GIRFEC Champions

"Quality improvement through the child’s journey was the theme of the first ever joint Early Years Collaborative and Raising Attainment for All Learning Session held earlier this month. Over 850 practitioners from across health, education and social care – including the third sector – shared what they are doing locally to improve services and outcomes for children and families..."

"Announcing a new Improvement Awards Programme, Aileen Campbell, Minister for Children and Young People said: “The improvement awards will recognise and celebrate the work of CPPs and National Partners, act as a catalyst for sharing successes, provide examples of innovative change leadership and most importantly, recognise how practitioners are making life better for thousands of children and families.”

"During the learning session, delegates shared how their improvement work is making a difference. Argyll and Bute highlighted how they are working across agencies to test and spread a new family pathway to regularly assess children’s needs so that developmental issues can be responded to at the right time Ms Campbell said: “The time is right now to accelerate the pace of improvement and scale up what we know works in delivering prevention and early intervention."

http://register.scotland.gov.uk/scotland-getting-it-right-for-every-child-girfed-news-alerts/2015/55/26/e10edcbb-6fc1-4a2f-8761-a55b00ebdaca




Argyll and Bute Pathway from Children and Families on Vimeo.

Some of Argyll and Bute`s GIRFEC champions highlight their work.

"The pathway is about capturing key moments in a person`s life from pregnancy - all the way through to a child starting nursery."

[It is a bit ambiguous who the PERSON of interest is.]

GIRFEC underpins the work of the pathway and you can`t separate the two: so it`s Named Person to Named Person." [That`s the data flow of those key moments in a person`s life.]

Catriona Dreghorn, senior midwife, sums it up by giving a well scripted account: "The family pathway has more formalised, I think, what we probably did anyway."

 

That`s not true. There would have been no need to employ 500 extra health visitors to cope with the mountain of GIRFEC form filling - at a cost of £40 million - if that was true, and no need for Aileen Campbell to be going around the country drumming up support with an Improvement Awards Programme.

 

And there would have been no need to keep families in the dark about GIRFEC for so long.

 

When are we going to get some straight talking?

GIRFEC and Police Scotland

"GIRFEC is all about early and effective intervention – and of course about putting the child at the centre of that approach." So they say.

http://www.pkc.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=20961&p=0

It is also about Community Planning Partnerships - all state, corporate and voluntary agencies working together with a shared understanding of children`s wellbeing (common language) and a consensus about passing on information about children between the various agencies.

Alongside health and education, the police are an important partner in the Community Planning Partnership. From their document Getting it right for children and families and using language straight from the SHANARRI wellbeing wheel, they assure everyone that their mission is to keep children safe. 

Every child or young person has the right to be safe and protected, and to feel safe and protected from any avoidable situation or acts of commission or omission which might result in that child being exposed to demands and expectations which are inappropriate to their age and stage of development. 

http://www.cen.scot.nhs.uk/files/Outline_CYP_Act_Guidance_April2014.pdf
 

Well if that is GIRFEC (Getting it Right for Every Child) and the Community Planning Partnership it is not working out too well.

The following article from the Guardian exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of the CPP:

"Scottish ministers have appointed a human rights lawyer to investigate a record level of police use of stop-and-search after a damning report by the police inspectorate."

"An inquiry by the Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland found a series of failures by Police Scotland after the force increased the use of common law stop and search, dwarfing its use everywhere else in the UK. After revealing that 83 children under 11 were stopped and searched in six months last year without any proof of a crime – despite the force’s promise that it would end, the inspectorate said Police Scotland’s record-keeping on stop and search was riddled with errors and inconsistencies...."

"The Scottish justice secretary, Michael Matheson, announced on Tuesday that John Scott QC, a leading human rights lawyer and chair of the Scottish branch of the Howard League for Penal Reform, would now lead an expert panel to investigate the future use of stop and search, including considering a ban."

"Stop and search can be a valuable tool in combating crime," Matheson said, "but we must get the balance right between protecting the public and the rights of the individual. "As such, it is vital that stop-and-search powers are used appropriately, and we need to make some key decisions on how such powers should be used going forward. We need a clear, consistent approach which, as a society, we can all be agreed upon."

"Both announcements mark a U-turn by the Scottish government after Matheson’s predecessor as justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, repeatedly defended the practice, despite mounting evidence that it was being abused and unregulated. They are also a significant blow to the reputation of Stephen House, the former Metropolitan police assistant deputy commissioner who became the first chief of the new force Police Scotland...."

"A study by Kath Murray, at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Edinburgh, found that stop-and-search rates were four times higher than the rest of the UK because Scottish police were heavily using common law powers to search without evidence – a practice banned in England and Wales..."

"She discovered too that children under 14 were searched 26,000 times in 2010 without evidence or suspicion of a crime. That included 500 searches of children aged 10 or under, and 72 searches of children aged seven or younger...."

http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/mar/31/human-rights-lawyer-to-investigate-scottish-police-use-of-stop-and-search

All of this, including GIRFEC, leaves us to ask the embarrassing question: How come Police Scotland, one of the important partners in the Community Planning Partnership, does not know that it is inappropriate to stop and search children in a consensual search who are actually below the age of consent?

