Joint inspection of services to protect children and young
people in the East Renfrewshire Council area
16 September 2010
The inspection of services to protect children1 in the East
Renfrewshire Council area was carried out in May 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.
1
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
East Renfrewshire is situated in the west of Scotland. It covers an
area of 174 square kilometres. Although it is one of the least deprived
council areas, 10% of the population live in one of the 25% most
deprived areas in Scotland. East Renfrewshire has a population of
just under 90,000 with 23% under the age of 18 years compared to
the Scottish average of 20.5%.
The number of children referred to the council for child protection
enquiries decreased between 2006 and 2009. The level of referrals is
lower than for Scotland as a whole. The proportion of children on the
Child Protection Register (CPR) in East Renfrewshire is 1.6 per 1000
which is lower than the national average of 2.9 per 1000.
1
2. Particular strengths that made a difference to children and
families
•
Children and families benefiting from high quality relationships with
staff.
•
Shared responsibility amongst staff across services for keeping
children safe and meeting their needs.
•
Self-evaluation effectively achieving improved outcomes for
children.
•
Outstanding leadership and direction provided by Chief Officers
and the Child Protection Committee (CPC).
3. Examples of good practice
•
What About Me? Project enhancing the experiences of children
affected by parental substance misuse.
•
Successfully tackling health inequalities for looked after children.
•
Improving children’s well-being through an effective approach to
joint self-evaluation.
4. How well are the needs of children and families met?
Children are benefiting from highly effective support to keep them safe.
As a result, children can identify trusted members of staff who they feel
confident to speak to if they are worried about themselves or another
child. They have a very clear understanding of how to keep safe when
using the internet and mobile phones. Children and young people
have participated in developing interactive programmes on-line which
help increase their knowledge and skills about how to keep safe.
2
Services have developed a wide range of ways to identify vulnerable
children and families and give them enough help at an early stage to
prevent problems arising or getting worse. Parents are getting helpful
advice and practical support to help them improve the care of their
children. Frequently the right help is given at the right time to reduce
risks. Better coordination of help with parenting would benefit some
parents especially those with the most difficulties. The What about
me? Project has developed a range of very valuable services to help
ensure that children whose parents have problems with drugs or
alcohol get a good start in life. Services could further enhance the
ways in which they share information about children affected by
domestic abuse to ensure children always get the support they need.
Staff review regularly the help they are providing to children and
families, making changes as necessary to ensure it is improving
children’s circumstances.
Staff across services have a thorough understanding of their
responsibilities to keep children safe. They are very alert to risks to
children and act quickly to investigate any concerns. They keep
children and families informed well about the actions they are taking
during investigations. They explain clearly what is going to happen
and why, and give families easy-to-read information about all child
protection processes and meetings.
Staff are using legal measures appropriately to protect children.
Where it is not safe for children to remain at home, they make
alternative arrangements for them to be cared for by relatives or foster
carers. Staff always carry out checks carefully to make sure children
are found safe and suitable places to stay.
Children’s needs are met very well by staff from different services
working closely together. Everyone takes responsibility for playing
their part in improving children’s circumstances. Families are given
high quality and carefully planned support to help them make and
sustain positive changes in the care of their children. A very effective
system is in place to ensure health needs are assessed and met for all
children who become looked after, including children who are looked
3
after at home under a requirement from the Children’s Panel. Routine
health assessments are not yet in place for all other vulnerable
children who could benefit from them. Staff across services have a
very good understanding of children’s needs and ensure services are
available to nurture children and promote healthy physical and
emotional development. Most children who need specialist services to
help them recover from abuse and neglect get them without delay.
Education staff monitor children’s school attendance carefully and take
appropriate action to trace any child who goes missing from education.
Services work well together to identify and support young people who
may be at risk of running away from home or from care placements.
Training for CPC members and a series of staff briefings is raising the
awareness of the risks to children who may have been brought into or
moved around the country illegally. Staff have involved young people
themselves in plans to improve services for those who want advice
and support about their sexual identity.
Staff across services know children very well and have an excellent
understanding of their particular circumstances and needs. Social
workers see children regularly, spending time with them, listening to
them carefully, and finding out and recording their views. They take
time getting to know young children and children with communication
difficulties, carefully observing their behaviour to understand any
changes which might give cause for concern. Staff communicate very
effectively with children and families and deal with difficulties honestly
and sensitively. They use interpreters well to communicate with
families where English is not their first language. They provide written
information in an easy-to-read form and give families enough time to
read them and ask questions. As a result, children and families have a
very high level of trust in staff to help them with any difficulties.
