. The report does well to underline the horrors of the lifestyles of what is, fortunately, a small minority of Scotland's children.
There must be great concern at the weaknesses in Scotland's child protection system that the review has highlighted. Although the Executive is to be congratulated on some of the steps that it has taken, the content of the report indicates that a great deal more must be done.
Let us deal with the positive aspects first. The Executive was correct to call for the review against the background of the appalling case of Kennedy McFarlane. In some respects, the review points a way forward.
If I may respond to the point that the minister made earlier, the Executive is of course right to have launched, as it did the other day, a campaign to warn youngsters about the dangers posed by paedophiles on the internet. Although a sense of proportion is always necessary in dealing with the issue of child abuse, it cannot be denied that the problem exists. I fully concede that anything that can assist in dealing with the problem is worth doing.
However, time and again, the report underlines the fact that the children's hearings system, in its present form, is failing. As I have said in the chamber before, children's reporters must obviously give priority to cases that involve children who are at risk. The document contains many examples of that. However, it is clear that the system's current lack of resources has from time to time resulted in worrying failures.
On offending, it must be stressed yet again that, in most cases, the actual victim of the crime or offence is another child. The existing system's impotence in dealing with offenders makes a significant contribution towards putting more children at risk.
We are therefore fortunate that the wiser counsel of the Conservatives prevailed at stage 2 of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill and that the Executive's plan to refer 16 and 17-year-old law-breakers to the children's panel was scrapped. Frankly, that was a daft idea, which would have delayed an effective response to offending while further clogging up an already overburdened system, and which would have resulted in vulnerable children being placed at even greater risk.
Does the member care to explain the comments that were attributed to Tory spokespersons yesterday? They did not welcome the funding that was announced to support vulnerable families and to provide the hearings system with a wider range of options. Will the member explain why the provision of funding to respected organisations such as the Aberlour Child Care Trust, Barnardo's and Children 1st, smacks of a nanny state?
I personally did not issue that release. In any event, the obvious sense of that is that resources are finite, so such resources as are made available must have the maximum possible effect. From my reading of the issue yesterday, it is quite clear that the resources that are being made available are not being used to the best effect. Anyway, I must continue.
The proposal to send 16 and 17-year-olds to youth courts is not likely to progress matters further in reducing offending. That age group, which is currently tried in adult courts, would understandably view youth courts as a soft option. The vast majority of youngsters under the age of 16 will continue to be sent to the children's panel, which everyone knows is a soft option.
The solution is to continue to send the older offenders to adult courts and to send persistent and serious offenders who are under the age of 16 to youth courts. That would allow the panels to focus their energy on dealing with children who are at risk. The dual effect of that would be that young offenders could be dealt with more effectively and that the hearing system could deal more adequately, more speedily and more responsively with vulnerable children at risk.
Other aspects must, of course, be considered—
Does Mr Aitken agree that cases involving older young people who are in their teenage years can be quite complex, in that the grounds for referral will often be that the person has both committed offences and been offended against? How does he propose that such cases would be dealt with in his new way of dealing with young people outwith the children's hearings system?
I disagree in part with Mr Barrie's original premise. I agree that it quite frequently happens that younger offenders can offend because they have been offended against, but personal responsibility must come into play at the older level. Such cases are not quite as prevalent among older young people as Mr Barrie would have us believe.
Everyone has their part to play. As the minister rightly identified the other day, parents should control what their children view on the internet. Parents should also be required to know where their children are at night, thus leaving the children less vulnerable to those who prey upon them and less prone to offend.
Parents must play their part, and wider society must play its part, but above all, we need to get more police on to the streets and into the communities and to build a justice system that puts the rights of victims above those of criminals. The disturbing trend of rising crime under the Government will continue unless that is done. That trend threatens all sections of society, including—or, perhaps I should say, especially—children.
I would be extremely depressed were future generations of parliamentarians ever to have to read a document such as the report. We must all have found the report's content deeply disturbing and frequently distressing. We must recognise that and take action to prevent things of the type described in the report from happening again.
I move amendment S1M-3748.1, to leave out from "and supports" to end and insert:
"calls for an overhaul of the children's hearings system which would not only better deal with young offenders, but offer greater protection to vulnerable young Scots, and further calls for a substantial increase in the number of police officers visible within our communities to deter and detect crime which would help make all sections of society safer."
I start by welcoming the various and wide-ranging announcements that the minister has made today.
Child protection issues almost always come to public attention through press and media reports of high-profile cases, which all too commonly involve details of tragic events and exceptional cruelty and abuse. By definition, something serious has gone wrong with child protection in such cases.
In spite of the appalling nature of those cases, we are always perhaps tempted to take refuge in the idea that the media is giving us a view that is unrepresentative of the whole picture. However, as ministers and others have acknowledged, when we turn to the report, we see that the findings make it clear that, at the day-to-day, less sensational level, many children and families are subject to real difficulties, risk and harm and are not being caught by the system or, if they are caught, are not being supported as well as we would wish.
A lack of confidence in the system comes out of the report. Although, as others have said, the report makes it clear that dedicated individuals and organisations are doing much excellent work, youngsters throughout the country are still being exposed to risk and actual harm because the system of support and protection that is currently in place is not responding quickly or accurately enough to meet the needs of vulnerable children.
I am glad that ministers have acknowledged the seriousness of the issue, have not tried to cover it up, have not seemed complacent and have initiated a wide-ranging reform programme, about which we have been told before and again today. Ministers have taken and are taking measures to improve local oversight and the proper inspection of the system.
