Children's Hearings Advocacy Expert Reference Group minutes: July 2024

Attendees and apologies

Pam Semple, Chair, Scottish Government
Avril Muir, Angus Independent Advocacy
Eve Manderson, Borders Independent Advocacy Service
Kyna Reeves, CAPS Independent Advocacy
Elaine Adams , Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection
Mel McDonald, Children’s Hearings Scotland
Vicki Straiton, Clan Childlaw
Annmarie Denny and Nikki Speirs, East Ayrshire Advocacy Services
Julie Hutton, Independent Advocacy Perth and Kinross
Pauline Cavanagh, Partners in Advocacy
Melissa Hunt, Scottish Children’s Report Administration
Vivien Thomson, Social Work Scotland
Louise Piaskowski, Scottish Government 
Kay McKerrell, Who Cares? Scotland

Apologies

Donna Inglis, Advocacy Western Isles
Selwyn McCausland, Barnardo’s
Bryan Evans, Children 1st
Suzanne Swinton, Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance
Tom McNamara, Scottish Government 
Nick Rougvie, Scottish Government

Items and actions

Welcome and introductions

The chair welcomed members, noted the apologies, and introduced Mel McDonald, complaints management officer, children’s hearings Scotland practice and standards team replacing Edward McKim. Also noted was the retirement of Karen Pamler from borders independent advocacy service and departure of Cathy-Anne Dunn from advocacy Western Isles. Thanks to both were given for the contributions they have provided to furthering the children’s hearings advocacy provision. 

Actions and activity since last meeting on 30 November 2023

The chair noted no changes had been requested to the draft note of last meeting. The note was agreed. This will be published on the Scottish Government website. 

The chair provided an update on the actions and activity from the last meeting.

Staring with Group membership, the chair updated that the Law Society of Scotland are still working on identifying a Family Law Committee member to join the group, following Morag Driscoll’s retirement.

Action

• Social work Scotland (Vivien) offered to support SCRA (Melissa) with sharing the data on children’s advocacy in hearings with local authorities and Social Workers via Chief Social Worker Officers and the SWS Children and Families Standing Committee

Update

• Melissa advised this had happened and is looking for it to happen again with the latest information provided in the paper for this meeting.

Action

• Kay would take SCRA data to next NPN meeting for deeper discussion on learning points.

Update

• The data was discussed, and this new collection will also be taken to the group for further analysis and identifying learning to support improvements. 

Action

• Scottish Government would ask Edward if he wanted to provide an update for CHS in writing to be circulated with the draft meeting note

Update

• Completed. Edward’s update was brief.  He mentioned the transition of the Tribunal Support Model last phase was happening in April and this update was shared with members alongside the request to review the draft meeting note for 14 March

Action

• SCRA, SG and advocacy providers agreement remains to work together to conduct some auditing across SCRA records and reported numbers from provider organisations over the next 12 months

Update

• Ongoing, awaiting a full year set of data to discuss. The chair suggested a small sub-group might convene to identify what data we might want to use and be able to audit e.g. Research Scotland Evaluation Report, SCRA official statistics.

Action

• SCRA will speak to Children 1st and consider if a run of figures for safeguarders in hearings can be provided alongside the advocacy information

Update

• Completed. The latest update from SCRA has been shared with safeguarder panel as it includes information about safeguarders for the first time.

Action

• Scottish Government and advocacy organisations explore what the new Scottish Council for voluntary organisations (SCVO) training on how to become an advocacy worker covers and any opportunities it may offer

Update

• Ongoing. Pauline has worked on content on how to become an advocacy worker, testimonies, and other updates such as new signposting on the Parent Club website have been progressed. We plan to send the newly developed content to the sub-group to get their agreement before publishing. We will let ERG see final product.

Action

• Scottish Government to consider resource and opportunities to plan promotional/celebratory events over the year

Update

• Ongoing. Some members have shared ideas that are being considered and organisation plans will be brought to the ERG as they are developed.

