Joint inspection of services to protect children and young
people in the Clackmannanshire Council area.
29 April 2010
The inspection of services to protect children1in the
Clackmannanshire Council area was carried in January 2010.
We looked at the services provided by health, the police, the
Council and the Children’s Reporter. We also looked at the
services provided by voluntary and independent organisations.
Our report describes how good they are at protecting children
and keeping them safe. To find this out we read a sample of
children’s files which were held by these services. We talked to a
number of children and their parents and carers to listen to their
views about the services they had received. We also spoke to
staff in these services who worked with children, parents and
carers and to senior managers who were responsible for these
staff and the services they provided.
What we found and tell you about in this report is based on a
sample of children and families. We cannot promise that this will
be the same for every child in the area who might need help.
A team of inspectors gathered all the information and helped to
write this report. These inspectors have experience of working
across the range of services involved in protecting children.
Inspection teams include professional staff who work in council
areas elsewhere in Scotland.
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When we refer to children in this report we mean children and young people under
the age of 18 years.
Contents
1. The area
2. Particular strengths that make a difference to children and families
3. Examples of good practice
4. How well are the needs of children and families met?
5. How good is the management and delivery of services?
6. How good is leadership and direction?
7. How are services improving?
8. What happens next?
1. The Area
Clackmannanshire Council is in central Scotland. It lies to the north of
the River Forth and is the smallest of the Scottish mainland local
authority areas. The Council area has a population of 50,480 with
21.8% under the age of 18 years which is slightly higher than the
Scottish average of 20.2%.
The number of child protection enquiries has increased steadily over
the last three years. The number of children on the Child Protection
Register (CPR) in Clackmannanshire has also increased and peaked
between 2008 and 2009 when the number doubled from 29 to 58.
The proportion of children on the CPR is 6.0 per 1000 which is
significantly higher than the national average of 2.9 per 1000.
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2. Particular strengths that make a difference to children and
families
•
Trusting relationships built up by staff who know children well.
•
Services which help and support children and families at an early
stage.
•
Immediate actions taken by staff to keep children safe.
•
Strong teamwork by staff helping individual children and their
families.
•
The leadership of improvements in services to protect children.
3. Examples of good practice
•
The work done by services to support the safe use of the internet
by all children, parents and relevant staff.
4. How well are the needs of children and families met?
Staff in schools work well to help children learn ways of keeping
themselves safe from harm. They receive helpful advice about
keeping themselves safe when using the internet. Children have easy
access to drop-in sessions where they can get useful information and
advice about keeping themselves safe and healthy. School staff
identify children who need support and ensure they get the help they
need at an early stage. Families with young children benefit from a
wide range of helpful support services which they can access quickly.
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Family centres provide helpful support to parents and young children.
Staff from different services are now working together more effectively
to make sure most families receive the help they need. A few children
who experience neglect do not get support quickly enough to stop their
situation getting worse. Staff do not always make sure children are
given the help they need when parents are unwilling or unable to work
with services.
Staff respond to almost all children promptly and effectively to protect
them when they suspect they may be at risk. Children and families are
given helpful information by police and social workers to keep them
informed about what actions they are taking and why. Staff are clear
about their responsibilities to make sure children are kept safe and
they use the law effectively to protect them. They find somewhere
safe for children to stay if they are unable to remain at home.
Children who need extra support to overcome problems in their lives
receive specialist help quickly, including mental health services. The
Secondary School Support Service and attendance and welfare
officers are very successful in helping vulnerable children stay in
school. Some children who are affected by their own or their parents’
use of drugs or alcohol are supported well by a practice nurse. Staff
from Women’s Aid and the Cedar project successfully support some
children who have experienced domestic abuse. Not all children have
their needs met well. Staff are not alert enough to the needs of some
vulnerable children including those who are living in situations where
there is domestic abuse and children experiencing neglect. These
children do not have their needs fully assessed or met. In some
cases, staff focus too much on the needs of parents rather than the
needs of the children. Staff are not consistent in identifying and
meeting the health needs of school-aged children and those who are
experiencing neglect.
Staff work together very well to find children if they run away. A helpful
system is being developed to make sure these children are followed
up and get the support they need to stay safe and well. Staff in
education and health services have reliable systems to trace children
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who go missing. The Child Protection Committee (CPC) is aware of
the risks for children who may have been brought into or moved
around the country illegally. Services now need to pay more attention
to supporting young people with their sexual identity and the needs of
gay and lesbian young people.
Staff develop helpful and trusting relationships with most children and
families. A few children do not have regular enough contact with
social workers to build up good relationships. Staff help children to
express their views and listen to them when making decisions. When
children are very young or unable to communicate, staff carefully
observe their behaviour and development to monitor their well-being
Independent supporters are very helpful to some children and parents
and assist them to express their views about what they want to
happen. Overall, parents are clear about what staff expect them to do
to keep their children safe and secure.
5. How good is the management and delivery of services?
Children and families are now more involved in decisions about their
lives. Most parents are listened to and their views taken seriously in
meetings. The people who chair meetings helpfully explain what is
going to happen. Some children are helped to express their views at
meetings and take a full part in meetings. However, children are not
always invited to or are helped to be fully involved in meetings. Staff
need to give children more encouragement to attend meetings when
decisions are being made about their lives and to help them to give
their views.
Staff have improved their recording and management of information.
Children’s records are usually well-organised and contain accurate
and up-to-date information. Staff record carefully the contact they
have with each other, children and families. The quality of recording in
health records is variable. Information about children and their families
is not always used effectively by staff across services to produce a list
of significant events to identify those who need the most help. Staff
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work together well to manage the risk posed to children by sex
offenders by sharing information with each other.