The Liberal Democrats welcome the proposal for a statement of children's rights in the children's charter. We certainly appreciate the Executive's support for the establishment of a commissioner for children and young people, which will contribute to the child protection overview. Shortly, we will move to stage 3 of the Protection of Children (Scotland) Bill, which will make a big step in the right direction. Similarly, everyone realises the value of additional support for helplines, which will enable ChildLine to expand its operations in Scotland. As Bill Aitken said, we welcome the initiative to make people aware of the dangers of matters such as internet pornography and grooming.
When we examine the report's findings and recommendations, we find several strands in which improvements must be made to ensure that youngsters are drawn into the support system in the first place and to avoid children being lost through flaws and inadequacies in a fragile and sometimes ill co-ordinated safety net. The report recommends that improved access and communication be high on the agenda. That means access to information, support and advocacy for children and support and better access and communication between professions and caring agencies. The interagency exchange of information between health, social work and education services is considered crucial to drawing vulnerable youngsters into the system.
The report also emphasises the review of the child protection committees, which the Executive is pursuing. We come back to the idea of statutory provision for child protection committees. There is a real emphasis on the need to reduce delays in the system, which have allowed casework to be slow and unresponsive and have perhaps even allowed cases to fall into abeyance for lack of action.
Recommendation 12 is important. It identifies a need for improvement in the assessment of needs, in particular for high-risk groups such as children who are born to alcohol-abusing or drug-abusing parents, and a need for the provision of an action plan for those youngsters. If a child is in an at-risk group, they should be dealt with comprehensively with an individual plan.
Similarly, recommendation 15 is important. It advocates a single integrated assessment, planning and review framework for children in need, which would be available to all partner agencies and would allow for the transfer of information if children or families move from one area to another. It would include clear plans and an indication of progress for each child. There would be milestones, so that it could be seen what point a child had reached in the system. If the child did not reach the milestones, attention would be focused on the need to do something.
In reading the companion volume to the report, I was convinced by research that stresses the importance of community intervention and planning, and the idea of creating safer living environments for children in socially deprived areas, for example through the provision of low-cost babysitting schemes, better monitored play areas, crèches and out-of-school care facilities. Such measures address the view that tackling individual cases is not the only way in which to protect children. If we have the right systems in place in society, children will be protected by the way things are done.
Apart from specific child protection issues, other Executive programmes, such as sure start and early intervention, can contribute to our success in tackling the problems that are associated not only with learning difficulties, for example, but with children who are at risk.
I want to return to an issue that I mentioned in the debate on children's services in December, namely the need to recognise the pivotal role of social workers. We must recognise the responsibilities, dilemmas and difficult judgments that social workers face. I repeat the wish that I expressed then, which is that individuals on the ground should not be too readily picked on as whipping boys when things go wrong in desperately complex and difficult situations, where moral and practical dilemmas are legion, and where hindsight makes it easy for us on the outside to see that different decisions or actions might have been taken at particular points in the process.
In an early speech in the Parliament, on education, I made the point that ministers, legislators and local authority departments are facilitators in such matters, and that the systems that are set up must be coherent and well resourced. However, above all—as the review shows—success depends on the people on the ground doing well. We cannot be successful if we do not have well-trained, well-motivated, well-resourced, and well-respected practitioners dealing properly with the real people and the real cases on the ground. To that end, while I strongly commend everything that the Executive is doing and seeks to do, I urge ministers to continue their hard work to address the problems with the supply and retention of well-motivated child care social workers.
We have until 16:38 for open debate. Seven members have requested to speak, which means speeches of four minutes, although I will accept extra time for interventions.
It is now almost six years since the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 came into force, which totally updated our child protection system from the one laid out in the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968. A number of members who practised social work at that time felt confident and optimistic that the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 would provide a better framework for child protection than the one we had. However, in the light of experience in the past six years, it is disappointing to see the bureaucracy that has resulted from the 1995 act with regard to seeking child protection orders, child assessment orders and exclusion orders. The act has not lived up to our optimism.
It was clear that we had to update the old place of safety method, whereby a simple signature from a justice of the peace could result in someone entering the system quickly, but we replaced it with a system that is perhaps too complex and too difficult.
The review states:
"Emergency protection measures were used only rarely in the sample of cases which were looked at. Social workers were reluctant to apply for Child Protection Orders unless they could demonstrate immediate risk to a child and in some cases they were concerned about appearing in court and being cross examined about their work."
If that is the framework that is the bulwark of child protection, perhaps we should seriously examine it.
I welcome what the minister said in her speech about placing child protection committees on a more statutory footing. That is long overdue and will result in better practice throughout Scotland. I was a member of Fife's child protection committee and for about seven years chaired a local child protection group that was established throughout Fife. Local child protection groups that bring together voluntary and statutory sector workers from one geographical area to meet semi-regularly to discuss general issues—but not necessarily specific cases—are a good way to aid interagency co-operation and understanding. If we are to develop seriously the idea that child protection is not only a function of social workers, health visitors or paediatricians, but a function and an interest for us all, we must engender that in our local communities through bodies such as local child protection groups.
Ian Jenkins and Irene McGugan highlighted the report's reference to the pivotal role of social work. When social work works well, outcomes are good, but it is sad that, despite the interagency approach that we keep talking about, when social work does not perform well, the outcomes are poor. We must ensure that everyone progresses the child protection message.