Actions

• Research Scotland (Katy) to connect on research work with to help contextualise information and disseminate with: SWS (Vivien) for Social Workers and local authorities; SCRA (Melissa) with Children’s reports; CHS (Edward) for the Panel member community; CELCIS (Elaine) for Children’s Hearings Improvement Partnership relevant contacts/networks.

Update

• Completed.

Items and actions

This note provides an overview of the agenda, discussion and action points from the meeting of the children’s hearings advocacy expert reference group. Once agreed by members the meeting note will be published. 

The meeting was held as a video conference on Thursday 4 July 2024. Papers issued for this meeting included: the agenda; minutes from last meeting 14 March 2024; Scottish Government update paper; draft Referral to the children’s reporter guidance and Scottish children’s reporter administration update paper. 

Members updates

Scottish children’s reporter administration (SCRA) Update – a written paper accompanied this item.

The Chair invited Melissa to give an update. Melissa referred to the SCRA update paper which provided data from 1 March 2024 to 27 June 2024. The details were discussed, and highlights for this period included:

• eight hearings deferred with a reason of ‘for advocacy for the child’ in five different local authorities
• the total count of children with an advocacy worker at their hearing is 886 or 18.9% (total for the period is 4676 children)
•  the total count of hearings with an advocacy worker present is 1196 or 16.6% (from a total of 7211). This is a slight % decrease from the previous update provided to the March meeting where 17% of hearings were recorded as having an advocacy worker present
• A new addition (as requested by ERG members) is data on children recorded as having a legal representative and / or safeguarder
• 205 children recorded as having a legal representative (4.3% of all children at a hearing) and there were 319 hearings where a legal representative was recorded as being present (4.4% of hearings).
• 546 children recorded as having a safeguarder (11.7% of all children at the hearing) and there were 853 hearings where a safeguarder was recorded as being present (11.8% of hearings)

Melissa explained SCRA continue to be committed to some auditing across SCRA numbers and Provider numbers during the next twelve months but would like to wait until they have a year of SCRA counts completed and are confident in the data that is being produced. SCRA intend to produce a cumulative comparison report when they have 12 months of data collected.

Points of clarification were asked including whether the counts of children with an advocacy worker made any distinctions of which provision this was supported through (e.g. primary, alternate children’s hearings advocacy or local authority core contract or other). Melissa confirmed this is the total count for all means of advocacy support. It was also asked, and Melissa clarified the count of hearings with a child advocacy worker being present, does not mean the child was present.

Melissa explained this data will be shared with Locality Managers and senior practitioners. It is hoped the use of the data to support local discussions, including with Social Work, will improve referral processes and remove barriers and this is being actively encouraged. Where positive recurring conversations are happening, you can see it is having some impact. Children 1st have also been made aware of the inclusion of the safeguarder counts for the first time along with legal representative counts too covering the three supports together. Melissa will ask SWS (Vivien) for assistance to share again directly with the local authorities, and SWS group/networks.

The group agreed the data is useful and insightful in seeing where referrals are coming from and to help highlight where there could be improvements in referral patterns.

CELCIS (Elaine) contributed with an update on delivering with SCRA new training to Social Work in three Glasgow areas. The training will be run as pilot with a view to rolling out the package to other areas who have expressed interest. The training will have a focus on new and refresher on legal duties, report writing and will part of this also emphasise and encourage conversation and referrals into advocacy at the earliest opportunity. 

Children’s Hearings Scotland Update

Chair invited Mel to offer an update. Mel mentioned the collaborative work being taken forward to between CHS and SCRA, with the help of others too to introduce and provide children with the feedback postcards with QR codes to encourage feedback on how they experienced their hearings, good, bad, or wish to make a complaint. 

This is being rolled out in a phased way in localities, Highland most recently and Ayrshire will be next.

They have changed the corporate parenting part of the website get in contact / give feedback, and feedback can be given anonymously: https://www.chscotland.gov.uk/get-in-contact/give-feedback-as-a-young-person/
 
Since August last year responses have very low, around 10 items of feedback provided, and not enough to properly build a feedback loop process. Mel noted that some items, such as for example legislation, is not something that they could change, but practice, conduct, behaviours, skills such as listening of Panel Members are areas where action can be taken. The ambition is to be able to have a route to hear how children and young people are experiencing their hearings and address the areas where things are going well or need to be changed or improved.

