Children’s advocacy in the children hearings system: expert reference group: April 2023

Attendees and apologies

(Chair), Scottish Government (SG), Pam Semple
Angus Independent Advocacy, Mark Rogers
Advocacy Western Isles, Cathy Anne Dunn
Barnardo’s, Selwyn McCausland
Borders Independent Advocacy Service (BIAS), Lorna Ratky-Smith, Eve Manderson
CAPS Independent Advocacy (CAPS), Kyna Reeves
Children’s Hearings Scotland (CHS), Edward McKim 
Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection (CELCIS), Elaine Adams
Clan Childlaw, Vicki Straiton
Independent Advocacy Perth and Kinross (IAPK), Julie Hutton 
Partners in Advocacy, Pauline Cavanagh
SG, Tom McNamara, Melissa Parkinson, Kenzy Thomson, Louise Piaskowski, Nick Rougvie
Who Cares? Scotland (WC?S), Kay McKerrell and Denny Ford

Apologies

Advocacy Service Aberdeen, Kevin McBeath
Angus Independent Advocacy, Heather McMaster
CAPS Independent Advocacy, Jane Crawford
Children 1st, Bryan Evans
East Ayrshire Advocacy Services, Annmarie Denny
Scottish Children’s Report Administration, Alistair Hogg
Social Work Scotland (SWS), Charles Rocks
Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance (SIAA), Suzanne Swinton 

Items and actions

Items and actions

This note provides an overview of the agenda, discussion, and key action points from the meeting of the Children’s Hearings Advocacy Expert Reference Group (ERG).

The meeting took place as a videoconference on Thursday 20 April 2023.  Papers issued for this meeting included: the agenda; Scottish Government Update Paper; and a social media visual to promote the www.hearings-advocacy.com website.  

Welcome and introductions:

The Chair welcomed everyone to the meeting and noted apologies received. It was noted this would be the last meeting Lorna Ratky-Smith would join as she is taking on a new role. A welcome was extended to Eve Manderson who will attend in future to represent Borders Independent Advocacy Service.  A huge thanks and fond farewells were expressed to Lorna for the contribution she has made to the children’s hearings advocacy work. 

Actions and activity since last meeting

The chair confirmed there had been no corrections or amendments requested to the draft note of last meeting on 1 December 2022, therefore it was considered accepted and will be published. Topics covered at that meeting included a presentation from Scottish Government colleagues on Voice of the Infant: best practice guidelines and infant pledge (now published), and members updates, including from the Scottish Government. 

The Chair provided an update on the actions and activity from previous meetings, starting from 1 December 2022:

Action - Members were asked to provide comments or questions on the Practice and Policy Advocacy Response Summary provided by Children’s Hearings Scotland to be shared with Scottish government or Edward McKim

Update - The chair and Edward confirmed there had been no further feedback or questions raised by members.  Action was closed.

Action - Scottish government would invite Elaine Adams to provide an update on changing language in children’s hearings for the next meeting. action was closed.

Update - Elaine will provide an update at this meeting. Action was closed.

An update on actions from the 8 November 2022 communications and engagement sub-group was provided:

Action - SCRA (Maryanne) would speak to Our Hearings Our Voice (OHOV) about the possibility of working together on ideas to spotlight/promote the role of advocacy for children and young people within children’s hearings.

Update - This is on-going. Contact has been made with considerations being given to opportunities that may fit with OHOV work plan.

Action - CHS (Edward) would share contact details for the Scottish Association of Social Work to discuss communications opportunities e.g., a journal item.

Update – This will be followed-up.

Action – SG would speak with Charles Rocks about how and what we could do to support promotion of children’s advocacy services for children’s hearings and resources with and for Social Workers.

Update – A good meeting took place in November between SG and Charles. Charles provided an input at the 1 December 2022 Expert Reference Group meeting where useful context and ideas were shared.

Action - Scottish government would develop a paper of good practice for communications and engagement collating all the useful inputs put forward by the sub-group. 