When we discussed children's services last month, I observed that the varying attendance at child protection case conferences is disappointing. The only agency that is always represented at a case conference is social work. Often, health visitors are present and sometimes schools are represented, but it is rare that the medical profession is present. If we are to have a proper and cohesive child protection system, we must all ensure that people take it seriously.
Will the minister consider issuing further guidance to our local authorities on the use of section 38 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, which deals with refuges, so that people do not have to enter the system through formal child protection procedures? That would allow us to use that section for youngsters who are very troubled and need a bit of space. The section was another departure from the statutory intervention that we had to make in the past, but its use has been patchy throughout Scotland. We need to examine that seriously.
I will talk mainly about social work, because my experience of that is twofold. My wife is a social worker from the days when such a thing as Edinburgh Corporation existed, which had a children department. I have experience of working in a computer services organisation that provided computing services to social work.
My first public defence of social work was when I wrote a letter to The Scotsman in about 1968 or 1969 in response to a criticism by a very young Edinburgh councillor called George Foulkes—who I presume was slimmer then, too—that social workers were too young. The British Association of Social Workers briefing for our previous debate on children's services said that those highly trained people are an aging work force—I have not had the courage to show that to my wife yet.
My first point is about bureaucracy, which Scott Barrie covered. There is a great element of duplication. I will pick up what my colleague Irene McGugan said about the strengths of the report's findings compared with the weaknesses of its recommendations. After she said that, I noticed that one finding in paragraph 8.51 of the report is that
"there is too much duplication of effort",
yet neither of the associated recommendations deals with that. It could be argued that the recommendations would create more work. The report's recommendations are an honest attempt to deal with the problems, but most of them would increase the work load and bureaucracy.
Does the member accept that the forthcoming summit, which will bring together all the agencies that are involved, is designed to deal with some of the recommendations and to consider how we can develop them sensibly and practically?
I hope that the summit will do that. The recommendations will need to be examined hard, because if they are taken as they are, they will increase bureaucracy and the work load.
The second matter that I want to address is recruitment. There is a clear problem recruiting to children's social work vacancies. The fact is that many recruitment exercises meet with little or no success. I also have concerns about the recent tendency to hire unqualified workers. I know that such people can undertake many tasks, but we need an assurance that the need to supervise those workers will not simply increase the burden on already hard-pressed qualified workers.
The third point concerns the image of social work, but it is not a party or even a politician's point. All of us have a role to play in trying to give greater esteem to the social work profession. In saying that, I am thinking in particular of the media. Social work needs the level of esteem that is given to other professions. The clear fact is that social workers have become the whipping boys or girls for the failures of society. Mr Jenkins referred to that. Social workers are damned if they do and damned if they do not. They are treated as fair game—perhaps I should have said unfair game—when society looks for someone to blame.
A classic example of that happened in the recent tragic case in Inverness. Last night's television and today's papers rushed to judgment, highlighting the need to investigate the social workers involved. Is it any wonder that recruitment is bad and morale at an all-time low? We have a duty to give the social work profession more support. Rational criticism is, of course, needed in cases in which it is justified, but we do not need the sort of criticism that we saw last night and again today.
My final point is on crime. It will hardly surprise members to learn that I do not agree with anything that Bill Aitken said. There is increasing unease out there about how the youth justice system is working. The link with child protection is that the same reporter, the same children's panel members, the same social workers and, as Scott Barrie said, sometimes the same children who are involved. Both systems suffer from the problems that we are discussing today. Unfortunately, in the eyes of an increasing number of people, both the youth justice system and the child protection system are flawed.
As the debate is important and concerns a vital subject, it is depressing that the benches are so empty. Perhaps yesterday's excitement was too much for members and they have decided to go back to their offices.
How society treats its young people and old people is a test of how civilised it is. If we consider the report that we are debating today, we see that we have a way to go before we can count ourselves as truly civilised. My colleague Bill Aitken referred to some of the harrowing accounts that the report contains. I was pleased to hear the minister say that she recognised that the serious problems in the system need to be addressed.
I wish briefly to raise two points. The first concerns the children's hearings system, which a number of members, including Alasdair Morgan, mentioned in their contributions. I am sorry to say that the children's hearings system is in a bit of a mess. There is no doubt that it is losing—or has lost—a lot of public confidence.
There are a number of reasons for that. Perhaps it is because it is under-resourced, but it is certainly because of the excessive delays in getting children through the system. There is also a perception among the public that the system does not treat young offenders as effectively as it should. That is particularly the case for the persistent young offenders who come before the system.
I can talk only from personal experience. In the small town in which I live, the perception among my neighbours and people in business is that the disorder in the town is caused by a small group of young offenders aged 14 and 15, who persistently reoffend. Everybody knows who they are.
The member's colleague, Bill Aitken, has already disassociated himself from the remarks that were made by whoever issued his party's press release yesterday. Does he accept that one of the ways to ensure that young people do not fall into persistent offending is to provide support at an early stage? Does he further agree that support for vulnerable families is absolutely critical to that? If so, does he welcome the projects for which funding was announced yesterday?
My colleague Bill Aitken has just confirmed to me that he disassociates himself from the remarks that were made. I think that it was my colleague Brian Monteith who made the remarks yesterday, to the effect that if money is available to deal with such problems, it would be better to put it into improved policing, education and properly punishing those who offend.
