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Child protection in Moray
12/02/2009
Responding to today's HMIE report on inspection of services to protect children and young people in Moray, Minister for Children and Early Years Adam Ingram said:
"The shortcomings identified in this report are completely unacceptable and must be addressed quickly and effectively.
"As soon as we became aware of these worrying findings I was in touch with child protection agencies in Moray to ensure urgent action was being taken and I followed this up with a face-to face meeting last month. This has led to a strengthening of the action plan that Moray Council, Grampian Police and NHS Grampian are now committed to delivering.
"It is clear to me that the leadership in Moray, particularly in the Council, now have to demonstrate a real commitment to delivering this action plan. They need to demonstrate their ability to improve their performance. There must be no excuses and no passing of the buck by those responsible. They should also know, that I will be closely monitoring their performance and any failure to act will be met by action by the Scottish Government.
"Scottish Government officials have already been working with senior managers at Moray Council to help drive progress and we are pleased that CoSLA have offered additional support.
"We have been and will remain focussed on ensuring that vulnerable children in Moray are not being failed by the deficiencies identified.
"Child protection services across Scotland are subject to rigorous inspections, allowing problems to be indentified swiftly and action taken immediately - the process we are seeing in Moray. Just yesterday I announced that the next round of multi-agency inspections will be more targeted to help drive up standards in areas like Moray which need to make the most progress.
"Findings from across the country also show many successes - Inverclyde received a glowing report just last week and areas like West Lothian, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire have shown what can be done.
"Other areas can learn from this good practice and, to build on that, we recently announced that Scotland is to have the UK's first hub of child protection expertise which can put agencies in touch with leading professionals from across the world.
"To further ensure stringent measures are maintained we have also launched a wide-ranging review of guidance on child protection. Clearly a lot of work needs to be done in Moray and we will closely follow the action plan which is being implemented to help ensure robust protection is in place for vulnerable children."