This week the Scottish Parliament is due to debate child protection, after Peter Peacock, minister for education and young people, briefed the cabinet on progress on the audit and review of child protection in Scotland. He said, 'It is everyone's job to make sure our children are all right. It's not just a question for social workers, it's a question for the police, it's a question for health authorities and all the professionals that work within these organisations and many others in our communities.'
Irene Audain, chief executive of the Scottish Out of School Network, welcomed the consultation process and said it was right for the government to take its time in getting new processes right. She said, 'If you are going to consult widely it is going to take time. We tried to consult our members and others that have expertise, not just a few of our staff. It is good that it has taken time, because that means it's owned by more people.'
She added that nursery nurses and other childcare workers played a vital but possibly undervalued role in child protection. 'Out-of-school carers are important because they are more informal than schools,' she said.
'Workers develop a good relationship with children and they can pick up on things such as signs of abuse.
'Parents are more likely to talk to nursery staff when they are picking up children and say things they might not tell a teacher, social worker or doctor.'
However, Ms Audain said that childcarers needed additional training to act on signs of abuse and to liaise with social workers, teachers and healthcare workers. Ideally, she said, this training should be delivered jointly to help foster better links between the professional groups. 'We would say that people from across the sector can be trained together and learn about each others' roles. Then, if a nursery worker needs to call the local social worker, they may have met before on a training course.'
Ms Audain called on the Scottish Executive to insist that local authorities develop joint training on child protection that included childcare workers and was properly funded.
However, the Executive said no money had been earmarked for training and that the strategy was to use existing funding more effectively, and more details would be available when the multi-disciplinary standards for child protection are published early next year.