I return to the point that I was making about the public losing confidence in the children's hearings system, and especially with how it deals with persistent 14 and 15-year-old offenders, who are not being dealt with properly. Although that is partly an issue for the police, it is also an issue for the children's hearings system.
As my colleague Bill Aitken pointed out, young people are victims of crime themselves. Many of the crimes that young people commit are crimes against young people. As a result, we need to protect younger as well as older people. I am delighted that, during consideration of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill, we saw a U-turn on the ludicrous plan to send 16 and 17-year-olds to the children's hearings system. Such a step would simply have overburdened the system even more. Instead, we should make more use of youth courts for 14 and 15-year-olds, which would ensure that they are dealt with properly and would free up the children's hearings system to deal more adequately and speedily with young offenders.
Will the member give way?
No, I am in my last minute and wish to make another point.
Mr Barrie will be pleased to hear that I wish to congratulate the Executive on one particular aspect. This week, Cathy Jamieson launched the "Think U Know" campaign, which deals with internet safety for young surfers. I welcome such an encouraging move from the Executive. We are all aware of the concern that young people on the internet are being targeted by paedophiles and other adults who seek to use them for sexual purposes. We have to get the message across to our young people that they must take the issue seriously and ensure that they inform parents, teachers and siblings. The message must also go out to parents and to teachers in schools that they can speak to young people about such issues. There must be access to organisations such as ChildLine. Indeed, I was pleased to hear the minister's acknowledgement that there would be funding for that organisation.
Another aspect of the debate that needs to be examined is the fact that, if the matter is to be policed properly, we need more policemen.
I know that I am over my time, Presiding Officer.
You certainly are.
I will just conclude with one final point.
No, there really is no time for that. I think that you have had your cut. I would be obliged if you would take your seat so that I can move on to Jackie Baillie.
Thank you, Presiding Officer.
Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am sure that that will come as a relief to other members.
That comment was not entirely helpful.
I always want to be helpful. Let me return to the substance of my speech.
"It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright" is not just the title of the review, but the key message that has been echoed around the chamber this afternoon. Without a doubt, protecting Scotland's children from harm and abuse is a collective responsibility. I believe that the Parliament has a special responsibility to translate those concerns into action. As many members have pointed out, civilised politics is about protecting the most vulnerable in our society. There are few more vulnerable people than little boys or girls who have run away from home, or children who have been abused by the very people who should love them. The recent review leaves us in no doubt that such children exist in Scotland.
In 2002, 2,018 children were on the child protection register. They, at least, have one foot in the door of the protection system. The report also shows that there is a worrying lack of public confidence. Friends or relatives of children at risk are reluctant to report their concerns, so the problem is perhaps greater than it at first appears.
The review does not make comfortable reading, and it is clear that there is much to be done. As well as identifying the heinous problem of child prostitution in Scotland, it found from the audit sample that 21 per cent of children at risk were not getting the help that they need. It is only by exposing such statistics—uncomfortable although they may be—that we are able to understand the problem and take concerted action.
Children's problems have the potential to snowball. Family problems, if not addressed, can lead to child homelessness, and abuse through prostitution, crime and substance misuse. The essential task of protection agencies must relate to early detection, and to providing effective responses to warning signs. It will soon be too late if the warning signs are ignored.
The review makes several suggestions as to how to improve performance. The first relates to access to information, and to ensuring that both adults and children are aware of the resources available to help them, such as freephone advice lines for counselling and advice in schools. Communication between agencies is also of critical importance.
Different services and agencies must share their information and have a common strategy. It is only when we have that integrated picture of medical problems, behavioural problems at school, school absences and social work assessments that we can begin to know a child's level of risk. A lack of communication can be fatal.
The working group on young runaways and children abused through prostitution proposes the development of local protocols to tackle the problem. They form a welcome basis for an integrated approach from all the relevant agencies—police, local authority and voluntary sector alike. I am delighted that the Executive has already responded to some of the key policy recommendations in the review. The three-year programme of sustained activity to reform the child protection system, coupled with the robust monitoring of progress, indicates a commitment to the issue. New resources already announced, such as the £13.3 million for social work training and child protection measures, should also help reforms, but there is no one-off response that will solve the problem. We need a continuing commitment to improve the way that children at risk are identified and protected because even one child suffering is one child too many.
If we needed a reminder, only this week a 5-year-old girl was discovered drowned in the Caledonian canal. Her body, found in a weighted bag, might have been there for several months. What kind of a society is ours that that could happen? I hope that that will spur on the Executive in its determination to build on the good efforts that it has made to reform the child protection system, and to build on them quickly.
This is a topic of huge concern to every human being in the country. The fact that any child suffers physical or mental abuse, either deliberately or accidentally, is terrible. No child should have its life blighted by the circumstances that exist in our nation.
I spent many years working in certain parts of the west of Scotland, where one could say that education was a challenge and possibly a secondary consideration to providing a stable base for a lot of the children in their daily lives. In that context, we came across many dreadful situations.
At the risk of sounding like a bit of a Jonah, I add a piece of information that I have gleaned. I do this because of what Cathy Jamieson said earlier about prostitution. Less than a year ago, I had a meeting with an assistant chief constable in Strathclyde on the subject of drugs. As the long discussion continued, he revealed that he had been to an international police meeting in western Europe where their projections were that the crimes they had to face up to were, in order of priority, trafficking in children, trafficking in women and trafficking in drugs.
