child protection services

Valentine Scarlett, teaching fellow at University of Dundee explores innovative ways to support social work students meet Key Capabilities in Child Care and Protection. She describes her work with a range of pre qualifying students across disciplines to enhance their learning in child care and protection. By encouraging students to work collaboratively in this arena, she explains how joint approaches can be explored, assumptions questioned and potential future working relationships identified.

In 1996 the Scottish Office commissioned a complete revision of the existing guidance manual for Children's Panel members in order to bring it up to date, in particular for the new legislation. The Children (Scotland) Act 1995 was implemented in April 1997 and the Human Rights Act 1998 has since been introduced. Experience of working with the new legislation has brought about best practice guidelines.

Fife Child Protection Committee (CPC) Annual Report 2005 to 2006 and Annual Plan 2006-2007, illustrates the successes, the work underway and plans to build on continuous improvement in child protection.

The Kinship Care Practice Project conducts research, develops training materials, and provides educational opportunities to ensure safety, well-being, and permanent homes for children through collaborative work with extended families. This website provides the Curriculum Materials, which are intended to prepare child welfare caseworkers to engage family members of children in the custody of the child welfare system in development of a permanent plan for the child.

This Communication Strategy sets out the key strategic objectives of the North Ayrshire Child Protection Committee and how they can be implemented. This will ensure effective communication in all aspects of the work and interests of the Child Protection Committee. It is envisaged that this communication Strategy will operate for 3 –5 years, subject to ongoing review.

Certain types of charity are set up to assist or care for those who are particularly vulnerable, perhaps because of their age, physical or mental ability or ill health.

Charity trustees are responsible for ensuring that those benefiting from, or working with, their charity are not harmed in any way through contact with it. They have a legal duty to act prudently and this means that they must take all reasonable steps within their power to ensure that this does not happen.

In the Borders there are an estimated 1,306 children and young people affected by substance misuse within the family. The Borders Drug & Alcohol Action Team (DAAT) has, over recent years, become increasingly aware of concerns around the impact of parental drug and alcohol misuse on children and young people. Assessing this problem has been a very complex process, and due to the varying levels of awareness and activity between agencies, has been impossible to determine exact numbers of children and families affected in this way.

Research on families involved with child protection services in the United Kingdom reveal that many the families all share the common experiences of living on a low income, suffering housing difficulties, and social isolation. The children and families experiencing these factors may often feel that they have few choices available to help them. This learning object explores the complex issues that often surround these children and families.

These rules set out the procedures governing the constitution, arrangement and decision-making of children’s hearings. The rules consolidate and amend the Children's Hearings (Scotland) Rules 1986 taking into account the new provisions introduced by the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 and the Children (Scotland) Act 1995.