Launch of Fresh Start

The hypocrisy of the Scottish Government

Robust guidance required for Named Persons

"Guidance for professionals involved in the Scottish Government's named person scheme must be straight-forward and accessible, a Holyrood committee has been told."
 
"MSPs on the Education Committee heard confusion surrounding a code of practice for the scheme could result in teachers and health visitors becoming defensive about sharing information about children."

"One of the main changes put forward in the new Children and Young People (Information Sharing) (Scotland) Bill is that a duty to share information which could support, promote or safeguard the well-being of a child would become a duty to consider whether to share that information. However there are concerns an accompanying draft code of practice, aimed at helping named persons make decisions on data sharing, lacks clarity. Jackie Niccolls, of the Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership, told MSPs that staff need `robust guidance` on what information they can share, and reassurance that they are not going to be personally liable if they share or do not share information."

Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/named-person-scheme-must-have-robust-guidance-holyrood-committee-told-1-4571341

Child abuse panel members were bullied

Published on 11 Aug 2017

"`How can there be an independent inquiry if there's no place to complain?` asks Sharon Evans, CEO of Dot com Children's Foundation, who is one of the two members from the child abuse panel warning that inquiries aren't independent from the government."

Special series in Sunday Guardian

More from Suranya Aiyar in collaboration with various other campaigners against child protection abuse:

"The most suspect and frustrating of all in child protection cases I hold to be the absence of any requirement of proof, of stated and reasoned cause, or of concrete answers. Allegations are made without any form of documentation, just expressions like `we think` and `our assessment"` The County Committees accept vague, undefined claims and arguments, and do not demand anything in the way of quality control and concrete justification for the CWS’s conclusions. I have lost count of how many times I have read, and heard, that the answer of the CWS to questions is that there has been a `professional assessment based on child expertise`, an undefinable phrase which even the Ministry of Children and Equality says does not give a concrete explanation of anything at all. Or the proposed measures are said to `have been assessed to be in the best interest of the child`. It is never revealed what these `assessments` consist of, what the background for the `assessments` is, and which concrete points constitute the basis of the assessments."

http://www.sundayguardianlive.com/lifestyle/11055-norway-s-child-confiscation-policies-are-disastrous-unjust