Children’s hearing redesign

Date: 20th August 2024
Category: General measures of implementation, Special protection measures

Closing date: 28th October 2024

This consultation seeks to redesign Scotland’s children’s hearing system, aiming to build on it’s strength and improve the experience for children and families in need of support. The focus is on areas which may require changes to the law.

The policy aims are:

To ensure that the children’s hearings system meets the needs, and respects the rights, of all the children and families it serves;
To ensure that the processes of the children’s hearings system support children and families to properly participate and engage - with the referred child always at the centre;
To support the children's hearings system to become more inquisitorial and to minimise the application of adversarial proceedings, without diminishing the significance of the process;
To ensure that the children’s hearings system and the professionals operating within it have the capacity to deliver what each child needs;
To ensure each child continues to be treated in a way that is trauma-informed and accounts for their age and stage of development;
To make other technical and procedural alterations where it is necessary, appropriate or beneficial to ensure processes and procedures work more effectively.

Following the launch of this consultation, two online engagement/information sessions have been scheduled to take place on the 15th and 22nd of August 2024. The sessions aim to provide additional information and background on the consultation, explain the different approach taken in this consultation and sign post alternative ways to engage with the redesign process including details of future engagement events.

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Children’s hearing redesign