Children’s Advocacy in the Children Hearings System: Children’s Hearings Advocacy Expert Reference Group: Communications and Engagement Sub-Group: January 2024

Attendees and apologies

Chair, Scottish Government (SG), Louise Piaskowski
Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection (CELCIS), Elaine Adams
Children’s Hearings Scotland (CHS), Edward McKim 
Partners in Advocacy (PiA), Pauline Cavanagh
Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA), Maryanne McIntyre
Scottish Government (SG) Pam Semple
Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance (SIAA), Suzanne Swinton and Marta Wittek
Social Work Scotland (SWS), Vivien Thomson

Apologies

CAPS Independent Advocacy (CAPS), Jane Crawford and Kyna Reeves

 

Items and actions

Items and actions

This note provides an overview of the discussion and action points from the meeting of the communications and engagement sub-group of the children hearings advocacy expert reference group (ERG).

The meeting took place as a videoconference on Thursday 18 January 2024. A paper containing a table of activity listing topics to consider progresses, proposals on how to act on these and a space to note progress/actions was shared for this meeting. This sub-group met last on 8 November 2022.  

Discussion on themes and ideas – accompanied by a meeting paper, Table of activity – proposals to consider

The purpose of the meeting was to support on-going strategic work recognising the importance of local discussions and engagement, as well as looking to national communications, which remains high on the agenda at expert reference group (ERG) meetings. An action was set at the 30 November 2023 ERG meeting to convene the communications and engagement sub-group in early 2024, to discuss activities in more detail and make plans for progressing these.

A range of activities were identified by the group to further enhance our communications and engagement strategy. The topics discussed included:

• Ways to support practice as a children’s hearings advocacy worker.
• Ways to support interest in work experience/careers as an independent advocacy worker/independent advocacy sector.
• Campaigning/national awareness days to further promote children’s hearings independent advocacy and independent advocacy broadly.
• Developing content on the hearings-advocacy website to improve access to information/resources for children and young people including more video and audio content about what independent advocacy is and how it can help, improving access to information/resources for professionals, and signposting to ‘top searched’ information. 
• What information may be required by children and young people in cross-border Deprivation of Liberty Order (DoL) Placements to explain the independent advocacy offer.
• Targeted communications with key Hearings System partners including social workers, teachers, health professionals, children’s careers (foster / kinship / residential) to support understanding and build confidence in improved referral behaviours.

The detail of the activities suggested to be progressed under these topics were noted in the meeting paper ‘Table of activity – proposals to consider progressing’.  The updated version was shared with this meeting note.

Next steps and actions

Actions

• Scottish government to draft content for new ‘professionals page’ on website, working with SCRA, SIAA, PiA on consistency of massaging and signposting.
• Scottish government , SCRA and advocacy organisations to work on developing new audio and/or video content for children and young people.
• Scottish government and all to ensure Vivien is copied into all relevant newsletters, websites etc so she can share materials with Social Work networks.
• Scottish government to consider best way to signpost to ‘hearing about me form’ and communicate/agree with Members by email correspondence.
• Scottish government to consider feedback regarding information about advocacy offer for cross-border Deprivation of Liberty Order (DoL) placements. This will include work on signposting for professionals on the website and possibly developing information packs for lead professionals when the advocacy service is first discussed.
• Scottish government and all to support information sharing across networks by members, send the group the details of the comms managers, social media/newsletters etc. in each of the organisations within the Provider Network and ERG.
• Scottish government and all to reflect on progress made ahead of next ERG meeting in March 2024.