Update - The development of the paper is ongoing.

From 28 July 2022, there were outstanding actions in relation to progressing an implementation plan to support the Skills and Knowledge Framework. Members endorsed the approach at that meeting with agreement to consider what they and their organisation could do to contribute to implementing the Framework. A meeting to discuss the detail would be planned for the new year. Updates would be covered under Training and CPD item at this meeting.

Members updates

Scottish Government update – a written SG update paper accompanied this item. 

Change to the agenda order, the chair invited Tom McNamara, head of youth justice and children’s hearings unit, Scottish government to provide the group with an update on two matters before he needed to leave the meeting.

Hearings System Working Group (HSWG)

The Scottish government have followed observer status within the Hearings System Working Group. It was expected the group will publish the report of considerations and recommendations in mid-May. The report will carry significance and complexity within this work for all partners. Ministers will take time to carefully consider all aspects of the report. There will be opportunity for transformational change, and SG would be happy to support any space and discussions with this group for considering the report outputs and clarity on details of any aspects that may emerge and relevant to children’s rights, participation, and advocacy.

Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill

Tom provided an overview of the areas where the Bill is proposing to make changes including the definition of Secure Care to clarify ‘deprived of liberty’ and ‘restriction of liberty’, future regulation of cross-border placements, and improving matters for victims were mentioned among other measures.  Tom mentioned the Bill is currently at Stage 1 of Parliamentary proceedings. The lead committee is the Education, Children and Young People Committee; however, the Criminal Justice Committee also have a keen interest in ending placements of under 18 year olds in Youth Offending Institutions (YOI) and related matters. The committees have issued a call for views from stakeholders and have held oral sessions with stakeholders too, with other to come. Analysis of the recently published responses to calls for views and surveys will be considered by Scottish government as well as the lines of questioning by the committees in considering what further matters may need further work and clarification at stage 2. The first evidence session with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Minister for Children and Young People and Keeping the Promise was with the Criminal Justice Committee on 19 April. There was clear support for the aims of the Bill. You can watch a recording of the session or read the official report.  The Minister for Children and Young People has been invited to give evidence to the Education, Children and Young People Committee on 3 May.

Within this group, it is recognised there is great support for the provision of raising the age for referral to the Children’s Reporter to 18 years old. We are particularly eager to work closely with the group in relation to the implications of advocacy provision for the higher age cohort of 16–17-year-olds. We would want to support discussions to fully understand and plan appropriately for the resourcing, sequencing, and capacity issues for individual organisations and collectively across all partner organisations.

Members thanked Tom for the updates on these developing transformational issues and acknowledged there was a lot of detail to process. Points of concern were made regarding obligatory attendance over proper participation for children and young people in their Hearings. A discussion took place where a point was put forward that the children’s hearings advocacy scheme is not where we would like it to be – whilst the aspiration is there, the willingness of all partner organisations in day-to-day practice is not. The power imbalances persist and the respect and regard for independent advocacy discipline is also not apparent and needs to be challenged.  The system needs to properly consider how children/young people are empowered and respected.  

Tom agreed with the views expressed and encouragingly commented that this honesty needs to be part of the dialogue. Tom stated that science needs to be applied to understanding how system wide certain issues are to know what the treatment needs to be. Changing culture is not a one-time initiative we need to apply method and dialogue to cultivate the changes needed. There is opportunity in this current transformative space to challenge culture as well as all other issues.

Members further commented that advocacy organisations are in a unique position directly seeing the power imbalance that need to be addressed. This is particular for children and young people – in how the system operates and power given to the adults and professionals within it.  Also, for the independent advocacy discipline to be given the understanding and respect it is properly due. Encouragement was shared that whilst structural change takes time, there are now 10 advocacy organisations with collective power to push the causes and the system wants to change. All professionals should call out behaviours that are not right – there is space to have feedback sessions after hearings. A framework to triangulate feedback locally may be useful, this was somethings the Children’s Hearings Improvement Partnership hoped to do at some stage. The HSWG outputs should galvanise how to do things differently.

