During April this year, I attended a joint meeting between Child Protection Committee Convenors and CP Lead Officers together with their Adult Protection Committee Convenors and ASP Lead Officers. It was the first time that all the CP and ASP Convenors and Lead Officers had been together for many years – by my recollection at least eight. The meeting concentrated on the cross cutting issues that link both Child Protection and Adult Support and Protection.
The Agenda included considering the wider world of Public Protection and how Child Protection and Adult Support and Protection fit into that landscape. We heard from Sinead Power from the Scottish Government Public Protection Unit about the plans to achieve better, more effective links between the different strands of Public Protection, which can include Violence Against Women, Homelessness, Alcohol and Drugs Partnerships, MAPPA (Multi-agency Public Protection Arrangements) as well as Child Protection and Adult Support and Protection, sometimes alongside other, additional Agendas. The move towards working more effectively and efficiently together across Public Protection makes perfect sense.
In addition, there were inputs in relation to Chronologies – which have been a longstanding issue in terms of quality and effectiveness across both Child Protection and Adult Support and Protection. The National ASP Implementation Group have a Subgroup on Chronologies, which has recently recognised that this is a much wider issue than simply Adult Support and Protection and therefore have widened out their membership to attempt to make improvements in relation to Chronologies across a range of Partners. This work is being supported by Ellen Daly – another Iriss colleague. If you have an interest in this work, email me at: brenda.walker@iriss.org.uk
I mentioned the work of my colleague Hannah Martin from Iriss in my last blog – in relation to her recently published Report titled ‘Understanding Age in Child Protection Guidance and Adult Support and Protection Legislation ‘ – Hannah also gave a presentation on this work, which has very clear links across both CP and ASP.
There was a presentation provided by the Care Inspectorate in relation to the plans that they have to better align across Child Protection and Adult Support and Protection how they have Learning Reviews submitted to them and how they subsequently report on these.
There was a really packed Agenda across the day and I for one, really enjoyed seeing colleagues across CP and ASP in the room, on a face to face basis. I really hope this will become an Annual event in the CP and ASP Calendars.
In early May, I attended some engagement workshop sessions organised by the Care Inspectorate to consider a Quality Indicator Framework for Adult Support and Protection. It is envisaged that this Framework once finalised, can be utilsed to support self-evaluation activity in relation to ASP for local areas, as well as to provide a tool which can be used to inform future ASP Inspection activity by the Care Inspectorate. It was great to be in attendance and the overwhelming view in relation to this much more collegiate approach from the Care Inspectorate was very positive.