Opportunity to market this and appreciating the role advocacy workers may be able to offer in helping children and young people to provide their views in feedback or to make a complaint if they wish to do so. 

Mel invited any feedback on the website or ways to improve engagement in providing feedback. Contact Mel McDonald by email mel.mcdonald1@chscotland.scot

Group members commented that being clear on what will be done with feedback is important to set out. How will the child/young person see the closure of the feedback loop? Everyone acknowledged getting feedback from children and young people is more difficult. Children will ask what will happen with the information they provide. Advocacy workers will often know what children and young people have been happy or unhappy about in their hearings, but they will only share this as a view if the child or young person wants them to do so.

Action

• ERG members asked to provide Mel McDonald (CHS) with any thoughts on the feedback process and information (leaflet and the website page) on how this could be better provided, and greater use encouraged by children and young people

National Provider Network (NPN) Update

Chair invited Kay as Chair of the NPN to provide an update. Kay highlighted the following themes and trends raised in the last period since March.

Good points have included great feedback on the CHS Regional Partnership Coordinators engaging well with the advocacy organisations, helping to ease referral pathways and remove barriers. Also, positive feedback on the way organisations have been asked to engage in strong interactions with Research Scotland on the evaluation work. The SCRA data is hugely helpful to add to the data set and it has also been a useful good practice tool to discuss with managers to see trends etc.

Non-instructed advocacy (NIA) guidance has also been developed by a sub-group of the NPN and training designed and developed by Partners in Advocacy. The aim is to raise awareness, and to build a consistent approach to practice within children’s hearings. Working in dialogue with SCRA and CHS on the guidance this has been written in a way to make the complex topic accessible to aid understanding of NIA practice within Children’s Hearings. Discussions on the guidance have been concluded, now the plan is to move forward over the summer with training for all the children’s advocacy workers through a train the trainer method. Awareness events will also be supported to help professionals develop their understanding of the non-legal, holistic rights-based practice.

Late notifications of hearings continue to be a challenge. It seems there is confusion about  who notifies the advocacy worker of the hearing times and place. Often children do not know, and information does not get passed to the advocacy worker via any other route. Children and young people express that they do not want their hearings to be deferred but they also want advocacy.

Another theme emerging was education, more children are experiencing disruptions to their education and there seems to be discrepancies in practice across areas, where in some area education is often involved, in others not involved or excluded from being involved. An example was discussed where a head teacher wanted to attend a hearing but was not permitted to do so. 

A final theme discussed was out of area placements and the impacts for the children and also in terms of service provision and practice. It is interesting to note the national shortage of placements, which is impacting on siblings being separated and placed out with their local areas. The first principle is to preserve the advocacy relationship however it is becoming more common for children and young people to be placed at distance so transitions to other advocacy services is sometimes the better option if in the best interest of the child and is happen more regularly. It is not always practicable for advocacy workers to sustain long travel and regular travel.

Vivien contributed that there is a national shortage of placements which impacts on out of area aspects and the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children numbers are also impacting on placement availability. 

It was also noted that difficulties social work profession is facing with staffing shortages. Fortunately, the advocacy organisations have had more positive experiences where recruitment has been going well and quality of candidates is high.

Elaine added clarity on a case point, mentioning the date, time and place of hearing will be communicated by the Reporter once they know advocacy has been instructed. If the advocacy worker lets the Reporter know they are supporting a child, they should receive notification of the scheduled hearing. Without this confirmation of instruction, the Reporter cannot share the information. Melissa committed to checking with areas what they are doing and who is involved in checking who is invited/should receive notification of the hearing scheduled time, date, place. The system is refreshed for each hearing so it is not taken as given that if advocacy was present before that it will be again unless there is a confirmation that this the case. Melissa also advised that we should be mindful of pilots running where some areas may be trialling different approaches.

