In May 2000, a three-year-old girl died in Dumfries and Galloway after she had been hit on the head by her mother’s boyfriend in a fit of temper and hurled against a bedframe, leaving her with severe head and spine injuries. Prior to the incident there had been a number of warning signs that Kennedy McFarlane could be in danger, as she had been taken to hospital with a range of injuries. But no action was taken.

Following the girl’s death, an inquiry led by Dr Helen Hammond published a damning report on the systematic failure of social workers and doctors to spot signs of serious child abuse. The Scottish Executive set up a multi-agency review of child protection, which is due to report next month. A major focus is current child protection practice and how well the relevant agencies work together, in particular multi-agency training.

In anticipation to the report, one local authority, East Dunbartonshire, has already embraced the multi-agency approach. Its new community structure draws together social work, education, housing, social inclusion and community development to “enable an integrated community response to protect children”, it says.

“We are proud of our training,” says Anne Barr, the educational psychologist and staff development officer for child protection in East Dunbartonshire. “It provides a model of a planned, collaborative approach to a crucial but sensitive area of working.

“If we want to raise achievement, produce environments that are conducive to teaching and learning and enable children to be successful, it is vital we have a long-term strategy for child protection issues.”

About 200 people, senior representatives from education and support services, early years, social services, health, housing, community schools and community education, received multi-agency training between January and April this year. This involved presentations from education, social work and health experts, the children’s reporter and police, with the focus on sharing information, clarity about roles and responsibilities, areas of practice and building good working arrangements and relationships.

Teachers have been identified as having a key part to play in making the strategy work and each local authority school now has a child protection co-ordinator.

“Headteachers, members of senior school management and all guidance, psychological services and behaviour support staff have been trained,” says Ms Barr.

“From August we plan to roll out the training to all education staff members by training a key person in each school who can then train the other staff.

“My focus as education presenter,” says Ms Barr, “was to ensure that other agencies were aware of and responsive to the key role of education personnel and that education personnel were fully aware of where their responsibilities dovetail with others agencies throughout the whole child protection process.”

Evaluations of the training sessions, she says, were “extremely positive”. What delegates from all agencies appreciated most were discussing common concerns, clarifying roles and responsibilities, as well as the restraints that each works within, and agreeing on the crucial need to work together and develop further networks to protect children.

“Since multi-agency training began in January there has been a large increase in the number of referrals from education staff,” says Paula Godfrey, East Dunbartonshire’s social work and field work manager. “This has resulted in two children being put on the west of Scotland register of children at risk of abuse.

“Multi-agency tasking is about shared responsibility and consistency of approach. Teachers see more of children than other agencies do. In that sense the teacher is the key,” she says.

Ms Godfrey and Ms Barr emphasise that they are not encouraging teachers to become over-zealous or vigilantes, to go out and investigate. “It’s simply about being alert to areas of concern and using your professional judgment,” says Ms Barr.

East Dunbartonshire has produced a new child protection procedures and action advice folder for schools. The guidance pack outlines the education service’s role and responsibility in developing a positive, caring ethos and in developing the personal and social education curriculum, including the key curricular area of a personal safety programme appropriate to age and maturity.

The authority sees the next step as being the proactive preventative measure of introducing child protection into the curriculum.

“In reality we know that the number of children identified as being abused will not be all the children who are,” says Ms Barr.

“This is where the curriculum will be very important in preventing abuse. This is education’s unique role and in the fullness of time it will be the main focus of education, the main challenge.”

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES

SECONDARY HEAD “Multi-agency training clarifies the roles of each partner, whatever difficulties arise with the pupils. It’s useful to be informed.

“We have a multi-agency approach to children with learning and behaviour difficulties, and child protection is part of the whole support framework.

“We have a school joint assessment team, which includes social workers, the police, psychological services and other agencies. They meet four times a year and around six pupils may be the focus at any meeting. These are not child protection issues; it could be a learning issue that is being discussed. We look at pupils’ individual education plans.

“Should a child protection issue arise - it hasn’t yet - we have the links. A member of our senior management has been trained, along with support for learning and guidance staff.”

Meg King, Thomas Muir High, Bishopbriggs HEALTH WORKER “Presenting from the health perspective, I talked about past child protection reviews and what we can learn from them.

“On the subject of better communications, headteachers wanted direct contact numbers and it was suggested that there could be local network lunchtime meetings between agencies, which include a training element.