5. How good is the management and delivery of services?
The assessment of risks and needs is much improved. Staff carefully
gather and share information to identify risks to children at an early
4
stage. The information provided by health staff when there are
concerns about children is more comprehensive. Staff now need to
ensure that they routinely seek a medical opinion at an early stage
about all children who may need a medical examination. Staff carry
out skilful analyses of risks and make sound plans to keep children
safe and to make sure they get the help they need. Assessments of
the needs of children affected by their parent’s substance misuse are
carried out very effectively. Almost all children at risk have their health
needs assessed well. A suitably trained Doctor is available at all times
to give advice and to carry out medical examinations of children who
may have been abused. Older children who may have been sexually
abused are seen by specialist doctors in a suitable setting.
Planning to meet the individual needs of children has improved
considerably. Plans to keep children safe and to meet their needs are
drawn up quickly. Staff and families actively share the responsibility
for creating plans and making sure they are carried out. Meetings to
review the progress of individual children’s plans involve the right
people. Plans to provide support for children and families continue
after their names are removed from the CPR. Services now need to
make sure that police are more fully involved in decision making
meetings about children at risk and that health and education staff
submit reports routinely after sharing these with children and families.
Staff work well together to manage the risk posed to children by sex
offenders and share relevant information well.
Chief Officers and the CPC are strongly committed to improving
services to protect children and have high expectations. Staff are
always trying to improve how they work together so children and
families at risk get the best help that can be provided all of the time.
They are increasingly focused on improving outcomes for children.
Managers and staff across services are strongly encouraged to review
the effectiveness of their work. They routinely review what is working
well and what needs to improve. Staff work closely together to make
informed plans for improvement. The CPC is developing ways of
taking more account of the views of children and families who use
services to protect children.
5
6. How good is leadership and direction?
Elected members, Chief Officers, leaders of the Community Health
and Care Partnership (CHCP), and members of the CPC have a
shared ambition to provide excellent services to protect children. Chief
Officers and senior managers across services plan effectively together
ensuring that services respond at an early stage to improve the life
chances of vulnerable children and families. Chief Officers set
priorities to improve the quality of services to protect children and
resource the CPC to deliver on these successfully. There is a strong
shared vision of continuous improvement in services for children. Staff
are supported well to achieve high standards of practice and develop
new ways of working together. The Chief Officers’ Group take
collective responsibility for public protection arrangements and
maintain a strong overview of child and adult protection, and the
management of sex offenders. This approach could be further
strengthened by including domestic abuse. The CHCP and Education
Service have helped staff to work together in a better and more
targeted way to deliver services for vulnerable children and families.
The Family Protection Unit benefits from strong leadership by the
police. Staff across services are valued and recognised for their
contribution to delivering high quality services.
7. How are services improving?
Chief Officers and the CPC are successfully finding new ways to make
better use of management information to show how well services to
protect children are improving over time. Integrated children’s services
planning is delivering substantial service improvements which are
benefiting vulnerable children and families. The current plan is making
it easier to measure improved outcomes for children. The CPC is
starting to adopt a similar approach to their annual report and business
planning. The self-evaluation and quality assurance sub-group of the
CPC is delivering ongoing improvements in the effectiveness of key
processes and service users experiences. The CPC takes thorough
account of any issues identified locally and is keen to apply any
6
learning from national groups and publications. Technology is used
imaginatively to support more effective staff training and
communication with service users.
Social workers are supported well to reflect on their practice regularly
and make improvements in the work they do to help individual children
and families at risk. Supervisors of health visitors and school nurses
are now adopting a similar approach. There are many examples of
how the lives of vulnerable children and families have got better as a
result of self-evaluation. Multi-agency reviews of the safety and
well-being of vulnerable children in school catchment areas are
evolving successfully and resulting in improvements in meeting
children’s needs.
The main actions Chief Officers and the CPC were asked to take
forward from the previous inspection have resulted in significant
improvements to services. The health and development of children in
need of protection has improved due to the provision of a
comprehensive child protection medical examination service. Risks to
children are being reduced and their needs better met within shorter
timescales due to more effective planning for individual children.
Parents’ reports to child protection case conferences are routinely
submitted and are starting to be analysed to inform future service
development. The views of children whose names are on the CPR are
recorded more fully and systematically using their own words when
possible.
8. What happens next?
We are confident that services will continue to provide a very high
quality of provision and will be able to make further improvements
in the light of 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.
7
We have agreed the following area for improvement with services in
the East Renfrewshire Council area.
•
Further develop ways to measure improved outcomes for children
in need of protection.
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 of these for the East Renfrewshire 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
excellent
very good
very good
very good
We also evaluated the following aspects of the work within the local
authority area.
Self-evaluation
Improvements in performance
very good
very good
Managing Inspector: Emma McWilliam
September 2010
8
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