COMMENT
Peep Learning Together – the best
it have been laying the groundwork for when it becomes mandatory in three months’ time. Tough David Dimbleby appeared to find it hard to get his head round it on a recent Question Time broadcast from Aberdeen, the policy is relatively straightforward: from August, every child will have a named person – generally, a health visitor or teacher/ head teacher – who will act as a single point of contact and make sure all concerns are recorded and acted on. Te provision is aimed at helping parents access services and identifying those children in need of protec- tion. Its critics, however, see it as an erosion of parental rights. Some worry the named persons will pry into every aspect of their lives; others that making the service universal will lead to those children in greatest need of protection falling through the net. Alexander says such fears are misplaced.
In the Highlands, the policy has neither lowered the threshold at which chil- dren are considered at risk nor resulted in an overload in the system. In fact, it has cut down on bureaucracy and empowered health visi- tors and teachers; now if a named person asks for a service, such as access to a children’s support worker, they must be responded to. And because they have the confidence to deal with low-level concerns themselves, rather than referring them on, social workers have been freed up to focus on the most serious cases. Alexander claims the introduction of a single child’s plan – to replace myriad plans from myriad agencies – has also made life easier for both parents and practitioners. “If you go back 10 years, it was chaotic,” he says. “Firstly, it was difficult for children and families to get into the system and to access services, but the way services would be allocated would be very ad hoc. Quite often, concerned practitioners would be knocking on all sorts of doors, while people like me would be putting in bureaucratic systems to gatekeep resources. “Every time someone wanted a new service,
there would be different reports, different forms and different meetings and, for chil- dren where there were issues in terms of the children’s hearing system, there was a totally delinquent model.” In the past, Alexander says, any concern about a child, however minor, would lead to
a referral to the Children’s Reporter, so they were inundated and took weeks to request and read reports from a variety of agencies before taking a decision on whether or not action was required. “Te children who actually needed compulsory measures were somewhere in that morass,” he says. Post-GIRFEC, the number of referrals to the reporter has gone down, as has the number of children ‘looked after’ at home, although the number being looked after outside the home – i.e. in foster or local authority care – has gone up slightly. “Te reduction in referrals has come about
“Far from subsiding, antipathy towards
the policy is growing daily”
because we don’t communicate with each other through the reporter and people don’t scattergun their concerns around. Tey go straight to the appropriate person: if it’s a low-level intervention it will be the named person, if it’s a high-level intervention it will be a social worker – and it works,” Alexander says. “What it means is that social workers have fewer cases, there are fewer meetings, the children’s hearing system is taking compulsory measures on fewer children and we are more confident the right children are in the system. How people can justify the chaos that went before, I don’t know.”
Of course, a cynic would say Alexander has
a vested interest in trumpeting the benefits of the system, so I spent a day in Inverness talking to social workers, health visitors, teachers and parents’ organisations. Tough none thought GIRFEC and named person were flawless, all agreed it was an improve- ment on what had gone before. One senior social worker described how the policies had lightened her load. “I used to have two piles of cases on my desk: there would be the urgent ones, which I’d deal with, and the less urgent ones, which I would never get round to. Now the less urgent cases are being handled by other people, making them less likely to escalate, and we can concentrate on those that most require our attention.”
Tis is good news for social workers, but doesn’t it just shift the burden on to health visitors and teachers/head teachers? Unison and the EIS – both of whom support the policy in principle – have expressed con- cerns about resources, although Unison has been reassured by the Scottish Government’s
start for the Holyrood baby
▏ How can we help all parents to give their children the best start in life and to narrow the gap in attainment between children from rich and poor backgrounds?
Evidence tells us that a child’s early experiences, particularly the relation- ships that they have with those that care for them and the quality of their home learning environment, are key factors in infl uencing how well they do both at school and beyond. Peeple is a charity that supports parents and children to learn together. Our Peep Learning Together Programme is based on 20 years of experience of working with parents and practitioners, and the latest research into child devel- opment and learning. The Programme helps practitioners to work with parents/ carers and their babies, toddlers or pre-schoolers, in a structured and fun but fl exible way. Crucially, the Programme builds on what parents are already doing, by sharing information about child development in an informal, accessible way through songs, rhymes, books, stories, play and discussion. The Programme covers fi ve strands of learning: personal, social & emotional development, communication & lan- guage, early literacy, early maths, and health & physical development. Parents can also gain Peeple’s popular units that are SCQF credit-rated by SQA by participating which can lead to further learning and to volunteering oppor- tunities or employment. Peeple also provides an antenatal course which pro- motes secure attachment relationships. Practitioners across Scotland, from early years, health, education, com- munity learning and development, and family support, use Peep programmes in outreach, groups and settings. Peeple was delighted to receive three years funding from the Scot- tish Government to continue to promote our preventative programmes across Scotland. “Peep has provided me with confi dence,
self-esteem, allowed me to recognise my childrens learning steps and build upon them. It also empowered me as a parent to empower my children and have the confi dence to move to a health- care career.”
Dr Sally Smith, Peeple CEO To fi nd out more, go to
www.peeple.org.uk.
23 May 2016
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