Whatever idiosyncrasies and inadequacies there are among our own people and the way they try to make their lives, on top of that is the burden of crime pushing on those areas and striking at young, vulnerable people. None of us, in the chamber or elsewhere, would not want to do everything that we possibly could to turn that situation around. In other words, some children's lives are tragedies from an early age and there is a duty incumbent on every one of us.
Examining the review, it is terrible to discover how many children fall through the net. Of 188 cases examined in detail, 40 children were not protected and a further 62 were only partially protected. Not or partially protected is simply not good enough, whoever we are. All sorts of people are involved in child protection. Having been in areas of some difficulty where children had major social problems and the teachers, social workers and the police were all involved, much time was spent on what I can only call fire fighting, holding the line or dealing with the most spectacular cases while other less spectacular cases fell through the net. They were not deliberately neglected, but they could not be dealt with simply because there were not the people or the time to do the job.
That brings me to the question of resources, and I would like to cite one or two items from a special report on the children's hearings system in Scotland. Whatever criticisms people have of them, children's hearings are fundamental to a lot of child protection. It is often the case, as the report points out, that decisions made by children's hearings are not so much about the needs of the child as about the resources available to deal with the child. That is the wrong way round; the boot has to be on the other foot. It must be a question of assessing the child's best needs and finding the resources.
We know that GAE has not been terribly good on that and that a lot of local authorities—in absolute sincerity and for the right reasons—are spending more than the allocated GAE on children's protection. Unless child protection is properly resourced, people will be sitting here 10 years from now making many of the same noises. I sincerely hope that that will not be the case.
I welcome the steps that the Executive has taken to try to deal better with the problem of child protection. I shall try not to rehash some of the excellent points made by other speakers.
On resources, as usual I will ask not only for more resources, but for better-directed resources. We need adequate staff, but the figures that we have been given show that, in some council areas, 25 per cent vacancies exist in child services. There is no point in having lots of schemes if there are no people to deliver them. That must be dealt with. The problem is increasing because referrals from the reporters to the children's panel have gone up by 69 per cent, which indicates the size of the problem. As Colin Campbell said, GAE resources from the centre to the councils are a third less than what the councils are spending. I often criticise councils for spending money on the wrong things, but here they are clearly on the side of the angels. They are doing a better job on that than central Government is, and we must address that.
We must get better value in a number of ways, by rolling out more rapidly and vigorously examples of good work, which do exist. Something that we are very bad at in Scotland, for some reason, is copying things from one another. The main Scottish industry is reinventing the wheel. We need more co-operation and access to information across agencies. The minister is trying to achieve that and we need to get a firm grip on it.
If we put more resources into foster care, so that payments are somewhat more generous and support is better, we would solve a lot of other problems. Good foster care is one of the best and most effective ways of dealing with the issues that we are discussing today. I particularly welcome the minister's announcement of progress on the question of missing children and runaways; I gather that there are about 9,000 of them every year. I am one of those who have for a long time been passing on the concerns of some youth organisations that resources to deal with that problem are totally inadequate.
We should also put more resources into voluntary organisations that try to counter the break-up of marriages and partnerships, because that is the point from which many later problems stem. There are some good organisations that are seriously underfunded. The children's commissioner is a welcome development. Many of us have been arguing for that for some time, and it will help to bring together a lot of the issues and will keep on prodding us in the right direction.
We need more positive outlets for children. If there are more youth clubs, scout troops and football clubs for young kids to get involved in, that helps them in a number of ways to avoid those problems.
We need to be sympathetic to the problems of voluntary organisations. We want an all-embracing vetting system that catches all the potential villains so that they do not slip through the net, but the present system is unduly bureaucratic and people have to make repeat applications. For example, if I help at an Easter play scheme, I would then have to reapply if I want to help at a summer play scheme or an after-school club. That is ridiculous. The vetting system also creates substantial administrative costs for voluntary organisations, which are a major issue for small and large organisations. I hope that sympathy will be shown for how the voluntary sector is supposed to deliver.
I commend the Executive not only for raising the profile of children's welfare, but for taking sensible and achievable measures and strengthening our criminal law in relation to children.
I want to make some observations on the exploitation of older children, young men and women who are subject to exploitation through prostitution and child trafficking. We begin from the premise that children cannot consent to their own abuse and that children and young people are targeted by criminals and exploited by adults. The Parliament must welcome the progress that has been made in the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill to secure measures to create in Scots law a crime of human trafficking in relation to forced prostitution, and in increasing sentencing powers in relation to the possession of obscene material that depicts child pornography.
Does Pauline McNeill agree that we must seek to identify, register and treat many people who have recently been identified in the criminal prosecution system for committing internet crime, but who are not being prosecuted, as the number of times that they have accessed the internet is insufficient? The numbers are horrific and people must be identified earlier. Does she agree that we probably need a "stop it now" campaign in Scotland to deal with people who have not yet been prosecuted for sex offending?
I have no difficulty in agreeing with Dr Simpson's central point. We need to look beyond the most serious criminals and recognise that other criminals whom we need to catch are out there—particularly on the internet.
The United Nations Children's Fund is calling on the United Kingdom Government to introduce a criminal offence that extends to the crime of trafficking in children, which I believe will eventually be incorporated into Scots law. It has called on the Government to provide the necessary social services for trafficked children, including the provision of safe houses. Victims of trafficking who return home may be subjected to torture or rape, or even detained by traffickers. Such things occur as a punishment to victims, who may be seen as co-operating with the authorities, as a warning to others or as a punishment for not paying what the trafficker sees as unpaid debts. Sometimes, the victim is simply trafficked again to another country.
