2.1 The most effective protection of children and young people involves early support within the family, before urgent action is needed, and purposeful use of compulsory measures is necessary. If children do require placement away from home, real protection involves attuned, trauma-informed and sufficiently sustained support towards reunification or towards an alternative secure home base when this is not possible.
2.2 The Scottish approach to child protection is based upon the protection of children’s rights. There are consistent threads running between enabling, preventative and protective work applying the GIRFEC approach. Child protection is therefore considered within a continuum of prevention and protection, with multi-agency support beginning with early intervention informed by the GIRFEC model of policy and practice. Multi-agency assessments are set in the context or rights, resilience, and relationships.
2.3 The GIRFEC National Practice Model - provides shared practice concepts within assessment and planning. Practitioners should be familiar with the core elements such as ‘SHANARRI’, wellbeing indicators, the My World Triangle, and the resilience matrix. Together they support holistic analysis of safety and wellbeing, dimensions of need and the interaction of strengths and concerns. The National Risk Assessment Toolkit integrates the national practice model in a generic approach to the holistic assessment of risk, resilience, and strengths.
2.4 Rights - Child protection is integral to the protection of human rights. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) underpins the GIRFEC approach. The child’s best interests, right to non-discrimination, and appropriate involvement in decision-making are key requirements. The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 supports implementation of the key aspects of the UNCRC.
2.5 Connections between safety and rights are further illustrated in “The Promise”, the Independent Care Review. The Independent Care Review (2020) listened to over 5,500 individuals, more than half of whom had experience of the ‘care system’. This Review emphasised the need to listen to children’s voices.
2.6 Voices – of children and young people shaped the Children’s Charter in 2004. The Children’s Charter sets out what children and young people need and expect to help protect them and promote their welfare. Each child who can form a view on matters affecting them has a right to express those views if they so wish. Those views must be listened to, understood and respected, and should be given due weight in accordance with a child’s age and maturity.
2.7 When a child is very young or has difficulty communicating, every effort must be made to understand their views and needs. Those working with babies must seek to understand the ‘voices’ of infants through their body language, verbalisations and gaze so that their feelings, preferences and ideas are heard, and their rights and views are upheld. The Voice of the Infant: best practice guidelines and Infant Pledge sets out what infants should expect from those around them. Infants must be supported to be active participants in all services they come into contact with.
2.8 The child’s experience, views and needs are central within child protection processes. Talking with and listening to children means attention not only to words but also to their experience, needs, wishes and feelings. Listening includes attention to non-verbal communication and to physical and behavioural responses to their care environment.
2.9 Relationships – protecting children involves listening to families, being clear and honest about concerns, giving choices and seeking co-operation. “All children must be supported to continue relationships that are important to them, where it is safe to do so.”1 The aim is to develop goals in collaboration with families on the basis of shared understanding.
2.10 In some situations, partnership may seem unrealistic due to services finding it hard to engage with families. This might be due to avoidance or aggression. Engagement requires exploration of the barriers to collaboration and of the factors that encourage motivation to change. Partnership can only evolve if processes and choices are understood within a trauma-informed approach.
2.11 Resilience – practitioners protect children by considering the holistic wellbeing needs of each child, and by building on those strengths and potentials in the child and in their world that will help them move through phases of stress and adversity.
2.12 Strength-based approaches – effective engagement to reduce risk is more likely within approaches which stress respectful and rights-based communication with children and families, build upon strengths that have been evidenced, address need and risk, and work with the interaction of relationships and factors in the child’s world.
2.13 Signs of Safety is a relationship-based practice model of child protection and family support, which is an innovative, collaborative, strengths-based, safety organised approach for practitioners working with children and families and was adopted in Dumfries and Galloway in 2018.
2.14 The model integrates respectful, open-minded, and detailed exploration of risk and strengths with step-by-step action to achieve and sustain change in order to increase safety. Plain language is fundamental to forming shared agreements in stressful and urgent circumstances.
2.15 Safe and Together is a model for working with families where there is domestic violence where we partner with the non-abusing parent and build on their strengths and successes. The model provides tools which support assessment and safety planning. This is also relationship-based practice and was introduced in Dumfries and Galloway in 2022.
2.16 Cultural sensitivity – and competence is necessary in considering the family perspective. It is essential to consider the child’s experience and consider risks, stresses and protective factors in the child’s world. Religion, faith and places of community and worship may be a key reference point and a source of resilience, identity and connection.
2.17 At the same time, risks and stresses are accentuated to some families by isolation, racism, food insecurity, poor housing, barriers to employment, and poverty.
2.18 A trauma-informed approach – should be taken in all child protection work. A knowledge of child development and the impact of trauma is required in relation to undertaking Joint Investigative Interviews. These skills are key in relation to the new Scottish Child Interview Model (SCIM).
2.19 Transitional support – continuity of planning and support is required when supporting children through transitions. The child should remain central to this.
2.20 For vulnerable young people making their individual transitions to adult life and services, it is important to consider that transitions might involve changing worker, service and moving home, and therefore are multi-dimensional for the young person, and that risks can increase as a result of emotional and relational transitions.
2.21 Local services must ensure sufficient continuity and co‑ordination of planning and support for each vulnerable young person at risk of harm as they make their individual transitions to adult life and services. ‘Transitions may be considered by services to be a ‘handover’ between services, and yet for a young person they are multi-faceted. Phases of enhanced risk may relate to emotional and relational transitions that occur sometime after changes in service, worker or home base.
2.22 Family Support – should be provided early whenever possible. Third Sector have a vital role here, providing collaborative and flexible support which is wide ranging. Preventative, protective and reparative assessment and action should be co-ordinated and streamlined as appropriate in each situation. Support can be provided in the family home or Family Centre settings.