WE MUST DO MORE. WE MUST DO BETTER EXPERTS’ WARNING
Charities: Specialist services needed to protect youngsters
Urgent action to save Scotland’s lost children was demanded yesterday after a teenager laid bare her harrowing life stor y and shattered childhood.
The country’s leading child protection experts said too many young people were falling between the cracks of a care system that must be better resourced and focused.
They spoke out after Sarah, now 16, detailed her life from being born to a drug- addicted mother with opiates in her blood to tumbling through foster care and residential units before taking heroin and selling herself on the streets of Scotland’s biggest city at just 14.
Writing in The Sunday Post today, John Carnochan, a former member of the Scottish Government’ s Early Years Taskforce and co-founder of the acclaimed Violence Reduction Unit, described her story as a national disgrace.
He said: “If we even have one young girl who has had a life like that in 21st Century Scotland, in 2018, we should be absolutely ashamed of ourselves.
“Social work, teachers, police officers all stand up and say they are doing their very best.
“If that is their very best, it’s just not enough.”
Mary Glasgow, interim chief executive at charity Children 1st, said investment in services could make an immediate difference to families. She said: “The system around social workers is sometimes not set up in a way which allows us to build really strong relationships. We have challenges
We need to have more trauma services
because of funding and the whole system needs a massive shift in investment to keep children in their families.”
More services, she said, were needed to specifically help people recover from trauma, and organisations such as the police, social services and even charities had to be more trauma-focused.
Ms Glasgow said many parents addicted to alcohol or drugs had experienced trauma during childhood which had never been resolved, leading to their problems as adults. She said: “You can’t work with children in isolation, you have to work with their parents too and as early as possible. We need all professionals to be trauma-sensitive.
“They can’t say, ‘ There is another feckless person taking drugs’.
“People need to wonder what has happened to that person instead.
“We need a total shift in policy and how we think about this problem, these children and families.”
Aberlour, another leading children’s charity, works with many vulnerable young people on the edge of crisis, and chief executive Sally- Ann Kelly said support during the good and bad times in a family’s life was vital.
She said: “The more placements children have and the more carers they have, the more likely they are to suffer harm themselves and they find it difficult to regulate their life.”
In Sarah’s case, she moved from respite and foster care placements to residential and secure units over a short space of time.
Her family said if they had got more help in the early days, or even before Sarah was born, they may have been able to provide her with a better, more stable life.
Last night, a Glasgow City Council spokesperson said: “We do everything we can to steer vulnerable young people away from sexual exploitation.
“The collective aim is always to protect those at risk of exploitation and bring perpetrators to justice.”
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Scotland’s care services do amazing work safeguarding children every day, but we need constantly to improve and the First Minister asked Fiona Duncan to lead an independent review of care in Scotland.
“We remain committed to helping vulnerable children.”