Scottish Government

2. Background

On 26th August 2002 five years old Danielle Reid started at Crown Primary school in Inverness. Her mother informed the class teacher on her second last day at school on 8 ^th October 2002 that she and Danielle would be moving to Manchester. Her body was discovered in Inverness on 7 ^th January 2003.

Dr. Jean Herbison, a consultant paediatrician and lead clinician for child protection with Greater Glasgow NHS Board, was commissioned by Highland Child Protection Committee to undertake an independent review into all the circumstances surrounding her death. The report, Danielle Reid, Independent Review Into the Circumstances Surrounding Her Death, contained 68 general and service-specific recommendations. Recommendation 11 urgently sought the establishment of proactive systems to ensure the adequate tracking of vulnerable children while recommendation 41 asked for a robust national system to be set up to timeously track the transfer of pupil records in the United Kingdom. Scottish Ministers noted the recommendations and the background to them.

The then Scottish Executive's ScotXed Unit was at the same time in the process of developing an electronic "school to school" (S2S) data transfer system to ensure a procedure for managing data files of children who had not arrived at a destination school after leaving a previous one.

An electronic data transfer system, leading to a 'lost' pupil database had been developed in England and Wales in 2003. By 2004 the database had grown from around 9,000 pupils to over 20,000 pupils. The system did not include follow up procedures to locate missing children nor a process for flagging records to indicate child protection concerns. It did not appear to be tenable or acceptable in terms of child protection.

A system to deal with children identified as missing from the Scottish education system was clearly required and following consultation with education authorities and child protection committees in January 2005 the Scottish Executive (now Scottish Government) established the CME(S) service with an aim of ensuring that action was initiated at local and national levels to trace children. The small team, based within the Scottish Government's Support for Learning Division consisted of a Director, Project Officer and Administrator. The Director and Project Officer were both secondees. In the first instance funding would be provided by the Scottish Government for 3 years.

The initial proposal was to create a central body which would act as a clearing house to assist local authorities to develop:

• local and national co-ordination of efforts to track children whose whereabouts were not known by schools or authorities and to co-ordinate specific actions regarding children about whom there were child protection concerns;
• the practice of flagging records of children where child protection concerns had been identified; and
• appropriate practice in the transfer of pupil records.

Review at a very early stage caused significant changes to be made to the first two proposals to ensure better protection for children:

• whether there were existing child protection concerns or not all children with the exception of Gypsy/Traveller children were to be referred to CME (S) within a four week period of becoming "missing from education". In all cases where there were existing child protection concerns, including Gypsy/Traveller children, referral to CME (S) should be urgent to ensure priority action; and
• the flagging system was not introduced. It became evident that the seriousness of each case could only be judged in joint discussion between CME (S) and the referring local authority. Any child with whereabouts unknown was deemed to be potentially at risk.

Safe and Well, which describes good practice in child protection in education and when children go missing from education, was distributed to local authorities and other involved agencies.

CME (S)'s role is described as a supportive, co-ordinating and liaison role aiming to work with education authorities and schools in the exchange of information across Scotland and other parts of the UK. It has a remit to:

• promote the use of systematic procedures in schools and education authorities and enhance practice in transfer of records;
• develop good practice when responding to a child or young person becoming missing from an education service;
• promote consistent practice in local areas to locate and engage children; and
• enable effective inter-authority and cross-border location and transfer of information.

and to assist with:

• transferring information;
• tracing and locating children; and
• tracking information where children arrive in a new location with limited or false information, to assist authorities to provide support effectively.

Children 'missing from education' are children and young people of compulsory school age who are not on a school roll or being educated otherwise (at home, privately or in an alternative provision). They have usually not attended school for a substantial period of time (usually agreed as 4 weeks, or considerably less for vulnerable children) (Safe and Well).

S ervice objectives were set and progress towards them within the first year was as follows:

1 " Develop detailed guidance to aid transfer of information and follow up procedures in schools and authorities"

• a CME(S) section was contained within Safe and Well with sections on information transfer, guidance on the tracing and locating of families, guidance on effective local procedures, flow charts for good practice, background explanations as to why children go missing, search request referral and exemplar transfer forms and a useful contact list;
• a CME(S) project leaflet was produced; and
• policy and procedures for Gypsies/Travellers was published and disseminated.

2 " Develop national agreements and procedures to aid the transfer of information between authorities and assistance across authorities for follow-up; and with other parts of the UK and other countries."

• all local authorities had a named designated CME(S) contact in place;
• CME(S) procedures, good practice guidance, liaison and referral arrangements with CME(S) and internal local authority systems for tracing children were agreed in consultation and collaboration with the designated CME(S) contacts and local authorities;
• the CME(S) section in Safe and Well promoted the requirement for all local authorities to have robust procedures and policies in place for children missing from education;
• requests from local authorities to contribute to the development of their "children missing from education" policies had been accepted by CME(S);
• requests by CME(S) to DCSF to provide LEA/ CME contacts list England and Wales had been accepted; and
• requests by CME(S) to the Northern Ireland Education and Library Boards to provide CME contacts had been accepted.