“It’s about basic awareness at the moment. A nursery head, for example, should be able to contact a health visitor if they have childcare (as opposed to child protection) concerns, over a child consistently late or not turned out properly, for example. This is early intervention, preventative work.

“Obviously, if the immediate concern is child protection, you contact social work.

“I learned a lot too. For example, housing visitors are in and out of family homes so, as a minimum, they should have basic awareness training in child protection.

“The good thing about the training was that it was interactive with a lot of sharing and discussion. It emerged that people wanted more training. That’s obvious from our evaluation forms.”

Fiona McManus, child protection adviser, Greater Glasgow Primary Care, NHS Trust SOCIAL WORKER “The main benefit of the training was that it reinforced the shared responsibility towards children. To other agencies child protection is a frightening responsibility.

“As social work is the lead agency in child protection, I think it was good that what we do was demystified for other agencies who have not had the training in child protection that we’ve had.

“We also learned a lot about the others. But the real gain is improved communication, being able to work closer together.”

Morven Skinner CHILDREN’S REPORTER “The multi-agency training was very successful in providing a good platform to explore respective roles and to promote working together. The new guidelines put a structure on the training.

“My input concerned what agencies can expect from children’s reporters and what are our expectations from referring agencies.

“I learned that people who are not dealing with child protection issues on a daily basis can experience a lot of anxiety, so you have to take other people’s sensibilities into account.

“This co-ordinated, systematic approach is to be welcomed. It was an ambitious and successful exercise which is now ongoing.

“As we progress, anomalies will arise and guidelines will need to be reviewed.”

Margaret Small, authority reporter for East Dunbartonshire

THE CONFIDENCE TO SPEAK OUT;SCHOOL CASE STUDY

Auchinairn Primary in Bishopbriggs has a school roll of 223 pupils, plus a nursery, from a mixed catchment area. Headteacher Lorna Kenney is the school’s child protection co-ordinator.

She says the multi-agency training has been useful in getting to know other agencies and how they work, and it has given her more confidence to pick up the telephone to ask for help and advice.

The training has also made her more aware of child protection issues and that has been communicated to her staff, all of whom know not to hesitate if they have concerns about a child. “That includes classroom assistants, janitorial staff and playground supervisors, who often have a more informal communication with the pupils,” she says.

“Knowing what the different agencies can and can’t do helps us all work together for the child’s benefit. Someone who hasn’t had multi-agency training might have the wrong perception of what exactly a social worker can or can’t do.

“I understand better the process that will be gone through if a referral is taken forward. There’s more of a dialogue now.

“If a child discloses anger, against a family member for example, you don’t immediately phone his or her mum. You can talk to your line manager and then to the advice and response unit in social work. Depending on the advice you receive, you might then phone the parent,” she says.

Whether or not there is a referral, this process leads to a greater sharing of information.

“You might learn that home life is challenging at that particular time, so you know not to press too hard on homework or make an issue of a forgotten games kit because you know the child has other things on their mind,” she says.

In her experience as a teacher and a head, Miss Kenney says most abuse is physical or emotional, rarely sexual. “Emotional abuse is the hard one to spot but it can be accompanied by a failure to thrive,” she says, by the child not eating properly, for example.

She believes the multi-agency approach has enhanced and will continue to enhance her educational practice.

Speaking to other agencies also makes her more confident with parents, which is important because parents can disclose relevant information too.

“Speaking to others helps you understand the pressures that may be on a particular family. If a parent tells you, for example, that they’re having rent problems, you can discuss this and perhaps suggest an approach to the council housing department.

“It’s all about working together for the child, making that child safe and comfortable so that they thrive.”

Deputy head Pauline Greer has also been through the multi-agency training.

“I feel better skilled,” she says. “The guidelines are tighter and clearer and easy to follow. I think all our staff are more informed as a result and everyone has confidence in the procedures.

“We are the front line for a lot of children and we need to give them the confidence to talk to us.”

Mrs Greer has set up an appointment system where any child in the school can put their name down to come and see her for a chat.

“There’s more awareness of the need to listen to children generally and this is an extra opportunity for them to talk.

“They might come because they’ve fallen out with a pal, or just to have a blether.

“That’s all to the good. It’s positive. There’s no stigma. But it also gives me the opportunity to quietly track or monitor any child there may be concerns about.”