In line with our Keeping The Promise and Corporate Parenting responsibilities, SCRA is committed to multiple areas of participatory and inclusive practices. These include:

Improved communication with, and support to, children, young people, parents and carers, including electronic, paper-based and personalised services.

Throughout our participation and engagement journey, and more recently in line with The Promise, we have continued to improve our existing communications and develop new ones. SCRA has worked with Hearings experienced children and young people to codesign various key information and views forms including the Hearing About Me form and Customise My Hearing form.  We have also created a variety of new leaflets, information films, podcasts, animations and information platforms on our website, many of which are either delivered by or codesigned by Hearings-experienced young people. 

We have worked closely with partner agencies such as Our Hearings, Our Voice and Children’s Hearings Scotland to develop shared communications. 

Children, young people and families now have access to email addresses for Reporters and families are able to contact us in a variety of different ways.  We continue to promote pre-Hearing visits to help children, young people and families prepare for Hearings.

We work with partner agencies and children and young people to continually improve our communications and we are rolling out Language Leaders training to all staff, developing new letters, and reviewing current films and animations with a view to updating, refreshing and improving their content so that it is accessible for all.

Provision of child-and-young-person friendly Hearing suites and areas to promote a safe, inclusive and participative environment as a rolling programme, all of which have been design-led by Hearings experienced young people.

Since the project was launched in 2017 we have delivered over 44 new Hearing rooms from the portfolio which was co-designed by Hearings-experienced young people.  As it has been 7 years since the project was rolled out, a new cycle is being co-designed with Hearings experienced young people as well as SCRA staff and partner agencies.  The new approach will be introduced from 2025 onwards.

A large sensory garden in Stirling was launched in 2019 and was revamped in 2022 and 2023.  A sensory room for children and young people was launched in the Glenrothes office in March 2022 and Kilmarnock in 2024, with plans to introduce more. In addition, a number of waiting rooms now have sensory elements to them.

The highly successful take away sensory and colouring in kits which were introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic are now established in the longer term and options are offered to children, young people and families at every Hearing.  Our Hearing centres also have sensory kits in the Hearing rooms to support families who may be neurodiverse.  The Dolly Parton Imagination Library book gifting programme for children five and under has been running for four years and we recently introduced a gifting library for older children throughout Scotland in all of our larger Hearing centres. 

Partnership work

Building on existing relationships and forging new ones with key partners, we have been delivering ongoing participative work with key partners to improve the support they can offer to children, young people and families. We have also delivered national training to partner agencies to improve their knowledge and understanding of the Children’s Hearings System and legislation including advocacy providers. SCRA’s Press and Communications Team built the advocacy services website for children and young people wishing to access advocacy for Hearings, as well as supporting the development of other websites such as the Children’s Hearings Improvement Partnership and Our Hearings, Our Voice (OHOV). We continue to work closely with OHOV to improve and develop our services in partnership with them. 

Internal workstreams

In response to Keeping The Promise, SCRA created its first internal care experienced staff group.  The Voice of Experience Reference Group is a national group of staff with a variety of experiences of care and/or Children’s Hearings, either as children having attended Hearings or being in care, or as carers, parents, adoptive parents or kinship carers. The group considers current areas of practice and comes up with ideas for improvements as well as making suggestions for new projects. They submit reports to the Executive Management Team and meet with the Principal Reporter for open discussions around improvements, as well as recognising approaches that work well.

SCRA has also focussed on delivering Care, Connect and Protect programmes to improve our services for children, young people and families involved in the Hearings System.  Multiple trial approaches are being tested before wider roll out as part of our improvement programme to ensure children and young people are included, listened to, and able to participate in their Hearings in a variety of different ways.

SCRA’s commitment to providing national Modern Apprenticeships exclusively for young people who are or have been involved in the Children’s Hearings System or who have been in care, has been running since 2010.  Since that time we have recruited a Modern Apprentice approximately every 18 months, including during the Covid-19 pandemic, and throughout Scotland. Almost all of our Modern Apprentices have gone on to secure permanent positions within SCRA. In 2015, we also introduced funded temporary work experience placements in partnership with Local Authorities for care-experienced young people, and in 2018 we have built on this to roll out salaried work experience placements for care experienced people as well as our MA programme.  

SCRA is committed to improve our external partnership work on both a local and national scale. SCRA has developed strong partnerships and working relationships with a variety of key agencies and organisations in order to promote improved child protection practice, an understanding of the Children’s Hearings System, and support to children, young people and families attending Children’s Hearings. Work streams include free training and information sharing, delivering new communications, advocacy and support information, and improvements in tailoring information for enhanced service delivery.

SCRA has developed a suite of communications materials for children and young people including leaflets, films, cartoon animations and podcasts. These were all designed in consultation with or co-designed by children and young people, and can be downloaded from our website. They are regularly reviewed and updated.