Scottish Government

Title

Child Protection Inspection findings: Increase the proportion of local authority areas receiving positive inspection reports.

Associated Targets

Brief Description

The indicator provides information on the percentage of local authorities that had a positive evaluation in all reference quality indicators used by HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIE) in child protection inspections.

Strategic Objective(s) to Which Indicator Relates

This indicator aims to inform progress in relation to the Safer and Stronger Strategic Objective. Positive inspection reports in child protection inspections will ensure that children are not put at risk.

The indicator also supports these other Strategic Objective

Smarter, Healthier and Wealthier & Fairer.

More Detailed Definitions

Definitions of Keywords

The child protection inspections provide nationally comparable data over a range of quality indicators on how well children at risk in Scotland have their needs identified, assessed and acted upon so as to keep them safe from neglect or abuse. The inspection reports provide the Scottish Government with assurance that the various agencies providing protection services to vulnerable children (principally social work, police, health, voluntary organisations, education and the Scottish Children's Reporters Administration.) are working well together locally under the strategic direction of their local multi-agency Child Protection Committee (CPCs).

The definition of positive inspection reports is the percentage receiving satisfactory or better, good or better or very good or better in all four reference quality indicators as defined in How Well Do We Protect Scotland Children?

http://www.hmie.gov.uk/documents/publication/hwpsc.html

The reference subset of Quality Indicators (QIs) is:

· 2.1 Children and young people are listened to, understood and respected:

· 2.2 Children and young people benefit form strategies to minimise harm;

· 2.3 Children and young people are helped by the actions taken in immediate response to concerns;

· 2.4 Children's and young people's needs are met.

Evidence Source

The data for this indicator are based on the evaluation reports of the inspections carried out by HM Inspectors of Education to date.

Baseline and Past Trends

The baseline for child protection inspections was completed in February 2009. All 32 Local Authorities having been inspected in the first inspection cycle. Two of these were pilot inspections and were not directly comparable and are therefore not included in the baseline. In the second cycle, to the end of March 2010, 10 Local Authorities have received child protection inspections, two of which were pilot inspections in the first cycle.

Methodology for Data Source

Those receiving a positive inspection report are evaluated as satisfactory or better, good or better or very good or better in all three of the reference quality indicators. They evaluate the local authorities on improvements in performance in terms of an increasingly confident and competent child protection workforce, skilled at identifying and assessing how best to meet the individual needs of the children who require the service.

Data Ownership and Quality Assurance

This indicator is based on evaluations by HM Inspectors of Education. This data is not National Statistics.

Publication of Data

The latest publication is available from the link:

http://www.hmie.gov.uk/documents/publication/siqir.html

The next publication will be published when the second cycle of child protection inspections has been completed and their inspection findings are available.

The most recent figures only refer to the results of the first year in the second three year inspection cycle. These do not provide a full coverage of local authorities and are not representative.

While recognising the limitations of these data, we have decided to publish them, despite the original intention of reporting on completed inspection cycles only. This is partly due to the importance of this policy area and partly because we aim to ensure that the approach used for the publication of these figures is consistent with the one used for the School inspection indicator. For that one, the completion of the first inspection cycle will be delayed, as a result of the delay in completing the inspection of secondary schools which was made necessary by the reallocation of that resource to support the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence.

Methodology for Recent Change Arrow on Scotland

The threshold will be determined once the second cycle of inspections is completed.