There has been significant progress in how staff gather information
and assess the risks and needs of vulnerable children. Police and
social workers are now involving health staff more regularly to share
information at an early stage and to plan child protection
investigations. Guidance and training for social workers is helping to
improve how they assess risks to children. Managers need to ensure
that staff are more consistent in their assessments and pay more
attention to the risks and needs of children who are experiencing
neglect and sexual abuse.
Staff have improved the ways in which they plan together to meet
children’s needs. Meetings to discuss vulnerable babies work very
well to identify those who need help before they are born. Child
protection case conferences are usually held within agreed timescales
and are well attended. The quality of the plans for individual children
is variable. Some do not identify clear outcomes for children.
Meetings to monitor children’s progress are not always held regularly
enough and some are poorly attended by all relevant staff. School
staff do not always attend meetings for older children. Recording of
what happens at these meetings is not consistent. Planning for the
longer-term future of children is improving. Social work reports are
usually provided in good time for meetings and the quality of these
reports is improving.
When they plan child protection investigations, police officers, social
workers and health staff decide together if a medical examination of a
child is needed. They do this very promptly for almost all children and
medical examinations are carried out well by suitably trained staff.
Across services chief officers and senior managers are committed to
taking a closer look at their own work to improve child protection
services. A promising start had been made by the continuous
improvement group to look at and assess the quality of services. Staff,
children and families have not yet been fully involved in providing their
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views about the quality of services.
6. How good is leadership and direction?
Chief officers, through the Forth Valley G5 public protection group,
have updated their vision for protecting children. This has been
communicated effectively to staff across all services. Staff are now
very aware of the high priority given to child protection. Chief officers
have strengthened their leadership and the responsibility for protecting
children is now much clearer to staff. Staff across services are now
more confident in their work. Resources are shared across all
services to support improvements in services to protect children. New
posts to improve services and work to keep children safe have been
effective. Chief officers are working well together to promote
partnership working. There is a strong commitment to partnership
working by managers and staff. Managers in all services now know
each other better and are communicating and working well together.
Staff across services are enthusiastic about developing new ways of
working to ensure better outcomes for children.
7. How are services improving?
There are a number of important and significant improvements as a
result of the strengthened leadership for child protection. Senior
managers and staff are working hard to improve services for children.
The recruitment and retention of social workers has improved
considerably over the last three years. The Integrated Children’s
Services Plan (ICSP) now includes clear priorities for improving
services to keep children safe. The CPC has developed an action
plan to make necessary areas for improvement. There have been
improvements to the ways in which staff share information and now
they respond to children in who may be at risk and to meet their
needs. Together, services are monitoring progress and using better
management information to help them plan further improvements.
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Following the most recent inspection of services to protect children a
number of areas for improvement had been identified. The progress
made to improve these areas has been effective. Together, services
have significantly improved the quality of their work to keep children
safe. They have improved the ways in which staff work together to
protect children. Managers and staff know what needs to be done to
make services better. The experiences of children and families are
becoming much more positive as a result.
8. What happens next?
We are confident that the services will be able to make the necessary
improvements in light of the inspection findings. As a result, we will
make no more visits in connection with this inspection. Our link
inspector will maintain contact with services to support improvement.
We have agreed the following areas for improvement with services in
the Clackmannanshire Council area.
•
Strengthen assessments of risks and needs, and, improve planning
for children to ensure their individual needs are fully met.
•
Develop more effective approaches to identifying what services
need to do to improve and in doing so, fully involve children,
families and staff.
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Quality indicators help services and inspectors to judge what is good
and what needs to be improved in the work to protect children and
meet their needs. You can find these quality indicators in the HMIE
publications How well are children and young people protected and
their needs met? Following the inspection of each local authority area,
the Scottish Government gathers evaluations of four important quality
indicators to keep track of how well services across Scotland are doing
to protect children and meet their needs.
Here are the evaluations for the Clackmannanshire Council area.
Children are listened to and respected
Children are helped to keep safe
Response to immediate concerns
Meeting needs and reducing long term harm
good
good
very good
satisfactory
We also evaluated the following aspects of the work within the local
authority area.
Self-evaluation
Improvements in performance
satisfactory
good
Jacquie Pepper
Managing Inspector
April 2010
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To find out more about inspections or get an electronic copy of this
report go to www.hmie.gov.uk. Please contact the Business
Management and Communications Team (BMCT) if you wish to
enquire about our arrangements for translated or other appropriate
versions.
If you wish to comment about any of our inspections, contact us
at HMIEenquiries@hmie.gsi.gov.uk or alternatively you should write in
the first instance to BMCT, HM Inspectorate of Education, Denholm
House, Almondvale Business Park, Almondvale Way,
Livingston EH54 6GA.
Our complaints procedure is available from our website
www.hmie.gov.uk or alternatively you can write to our Complaints
Manager, at the address above or by telephoning 01506 600259.
If you are not satisfied with the action we have taken at the end of our
complaints procedure, you can raise your complaint with the Scottish
Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO). The SPSO is fully independent
and has powers to investigate complaints about Government
departments and agencies. You should write to SPSO, Freepost
EH641, Edinburgh EH3 0BR. You can also telephone 0800 377 7330,
fax 0800 377 7331 or e-mail: ask@spso.org.uk. More information
about the Ombudsman’s office can be obtained from the website
at www.spso.org.uk.
This report uses the following word scale to make clear
judgements made by inspectors.
excellent
very good
good
satisfactory
weak
unsatisfactory
outstanding, sector leading
major strengths
important strengths with some areas for
improvement
strengths just outweigh weaknesses
important weaknesses
major weaknesses
Crown Copyright 2010
HM Inspectorate of Education