Further Detail

The Police Scotland Corporate Parenting Plan 2021-24 sets out our vision; “to contribute to a care system which prioritises a child’s need for a happy childhood and results in positive experiences and outcomes”. Within the plan are five key themes, namely, Language and Stigma, Building Better Relationships, Supporting Children in Conflict with the Law, Offering Employment and Development Opportunities and Engage, Evaluate and Learn.

Internal Governance structures which support and monitor the delivery of priorities within the plan are now well established. The Corporate Parenting Working Group, chaired by the Children and Young People management team are held quarterly, attended by representatives from local and specialist divisions. These meetings provide a forum to consult on and direct work under the key themes.

At a national level, we continue to participate in national partnerships including National Youth Justice Advisory Group and National Youth Justice Improvement Board, and collaborate with other corporate parents across justice partners and wider. We continue to have corporate parenting champions in all 13 local policing divisions and they work closely within their community and local authority partnerships. These partnerships have grown significantly and are now part of all local authority planning/harm prevention partnerships. This allows Police Scotland as a national organisation to be receptive to local community needs, recognising these may be different across our population. The result is that we are alert to the needs of CEYP through local engagement partnerships.

Key updates are provided below under each theme, capturing our progress so far, reflecting the range of work undertaken and outlining next steps. 

Language and Stigma

The language of care is stigmatising for children, young people and adults who are care experienced and we seek to raise awareness amongst Police Scotland staff about the impact that language have and how it affects our practice. We must work with children, young people and other professionals to change the way we speak, write and refer to Care Experience in our practice.

Police Scotland is working with the Each and Every Child programme, a Government funded initiative, to provide our people with a broader and more diverse understanding of care experience, address our use of stigmatising and professional language, ensuring we appropriately apply reframing techniques when communicating about care and care experience. Each and Every Child has delivered training sessions to the Corporate Parenting Working Group, school based officers and plans are in place to deliver to a cadre of Champions across the organisation.

The Each and Every Child programme compliments local initiatives such as The Write Right About Me Project, an Aberdeen partnership focussing on writing styles and language that introduce ways for us to increase the voice of children; extends co-production to the ‘whole family’;  working with some of our young people to contribute to our awareness of the care system language.

The Children and Young People Team is working with Who Cares? Scotland and an advisory group of care experienced young people in Lanarkshire to engage with and hear from young people how we can change our language to promote a better understanding and to avoid stigmatisation.

Building Better Relationships

Our Plan is focussed on nurturing and sustaining positive relationships for care experienced children and young people, by empowering our workforce to value and develop these relationships.

The Children and Young People team, PPCW have refreshed and continue to deliver trauma inputs, based on the national Trauma Training programme, to probationary officers and specialist detective training courses at the Scottish Police College to ensure our people understand the impact of trauma and how to adapt the way they work to make a positive difference to the lives of children and young people affected by trauma.  These inputs ensure our people understand the links between trauma, intergenerational trauma, adverse childhood experiences (ACE’s) and their impact on behaviour and development.

The Care Experienced Officers and Staff group, formed during the consultation stage of ‘The Plan’ continues to attract new members from a variety of roles across the organisation. The group have been empowered to speak on behalf of those with care experience, sharing their own experiences growing up and providing the unique perspective of having care experience and being colleagues within Police Scotland.

Together with Who Cares? Scotland, the Care Experienced Officers and Staff group produced an animation and case study which is currently showcased within Who Cares? Scotland’s Knowledge Hub as an example of a project which has ‘demonstrably promoted collaboration and growth within an organisation on their Corporate Parenting journey’. Police Scotland - Care Experienced Group - a case study | Corporate Parenting

The importance of building better relationships with our care experienced children and young people is supported across the country. In Ayrshire and in Argyllshire officers are visiting children’s houses to chat with young people and staff in order to better understand their needs and to provide opportunities to discuss concerns.

