A to Z Index:

Children and Families

Information on fostering, adoption, childcare and children's rights in Aberdeenshire. Email: social.work@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

 

Integrated Children's Service Plan 2009 - 2010

The Integrated Children's Services Plan brings together all agencies involved with delivering services to children and young people to focus on achieving the priorities relating to children and young people in Aberdeenshire.

 

Getting it right for every child and the Integrated Assessment Framework

Getting it right for every child is a Scottish Government's policy to make sure every child or young person achieves their potential. The Integrated Assessment Framework is part of this policy. It helps everyone who works with children to work more effectively together and with families to make things better for children.

 

Children's Panel

The Children's Panel is a group of people from Aberdeenshire communities who come from a wide range of backgrounds. Panel Members are unpaid and give their services voluntarily, but are carefully selected and highly trained. They must be at least 18 years old but there is no upper age limit.

Every Scottish local authority, including Aberdeenshire, has a Children's Panel and Panel Members sit on hearings on a rota basis. A Children's Hearing has three Panel Members, of which there must be a mix of men and women. The Hearing must decide whether compulsory measures of supervision are needed for the child and, if so, what they should be.

Across Scotland there are around 2500 Children Panel Members. Aberdeenshire has approximately 90. They are carefully prepared for their task through initial training programmes and they will develop their knowledge and skills during their period of service through experience and attending in-service training.

We usualy recruit people from all walks of life to sit on the Children’s Panel each September. We look for anyone over 18 who can make good, common sense decisions. Find out more about the Children's Panel and the Children's Panel Advisory Committee.

 

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Fostering

Sometimes there are problems at home and breakdowns in family relationships. Some children may be neglected or abused in other ways or there may have been a sudden family crisis such as an illness and there are no other relatives available to help out. This is when fostering can help. Email: adoption@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

The Care Commission inspection of our Fostering service was done in February 2009. The inspection report found that:

  • the service has very good practice about the quality and professionalism of staff, response to current and propsed changes to legislation, the use of the National Care Standards and the promotion of best practice
  • the foster carers spoken with as part of the inspection confirmed that they were well supported and described their family placement workers as very approachable, competent, experienced and professional

The full report is available to read here:

 

Adoption

Adoption is very different from how it used to be: very few young babies are available for adoption, and there is a need for secure and stable adoptive homes for children of all ages. Email: adoption@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

Care Commission iInspection of our Adoption service was done in February 2009. The full Care Commission Inspection report which found many strengths and good practice examples is available to read here:

 

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Children's Rights

Anyone can ask for help from the Children's Rights Service, but the Children's Rights Officer will only get involved with the agreement of the young person.

 

Childcare Partnership

The Childcare Partnership aims to ensure that good quality, affordable childcare is available to meet the needs of all families across Aberdeenshire.

 

Childcare Information Service

The Childcare Information Service can provide information about Childcare provision for children aged 0-14, Getting Help with Childcare Costs, Pre-school education places for 3 and 4 year olds, Registering as a Childminder.

 

Child Protection Line

The Scottish Government have launched a 24-hour national freephone Child Protection line:

0800 022 3222

The aim is to simplify access to services and limit confusion on where to go. The number provides a single point of contact for information about child protection and refers calls direct to the appropriate services.

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