Actions 

• Scottish government to provide detail on plans for responding to the HSWG report and how organisations can get involved once the report has been published.
• Scottish government to ensure advocacy organisations have a representative invited to the Children’s (Care and Justice) Bill implementation session on 5 June in Glasgow.
• Scottish government to set up bilateral meetings with advocacy organisation in considering further the anticipated readiness and implications of children’s advocacy service expansion for the 16–17-year-old cohort.

Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA)

The Chair confirmed Alistair had to give apologies, but he had provided a note of a couple of updates to share. Mentioned already by Tom, he noted the Hearing System Working Group is likely to report next month, and there is likely to be reference to advocacy. Alistair and Edward from CHS had met with Selwyn and Pauline earlier this week in relation to Non-Instructed Advocacy - the others will be able update the group on that discussion.

Children’s Hearings Scotland (CHS)

Edward provided an update on work led by the CHS digital team developing a culture of feedback through the planned roll out of a child friendly complaints process and feedback look – in the format of ‘you said, we did’.  Themes likely to feature will be how children and young people have felt they have been listened to, respected, heard etc. This is anticipated to go live in the next month or so.

CHS have been speaking with SCRA about having some form of information available in hearings centres for children and young people to take away to let them know how they can give feedback.  The idea being explored is using a QR code.  Edward considered there may be an option for advocacy workers to help raise awareness and/or encourage children and young people they are supporting to offer feedback.  This prompted a lot of good discussion about how generally feedback uptake is not as high as may be desired and questions.

Members asked for clarification on the timescale and what impact children and young people should expect?  Edward would seek clarity from colleagues, but Data Protection Impact Assessments had been carried out and issues had been considered in identifying the nature of themes to act upon.

Advocacy organisations considered sharing QR code/information about how to provide feedback to CHS could be a challenge and come into conflict with their own feedback processes and the associated challenges with that currently being experienced. Several matters were mentioned with regards to the process of seeking feedback including: 

• Fatigue – asking the same people over and over, an example of OHOV was mentioned. We need to be more astute at sharing/acting upon feedback already given. 
• Sensitivity – how child and young people are feeling at the time – one piece of feedback shared that had stuck in minds of one organisation was “why am I always asked about how well you/adults did”.  
• Choice and variety of options to provide feedback – needing to be mindful of offering options and being clear these are available for when they may be wanted.   
• Timing and framing – comments were made that the time and circumstances are also important to consider, asking for feedback can bring children and young people down rather than building them up e.g. asking if they feel they have been heard, may trigger the response ‘no I don’t want to be here’ involved in the hearings system.

There was overall agreement that lots of things have been tried over the years, feedback is not a new thing. Children and young people have been encouraged for a long time to give feedback about their children’s hearings and many discussions have been had about when and what to ask. To be responsive to need and improve services – feedback is a key part of that, but not the only part. Giving feedback should not be forced but children and young people should know they have options to give feedback if they want to about the professionals and service they interact with. 

Action

• CHS (Edward) will clarify timescales for roll out and responding to feedback with digital team colleagues and will provide the group with an update.

National Provider Network (NPN)

The Chair invited Selwyn (Barnardo’s/NPN Chair) to give an update on the network’s recent activities.  

Non-Instructed Advocacy (NIA)

Selwyn and Pauline from the advocacy organisations met with Alistair (SCRA) and Edward (CHS) earlier in the week to discuss the NIA guidance and statement template produced by the NPN group. All agreed it was a positive meeting which had highlighted some areas where interpretation and assumptions had been made.  
It also provided an opportunity to give clarifications for SCRA and CHS and highlighted some points to take away for further work. There was an understanding gained and acknowledgement that NIA is not a new role/approach, it is well established practice for supporting people who have complex communication requirements and/or disabilities. The work will progress on two tracks:  

• A focus on understanding and endorsing NIA approaches for children and young people with complex communication needs and/or disability with an action to look at how this is communicated across the hearings system partners. This included action to work together on practice note information that could be additionality to the Complex Communication Needs or a separate one; and 
• Further work to consider implications of capacity, resourcing, and what this would mean systematically as an approach for under 5-year-olds in children’s hearings. The action agreed was to return these questions back to the NPN for consideration.

