Key messages from the joint inspection of services for children and young people at risk of harm between 2021 and 2025

The key messages have been aggregated and cannot reflect the experiences of all children, young people and their families.

Key message 1

Effective responses and early recognition of risks by staff were helping to keep many children and young people safe. Staff were confident and competent at identifying a range of concerns for children and young people. The persistence, however, of the risks to children and young people posed by domestic abuse across Scotland, means it is imperative that all partnerships continue to prioritise collaborative responses to this.

Key message 2

The provision of early help and support to prevent harm was a strategic priority in almost all partnership areas we inspected. This support had made a positive difference to children and their families in these partnership areas.

Key message 3

The identification and response to concerns raised about an older young person in the community, or concerns if they were a risk to themselves or others, were not consistently effective. Overall, staff’s response to concerns was more robust for younger children subject to abuse and neglect.

Key message 4

Staff across all partnerships had invested significant time and effort into building and maintaining strong, positive relationships with the children and young people they supported. These relationships were built on an understanding of trauma informed practice and a strong values-based culture of involving families in decisions made about their lives. The majority of children, young people and families we heard from appreciated the relationships they had with staff.

Key message 5

Outcomes for children and young people in relation to their mental health remained a significant challenge for staff to address. This, coupled with an increasing complexity of need and a difficulty in access and availability of suitable resources, meant that staff across partnerships were not confident these outcomes were being met, despite their efforts to do so.

Key message 6

We saw a correlation between how well partnerships involved children and young people, and the evaluation given for the impact of services on them. While the majority of children and young people were listened to in their individual care planning and support, this was not consistently the case when it came to how well their views influenced service developments. The views of children and young people were more readily sought if they were care experienced than if they were involved in protective processes.

Key message 7

Staff, overall, reported more confidence in their immediate first line managers rather than strategic leaders. However, we noted clear links between staff’s confidence in strategic leadership, systematic approaches to quality assurance and improved outcomes for children and young people.

Key message 8

Effectiveness in the gathering and analysis of quantitative and qualitative information about the impact of services, and feedback from children and young people about the differences services were making, were clear areas for improvement across most partnerships. This was also the case for how partnerships sought and used the views of children and young people to develop wider children’s services planning.

Key message 9

We undertook some joint inspections during the period of the Covid-19 pandemic. In these, we found the quality of collaborative responses to risk to children and young people was effective in the majority of cases. We also heard many examples of staff going above and beyond their remits to ensure vulnerable families were helped. Staff also told us how well supported they had felt from their immediate line managers and colleagues across services during this challenging period.

Key message 10

We continued to see an improved picture in relation to our evaluation of key processes of assessment, planning and reviewing the care and support for individual children and young people, although we still saw variability in quality. The quality of chronologies in supporting effective decision making remained inconsistent.

Key message 11

Not all children and young people were benefitting from equity of availability or access to independent advocacy. The extent to which independent advocacy provision was embedded varied across partnerships. This meant that, for some children and young people, they had limited means of fully expressing their views to someone independent of decision-making processes in their lives.

Key message 12

Levels of poverty and deprivation across many areas challenged partnerships’ ability to address an increase in the volume and complexity of concerns about children and young people. Without further national attention, the wide-ranging impact of these issues will continue to hamper the efforts of staff to effectively sustain improvement in addressing the holistic needs of children and young people at risk of harm and their families.