People
The children and young people that Scotland cares for must be actively supported to develop relationships with people in the workforce and wider community, who in turn must be supported to listen and be compassionate in their decision-making and care.
What we are going to do:
New procedures and policies
We will keep working with CELCIS to write new procedures about how we care for our children and young people. These will focus on more care and less system, and help people care the way that they want to. We will work together with people who write policies for children and young people to make sure that they are using words that children and young people like and think are OK.
Contact and relationships
When children and young people need to move from their homes, we will make sure that they get to keep in contact and have a relationship with the people that are important to them. We will help children and young people to tell us about the people that are important to them and that they want to keep in touch with. Children and young people should know the people that their brothers and sisters live with. Kinship carers, foster carers and residential carers for families should know one another and help the children in their family see one another. All of our residential carers will learn about how important relationships are for our children and young people. Supervision for our people who care will focus on relationships and not tasks.
One plan
Families should have one social worker and one plan. Parents will have their own plans, and be supported to know what they need to do to make things better so that their children can be home with them safely.
Promise Keepers
Glasgow Promise Keepers will meet with one another often to help make sure that everyone in Glasgow is keeping the Promise.
Training for partners
All of our Children’s Reporters will have completed a Diploma in Reporter Practice which helps them to understand more about how children and young people develop. We will train our police officers to help them understand why children and young people with care experience should not get police reports written about them unless they really need to.
Opportunities
We will make sure that opportunities to volunteer with the police through the Police Scotland Youth Volunteer programme are encouraged from young people with care experience. We will look at how we recruit new police officers and see how we can encourage more young people with care experience to apply.
Our nurses
We will make sure that there is a named nurse for each of our children’s houses and that the children and young people living there will know who they are and how to contact them. Our nurses responsible for helping children and young people will not change unless they really need to so that they build trusting relationships.
Educational achievements
We will develop a better system for recording the educational achievements and progress for our children and young people with care experience.