Services for children and young people in Perth and Kinross are performing well and delivering very good outcomes for children, young people and their families, inspectors have said.
It follows a joint inspection of services for children and young people in the Perth and Kinross Community Planning Partnership.
The inspection was carried out by the Care Inspectorate with Education Scotland, Healthcare Improvement Scotland and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland between August and November 2017.
Inspectors looked at how well a wide range of services were working together to make a positive difference to the lives of children, young people and their families. Inspectors interviewed staff, senior officers and young people, visited services, and carried out a structured review of individual children and young people’s case records.
Some specially-trained young inspector volunteers aged 18 to 24, who have personal experience of using care services, met young people, listening to what matters to them, and had the chance to probe agencies about what they were doing to improve the quality of care for other young people.
Karen Reid, chief executive of the Care Inspectorate said: "We were confident that the life chances and wellbeing of children, young people and families in Perth and Kinross are improving as a result of strong leaders working together to deliver really high quality services.
"We saw investment in early intervention and prevention having a positive impact, particularly in early years.
"Tackling inequalities was a clear priority. A wide range of high-quality, flexible services were helping to strengthen family wellbeing and help parents to needed extra support or confidence to provide nurturing and stable care. This included specialist, often intensive, services for parents whose ability to care for their children had been affected by substance misuse, mental ill health and domestic abuse.
"Where children and young people were in need of protection, alert and attentive staff took proportionate action to ensure their safety and wellbeing .
"Leaders had firmly embedded a culture of reflection, shared learning and strong partnership working, in which staff and managers felt empowered to be innovative and creative to do their best for children, young people and families.
"We are confident that partners in Perth and Kinross will make best use of insights gained in the course of this inspection to continue improving services for children and young people, particularly by continuing to strengthen use of chronologies and ensuring sufficient capacity of independent advocacy for children and young people."
Notes to editors:
Across nine quality indicators used to assess the effectiveness of the partnership, inspectors graded two as ‘excellent’ with a further six found to be ‘very good’ and one ‘ good’.
The full inspection report is available here.