Joint Inspection of Children's Services and Inspection of Social Work Services (Scotland) Bill

Speech delivered on Thu 19th Jan 2006

The Deputy Minister for Education and Young People (Robert Brown)

This has been an excellent debate and I thank members of the Parliament and of the Education Committee for their support throughout what has been a fairly difficult process.

I begin by responding positively to Fiona Hyslop's suggestion that matters of child protection should be dealt with broadly on a cross-party basis. That is entirely right and is what ministers have tried to do with the bill. I hope that that co-operation will continue as we move forward.

From the outset, the Education Committee has expressed full support for the principles of the bill, and its recommendations and amendments were intended to provide reassurance and to build confidence in the joint inspection process. The bill is now more robust and provides the framework for a strengthened joint inspection process.

I will respond to those who have made observations on the bill, and particularly to the British Medical Association's comments. There will, of course, be an on-going dialogue with all the interest groups involved, and with the BMA in particular.

We are especially concerned about sexual health issues that may affect young people, as Karen Gillon and other members said during the debate. We must consider the matter further as part of the consultation that we will be conducting on the joint inspection of wider children's services, and that is the proper way to do it. We have a little more time to do that, without the rush that there might have been on the protocol for child protection services, and we certainly intend to involve all parties in finding the right way forward, taking account of issues such as the differing ages of those involved.

We can now look forward. Joint inspection will help all those concerned with improving children's services to develop a shared understanding of what good-quality children's services should look like, including the collaborative working arrangements that are necessary for the delivery of continuous and sustained improvements for children. The focus of the discussions on the bill has been the conduct of joint inspections but, as Iain Smith, Fiona Hyslop and Elaine Murray said, there is a much bigger issue behind the bill, arising out of the tragic circumstances of one or two individual situations. We must remember that we have not introduced the bill because we consider inspection to be an end in itself; the value of joint inspection is the contribution that it can make to improving outcomes for individual children and for children's services generally.

There can be no doubt about the determination of the Executive or the Parliament, or about our joint long-standing commitment to supporting improvement. We all share a common goal of improving services for all children, and we want every child to fulfil their potential and to be provided with every opportunity to succeed. Some—too many over the years—have slipped through the net. Too many are not getting good enough services to support their needs and to ensure that they thrive, and that is what the bill is all about.

Fundamental change to improve outcomes for all Scotland's children is at the heart of the Executive's priorities. The Cabinet delivery group for children and young people, which is chaired by Peter Peacock, has identified where fundamental change is required. Joint inspection and the improvement of services is one of five distinct, but closely related, areas of cross-cutting work that we have identified, and progress is under way for all of those strands to ensure that children are safe, nurtured, healthy, achieving, included, active, respected and responsible.

Joint inspection is part of our work to introduce co-ordinated arrangements for the quality assurance of services for children. In parallel with preparations for the joint inspection of children's services, which will be piloted in 2007, we want to see in place in every children's services organisation arrangements to assess and improve the quality of services across organisational boundaries. We want quality improvement systems for every children's services organisation, systems for scrutiny and inspection, and transparent and accountable reporting arrangements.

A key point is the joint inspection of child protection services, as Fiona Hyslop said, to which we have paid specific attention in Scotland, ahead of the rest of the work programme. I want to make clear to Parliament why, within children's services, we have made that our priority. Fiona Hyslop was right to point out that, amidst all the furore that we have seen in recent days, particularly in England, it is worth remembering that most abuse of children takes place in the home and involves family members or others in the family circle, and that much damage to children results from neglect or from parental addiction to drink or drugs, and that it can often be intergenerational. That is why the quality of the services that we provide to intervene and to support children is of paramount importance. That is why child protection had to be the first area of children's services to be inspected, and there was a commitment in the 2003 partnership agreement to that effect.

The reform programme is producing action on a variety of fronts to ensure that children are protected and kept safe. We published the children's charter and the framework for standards and have strengthened the role of the child protection committees. We are following through on the recommendations of the Bichard inquiry to ensure that we have a safer workforce and safer arrangements. In that regard, some of the issues that have emerged in recent days will be taken on board.

The joint inspection process will be innovative and we will learn lessons from it. The child's journey through the various services that they have received will be evaluated and when good practice is identified, it will be disseminated.

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Joint Inspection of Childrens Services - Full debate.