The UK Government should not deport a victim of trafficking if there is a danger that a human rights abuse may take place. I am sure that the Scottish Executive will take an international approach to the issue of the wider protection of children and that there will be a further strengthening of our law.
In the final two minutes available to me, I want to develop the theme of young people and older children who are exploited through prostitution and sexual abuse. A significant number of young women are involved in prostitution on our streets. In a recent survey, some 24 per cent of them indicated that they became involved in prostitution when they were under 18. Given that we know that eight women have died in the past eight years on the streets of Glasgow, if that issue is not resolved, it will have serious consequences.
Often, young women who are being groomed for prostitution think that they are in control, but are unaware that the man with whom they have just struck up a relationship is preparing to capture them for the sordid world of the sex industry. Harsh challenges face the Parliament and society. Young boys are also vulnerable. We need to develop services for young boys and girls to ensure that they have somewhere to go when they decide to flee.
The Young Women's Project in Glasgow must be congratulated on its excellent work. Recently, I dealt with a young woman constituent who fled her family after claiming that her father had raped her and her sisters. She claimed that she was not aware that there was somewhere she could go. I say to the Executive that we need to make young people more aware that there are services and that we need services for young boys.
I have previously spoken to Cathy Jamieson about creating a system of places of safety for young people. I am not an expert or an ex-social worker, but, in addition to the review, the Executive could rightly develop such a system within the current system.
I am pleased to take part in this important and thoughtful debate. In winding up for the Liberal Democrats, I will briefly comment on some of what has been said, although I cannot refer to every member who has spoken.
The minister rightly referred to the fact that not only is child protection a matter for social work but it involves the co-ordination of all services. Many members touched on that point. My point is that it is easy to say that but much harder to deliver. My colleagues on the Finance Committee have been working on that very issue.
The minister referred to a subject close to my heart—young people who run away. I will not bore the chamber on the matter, because I have addressed it previously.
I will pick up on one figure that the minister gave us: the £600,000 that goes to refuge provision. That is proof that the Executive is putting its money where its mouth is.
Irene McGugan made a considered, thoughtful and well put-together speech. She had a lot to say. She referred to the fact that the speedy and accurate flow of information is crucial. She flagged up the issue of fostering; my colleague Donald Gorrie also touched on that issue. Fostering remains an issue for the Executive and I am sure that the Parliament will turn to it in due course.
Bill Aitken made a heroic and, I think, successful attempt to put the Conservative party back on to the right message. It is not surprising that he touched on justice, police numbers and so on but, in fairness to him, he talked about the horrific content of the report. Other members mentioned that, but Bill in particular flagged it up and summed up the issue nicely. We should remember and reflect on the issues that he raised.
My colleague Ian Jenkins touched on the important Executive commitment to the idea of the commissioner for children and young people. He also mentioned that access and communication are high on the agenda. I will return to that point. He also mentioned that recommendation 15—this goes back to what the minister is saying—refers to an integrated approach. That is marbled throughout the report.
Ian Jenkins raised a point that was echoed by many members, most eloquently by Scott Barrie. He said that social work must not be the cinderella service or the "whipping boys". The vacancies to which Donald Gorrie alluded in the child protection end of the service are horrific. It lies in the hands of the Executive and local authorities to look again at social work and consider whether it is funding it in the way in which they should be. I am sure that many good efforts are made, but the service is, as members have mentioned, patchy throughout Scotland.
I will conclude by making a point of my own, which I shall draw from the comments of previous speakers. My point will come as no surprise, given the constituency that I represent. Ian Jenkins talked about access and communication and Donald Gorrie talked about access to, for example, youth clubs. I will describe the scene, with which Rhoda Grant will be familiar, in which a family lives in a remote house somewhere in Sutherland. The children will go to school in the daytime. They will go away in the bus—they will have to walk some distance to get the bus—and they will go home. In many cases, they will not be seen again until the following morning. What might—and sadly does—happen during those long, dark hours is an issue that we as an Executive and a responsible Scottish Government have to get into.
My plea to the minister is simple. I commend her for what she does. She should remember that, in some of the most far-flung parts of Scotland, remoteness is an issue. A one-solution-fits-all approach is not that clever—we have to fine tune it. I look forward to the minister commenting on that in summing up, if she can do so; if not, I will be pleased to hear her comments on the matter in future.
It is no time at all since we had a similar debate, courtesy of the SNP. We cannot expect to make momentous changes in a matter of weeks, although we are grateful for the opportunity to air our concerns—whether they are our own or those of our constituents and the organisations with which we come in contact.
Colleagues throughout the chamber have all highlighted the report "It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright". How depressing the comments are when we know that we can do so much better and that those children deserve nothing less than our very best efforts.
I would like to comment on the issues that the minister mentioned and on some of the points that colleagues donated to the debate. I was taken aback when the significance of what is said in the "Think U Know" advert really sank in after I had heard it a couple of times. The highlighting of the child and adult voices is chilling and anyone who listens to the advert has to pay attention. Although we think that only young children are involved with chat rooms, my 18-year-old son uses the internet and plays around with chat rooms. He wants to meet a friend in London, but that will happen over my dead body, unless I am entirely satisfied about whom he is talking to. We do not know whom we are talking to in internet chat rooms. Although he is 18, my son will have to satisfy me about that before I give him the funding to go to London. Such things can happen to anyone, especially children who have ready access to the internet.
