South Lanarkshire Report Issues Child Services Call

The life chances of some vulnerable children and young people are not improving sufficiently well in one council area, inspectors have found.

South Lanarkshire Council has been asked to take steps to improve outcomes for the group of youngsters in an inspection report published today.

The document was produced following a joint inspection of services for children and young people in the area, led by the Care Inspectorate, which was carried out in June and August 2014.

They looked at the range of services provided to children, young people and their families across the area by the South Lanarkshire Community Planning Partnership.

Across nine quality indicators, one was found to be very good'', four were found to begood'' and four were found to be adequate''.

The report said: Inspectors are confident that the lives of many children and young people growing up in South Lanarkshire are improving as a result of the services delivered to them by the Community Planning Partnership.

All services are supporting the majority of children effectively and providing them with a positive start in life.

However, the life chances of some of the most vulnerable children and young people are not improving sufficiently well.

Partners now need to demonstrate a stronger integratedapproach to drive forward practice change which will help to close outcome gaps more successfully.

They should pay particular attention to improving support for care leavers.

They need to further strengthen their work towards prevention and early intervention, ensuring that priorities are informed by a robust and transparent needs assessment across the whole partnership area.''

The inspection was carried out by teams of inspectors from the Care Inspectorate, Education Scotland, Healthcare Improvement Scotland and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland.

They noted that there was insufficient evidence'' of improvement in tackling health inequalities for looked-after children, young people and care leavers.

In addition, they found that while the school attendance of looked-after children was improving, it remained below the national average and well below the average attendance for children in the council area as a whole.

Inspectors noted key strengths, including that partners were ensuring newborn babies get the best possible start in life.

Their recommendations included that South Lanarkshire Community Planning Partnership and Getting it Right for South Lanarkshire's Children Board should now lead and direct further improvement in the initial response process of child protection concerns.

Annette Bruton, the Care Inspectorate's chief executive, said: Protecting young people and ensuring that the services they and their families access are of the very highest standard is a crucial part of the work we do as Scotland's care regulator.

By working with our partners we can ensure we build up an accurate picture of how services are performing.

We want to answer the key question 'how well are these services improving the lives of children, young people and their families?'

Where there is room for improvement we do not hesitate to report on this and expect partnerships take the necessary action so that everyone in Scotland can access services which meet their needs and respect their rights.''

A spokesman for the South Lanarkshire Children's Services Partnership said: Overall, the report is encouraging with a number of good practices highlighted.

The partnership is pleased with the positive findings and, as with all inspections, a number of areas for improvement have been identified.

Since publication of the findings, the partnership is pleased that improvements have already been made.

Partners recognise that continued work is needed to support children and will work together towards making sure all the necessary improvements are made.

The child protection committee will now discuss this report and bring forward an action plan to the Public Protection Chief Officers' Group for approval. This action plan will be monitored by both of these partnership groups.''