To use their own words: when the police stop and search children below the age of consent are they not exposing them to demands and expectations which are inappropriate to their age and stage of development?

Whistleblower threatened after 2 baby deaths

 HOSPITAL bosses threatened staff with police after a whistleblower spoke to the Record about two baby deaths in a crisis-hit neonatal unit.

Yesterday, we revealed how staff at Wishaw General feared that Junior MacLean and another infant had died as a result of cuts at the overstretched unit.But instead of addressing the problem, managers used scare tactics to hush up staff.

Junior’s parents John and Sarah last night backed the whistleblower for raising concerns about their baby’s care.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/health/hospital-bosses-use-shameful-scare-3342849

So, hospital bosses threatened staff with the police after a whistleblower spoke about the death of two babies. They claimed that the whistleblower breached the Data Protection Act - but this act was never intended to cover up inadequate services. Is that what they call a Community Planning Partnership in action?

Triple P parenting interventions

Perth and Kinross Community Planning Partnership (CPP) and the Dartington Social Research Unit (SRU) are working collaboratively on the Evidence2Success project. The aim is to collect data on the wellbeing of children in the area in order to be able to provide appropriate preventive and early interventions to enhance the wellbeing of children. http://www.pkc.gov.uk/article/4899/Evidence2Success

The Evidence2Success project prides itself on being able to provide evidence based programmes from around the world which affect the behaviour, mental health, education and physical health of the target population. One of the examples of a programme which meets this standard is the Triple P Parenting programme. http://www.pkc.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=19187&p=0

What is triple P?

The entry in Wikipedia indicates that Triple P is a multilevel parenting intervention aimed at the population level which aims to reduce emotional, behavioural and mental health issues in children and adolescents. All members of the population participate but `at risk` individuals are provided with tailored programmes. This program is based on the principles of community psychology.

Triple P, or the "Positive Parenting Program", was created by Matthew R. Sanders and colleagues at the University of Queensland in Australia and evolved from a small "home-based, individually administered training program for parents of disruptive preschool children" into a comprehensive preventive intervention program (p. 506).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_P_(parenting_program)

 

What do Triple P have to say about themselves? 

The Triple P – Positive Parenting Program is one of the most effective evidence-based parenting programs in the world, backed up by more than 30 years of ongoing research. Triple P gives parents simple and practical strategies to help them confidently manage their children’s behaviour, prevent problems developing and build strong, healthy relationships. Triple P is currently used in 25 countries and has been shown to work across cultures, socio-economic groups and in all kinds of family structures

       http://www.triplep.net/glo-en/home  

What do others have to say about Triple P`s effectiveness?

"One of the things that we were often told, again and again, was that Triple P was so great because it was “evidence-based”. I didn’t have access to university libraries at the time so it wasn’t easy to access articles, only abstracts, but I did a Google Scholar search and noticed that pretty much every article about Triple P featured the name of Dr Matt Sanders, who is the person from the University of Queensland who developed Triple P and is very involved in the materials, promotion and training development for the programme. I wasn’t able to get hold of the full articles due to paywalls, but this discovery did leave me with some questions about the evidence and the risk of conflicts of interest."

http://drjackiekirkham.wordpress.com/2013/01/30/some-thoughts-on-triple-p-and-evidence-based-practice/

Here is another:

"But the weaknesses revealed in a recent systematic review and meta-analysis of the Triple P by Philip Wilson and his Scottish colleagues show how apparently strong evidence can evaporate when it is given a closer look. "strong evidence" for a treatment evaporates with a closer look"

Such is the evidence that Evidence2Success supports. Moreover, it does beg an important question: Should we be trying to treat whole populations in order to target a few individuals, particularly when it involves breaching the privacy rights of the population?  

As it was, parents in Perth and Kinross were not given the opportunity to give or withhold their informed consent. Their children were surveyed using Evidence2Success before parents had the opportunity to peruse the very intrusive questions being asked. Excuses were made afterwards, of course. If Triple P is one of the preventive and early interventions provided as a consequence of the survey, serious questions need to be asked about the validity and reliability of these surveys and programmes.

See also: New research questions flagship parenting programme

The `OPT OUT` Option

　
According to the Courier.co.uk the survey held in Perth and Kinross schools did not have the consent of parents because they were kept ignorant of the questions:

A survey in which children were asked about sex, knives and drugs has been slammed by parents.

Perth pupils were asked to fill in the "wellbeing" survey as part of a research project, which could be rolled out across Scotland.

Sections in which children are asked about their weight, sexual habits, drugs and whether they carry knives have left parents furious.

Scales were even provided in some schools for children to weigh themselves and some classes were apparently told to keep the questions secret from their parents.