It was further commented the rights issues for children under 5 years old will need to be given consideration in the context of UNCRC incorporation and HSWG report too.

Other common practice challenge themes

Other matters on the NPN agenda have included:

Referrals pathways - long standing issues and features with constant issue with late referrals and no notifications of the hearings meeting. 

Raising referral rates - across all areas referrals are rising, all organisations are busy. 

Recruitment and retention of staff – a lot of the organisations have been recruiting, this has been tricky in these particularly challenging times. 

Obtaining consent to meet/contact a child – guidance appears to be problematic from a legal perspective for anyone else giving consent other those with Parental Rights for children under 12 years old.  This has in particular been raised by social work colleagues in local authorities.   It has been problematic in practice settings having to go back to Social Work where consent has not been forthcoming for parents/carers and social workers are being asked to provide consent.

Actions

 

• NPN to consider next steps regarding implications of a systemic NIA approach for under 5-year-old. Considerations will need to be further reviewed by SG, SCRA and CHS.
• SCRA and CHS accepted NIA approach for children and young people with complex communications needs and/or disabilities. NPN will consider communications to ensure this is widely understood and practiced in children’s hearings including through an updated or new practice note.  

Scottish Government Update – continued

The Chair returned to the Scottish Government Update providing highlights and extra content on topics covered in the written paper.

Funding

The Chair returned to providing further information under the Scottish government update, mentioning funding of a total £1.81m in 2022-23 had been spent of the £2m budget. Scottish government are proceeding with authorisation clearance, and it is hoped grant letters will issue shortly.  Changes in ministerial team and processes public spending have impacted on timescales for getting the necessary clearance to issue these.

New Ministers 

There is a new minister for children and young people and Keeping the Promise, Ms Natalie Don. The First Minister, Humza Yousaf published on 18 April a new policy prospectus, setting out how the government will deliver for Scotland over the next three years. The policy prospectus, 'New leadership - A fresh start', describes three 'critical and interdependent missions' that will guide the Scottish Government in delivering a clear set of outcomes by 2026. They are:

• Equality – tackling poverty and protecting people from harm
• Opportunity – a fair, green and growing economy
• Community – prioritising our public services

The children’s hearings and children’s advocacy work sit across all three of these missions. The prospectus does not replace the programme for government 2023-24, which will be set out to parliament with planned legislation after the summer recess. This will be followed by the annual budget process, which will detail the Scottish Government’s strategic objectives for the coming financial year.

Monitoring and reporting 

Analysis of information for 2022-22 and 2022-23 will be completed. Quarter 4 / end year grant monitoring reports from advocacy organisations are due by end of April.

The Chair passed over to Louise to continue the update.

Cross-border Deprivation of Liberty Order Placements and advocacy

Since December another 4 new placement notifications have been received.  This is a total of 19 since Regulation came into force June 2022.   We are aware of 4 children/young people accepting the advocacy support.  The feedback provided through the focussed discussion with advocacy organisations in December on sharing experiences and learning was very useful.  The feedback is being considered currently within work to update guidance to provide some greater clarity of the process for practitioners including the development of a breach process.

Other updates

Louise drew attention to other updates provided in the written paper including the publication of OHOV 2nd Magazine, launch of the new statutory Independent Child Trafficking Guardian service. Work on Children’s Rights and UNCRC work, Siblings staying together and connected work, the National Care Service, and Youth Justice were also mentioned.  

Changing Language in the Children’s Hearings System

Elaine gave an interesting presentation to ERG members about what the Language Leaders Group, previously known as word busters, have done so far and gave a flavour of proposed next steps. 

The Our Hearings Our Voice (OHOV) young people have been working with the Language Leaders group to identify words or phrases that they would like ‘bin’ from the Children’s Hearings System.

