Barnardo’s Calls For A National Standard For Care Of Children

A children’s charity has called on the Scottish Government to investigate care and protection services nationwide after new figures revealing a record number of referrals also showed marked regional variations.

Barnardo’s Scotland believes the differences in child care and protection referrals suggest that some local initiatives work better than others and should be used to set national standards.

The call relates to the latest statistics from the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) which showed that five council areas had noticeably lower proportions of child and protection referrals despite the number of offence referrals being higher.

Three of those local authorities, Perth and Kinross, Angus and Dundee City, work closely with Barnardo’s Tayside Domestic Abuse Initiative, a unique Scottish service promoting interagency work between councils, police and charity workers.

The charity said the partnership was eliminating the need for referrals to the Children’s Reporter by helping victims of domestic abuse gain access to support.

Martin Crewe, director of Barnardo’s Scotland, said: “We urge the government to scrutinise the figures and look at the model in the Tayside Constabulary area to help identify practices that could be replicated across Scotland.

“We believe the reason why care and protection referrals are lower in Tayside is because of effective inter-agency work involving the police, social work and in cases involving domestic abuse, Barnardo’s Scotland.”

Opposition MSPs called for a review into growing “family breakdown” across Scotland following the publication of the SCRA figures, which showed that some 19,000 children were referred through “lack of parental care” in the past year.

Liz Smith MSP, Conservative shadow minister for children, said: “Research and experience consistently tell us that a secure family structure is the most likely source of stability for children. We urgently need to review in Scotland why this distressing and depressing trend is escalating.”

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said that there were no plans to hold a review or to investigate services further because the reasons behind the rise in referrals were already understood, as being “down to more children being identified”.