There are two versions of the survey — one for 9-13-year-olds and one for older children, the second of which contains graphic sexual references.

One shocked mother said: "The questions were totally inappropriate. If I had known the content, there’s no way I would have let my daughter take part."

At the same time the Scottish Government has not been open about its involvement in Evidence2Success. This is very worrying since the Social Research Unit requires councils to commit to a journey of change on the basis of the surveys. What change?  And who asked us?  See Scotland`s prying state Part 2

Early Years Collaborative

Eary intervention or a self fulfilling prophecy ?

The Children and Young People Bill stipulates that there should be a named person overseeing the wellbeing of each child in Scotland for the first 18 years of life, ready to spot concerns at an early stage. The role of the named person will be to mobilise services and instigate early interventions. The child plan will be preventative rather than reactionary. One of the ideas behind the proposal is that health issues and social problems such as criminality, substance abuse, unemployment and the like can be identified potentially in children as young as three, and therefore the most effective way of reducing the overall cost to society is to target the child and family early. No longer is the family to be seen as the lynchpin of society but rather the breeding ground for all social ills.

It is not difficult to see stereotyping at work in these ideas which tend to produce cultures of blame and oppress the poor.  Perhaps all totalitarian regimes begin by finding a scapegoat.  Be that as it may, this is social engineering on a massive scale and there is no evidence to show that surveillance of a whole country will produce the results claimed by the Scottish Government because nowhere has the experiment ever been done quite like this before. It is also rather simplistic because social problems tend to have social, cultural and economic causes.

Moreover, there are organisations such as AIMS (Association for Improvements in Maternity Services) who have experienced the devastating effects of child protection work on public health. HERE. Given the role of the named person to assess potential harm and the underlying philosophy of blame there is no doubt that many families will come to see the named person as a hostile agent of the state. As AIMS has noted when parents come under the scrutiny of critical health visitors and social workers there is a tendency for families to pull up the drawbridge and go on the defensive. Parents will not take the child to the doctor out of fear of being blamed for the accident. Mothers with the `baby blues` will hide it from the health visitor because mental health issues can result in removal of the baby. The stress caused to families and their children by child protection interventions can last for years even when children are not taken away.

There is another issue which is quite alarming when considering the targeting of young children as future extremists, benefit scroungers and criminals, and that is the phenomenon known as a `self-fulfilling prophecy`. For an example see the Association for Psychological Science  Make negative comments about a child often enough and the child will start to believe them. Produce those negative attributions from a number of sources and the effects are cumulative. Under the GIRFEC scheme there will be no escape, regardless of whether or not the assessment was fair; data will be collected by the named person. It matters little how sensitively the intervention is handled; the same data will be collated, shared and follow the child for the next eighteen years. The idea of making a fresh start,  turning a new leaf,  getting a break from it all, will be no more. I would not wish the enormous impact of that on any child.

Early Years Collaborative
The Early Years Collaborative involves social services, health, education, police and third sector professionals beginning to work together to improve Scotland`s wider society and economy by investing in child development from the start and preventing future problems. So says the Scottish Government following the European guidelines. That a whole country`s problems have been reduced to childcare in the early years is truly staggering. Isn`t Europe collapsing under the impact of corrupt banks?

So here are the distractors/collaborators: a Coalition of Community Planning Partners, all working together on this very ambitious project which starts with such humble beginnings: invest in child development. It is surprising that the police have anything to contribute towards reducing stillbirths or reaching targets for the developmental milestone of toddlers. Did they manage to achieve a shared vision with health and education?  

But where are the parents and grandparents? Ah! they are the ones who are going to be the recipients of the collaborators` expertise and their early interventions. Makes sense that they shouldn`t be involved I suppose. After all we live in a democracy, don`t we?

From the Scottish Government Website

News

Listen

Early Years Collaborative  HERE

24/01/2013

More than 750 early years experts will - for the first time - gather in Glasgow today to help make Scotland the best place to grow up.
The Early Years Collaborative - a coalition of Community Planning Partners, including social services, health, education, police and third sector professionals - will start to work towards three ambitious aims to improve children’s start in life:

• By end 2015, reduce the rate of stillbirths and infant mortality by 15 per cent;
• By end 2016, ensure that 85 per cent of all children in each Community Planning Partnership meet all expected developmental milestones at the child’s 27-30 month child health review;
• By end 2017, ensure that 90 per cent of all children in each Community Planning Partnership have reached all expected developmental milestones by the time the child starts primary school.

The new approach to better support children and families, has attracted interest from America and Europe and will enable experts to learn, share and work together to the benefit of local communities.

Children and Young People Minister Aileen Campbell said:
“I want to make Scotland the best place in the world to grow up and give every child the best start in life. Today marks the start of a new and ambitious approach to early intervention and investment in our children and families.

“Getting it right in the early years is the right thing to do for children and parents. By investing in development from the start, and preventing problems later on, the benefits go beyond families to Scotland’s wider society and economy”...