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Social work departments could be brought before the courts if they breach a new duty of care towards young people, the Scottish Executive has announced, writes Amy Taylor.

The proposal forms part of a wholesale reform of children’s services, similar to Every Child Matters in England, designed to use preventive services to slash the numbers of young people ending up in the children’s hearing system.

The provision says agencies must ensure young people get the care they need, with those not fulfilling the duty called before a sheriff to explain themselves.

The proposals, which have arisen from a review of the children’s hearings system, include giving vulnerable children a lead professional to co-ordinate services and the development of integrated assessments between agencies to reduce repetition.

It also proposes a duty on agencies to co-operate with each other in meeting children’s needs and arrangements for information sharing and joint working to improve service delivery.

Ruth Stark, professional officer for the British Association of Social Work Scotland, said the new duty of care would increase bureaucracy and duplicate the work of inspection agencies.

However, Tam Bailey, assistant director of policy at Barnardo’s Scotland, said that one of the duty’s intentions was to try and elevate the importance of children’s hearings among agencies.

He said that it could help to solve the problem of agencies not allocating workers to service supervision orders given to children by hearings panels.

 
Ministers say that too many children are ending up in the children’s hearing system due to services not taking action early enough.

However, Bailey and Stark said that more resources were needed to deliver the executive’s aims.

Stark said that a key issue missing from the plans were measures on how to recruit a better range of people to become members of hearings panels.

She said that employers were not reimbursed when staff were absent due to working on a panel, which meant many people were unable to take part.

Getting it Right for Every Child – Proposals for Action from: www.scotland.gov.uk.