Highland Council releases child protection action plan after Care Inspectorate criticism

An action plan has been produced by Highland Council to tackle weaknesses in its system to protect children at risk of harm after the Care Inspectorate delivered a very mixed review late last year.

In all, it contains 26 measures designed to improve on areas that fell short of the desired standard and all but one are on track to be completed or have been completed already.

But how far this can be implemented on the ground remains to be seen as the council struggles through a crisis in social work that it fears could lead to “critical to catastrophic” risks to children due to a lack of staff.

Despite that, the plan was developed alongside a child protection group that includes NHS Highland, the Third Sector, Police Scotland, and the Highland Child Protection Committee.

That group then updated the current plan “in light of the inspection findings” and it met to inform the draft proposals, which were shared with the Care Inspectorate before it was finalised.

There are four so-called improvement priorities that work like directives and service standards. The first – “children and young people are safer because risks have been identified early and responded effectively, this contains eight areas for improvement”.

The second was “children and young people’s lives improve with high-quality planning and support, ensuring they experience sustained loving and nurturing relationships to keep them safe from further harm”.

Improvement priority three was that “children, young people and families are meaningfully and appropriately involved in decisions about their lives. They influence service planning, delivery and improvement.”

And the final improvement priority was to “deliver collaborative strategic leadership, planning and operational management to ensure high standards of service delivery.”

The health and social care committee will discuss the plan on Thursday.

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