Joint inspection of services to protect children and young
people in the East Dunbartonshire Council area.
25 February 2010
The inspection of services to protect children1 in the
East Dunbartonshire Council area was carried out in
November and December 2009. 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. Example 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
East Dunbartonshire is situated in the west of Scotland and covers an
area of 175 square kilometres. While there are prosperous towns,
including Bearsden, Milngavie and Lenzie within the Council area,
there are also communities where there is severe deprivation. The
Council area has a population of 105,850. The percentage of the
population under the age of 18 is 21.3 compared to the Scottish
average of 20.5.
The number of children referred to the council for child protection
enquiries increased between 2006 and 2009. The level of referrals is
lower than that for Scotland as a whole. The proportion of children on
the Child Protection Register (CPR) in East Dunbartonshire is 0.9 per
1000 which is lower than that for Scotland as a whole.
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2. Particular strengths that made a difference to children and
families
•
Staff communicating well and building trusting relationships with
children.
•
Easy access to a wide range of support.
•
Staff are alert to the signs that a child may need help.
•
Effective leadership, giving clear direction to staff in child protection
work.
3. Examples of good practice
•
The use of the drama “CyberSpyder” to raise children’s awareness
of internet safety.
•
The work of the Befriending Scheme in increasing children’s
confidence through safe and positive relationships.
4. How well are the needs of children and families met?
A wide range of programmes in schools and early years services
strongly promote children’s safety and wellbeing. A theatre company
tours schools to raise awareness of safety, including the use of the
internet. Vulnerable children are assisted to develop ways of keeping
themselves safe at home and in the community. Children and families
are helped by having early and easy access to a wide range of flexible
and very effective support. They receive valuable practical and
emotional help from these services. Children who are known to be
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affected by domestic abuse or substance misuse are supported
effectively by children’s workers from Women’s Aid and addiction
services. However, the needs of all children affected by domestic
abuse are not always recognised early enough. Highly effective
parenting support is widely available and is helpfully tailored to meet
individual family circumstances. Parents value this service and
become more confident in managing their children’s behaviour and
supporting their development. Children receive flexible childcare very
quickly when they need it. Families at particular risk benefit from very
high levels of support from Action for Children and the homecare
service. A few vulnerable pregnant women are not offered support
early enough.
Staff are alert to, and treat seriously, concerns about children at risk of
abuse or neglect. They recognise signs that a child may be in need of
protection. Staff, particularly social workers, respond very promptly to
ensure children are protected from harm. Overall, police and social
workers work well together and are skilful in carrying out joint
investigations. Families are kept well informed about what is
happening during child protection investigations and legal processes.
Staff action helps keep children safe. They carry out very effective
initial assessments of risk, ensuring suitable support for children is
given. When necessary this includes moving children to family
members or foster carers who are suitably checked. Staff use legal
measures to protect children appropriately. Police and health staff are
not always fully involved in planning and carrying out investigations of
children at risk of abuse and neglect. As a result, not all children who
need a medical examination receive it.
Overall, local services run by the council, the health service and
voluntary organisations support children affected by abuse and neglect
well. This usually continues for as long as they need it, including those
whose names have been removed from the CPR. The health needs of
some children who are at risk of abuse or neglect are not always being
identified, assessed or met. Child and Adolescent Mental Health
Services (CAMHS) give high priority to improving the mental health
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and wellbeing of children recovering from the effects of abuse or
neglect.
Staff in the Delivering for Children and Young People’s Partnership
(DYCPP) are working well to make sure that vulnerable groups of
children are kept safe. Children missing from education are identified
effectively, monitored and supported. Procedures to ensure the safety
of children who run away from home are being reviewed.
Arrangements to identify and protect children who are brought into or
moved around the country illegally are being considered by the
DCYPP. More effort is required to raise awareness of the issues
created by young people’s sexual identity to make sure their needs are
met.
Children and families are listened to and supported by staff across
services. They benefit from consistent and trusting relationships.
Children on the CPR meet their keyworker regularly which helps them
to talk freely about their personal circumstances. Staff closely observe
and respond to children who are too young or find it difficult to
communicate their feelings and views. Staff seek the views of children
and families routinely and take these seriously. Parents and some
older children are encouraged to participate well during meetings.
