Scottish Government

Rationale

Criteria

Achieved

Action Plan

It's Everyone's Job to Make Sure I'm Alright - The Report of The Child Protection Audit and Review (2002) sets out clear recommendations for ensuring that children are effectively protected from abuse.

In particular the report emphasises the importance of:

• Effective sharing of information to ensure that practitioners have the right information at the right time
• The effective dissemination of knowledge through education, sharing best practice and research
• Effective inter-agency assessment and action planning in order to tackle risks and address the needs of vulnerable children.

Nurses working with school children have a critical role in multi-agency work to protect children.

• Nurses working in schools are actively involved in multi-agency team approaches to child protection and are involved as appropriate in all aspects of child protection work for their client group.

• There is a reliable system of hand-over from health visitors at school entry and between nurses when children change schools of all children where there are child protection concerns. This system is separate from the hand over of routine health information and standardised to ensure effective practice.

• There is a system agreed within the multi-agency child protection arrangements for informing nurses in schools of child protection issues/cases within their schools.

• Nurses in schools play a role as part of the multi-agency approach to child protection in referring, monitoring, maintaining accurate records and reporting in line with local protocols.

• Nurses working in schools are actively involved in single agency and multi-agency professional development programmes on child protection and have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities as part of the multi-agency team.

• There are support and supervision arrangements in place to support nurses working with child protection issues.