Three years ago the then First Minister, Jack McConnell, offered a "sincere and full apology on behalf of the people of Scotland" to people who had been abused while children in care. It was the first step in setting up an inquiry into what had by then been acknowledged as widespread abuse of children in residential care. Yesterday that inquiry reported. Tom Shaw, a former chief inspector of education in Northern Ireland, looked at 45 years of residential childcare in Scotland from 1950 to 1995 and recommended both a national centre to provide specialist services for survivors of abuse, plus a database of the homes and the bodies which ran them, and a new task group to oversee the welfare of children in care. Both should be adopted.
As Mr Shaw acknowledges, the prime objective of the former residents who contributed to the review was to ensure that children in residential establishments in 2007 do not experience the kind of abuse which they managed to survive. They are the survivors, the stronger ones, but all of them mourn others, many of them siblings, who have lost the struggle against mental illness, alcoholism and abusive relationships.
It is important that a proper record of all the individuals who went through institutional care is kept and is accessible. A national centre will provide that, but it will also open this shameful chapter of social history to a scrutiny that is long overdue. Unless we examine previous wrongdoing and misguidedness - and understand the difference - we cannot move on. That is vital, because, important as it is to provide constructive help for those who suffered in the past, much of the value of this report lies in its recommendations for future practice.
The Children (Scotland) Act of 1995 brought in new systems. The task now is to fit the current regulations to our new understanding that children not only have needs, but also have rights. One of the most important is the right to be listened to. There are new arrangements for inspection and monitoring through the Care Commission, but we should remember that there were also visits from inspectors in the years when children were being unjustly punished, cruelly beaten, made to feel worthless and sexually abused. Recent incidents of abuse underline Mr Shaw's warning that the needs identified when legislation was framed in 1995 still exist.
He is right that the way to ensure the welfare and safety of "looked-after" children (who are, in fact, the collective responsibility of us all) is to develop a culture in residential childcare founded on children's rights. When the children involved are damaged, as almost all are, there is an enormous gulf between adopting that as a philosophy and carrying it out on a daily basis. It cannot be bridged unless his recommendations to raise the status of residential childcare and those who work in it are implemented. That cannot be done without employing more qualified people and providing more training; and that will require extra funding. Consideration might also be given to a role for the Children's Commissioner in providing advocacy for children in care.
The proposal of a task group, essentially to monitor the quality of residential childcare and ensure children can make complaints, should be adopted along with the requirement for it to report to the Scottish Parliament, rather than childcare officials. Scrutiny by MSPs would provide an opportunity to investigate whether the regulations were working and provide an extra lever to ensure that never again do our most vulnerable children suffer further damage compounded by a lack of public concern.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article