Kyna explained often it is the review hearing stage where they are missed and only when they check back in which the children do they learn that a hearing has taken place. In these instances, the child is disappointed the advocacy worker was not there as they wanted them to be. Often this is down to social worker having changed, and the new social worker not thinking about making a rereferral.  Annemarie also shared that they have a good relationship with Reporters and let the local office know at earliest opportunity but also shared the same experience where they get missed off the notification list at the review hearing point.

Melissa added she would take a note of this point and look at what they may be able to do with the Reporters to prompt with new social workers if advocacy has been considered/is involved with the child.

Kay commented for NIA, this procedure will be different and will likely be missed if not counted as instructed.

Vivien asked about interactions with the NIA and if the material would be available for comment/sharing. Vivien contributed that the complexity comes from the rights issues, must consider parental rights in the non-instructed context. Vivien gave thanks for thoughts on non-instructed advocacy, looks forward to seeing the guidance and noted it will be important for those in the hearing system working to safeguard children to be aware.

Pauline emphasised the dialogue needs to change. Must uphold commitments to human and children’s rights. This is a systems issue, and gatekeepers of rights need to be removed. This is an area where advocacy organisations have great passion to drive improvements. NIA is in the national practice model for children’s hearings advocacy and is happening, the aim here is to provide more standardised approach and raise awareness to build confidence in its value. Advocacy is not a legal process, it is a holistic approach person centred human interaction.  

Julie contributed with agreement with Kay and Pauline in relation to NIA and changing the dialogue and thanked both for eloquently upholding NIA principles in independent advocacy.

Kay commented the guidance has been written clearly, with the intention of explaining the process and awareness through training to professionals is part of the plan. On the consent issues raised lawyers have reviewed the guidance.

Action

• SCRA (Melissa) will check in with areas on what they are doing regarding identifying who should receive the notification of the Hearings scheduled time, date, place

Scottish Government Update a written paper accompanied this item.

A few items were highlighted from the paper. Louise mentioned an agreement was reached on a flat rate £2 million budget for 2024-25. This was less than hoped for but a good outcome none the less. Negotiations had taken place on a one-to-one basis with all the organisations to agree individual allocations needed to ensure balance and sustain the totality of the provision. Offer of Grant letters had finally been issued.

Pam confirmed the external evaluation work was progressing very well to time, enabled by the fantastic help Kathy and colleagues at Research Scotland have received from all the members of this group.

Louise mentioned royal assent was achieved on 4 June for the Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Act 2024. Ministers are now considering the implementation schedules, removal of 1617 year olds in Young Offender Institutions (YOIs) into Children’s Secure Centres was a key focus, with indicative timeframe of end 2025 for raising the age of referral to the Children’s Reporter for 16 and 17 year olds with the necessary expansion of the children’s hearings advocacy provision. Also noted was the work being progressed to strengthen the regulatory framework around cross-border placements, with engagement events planned over the summer – more details on how to participate will be shared. Reflections were share on the impact on placements in this regard too. If the framework is proposing to extend to include all cross-border placements in residential care, what will be the impact on advocacy need? The group was advised of Wales’s intent to bring forward legislation to remove profit from children’s care. The commitment brings challenges and complexities with some concern, about an impact on the number of placements and possible knock on for cross-border.

Scottish Government highlighted a busy time for consultations running over the summer on support for people leaving care and moving on, Hearings Redesign, and Promise related consultations in the autumn on definition of care experience and future of fostering. Also, the Education (Scotland) Bill was introduced to the Scottish Parliament on 4 June 2024.

On Hearings Redesign, the third meeting was in May, with the next meeting scheduled for late July. A consultation is planned to consider the legislative elements – hoping to launch second half of July running for 12 weeks. This will be published on Citizen Space, and we will alert the group as soon as it publishes.

Finally, the SCRA Official Statistics have been published and are a useful source of information building the picture around trends and supporting the understanding around the advocacy provision need and demand.

Topics of The Promise and training for advocacy workers provided by Clan Childlaw were covered as specific agenda topics.

Update Children’s Hearings Improvement Partnership (CHIP) – a written paper draft guidance on referral to the Reporter accompanied this item.

