CHS Corporate Parenting activities
Our Strategic Outlook 2020-2023 has four key themes:
Children’s rights, high quality hearings, an empathetic and effective panel, and a focus on working collaboratively with partners.
At Children’s Hearings Scotland (CHS), we are very proud to be Corporate Parents. CHS, the National Convener (Elliot) and the 22 Area Support Teams are all Corporate Parents. However, the Children’s Panel Members who you meet in a Children’s Hearing are not Corporate Parents.
We have decided to include our Corporate Parenting activities into our three year Strategic Outlook 2020-2023 which you can view here.
1.Children’s rights
We will focus on ensuring that hearings are places in which children’s rights are recognised, respected and upheld. As an organisation, CHS will focus its attention on integrating the obligations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in to its work and will promote, internally and externally, the importance of children’s rights in its work. We want to create hearings that feel empowering to children and young people and be part of a system that is centred on love, care and respect.
2. High quality hearings
We want to ensure that the hearings experience is felt by the child or young person to be the best it can be and that hearings produce sound decisions, which move the child, young person and those around them forward, positively, in their journey. Infants, children and young people being able to effectively participate in hearings, but also have an influence over how they run, will be key enablers of this. We want to ensure that hearings, while places in which formal legal decisions are made, are carried out with love, care, respect. This approach will be underpinned by behaviour within and outwith the hearing. We will challenge behaviour that does not display these attributes.
3. An empathetic and effective panel
We want to ensure that the hearings experience is felt by the child or young person to be the best it can be and that hearings produce sound decisions, which move the child, young person and those around them forward, positively, in their journey. Infants, children and young people being able to effectively participate in hearings, but also have an influence over how they run, will be key enablers of this. We want to ensure that hearings, while places in which formal legal decisions are made, are carried out with love, care, respect. This approach will be underpinned by behaviour within and outwith the hearing. We will challenge behaviour that does not display these attributes.
4. Working collaboratively with partners
We will redouble our efforts to work with partners and aim to lead change within the care system. This will involve becoming a more active participant in the environments in which we work. We will take opportunities to contribute to, respond to, and influence research, legislation, policy and practice to make improvements for the better across care, protection, and youth justice. As part of this involvement, we will advocate for the increased use of effective early intervention and identify ways to work with partners who support infants, children and young people before the need for a hearing.