Elaine explained the work that had been done through stages by the group. Firstly, collating two groups of words - those that needed to be ‘binned’ from the Hearings System and those that we need to keep, but described differently to prevent distress or confusion. There was a voting exercise and early attempts to re-write words for children and young people, and work to consider the essential positive Principles of Language. The report and detail of the project so far is available here: Leading the way | Our Hearings, Our Voice (ohov.co.uk)

The project aims to improve language in the Children’s Hearings System. The group really want to lead the way in making language in the Hearings System more accessible, personal, and caring.

To help the group identify words that can upset or confuse children and young people, they have created an interactive word bin. You can get involved, you can drag the words or phrases you don’t like into the virtual bin here:

Language in the Children’s Hearings System | Our Hearings, Our Voice (ohov.co.uk)

Communications and Engagement 

Louise was invited to give this update. As mentioned already, a paper of good practice is in development. The helpful contributions from Charles Rocks at the last meeting and the sub-group meeting in November are informing the paper.

Summary of website analytics was provided covering the details provided in the SG update paper.

As SCRA have done on their website, we are planning to review and update the hearings-advocacy website too. We are considering the top search information to ensure topics are covered, including whether there should there be a page for professionals covering training, info/guidance.

A new visual for promoting the website on social media has been created and was shared with these meeting papers. All organisations were encouraged to share this and promote the website.

An ask was made of members for views/agreement to provide SG with note of main comms person in each organisation and a note of live social media channels. The aim would be to share so network can actively support, share, and promote each other’s children’s hearing advocacy related activity.

It was highlighted that 24 to 28 April marks the first Independent Advocacy Awareness Week being supported by Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance.

Actions

• Scottish government to review and update the hearings-advocacy website. Consider any new resources that may be required.
• Members to provide SG with contact details of the person/s in their orgs who oversee their social media and communications work.  Provide a note of social medial channels/handles idea is to share with all to build a community to share/promote each other’s information.

Training and CPD 

Louise was invited to give this update. 

Skills and Knowledge Framework

The approach was endorsed by ERG last July. There has since been discussion and actions noted about organisations considering what their corporate response could be – so what we mean is detail of what you / your organisation could do to contribute to an Implementation Plan.

Louise asked the group has there been any thoughts, progress, updates considered by organisations. One recent example shared of collaboration was that CHS organised NES Trauma Skilled Practitioner Level training days for professional working within Children’s Hearings and with care-experienced children and young people and extended offer of free places to advocacy workers/orgs.

Louise also asked if a focussed discussion on this at the next meeting in August be helpful. This would give people and organisations time to consider the framework again.  

The group responded that there is support within their organisations for this but more time to consider would very much be welcomed.

Making advocacy real in children’s hearings training

Planning for this next year’s training is in early stages and will take on feedback gathered this year.  A thank you was extended to managers for supporting staff to complete the necessary training in the last year.

Highlights were shared from the Scottish government update paper and some additional quotes provided in feedback from advocacy workers who has attended the training sessions were shared with the group too. 

Action

• SG to put Skills and Knowledge Framework on the agenda for the next meeting on 10 August.

Reporting and Monitoring

Evaluation

The Chair confirmed this work is ongoing. Funding had been a key factor in the apparent lack of progress but there is a commitment to carry this out by 2024. We anticipate funding being available to do this although there are considerations which require clearance through SG to develop the final detail of the proposal for scrutiny. It will likely be a social researcher who will carry out the work.  The methodology is in place. There have been strong views shared that children and young people should have a central role in this work, with which we fully concur.  We continue to welcome feedback on any aspect of this work.

Reporting and Monitoring

Louise was invited to start this update. SG had good discussions with all organisations over the Nov to Jan period. We were even able to have one of our annual monitoring meetings face-to-face and hopefully be able to arrange more in-person visits this year.

