144 youngsters registered with Children’s Reporter have died in last six years
ALMOST 150 of Scotland’s most vulnerable kids have died in just six years despite being registered with the Children’s Reporter, we can reveal today.
The youngsters – 30 of them under two – died after being reported to the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration – a public body who protect children at risk.
We can reveal that between January 2003 and June this year, 144 children and young people referred to SCRA died.
Yesterday, experts and politicians called for an urgent investigation into the tragic death toll and for more thorough inquiries into vulnerable children who die.
Child protection expert Alyson Leslie has been involved in four serious case reviews in England in the past year and chairs the General Medical Council’s disciplinary hearings.
She fears Scotland is not learning lessons from the death of children.
Alyson said: “The death of any child in any circumstances is a devastating tragedy.
“It has to be mourned, marked – and learned from.
“In England, the deaths of all children are monitored by local child death overview panels made up of healthcare and other professionals.
“They will look at child deaths to see if there are patterns.
“Also in England, suspicious, violent, unexpected or unnatural deaths of children are referred to the coroner, whose role it is to determine the cause of death and often to learn lessons.
“In Scotland, a fatal accident inquiry can be held by a sheriff whose jurisdiction and powers, in this regard, are more limited than an English coroner.
“FAIs, however, are not mandatory for deaths of children under the care of the local authority.
“We don’t have a system sufficiently comprehensive, robust or accountable in Scotland to give us the chance to understand why these children have died, whether the deaths were preventable and what we can learn from them.”
Labour’s Duncan McNeil, MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, echoed concern at the shocking death toll.
He said: “The scale of the problem is horrific and no stone should be left unturned in investigating every one of these deaths.
“If we are to reduce this tragic death toll, we need to understand how these children lived and the circumstances of their death.
“The new education secretary Mike Russell must take on this issue as a matter of urgency to bring about an inquiry to ensure all the lessons are learned and services are there for the future.”
In 2008-9, there were 47,178 children referred to the Children’s Reporter – one in 20 children in Scotland.
They were referred either because of concerns about their welfare or because they had committed an offence.
The police referred 88 per cent of cases, with social workers and teacher referring most of the rest. Of the 144 youngsters who died, 48 were aged 15 or over.
But shockingly, 30 of the deaths were children under the age of two.
In eight cases, children had been referred because of parental drug abuse, six because of domestic abuse and five because the child was born with drug withdrawal symptoms.
Other reasons were the child being born with health problems, homelessness, violence or aggression and the parents’ inability to care for the child.
Scotland has 32 council social work departments.
Yet, half of youngsters reported to the Children’s Reporter are not on the “at risk” register.
Once the SCRA receive a referral, they investigate the child’s circumstances by contacting the parents, social workers and teachers.
If they decide that supervision measures are needed, the case is passed to a Children’s Hearing.
The panel members can make a supervision order for the children to ensure they are being cared for, or in the most serious cases the children are taken into care.
The Children’s Reporter describes their aim as “providing a safety net for vulnerable children and deliver tailored solutions which meet the needs of the individuals involved, while helping to build stronger families and safer communities”.
The public body is headed by £90,000-a-year chief executive Netta MacIver.
She said last night: “The death of any child is tragic and sad.
“What our research points to is the need to understand more about the vulnerability of both our youngest children and young people approaching adulthood.
“The deaths recorded in these two age groups need to be a concern for us all.”
WASTED LIFE OF DEREK, 2
Little Derek Doran is one of the 144 young victims who died after being referred to the Children’s Reporter.
The two-year-old died after swallowing the heroin substitute methadone.
Parents Lisa Dodds and Derek Doran Snr were charged with their son’s murder after he was found dead in his bed in Edinburgh in 2006.
The case against them was later dropped.
Police believed he was fed methadone to put him to sleep because he wouldn’t stop crying – an allegation denied by Dodds.
She claimed she spilled the bottle on the carpet, cleared it up and put it in the bin.
She said her son licked enough methadone off the carpet to kill himself.
Agencies across the country are being urged to ensure vulnerable children are not falling through the cracks in our care system with improved reporting criteria and better inter-agency work to protect the most vulnerable kids.
The Scottish government are ploughing £500,000 into a three-year push to unite various agencies working to protect children.
Council social workers deal with families and their at-risk children in tandem with alerting the SCRA.
If a child is over the age of eight, the legal age of criminality in Scotland, the SCRA are informed if that child commits an offence and a hearing is convened to meet the needs of the child.
Critics say this multi-agency approach could be endangering lives of the most vulnerable members of our community.
Professor Brigid Daniel, head of social work at Stirling University and an expert in child protection, is heading the government push.
She said: “This is an initiative that aims to do something active and positive about equipping staff with the information they need to be able to support children.”
