Together (Scottish Alliance for Children's Rights)

Children’s Hearings – Feedback and Complaints

Children’s Hearings Scotland (CHS) is responsible for recruiting, training and supporting the volunteer panel members who sit on Children’s Hearings.

There are around 22,000 hearings every year and it’s really important for us to hear the voice of the child so that we can make their hearings experience better, both in terms of focussing on the things that children and young people think work well, and trying to fix things that they don’t like or that cause then anxiety or distress.

Children’s Hearings are legal proceedings and so there are things that we can’t change, or at least not quickly. That’s where changes to the law might be needed. As an organisation we engage with others to find ways to make long term positive changes, but in the short term we were acutely aware of two things:

  • We don’t hear enough from children, whether through giving us feedback or making a complaint
  • There would be some things we would be able to improve, particularly in relation to the practice of panel members, and if their approach could be more trauma informed or welcoming.

In 2022 the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) and the Scottish Government made it clear they wanted public sector organisations to look at ways to develop child-friendly complaints procedures. Our thinking was already well developed in this area, so we decided to get ahead of the game and develop our procedures in advance of the 2-year project window SPSO had set.  

We spent a lot of time researching what would work best and we engaged with several agencies along the way, including social work, education and TUSLA, the Child & Family Agency in Dublin. We worked closely with the SPSO to ensure that what we were developing aligned with their emerging expectations of public bodies.

We also visited a residential school and spoke to the staff and young people. They provided some very valuable insights about hearings and how they made them feel, which will help us to improve. We also worked with young people who helped us to co-design our initial approach to child friendly feedback and complaints.

We know that children and young people are not keen to make complaints, but would much rather just tell us what they think without a formal process involved. We also knew that they were nervous about who might be told they had made a complaint, and that if they did complain about a children’s panel member, the feared there may be repercussions at their next hearing.

We focussed our work primarily on encouraging informal feedback for those who had experienced hearings, but have developed a child friendly complaints procedure that so that there is a choice. The service is primarily online and consists of basic questions and an option for freehand text, but there are no mandatory boxes. Feedback and complaints can be provided anonymously – we want to remove as many barriers as possible. We launched our child friendly feedback and complaints portal in April 2023, well ahead of the SPSO guidance.

We continue to engage with other agencies, including advocacy providers, and with children and young people. We are planning enhancements to our web pages so that they are more reassuring about the things we know concern children and young people. We will soon have videos on our website featuring young people talking about their experience of the process and what helps and reassures them.

We are also planning to provide more options for young people to reach out to us by enhancing our telephone service, and using texts. Children and young people have told us that often they just want to talk with someone.

A pilot we rolled out in October 2023 uses postcards. The chair of a hearing gives the young person a postcard with a QR code, and explains that they can use it to tell us how they feel their hearing was for them. This, again, can be used for any feedback or to make a complaint that will be listened to and carefully considered.

This is a collaboration between CHS and the Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) to make sure that a child doesn’t need to engage with more than one organisation – we will manage that administration behind the scenes.

It’s still relatively early in this journey for us and we continue to promote and enhance opportunities for children and young people to reach out to us. So far we have received twelve feedback and complaints submissions providing varying insights. One item was particularly complimentary with the young person explaining how much of a positive difference the panel had made to their life and how they felt that their views had really been listed to.  We will continue to use these initiatives and look to develop more ways to listen to children, to get us much direct feedback  as possible and continue to improve their experiences of hearings.

Ends!

Children’s Hearing Scotland

Together (Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights)

Sign-Up and Become a Member (Individual or Organisational)

  • Would you like to find out further information about joining Together’s Membership?  Then visit our website page ‘Become a Member’ for further information.

#RightsOnTrack

Donate To Us Today!

Donate to Together and help us to promote children’s rights in Scotland and improve the lives of all babies, children and young people. 

Leave a comment