There is no doubt that everyone must take a responsible attitude towards chat rooms. We should talk to our children about them and, from time to time, pop in to find out whom they are talking to. We should not leave children alone with access to such a dangerous tool, even though they are entirely innocent. The internet is a wonderful tool, but much can happen through it.
A number of members raised the issue of the exploitation of children through child prostitution. I will have no truck with that. It is a crime and should not be tolerated in any decent society.
Donald Gorrie mentioned that there are around 9,000 runaways a year. That is an horrendous figure. Refuges would help enormously for youngsters who need either a modicum of breathing space or somebody to speak to. I confess that I do not always pick up on everything that my children tell me the first time.
Irene McGugan made a thoughtful speech and I fully expected her to mention the lack of resources for social workers. We have commented on that issue times without number. We only ever hear the bad news and never hear about the good work that social workers do. Ian Jenkins highlighted recommendations 12 and 15 in the report and the need for well-trained practitioners. There is no doubt that we need such people.
I am glad that Scott Barrie has returned to the chamber. He mentioned place-of-safety orders. I remember such things and I have signed one, which I did not do lightly. It took me a number of hours to examine all the details before I did so. It is great that things have changed, but we still require professionals to make the effort to become more co-ordinated.
Alasdair Morgan pointed out the bureaucracy that is involved for social workers. I counsel him not to tell his wife that it is more than 30 years since he wrote the letter that he mentioned. He should not highlight that to her, because he might suffer.
Murdo Fraser commented that children commit crimes against other children. When one child acts against another, it cannot be easy to decide who is to blame. Jackie Baillie mentioned how we treat youngsters. I did not think that Jackie Baillie and Murdo Fraser would agree on anything, but their comments on the issue were similar. Colin Campbell mentioned the trafficking of women, children and drugs—in that order. It is shameful that such things happen.
As our amendment shows, we are extremely concerned about the weaknesses in Scotland's child protection system that the report highlights.
There has been no shortage of concern about the astonishing statistics that are contained in the report, although to people such as my colleague Irene McGugan, who has spent a great deal of her working life confronting such statistics, they are not astonishing. Of course, they are not just statistics; they involve individuals. One of the most remarkable features of the report is the case studies that are highlighted on page after page.
There is no shortage of genuine concern, but concern is not enough. We need rigorous analysis of why we are in such a situation and we need proposals to get out of it. The analysis divides into two parts. Is there something uniquely sick about Scottish society that we must change if the situation is to change or is there a fault in the process by which we deal with the situation? Of course, one of the purposes of the review was essentially to ask that question and to examine the process that existed. The review also arose out of a specific failure of process.
Alasdair Morgan raised an important point about the image of social work and the attraction of social work as a profession. Indeed, some of the problems arise from that. Other problems arise from a wider difficulty in society and are related to the gap between the image of ourselves as a mature, responsible and wealthy society and the reality. An astonishing statistic in the report is that there are up to 20,000 children in Scotland who are living with a drug-abusing parent. That is an enormous number, which equates to 20 secondary schools full of young people who are living with a drug-abusing parent. There are many such statistics in the report. So, there are illnesses in society that need to be dealt with, perhaps in a way that transcends or overcomes politics.
I address the Conservative amendment with the greatest respect for the Tories. I have a great fondness for Lyndsay McIntosh, in particular.
It is reciprocated.
I am glad to hear it. Nonetheless, I have to say that the lack of analysis from the Tories is depressing. It is not enough simply to have a knee-jerk reaction and to call for more police and courts. We must go much further than that in our analysis of what we need to do to change society.
Although I do not question the minister's commitment, I find her analysis defective as well. If we are to examine why the current situation exists and—more important—find ways in which to change it, we must look at the policy that successive Governments have followed and ask where that has gone wrong. The Scottish Executive has held office since 1 May 1999 and the Labour Government has been in office since 1 May 1997. We are talking about six years. We should analyse closely the lack of policy that has been followed and the lack of action that has been taken in crucial areas. For example, the crisis in recruitment in child social work did not arise this week or last week or last year; it has been a developing crisis over five years. In those circumstances, there should have been action, which there has not been.
After analysing the policy failures, we must come up with some solutions—and there are solutions that we need to apply. As Irene McGugan said, SNP members have been supportive—but supportive in a more urgent sense than the Executive has understood—of many of the things that need to be done. However, we are not quite so supportive of what appears to be a developing policy of ensuring that the resources that are applied go to the voluntary sector and do not stick to the central core service. That is a major problem.
Does Mike Russell accept the fact that the resources that have been announced are additional to the resources that have already been allocated to local authorities, either through the GAE or through initiatives such as the changing children's services fund? Does he accept that it is correct that we work in partnership with the voluntary sector which, in many instances, has the best people to provide these services?
You are close to your time limit, Mr Russell.
I realise that, Presiding Officer.
That was a revealing intervention by the minister. If there are additional resources, they should go both to core services and to the voluntary sector. However, the second part of her intervention indicated—as I had suggested—a preference for the voluntary sector. It is the weakness in the core service that is causing many of the problems. We need investment in the core service and must change the perception of the core service to overcome the difficulties.
The SNP will continue to argue for a McCrone-style review of social work and a prioritisation of the core services. We are by no means against working with the voluntary sector. However, the minister's preference arises out of an analysis that is not rigorous enough in determining what has gone wrong.