Supporting Children in Conflict with the Law

Our Plan highlights that care experienced children and young people are over-represented in the criminal justice system but there is no evidence that they engage in more offending behaviour than their peers. However, the consequences of their behaviour, whilst in care, are much more likely to result in police attendance and, therefore, criminalisation.

Following on from a test of change in Dumfries & Galloway, The Respect Programme continues in Greater Glasgow, now in 27 children’s houses in the Greater Glasgow area with an additional eight once East Dunbartonshire join the programme. The protocol provides a different response to behaviours that could be considered as low-level crime and to children missing/not at home. Care staff are encouraged to assess when their children are “not home”, in line with usual age and stage behaviours and report as missing when they have concerns. Within strict parameters, behaviours should be resolved within the house, not reported to police, and even when they were, police have discretion to not record as a crime. This has led to a significant reduction in missing reports and a reduction in reported crime.

The Missing/Not at Home aspect of the test of change has been rolled out across the country, providing a more supportive and proportionate response for young people in children’s houses.

The Children and Young People Team, supported by Strategy, Insights and Engagement are now exploring options for an external evaluation to provide next steps to roll out all aspects of the Respect programme nationally.

The London Road Child Custody Suite is a facility that includes adapted cells, a discrete charge bar and the ability to provide distraction tools and integrated partnership working with Barnardo’s colleagues on-site. Criminal Justice Services Division has co-produced an animation, with young people, to be shown to children under 18 year who have been arrested and taken to a police station to give them more information on what will happen next, their rights when in the police station and the help available. This will be trialled in the London Road suite while engagement continues with justice experienced young people to refine and improve prior to a national roll out.

On 15 November, 2022, Criminal Justice Services Division, in partnership with the Scottish Police Authority, is organising multi-agency workshops focused on ‘Places of Safety’ to examine the issues surrounding children in police custody; what can be done to reduce numbers of children in custody and to ensure their rights are respected.

Police Scotland continues to support a police officer embedded within HMP & YOI Polmont, working in partnership with officers of the Scottish Prison Service to co-deliver a voluntary 2-week “Positive Choices” course. The programme is based on a trauma informed & rights based approach, ensuring participants have a voice throughout and includes interactive sessions delivered by people with relevant lived experience. Open discussion is encouraged throughout with key messages shared around the main areas of offending behaviour and other factors that typically bring people to the adverse attention of police and other authorities.   The course aims to engage and educate participants on a range of difficult topics which may well have resulted in them coming into conflict with the law whilst seeking to positively influence future choices & behaviours.

Renfrewshire division have a Police Liaison Officer embedded within Kibble Care and Education Centre in Paisley, a residential and secure centre, and onsite school for young people with complex needs. There are also a number of community houses for young people transitioning from the main centre into the community. This police officer works with the young people to build trusting relationships, providing a foundation to aid the officer’s engagement with them on prevention related work. The officer also supports Kibble staff with training and is involved with wider partnership working to improve outcomes for some of our most vulnerable young people.

Offering Employment and Development Opportunities

The Plan sets out our aim that care experienced young people and adults are aware of, consider and then feel supported to join Police Scotland as a youth volunteer, member of police staff, a Special Constable or to become a police officer.

A new member of the Care Experienced Staff Group who has recently gone through the recruitment process, completed the initial probationer training course, and is now working at a local policing division is working with the CYP team to map out the experience and the barriers and challenges faced. This will be shared with Learning, Training and Development to assist with any potential additional supports identified.

Mentoring services that support care experienced young people are being supported across the country. In particular, a collaboration with MCR Pathways to promote the benefits of this support, with many of our staff volunteering as mentors.

Engage, Evaluate and Learn

We seek to adapt to the needs of our Care Experienced community by listening to care experienced voices in a meaningful way and embed learning within our practice.

Further to the details above regarding the Respect Programme evaluation, the engagement on learning resources and the work with care experienced young people across the country, Police Scotland is developing a proposal to include the voice of children and young people in our policies and procedures in furtherance of a child right’s based approach to policing, in line with the requirements of the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child, and in particular Article 12. This proposal is being considered under the Equality and Diversity Service Delivery group.