3 " Develop agreements and procedures in line with national developments on data-sharing and education IT systems."

• a CME(S) database - compliant with the Data Protection Act - was commissioned and in use;
• an agreement had been reached with SEEMIS (a company who provide a Management Information System ( MIS) used by Scottish schools and local authorities) and local authority users for CME(S) to access information centrally; and
• consultations had also been held with Pearson Phoenix, another MIS supplier to schools and local authorities in Scotland, regarding tracking procedures and information sharing.

4 " Develop relationships, systems and procedures for inter-agency collaboration in support of follow-up action and information sharing."

• in conjunction with ACPOS a short life working group had produced an ACPOS/ CME(S) Joint Memorandum of Understanding;
• in conjunction with the NHS/Child Protection Nurse Consultants a Missing Family Alerts/ CME(S) protocol has been produced;
• in conjunction with Scottish Women's Aid a Scottish Women's Aid/ CME(S) agreement was being trialled. A protocol was currently out for consultation;
• in collaboration with gypsy/traveller agencies a Gypsy/Traveller protocol had been produced;
• in conjunction with the Scottish Council for Independent Schools ( SCIS) agreement had been reached in relation to referring and tracing children from the independent sector;
• in conjunction with the National Asylum Seekers Service ( NASS) and other asylum groups agreement had been reached in relation to information sharing;
• early scoping work with the Care Commission on an early years policy and procedures had begun; and
• consultations and awareness-raising events to discuss procedures and related issues had been held with other agencies and organisations including Shelter, Save the Children, Home Education bodies, the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration ( SCRA), the Children's Panel Advisory Group, the Pupil Inclusion Network Scotland and the National Missing Persons Helpline.

5 " Take action to share information and initiate follow-up activity when necessary, co-ordinating inter-authority and inter-agency communication and action at national level."

• in addition to the related protocol and policy work outlined above CME(S) had successfully traced 204 children between August 2005 and July 2006.

6 " Provide training and consultancy to support local development of systems and procedures in authorities and to support their development of these in schools."

CME(S) had committed to a programme of consultancy and training:

• an awareness raising national seminar had been held in August 2005 to launch the project;
• three one day regional training events had been held in October and November 2006;
• 3 half day training events had been held in December 2006 for Attendance/Education Welfare staff;
• a CME(S) local authority co-ordinators' meeting had been held in May 2006;
• on request, local authority Child Protection Committees had been visited and presentations delivered;
• consultations and meetings had been held with ACPOS, NHS/Child Protection Nurse Consultants, Scottish Women's Aid, gypsy/traveller agencies, SCIS, NASS and other asylum groups, Shelter, Save the Children, Home Education bodies, SCRA, the Children's Panel Advisory Group, the Pupil Inclusion Network Scotland and the National Missing Persons Helpline; and
• advice was ongoing to local authority or CME(S) personnel.

7. Put in place appropriate systems for monitoring of activity, appropriate record keeping and data protection policies within the service."

• a CME(S) database had been developed and was in use;
• record keeping procedures were in place; and
• a data protection paper had been produced.

8. " Put in place mechanisms for monitoringof national activity on information transfer and follow up within and between authorities."

• electronic and paper based record keeping was in place and showed referral numbers, date of referral, referring issues, referring local authority, authority where pupil found, and number of families involved; and
• information, action and receipt letters were generated by the CME(S) data base.

9. " Demonstrate the impact of the service and evaluation of activities and processes with ongoing self-evaluation and quality assurance."

• the number of requests for searches from local authority areas was increasing;
• local authorities were aware of CME(S)'s purpose by the inclusion of the CME(S) section in Safe and Well and by awareness raising events, training events and CME(S) newsletters;
• a wide range of agencies continued to engage with CME(S);
• the development of internal procedures and protocols for children missing from education was underway in local authorities;
• CME(S)'s success of tracing families and of children re-engaging with education had been demonstrated, with 97% of cases resolved to date;
• feedback from evaluation forms from awareness raising events and training events had been analysed; and
• ongoing consultation with local authorities and other agencies had been shown to influence CME policy and procedures e.g. ACPOS/ CME(S) Joint Memorandum of Understanding.

10. " Engage with and support any further national developments on transfer of information and follow-up in other sectors."

• the Child Protection Steering Group within the Scottish Government was aware of the purpose of CME(S) and how the proposed new statutory guidance on information sharing would affect future developments;
• the Director of CME(S) sat on the School to School Project Board and the School to School UPI Task Group;
• the Director of CME(S) would promote CME(S)'s remit with the ScotXed Forum;
• the Director of CME(S) had ensured that the data base build with Real Time Engineering was compliant with CME(S) procedures; and
• The CME(S) role would widen and diversify on becoming the administrator for the School to School Clearing House.

The review report which follows was commissioned in September 2006, to evaluate current service development and its interface with local authorities. It would inform policy direction and procedural and organisational development for both the remainder of the programme and the future direction of the service.