What action is being taken to improve services to children at risk.

I would draw your attention to the Partnership for a Better Scotland document at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/government/pfbs-00.asp which sets out the Scottish Executive’s commitments in relation to children, young people and their families.
This confirms our commitment to ensuring that all children get the best start in life. There is a wide range of work underway to help achieve our vision that children are nurtured, safe, active, healthy, achieving, included, respected and responsible.
These include the three year child protection reform programme which is now in its final year where the multi-disciplinary action team continues to work closely with practitioners and agencies to ensure that children get the help they need when they need it. Information on the range of work being undertaken within the programme, which includes embedding the framework for standards across all agencies, delivery of a training and development framework for practitioners with a suite of national training materials to underpin this, follow up of assurances from local services that child protection has been reviewed and issues acted upon, is available at www.scotland.gov.uk/childprotection.
Guidelines for education have recently been revised and the publication of Safe and Well earlier this year makes clear the role of staff, schools and education authorities in supporting and protecting children and young people.
Pilot inspections of child protection services in two areas were undertaken earlier this year and a full programme will rollout from next year. A range of Quality Indicators have been developed to support this programme building on the Framework for Standards and the need to ensure effective inter-agency working that is child-centred.
The Protection of Children (Scotland) Act 2003, which established a Disqualified from Working with Children List, was commenced in January 2005 to aid safer recruitment and help ensure those who are unsuitable to work with children are not able to do so.
Getting It Right For Every Child in June 2005, was a consultation on revisions to the Children’s Hearings system and services for children in the longer term available at:
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/06/20135608/56098.
This also included a single Integrated Assessment Framework to be introduced across all agencies which will provide for a single record for a child and so reduce the risk that information is not appropriately shared. Development in information technology through the eCare programme is helping develop the IT infrastructure to underpin the speedy and efficient sharing of information to help in the early identification of risk and action being taken to reduce this. More information can be found at http://www.ecare-scotland.gov.uk/.