Joint inspection of services to protect children and young people in the Stirling Council area
10 June 2010

The inspection of services to protect children
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in the Stirling
Council area was carried out in March 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.
The Care Commission carried out inspections of Stirling Council’s fostering and adoption services linked to the inspection of services to protect children. A number of recommendations and requirements were made and these are reported on the Care
Commission website, www.carecommission.com.
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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
Stirling council area is situated in the central belt of Scotland covering an area of 2187 square kilometres. It has a mix of urban and rural areas with most of the population in the City of Stirling and the towns of Dunblane, Bannockburn and Bridge of Allan. About one third live in a rural area. There is wide variation in the levels of prosperity with some communities experiencing relative affluence and others high levels of deprivation. Stirling council area has a population of 88,350 with 21.4% 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 increased between 2006 and 2009. The level of referrals is higher than that for Scotland as a whole. The proportion of children on the Child Protection Register (CPR) in Stirling is 3.9 per 1000 which is broadly in line with the national average of 2.9 per 1000.
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2. Particular strengths that made a difference to children and families
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Quick and effective help at an early stage for vulnerable pregnant women and their babies.
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Support provided by the wide range of flexible services.
3. Examples of good practice
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Think, Feel, Do programme in primary schools which increases children’s understanding and skills to help keep them safe from sexual abuse.
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Time4Us which helps improve relationships and parenting in families affected by substance misuse.
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How well are the needs of children and families met?
Primary school pupils benefit from information and advice about how to keep safe in a variety of situations, including when they use the internet. Police and school staff are also working well together to give internet safety advice to help parents guide their children. A few children who are at risk of abuse are given individual assistance to learn ways to keep them safe. A wide range of services is available to help and support children and families. Most families benefit from flexible support and practical help when they need it most to improve their individual circumstances. Some children and families are not getting the help they need early enough, or, for as long as they need it.
The risk of harm and abuse for these children increases as a result.
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Vulnerable families in rural areas have very limited access to services to meet their needs.
Staff take prompt and effective action to protect most children when there are concerns about their safety. They do not always take the necessary actions quickly enough to protect all children who are at risk of serious harm and abuse. Some children are left in situations which place them at risk for too long. Social workers and police officers support children and families through investigations and carefully explain what is happening and why. Staff are responding earlier and more effectively to concerns about vulnerable unborn babies.
Staff use legal measures when necessary to protect some children.
Other children remain at significant risk of harm when their home circumstances or welfare do not improve or their parents do not accept help. In emergencies, staff find places for children who cannot stay at home safely but they do not always carry out checks to make sure relatives and friends are suitable to care for them.
Some staff are working well together to identify and meet children’s needs. They need to be more consistent in the way they assess and plan to meet children’s needs. Many children receive very effective support through schools, early years and health services. Children and families receive valuable support to help them manage drugs or alcohol misuse. Time4Us is very effective in helping a small number of children and parents to manage the effects of substance misuse.
Many children get help from specialist mental health services quickly, but others have to wait for long periods before they get the help they need. Foster carers provide effective care for children and their wellbeing improves as a result. Some children who are unable to return home have to wait too long for a permanent place to live.
Staff take appropriate action in good time to try to trace children who go missing from school or nursery. Police and health staff act effectively to find children and families who go missing. A new system is being introduced to bring services together to plan for and to meet the needs of young people who run away. Training is helping staff be
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more aware of the risks to children who have been brought into or moved around the country illegally. Services are helpfully involving gay and lesbian young people in identifying the services and support they need.
Staff communicate well with children and families. They keep them informed about what is happening and build trust with them. Staff carefully observe very young children and those with communication difficulties to understand how children are feeling. Some children and families experience too many changes of social worker, or do not see them often enough to develop trusting relationships. Children and families whose first language is not English have easy access to translation and interpreting services. Staff do not always record the views and feelings of children well. A few children who are looked after away from home are helped by an independent supporter to express their views. Staff do not always ensure that the most appropriate person talks to children about important decisions affecting their lives.