Elaine was invited to update, and she explained the draft guidance document on referral to the reporter had last been revised in 2015. Elaine and Melissa (SCRA) with input from Vivien (SWS) too had worked on the refresh aiming to improve the language and format to make it easier for all to see how referrals should be made, including a refresh of the referral form. Elaine explained the tests for referral have not changed. Alongside the refreshed guidance (once agreed with comments from CHIP), there will be training materials. Elaine will let the group know when this is available. Elaine invited comments from the group, confirming she would be happy for people to take time to read it and email comments to her. Members said they had not properly looked at this and asked if they could take time to read. Elaine confirmed she would welcome any feedback and comments afterwards by email. 

Kay welcomed the extra time read this and agreed to take this to the National provider network for views.

Action

• All members invited to read the referral to the reporter guidance and provide any feedback and comments to Elaine Adams by email as soon as possible

Training and CPD

Louise confirmed funding has been agreed to work with Clan Childlaw again to provide the training and legal advice service for the children’s hearings advocacy workers under the national scheme. Louise offered a reminder to all the advocacy organisations to let Vicki and her team know at the earliest opportunity of new starts to get them set up with an account to complete the induction training. Louise also asked for support of the managers/organisations by responding to Vicki and team on communications that will be issued soon to plan for the follow-on training that all workers must complete annually. Vicki confirmed alignment of  resource for the service now via the main enquiry point meaning 5 days response to legal advice enquiries, new advocacy email and will be in touch with organisations soon to ask for views on topics to include. The United Nations convention on the rights of the child will be one and they will also look to confirm numbers to firm up arrangements for the training sessions.

The Promise

Pam highlighted that the Promise Scotland had launched their Plan 2024-30 website, with the intention that it will continue to progress and grow to ref6lect progress over the next six years. Members were encouraged to look at this, particularly the advocacy and legal support theme.

Pam also updated on The Promise Scotland scoping report on lifelong advocacy published in February this year noting the Scottish Government were considering the recommendations and proposals from this. The Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise will chair a ministerial stakeholder group to work together towards common objectives to meet the priority areas, including how voice of care is represented and feeds into work going forward.

An initial meeting of the group will focus on considering the potential approaches to lifelong advocacy for care experienced children, young people and their families and will be informed by the scoping reports. It was planned that a meeting would be held before summer recess, but this had to be postponed. Engagement will continue over the summer with interested parties, particularly at practitioner level, with a meeting of the group to be arranged after the recess period. Pam explained the Scottish Government would like to receive feedback on the scoping report proposals and recommendations to gain a deeper understanding of opportunities and challenges raised in the report and to work on potential approaches to deliver the proposals. Also noted was that advocacy is a recommendation in the Hearings for Children report, so output from that would also inform the discussion. Scottish Government is seeking views on best way e.g. in groups, individually etc to interact with stakeholders, including advocacy organisations over the summer. Requests to meet, interact with the Promise work can be made to the Scottish Government team, by email to ThePromiseTeam@gov.scot

Vivien indicated social work Scotland would like to meet with the Scottish Government promise team about this and would bring in a range of people to the discussion, at strategic and practice level. 

Kay agreed to take this to the national provider network for discussion and would feedback views on best way to engage the advocacy providers, possibly opportunity to contribute together and or individually to provide organisations own perspective and views. It was noted Who Cares? Scotland have already delivered its own report.

Action

• All members to consider The Promise scoping report on lifelong advocacy and the Plan 2024-30 and offer any feedback and requests to interact with the work to the Scottish Government team. Approaches and questions can be made via Louise and Pam or direct by email to ThePromiseTeam@gov.scot

Any other matters and date of next meeting – 4 July 2024

The chair asked members if they would like to meet in person for the next meeting. There was appreciation of some having further to travel but the opportunity to meet everyone was supported. Scotthish Government will look at options for a Glasgow or Edinburgh venue and confirm plans.

No other matters were raised. 

The date of the next meeting is 21 November 10:30-12:30. 

Action

• Scotthish Government to consider and communicate plans for the next meeting to be in person meeting