Advocacy workers/orgs have continued to work on embedding the new feedback framework into their advocacy practice and engaging with the toolkit and the data collection processes around it. This continues to be discussed within NPN too. If things need changed, we will do this. As mentioned before organisations have been using the different tools finding out what works well or not so well.

Another example in reviewing the framework is feedback from children that one of the statements for Outcome 2 (Advocacy puts children and young people first and involves them in shaping the service) is confusing. The statement is “my advocacy worker was on my side and no-one else’s”.  Children and young people have commented “yeah, but other people were on my side too”.  This gives us an indication that the statement needs reworded to make it less confusing about what is being asked.

As mentioned, work is ongoing/in planning to provide analysis for the full year periods 2021-22 and 2022-23.

Themes from monitoring reports and discussions in the last period:

There is continuous and steady demand in referrals. This is a positive step in supporting children and young people to exercise their rights and have their views heard. All organisations reporting increases on rate of referrals (typical for those areas) looking at same period last year.

Good practice examples shared included a child in secure care wanted to attend their Hearing which was in a different local authority, quite a distance away. The young person has communication needs making virtual hearings difficult for them. So, arrangements were made to securely transport the young person to the Hearing from their secure accommodation. This worked out well for the young person and their family. 

Another specific example was cited where there had been clear communication sent out to the young person before, during and after their hearing. The information had been prepared and shared in a way that was accessible to the young person – in colourful pictures etc. It was noted some individual reporters go the extra mile. 

The Chair continued with the feedback.

Increase in deferrals in some areas. A range of reasons mentioned, including Social Work not turning up (possibly linked to the reported resourcing issues currently being faced by SWS), lack of reports, shortage of panel members, delay or lack of notifications of hearings for advocacy workers.

Referrals from Social Work – some areas continue to see late referrals to advocacy services.

A few local matters regarding clarifications around referral pathways/who makes the referrals and parameters of the hearing’s advocacy scheme have been raised and resolved. 

Late notifications of hearing dates/times – there has been continued late invitations to meetings, or late request for advocacy at children’s hearings.  Late notifications remain an ongoing issue – this is whether from social work, SCRA. 

There also appears to be a slight concern about maladministration, for example advocacy worker notified when the hearing is about to take place, but no child details attached. The time taken to seek clarification where not all information is readily available impacts on precious time to relationship build with the child.  Isolated incidents but impactful none the less.

Use of alternate provision. Conflict of interest main reason for use e.g., sibling’s parent/child etc. 

Support for parents/carers. Parents/carers being unprepared for hearings causing impact adjourned hearings / delays in decisions by Panel Members for children and young people.

New hearings guidance on attendance being interpreted/implemented differently in different areas (example included push for children and young people to attend). Children and young people need to know they have options to attend or share views for the hearings. Concerns that Social Workers/parents/carers may not be supporting children’s attendance at hearings where they have expressed to advocacy worker that they want to attend.

Information sharing remains an ongoing challenge in some cases. An organisation says they request that reports be put into easy read or child friendly format so that children can see and understand what is being discussed about them, and they can understand more about their lives. None of the requests for easy read versions have been actioned. This was in contrast to a good practice example mentioned earlier.  This further highlighting that we do not have consistency across Scotland.

advocacy workers are finding that many schools do not have adequate private rooms/space to host an advocacy meeting or a virtual hearing.  

Louise continued with sharing a few more positive examples of practice. 

Communication with professionals and carers, it was noted some social workers have a good understanding of the role of advocacy which allows them to effectively promote the role of independent advocacy worker and the added value they bring to sharing the views of children and young people. Some of the work to raise awareness in coming months should support enhanced understanding and aid communication in future. An example was also shared that there has also been a real willingness of foster carers to engage with advocacy to support the children and young people they care for. They seem to spend a lot of time explaining beforehand what advocacy is and how it could benefit the children and young people.

Any other business 

The next meeting is on 10 August at 11:00 to 13:00.

No other matters were raised.

Chair thanked everyone for their participation and input, noting the forum continues to air all things and helps to provide a strategic way forward. The meeting was closed.