5. How good is the management and delivery of services?
The ways in which children and families are involved in decision-making meetings is improving. Parents and children are often supported well to express their views which are taken into account. Parents are usually included in all relevant meetings but the attendance of children is more variable. Children and families do not always receive a copy of written reports in good time before meetings take place.
The quality of assessments of children at risk of harm and abuse continues to be highly variable within and across services. Managers should regularly review these assessments. The time taken to provide assessment reports to the Children’s Reporter is too long. There are often conflicting views among services about those children who may need to be protected by legal measures. Police, health and social work staff are now working more closely to gather and share relevant
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information when there are concerns about children. Child protection investigations are improving as a result. 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.
The quality of plans to reduce risks to children and to meet their needs is still very variable. Managers should carefully review the quality of these plans. Some plans are beginning to set out what outcomes need to be achieved for each child and family. For most children, they are vague and do not assist staff to measure progress. Plans to support children and families after their names are removed from the
Child Protection Register (CPR) should more clearly set out what is needed to keep children safe. The effectiveness of core group meetings to monitor and review children’s plans had not yet improved.
They should be held regularly for children on the CPR and clearly recorded.
Children who need permanent placements are still experiencing very long delays. Staff identify children who need a permanent new place to live but it takes too long for places to be found. There is inconsistency in meeting the needs of children in long-term placements, including those in kinship care placements.
Across services, senior managers are committed to reviewing their work to improve outcomes for children. Staff in education and police regularly review their work. Health and social work staff have looked closely at their records. Services have only just started to look closely at their joint work to protect children. This has yet to inform planned improvements. Staff, children and families should be routinely involved in this work.
Staff work well together to manage the risk posed to children by sex offenders and share relevant information.
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6. How good is leadership and direction?
Chief Officers, through the Forth Valley G5 public protection group, have updated their vision for protecting children. Chief Officers have strengthened their leadership, and the responsibility for protecting children is now clearer to staff . Health and police have given extra resources to strengthen services to protect children across Forth
Valley. Stirling Child Protection Committee (CPC) has not given sufficient leadership and direction to staff. It has not set shared aims and objectives or developed strong enough team working to ensure positive outcomes for children. Staff have little awareness of what the
CPC does and are not guided by clear priorities for action. Staff lack clear direction to make improvements to the quality of their work. The
G5 Group is committed to the development of continued partnership working. A well attended voluntary sector forum is helping to improve partnership working in the area. However, relationships are not yet sufficiently developed to identify what is not working well or to overcome barriers and find ways to improve services to protect children.
7. How are services improving?
A number of significant improvements have been made to services to protect children in Stirling and across Forth Valley. New procedures to ensure staff share important information when there are concerns about children are beginning to work well. Notable improvements have been made in recognising and reducing risks for vulnerable unborn babies. There had been some helpful improvements to the ways in which child protection meetings are organised.
Together, services are not ensuring that they continue to improve their work. They have agreed an action plan in response to the previous child protection inspection report. However, the plan is not sufficiently focused on providing better outcomes for children. There has been limited improvement across the areas previously identified in the last inspection. There has been a reduction in the quality of some services to protect and meet the needs of vulnerable children and families.
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8. What happens next?
We will carry out a follow-through inspection visit within one year of publication of this report and report publically on the extent to which services have improved.
We have agreed the following areas for improvement with services in the Stirling Council area.
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Ensure more children and families get the help they need at an early stage before their situation becomes more serious.
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Improve the actions taken in immediate response to children when there are concerns about their safety.
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Improve assessments of risks and needs.
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Improve plans for children and ensure their individual needs are fully met.
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Develop more effective ways of identifying what services need to do to improve and involve children, families and staff more fully in these processes.
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Strengthen the leadership of the CPC to improve services to protect children.
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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 of these for the Stirling Council area.
Children are listened to and respected
Children are helped to keep safe good weak
Response to immediate concerns weak
Meeting needs and reducing long term harm satisfactory
We also evaluated the following aspects of the work within the local authority area.
Self-evaluation weak
Improvements in performance
Managing Inspector: Jacquie Pepper
June 2010 weak
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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 outstanding, sector leading major strengths important strengths with some areas for improvement satisfactory strengths just outweigh weaknesses
Crown Copyright 2010
HM Inspectorate of Education