Parents do not always get written reports far enough in advance to
help them prepare for meetings. Children and parents who could
benefit from the support of an independent person to represent their
views do not always receive this service.
5. How good is the management and delivery of services?
Staff are increasingly aware of the importance of meeting vulnerable
children’s health needs as part of child protection work. However,
health staff are not always sufficiently involved in gathering information
about children or planning to meet their needs. Health visitors are not
always included when plans are made for vulnerable unborn babies.
There is no system in place to alert school nurses to children who may
be at risk. Managers have reviewed the role of health visitors and are
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currently reviewing the role of school nurses to ensure best use of
these resources.
Social workers and police communicate well when a child is at risk.
However, in some cases social workers investigate concerns alone
when it would be more helpful for police and social workers to do this
together. Police officers do not attend all child protection meetings to
share information and jointly assess risks.
Paediatricians are available at all times to carry out medical
examinations for children. However, they are not always involved in
decisions about the need for such examinations. These decisions are
still made too often by police and social workers without appropriate
medical advice. Managers are confident that a recent agreement
between services will ensure health staff are involved more fully in
planning investigations. The wider health needs of vulnerable children
can now be fully assessed at a clinic in Glasgow.
Police officers are alert to risks to children living in situations of
domestic abuse. They always refer any concerns to the Children’s
Reporter quickly, but not always to other services. There is no agreed
system to ensure these children’s needs are fully considered and they
receive help at an early stage.
Using helpful guidance, adult and children’s social workers, police and
housing staff work together effectively. They share information and
assess risks to help protect children from sex offenders who may pose
a risk to them.
Senior managers are strongly committed to improving outcomes for
children. They direct and support staff and managers across services
to review their work using a range of methods. These include staff
surveys, group discussions and questionnaires. Early work has been
done to ensure such reviews include children and families’ views about
their experience of services and how they have been helped. Services
have still to agree a joint action plan to direct improvements based on
these reviews.
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6. How good is leadership and direction?
Staff benefit from effective leadership and clear direction. The DCYPP
oversees work to protect children across East Dunbartonshire. This
multi-agency group has reviewed and strengthened its shared vision to
keep children safe. The vision of the group is promoted to staff at all
levels and directs child protection work. As a result staff are clear
about their responsibilities to protect children. The DCYPP and its
sub-groups are directly accountable to Chief Officers in the Community
Planning Partnership. Planning and direction takes full account of
national guidance and meets local priorities. Together partners have
agreed a child protection workplan. Further work is now needed to
make sure that agreed tasks from this are completed and their results
monitored. Leaders show a high level of commitment to partnership
working in planning and delivering high quality services to protect
children. They actively promote joint working for their staff. As a
result, frontline staff work well in partnership to protect children and
support vulnerable families.
7. How are services improving?
Senior managers are working well together to strengthen services.
The DCYPP keeps progress under review and has recently renewed
the planning structure to help make sure that services continue to
improve. The recently introduced assessment format is helping
services to work together to carry out improved assessments of risks
and needs. Continued good work and improvements in services to
support children and families at an early stage is helping to meet the
needs of many children. There has been a sizeable increase in the
availability of foster care placements, and support for kinship carers is
developing well. Many children are benefitting from the school
counselling service which is on offer to all attending secondary
schools.
Service managers are making some progress in reviewing their work
together to see what needs to improve. They are beginning to look
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closely at their child protection work as part of a routine. This is
helping them become clearer about the strengths of their services and
to decide what needs to improve. As a result some improvements and
changes to services have been made. Services now need to focus
more on improving outcomes for children and families and on
improving their practice when reviewing their own work.
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 improvements.
We have agreed the following areas for improvement with services in
the East Dunbartonshire Council area.
•
Continue to strengthen systems to ensure the health needs of
children are met.
•
Identify, plan for and meet the needs of all children affected by
domestic abuse.
•
Involve health and police fully in all child protection processes.
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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
publication How well do we protect children and meet their needs?
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 East Dunbartonshire 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
very good
very good
good
good
We also evaluated the following aspects of the work within the local
authority area.
Self-evaluation
Improvements in performance
good
good
Managing Inspector: Joan Lafferty
February 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