The annual review of services for children and young people at risk of harm in Scotland finds broad improvements, but the outcomes for some children remain poor.
A review of joint inspections for services for children and young people at risk of harm in Scotland, undertaken by the national scrutiny body for care services, Care Inspectorate, has found overall improvements.
Inspectors acknowledged a high degree of relationship-based and trauma-informed practice across services and observed staff in a wide range of universal services working well together to support families.
They also noted strengths in multi-agency responses to early indications of concern and the ways in which children and young people were involved in decision-making in relation to their own planning and support. In general, they also noted improvements across key processes of assessment, planning and reviewing.
“The Care Inspectorate and scrutiny partners will continue to reflect on, and where appropriate, act upon the learning gained from the findings of this most recent joint inspection programme,” said Jackie Irvine, chief executive of the Care Inspectorate.
“We will also review feedback we have received on the most recent joint inspection processes and continue to develop our approach. There are many areas highlighted in this report which will support our focus,” she continued.
Variability across partnerships
Inspectors also saw variability across partnerships in relation to some areas of practice.
These included multi-agency responses to situations of risk in relation to cumulative harm, poverty, deprivation, domestic abuse and mental health. Responses to risks for older young people in relation to community-based harms were, broadly speaking, not consistently effective.
The wider collation of children’s and young people’s views to help shape the development of services was not taking place systematically in every partnership area. The extent to which partnerships were able to measure and demonstrate the difference they were making to children’s lives also varied due to differences in approaches to quality assurance.
“In these joint inspections, similar to the previous programme, we continued to note certain children and young people whose outcomes remained poorer than their peers,” said Irvine.
She highlighted the outcomes for children and young people subject to compulsory supervision orders and living at home with their parents, which remained an area in which partnerships could not easily demonstrate an improvement in outcomes.
“For this reason, we will focus our next joint inspection programme on these children and young people,” she concluded.