This has been a good debate and we have heard a number of considered and extremely constructive speeches. I thank all members for that.
Like other members, I emphasise the importance of delivering better protection for Scotland's children. Members have highlighted specific, appalling cases and have referred to documents that describe absolute horror stories. I do not think that anyone in a civilised society can tolerate the continuation of such incidents.
We have discussed the range of professionals who are involved in protecting children and the need for effective joined-up working. A range of Executive departments are closely involved in that and are brought together at ministerial level in the Cabinet sub-committee on children's services. The sub-committee provides a top-level cross-Executive steer to our work in the area.
As Deputy Minister for Justice, I have a particular interest in ensuring that the justice system works effectively to protect children and to bring their abusers to justice. A key part of that work is to ensure that children are supported in giving evidence in legal proceedings. It is of paramount importance that children receive special support and that the criminal justice system respects the best interests of the child. We are consulting now on how we can support child witnesses, both before they go to court and during court proceedings. The consultation includes proposals to establish a child witness support service, with the aim of increasing and improving the support available for child witnesses and co-ordinating the work of the many agencies involved.
We are consulting on a package of guidelines that will establish national standards. They include guidance on investigative interviews, on questioning children in court and on the provision of therapy to children that will not contaminate their evidence in court. We are consulting on a code of practice on how court familiarisation visits should be carried out to help to prepare children who go to court.
Just before Christmas, we published a report on our consultation paper, "Vital Voices: Helping Vulnerable Witnesses Give Evidence", which looked at how vulnerable witnesses, including children, can be given the right help to give evidence. We are now working on proposals for changes to the law, which we plan to publish before the end of March. We will focus particularly on the needs of child witnesses and on ways in which to reduce their anxiety and trauma, especially in cases involving violence or sexual abuse.
I turn now to some of the comments that members have made during the debate. Irene McGugan mentioned the feedback of concerns to agencies. Following the inspections that take place in each area, the teams feed back to the chief officers or their representatives the findings of those inspections, which makes a valuable contribution.
Irene McGugan, Ian Jenkins, Alasdair Morgan and other members spoke, in different ways, about promoting and valuing the role of social workers. We cannot say this too often: we value and support social workers. Ian Jenkins was right to say that it is unacceptable that the only time social workers seem to attract comment in the press is when they are being scapegoated and criticised, with all the good work that they do over the years being ignored. It is wrong to pick up on social work issues just when things go wrong. We value social workers and we are investing in them. In particular, we are investing in social work training and in child protection. We are putting in an additional £30 million over three years as part of a bigger package of support for the service.
Ian Jenkins mentioned communication between agencies. I think that that has improved over recent years—there are some good examples of co-operative working. We might suggest, however, that there is always room for improvement.
Scott Barrie referred to guidance and the use of refuges. The interim report by the working group on young runaways and children abused through prostitution recommends that the Executive should undertake an assessment of how local agencies deal with refuge provision, demand for such provision and models of good practice. Following that, additional guidance will be issued on the provision of refuges. We have identified up to £600,000 to develop work on refuge provision and will issue additional guidance when that is appropriate.
In a considered and thoughtful contribution, Alasdair Morgan raised a number of important issues. There are concerns about bureaucracy, which the Minister for Education and Young People has already addressed. Like other members, Alasdair Morgan expressed support for the profession. However, he was right to say that we cannot condemn those who criticise social work unthinkingly but not criticise social work when that is appropriate. Criticism must be balanced and must be made where appropriate. However, it should always be tempered with praise for all the good work that is done.
There seems to be a split within the Tory party on the issue. Some Conservative members recognised the value of investing in social work. Unfortunately, Murdo Fraser reacted in his usual manner, arguing that we need more policemen. We do need more policemen—that is why we have invested to provide record levels of police in this country. However, we also need well-trained and well-supported social workers.
Jackie Baillie was absolutely right to talk about the need for early detection. Many issues must not only be taken up in social work training, but be dealt with in social work practice, both in the voluntary sector and in local authorities. I support Colin Campbell's comment that we must always consider children's needs first. Social work is a needs-driven service. We do not determine how to support children simply on the basis of resources. The Executive—with Cathy Jamieson as minister—has a first-class record of putting the needs of children first.
Donald Gorrie and others raised some funding issues. I do not have time to discuss all the details of funding, but I have already mentioned the extra money that we are investing in social work training and child protection through sure start Scotland and the child care strategy. Under the 2002 spending review, we are investing £91 million over three years. We have allocated £22 million over three years to the aftercare of looked-after children. Donald Gorrie may be interested to know that £250,000 has been allocated to support diversionary activities, through the Duke of Edinburgh's award scheme. That money will make a valuable contribution.
Pauline McNeill—echoing Colin Campbell—touched on international issues. As well as considering what is happening in this country, we must always be aware of the developing international perspective on the horrendous trade in young people.
Jamie Stone asked about remoteness. The Minister for Young People and Education will reflect on his comments and give consideration to that issue.
All those who have taken part in the debate agree that we can and must take action in response to the findings of the child protection review. That action needs to be taken by a number of professionals and agencies, working together in a joined-up way. We need to provide a strong steer and direction at national level—on the detail of establishing standards, roles and remits and on helping to raise awareness and to change behaviour and approaches. We look forward to receiving members' support in seeking to achieve that over the next three years, as we develop and implement the reform programme.