31st
August 2007
Unidentified, Unprotected: Executive
Documents Reveal Plight of Inverclyde’s Hidden Drug Abuse Children
Any number of children in Inverclyde
could be at risk from their drug addicted parents and the council has no way of
knowing who or where they are, papers newly-released by the Scottish Executive
reveal.
Among the
correspondence published by the Executive following parliamentary questions
tabled by MSP for Greenock and Inverclyde, Duncan McNeil, is a June 2006 letter
from then Council Leader, Allan Blair, in which he states:
“It is
acknowledged that children and young people live in situations where drug misuse
is part of their lives … due to the impact on them of the drug misuse of their
parents”.
In addition
to admitting that local young people are living in these circumstances, Cllr
Blair also concedes that their safety cannot be guaranteed:
“Acknowledging
the problem, and developing strategies for action, does not allow us to present
guarantees that there will not be a child in Inverclyde who might suffer
significant harm or injury due to substance misuse … at the hands of their
parents”.
Not only
that, a more detailed submission from local Council, Police and Health Board
chiefs* concedes that the authorities don’t know identity of an unknown number
of these vulnerable children:
“At this
present time,” they say, “we could not provide general assurance that all
children affected by substance misuse have been identified.”
Mr McNeil,
however, said the revelations in Inverclyde were just the tip of the iceberg.
Indeed, the Executive’s own summary report acknowledges that “the
vast majority of CPC [Child Protection Committee] areas experience difficulties
in consistently identifying those children affected by parental drug misuse.”
Mr McNeil
said:
“To be
fair, reading what someone in the Executive with a strange sense of humour has
dubbed these ‘Letters of Assurance’, Inverclyde is not alone.
Local authorities across Scotland are not only unaware of who these
children are, they don’t even know how many there are.
To answer either question, they agree, would require significant
investment.
“These
children are being failed by a system which doesn’t even see them as a
statistic. They are being condemned
to a childhood of neglect, danger and squalor; a childhood which, if they
survive it, all too often precedes an adolescence and adulthood of poverty,
substance abuse and crime. The
question, then, is not whether we can afford to act, but whether we can afford
not to.
“Communities
like ours have already lost two generations to drugs. Only by embracing radical solutions will we stop today’s
children becoming the third.”
Mr McNeil
also called on the Executive to take action before it was too late.
“Local
authorities have been given a clear duty by the Executive to ensure that drug
addicts’ children get the services they need before they are at risk from
harm**. But now we have the proof
that they’re nothing like able to meet it.
The Executive needs to step in and I will be making urgent
representations to Ministers, demanding to know what help they are going to give
the authorities on the ground to end this needless suffering.”
Background
In March 2006, the Ministers for
Justice, Health & Community Care and Education & Young People wrote to
leaders of Health Boards, Chief Constables, Council Leaders and Chief Executives
of local authorities, raising two issues relating to child protection services.
First,
they sought assurances that Chief Officers had implemented the guidance issued
for Child Protection Committees (CPCs) by the Scottish Executive in January
2005, and that they were confident that the new functions required of the
Committees were being effectively undertaken.
Second,
Ministers sought assurances about the specific position of children in Scotland
affected by a parent’s drug misuse and drug misuse generally. In May a further letter of guidance was issued by officials
clarifying what the responses should include.
Agencies
were asked:
To provide evidence that
they had systems in place to ensure that children affected by drug misuse
could be consistently identified; and
To set out the extent to which they had in place up-to-date assessments of the needs of children known to be adversely affected by drug misuse, and detailed plans to ensure that these needs were being met.
Where
agencies were unable to provide either of these assurances, they were asked:
To provide evidence that
they were taking the necessary action to establish effective systems; and
To identify any local and
national barriers that prevented them from taking the necessary action, and
set out what the Executive might do to help alleviate these problems.
These
letters followed up on an exercise undertaken in November 2003 whereby Ministers
sought assurances from CPCs that the services within their remit were working
individually and jointly to protect children in need of help and protection.
By
31 May 2006, the Executive had received 27 collective responses from health
boards, police forces and local authorities responsible for services in local
areas.
These
responses were published in full on Monday 13 August 2007 in response to a
series of Parliamentary Questions tabled by Duncan McNeil MSP.
They are online here:
ENDS
* John W
Mundell, Chief Executive, Inverc1yde Council; Sir William Rae QPM, Chief
Constable, Strathclyde Police; and Tom Divers, Chief Executive, NHS Greater
Glasgow and Clyde
** Hidden
Harm. Next Steps: Supporting Children – Working with Parents (Scottish
Executive, May 2006) Under “Key issues in relation to children in need of
care and protection” point 5.1 states that best practice means, “ensuring
that children of substance misusing parents have their needs recognised,
assessed and, where appropriate, receive services which meet their needs at an
early stage. Agencies should not wait until children are considered to be at
risk from harm”.
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