Children in custody

On 15 November 2022, the Authority and Police Scotland hosted a roundtable session with a range of key partners to discuss how we can work together to reduce the number of children held in police custody. I am grateful to Michelle Miller for moderating the event. Her experience and insights from her pervious roles as Chief Social Work Officer and Head of Safer and Stronger Communities for the City of Edinburgh Council were valuable.

Amongst the attendees at the event were local authorities from across the country, the Children and Young Peoples Commissioner, the Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice, Social Work Scotland, Who Cares Scotland, Barnardos and the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit.

There was overwhelming agreement that holding a child or young person in police custody was not an appropriate setting. Throughout the day, delegates focused on the overarching objective of identifying how, by working in partnership, children could be taken to alternative and more appropriate places of safety while still allowing police officers and partner organisations to undertake their duties.

I want to thank all our partners who attended the event for their valuable and constructive action-focused discussion. Police Scotland and Authority’s team are now in the process off collating and summarising the outputs of the meeting, and sharing with our partners. Importantly, the next phase will be to agree actions to be taken to translate the findings into deliverable outcomes, improving the provision of places of safety for Scotland’s children.