National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland

The guidance provides a national framework within which agencies and practitioners at local level – individually and jointly – can understand and agree processes for working together to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. It sets out expectations for strategic planning of services to protect children and young people and highlights key responsibilities for services and organisations both individual and shared. It also serves as a resource for practitioners on specific areas of practice and key issues in child protection. This guidance replaces the previous version, Protecting Children – A Shared Responsibility: Guidance on Inter-agency Co-operation, which was published in 1998 and incorporates the Scottish Government guidance, Protecting Children and Young People: Child Protection Committees (2005). This guidance is in four parts. Part 1 – The context for child protection addresses the definitions, key principles, standards and legislative framework that underpin the approach to keeping children safe and promoting their welfare. Part 2 – Roles and responsibilities for child protection outlines the core responsibilities of services and organisations including statutory and non statutory services, third sector organisations, and church and faith communities. The role and functions of Child Protection Committees are addressed here, as well as the key responsibilities of Chief Officers. Effective leadership and staff development and training are also outlined as are the connections with other strategic planning fora. Part 3 – Identifying and responding to concerns about children provides a framework for identifying and managing risk and outlines the common stages of responding to concerns about a child?s safety. This includes early gathering of information, joint decision-making and planning, joint investigations and medical examinations and assessment and Child Protection Case Conferences. Part 4 – Child protection in specific circumstances gives additional information on dealing with specific circumstances that may impact adversely on children as well as addressing operational considerations in certain circumstances. While a range of special or specific circumstances has been included, the national guidance does not provide detailed guidelines on areas of practice/policy that are covered elsewhere. Rather, where appropriate, it signposts to relevant policies and materials or provides a framework of standards that local policies will need to consider.