Child Protection Investigation for Children and Young People

If a concern has been raised about your safety the Police, Social Work and someone from Health will meet to discuss the concern and working together to ensure that you are safe. This meeting is called an Inter-Agency Referral Discussion (IRD).

A decision from the IRD may be that a Child Protection Investigation is carried out to make sure that you are safe and have the right people around you to make sure you are happy, healthy, safe and loved.  An Interim Safety Plan will be put in place to make sure that you have people around you who can make sure you are safe.

A lot of information needs to be gathered this is called and assessment, the social worker will complete this within 10 days.  During an assessment four key questions will be asked of you, your child, your wider family and anyone else who helps care for your child:

What are we worried about for your child?

What is working well for your family?

What needs to happen to make sure your child is safe and well in the future?

How safe is your child on a scale from 0 to 10?

The social worker will tell you what is happening and they will ask you what you want to happen.  Your social worker will come to meet you and those in your network which maybe be your parents, extended family and school. To help identify people in your network your social worker will create a family tree / genogram and look at the support you have around you.

The social worker will gather your views and offer you advocacy, this is someone who is independent of social work that you can talk to and share your views about what you want to happen. Your views and feelings will be listened to and included in the report.

If you are hurt or injured you might be asked to see a doctor, this is called a medical.  

You may have to talk to the Police about what has happened, this would be called a Joint Investigate Interview and a social worker would be there too to offer support. There is a specialised team of Police and Social Work who do this, this team is called Ayshire SCIM Team.

The Child Protection Investigation might result in a number of possible outcomes:-

• Social work will look at all of the information and assess there to be no concerns for you and decide to take no further action. 
   
• They may think you and your family need some help, support or guidance with a particular concern and be able to put some support in place for you through people and agencies you already know.
   
• People involved may think you might not be safe and / or cared for sufficiently, the report will be sent to the Reporter at the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration.  A Children's Hearing may be held. The Children's Hearing has the power to make a Legal Order to make sure you are cared for in a particular way.
   
• There may need to be a meeting where keeping you safe will be discussed - this is called a Child Protection Planning Meeting. This meeting will make a plan to keep you safe and your views will be listened to.