PAS Response to Scottish Parliament consultation on the revised National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland

The guidance should stress that parents and carers and children are an integral part of the process and should be involved and have a voice at every stage; in order for this to happen they must understand the process. [...] Trialling the guidance with a range of professional groups to identify which terms are not understood, and then using the results of this trialling to create interactive links within the guidance to a glossary of terms would be a useful exercise to improve accessibility. [...] Materials for parents and carers As we said earlier, many parents and carers enter the child protection system without a clear understanding of the process, and in order to have their rights respected and be able to meaningfully participate in the process it is essential that a suite of resources should be developed. [...] The following legislation should be included within the legislative context section in Part 1 of the guidance and within the appendix: 2 • The Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 o The effect of domestic abuse on children is a child protection issue whether the child is the subject of the abuse or not. [...] An understanding of this dynamic and the need for children’s voices to be clearly heard in contact proceedings and in support thereafter needs to be understood, and we suggest that there should also be references to relevant research such as the evidence review of court enforcement orders2 and the work of Morrison et al on children’s participation rights in contested contact cases3.