Scotland's Redress Scheme: combined annual report 2023

6.12 Save The Children UK

Published Redress Report

Introduction

This report sets out the non-financial steps Save the Children UK has taken to meet our obligations as members of the Scottish Government’s Redress Scheme for Survivors of Historic Abuse. The reporting period covered in the report is the first year of the scheme – from 8 December 2021 to 7 December 2022. The report is submitted to the Scottish Government as per our obligation under the scheme.

We explain below the measures we have taken to ensure that we are prepared to provide assistance or support to survivors who may make contact with us.

Governance

We have taken a number of steps to ensure we fulfil our obligations under the Scheme and put in place a high-quality programme of support for survivors. We established:

• An oversight group to oversee our commitments: this group includes senior staff responsible for our work in Scotland, as well as representatives from our Safeguarding, People and Wellbeing, and Legal teams. This group reports directly to our Trustees, through the Audit and Risk Committee of our Board.
• An agreement with Harmeny Education Trust Ltd (HETL) on how we work together to support former pupils to access records and provide emotional and practical support.

Providing emotional, psychological or practical support

Our Safeguarding and Wellbeing teams have developed a values-based, people-centred approach to providing emotional, psychological and practical support to survivors.

We incorporated support to survivors of historical abuse into our case management standard operating procedures and survivor- centred protocol. Our Director of Safeguarding is the named lead for these policies.

We have developed a therapeutic pathway for survivors of historical abuse. The pathway is based on taking a person-centred approach and providing support that is tailored to an individual’s needs. Our Safeguarding and Wellbeing teams will work together to ensure the best possible support is available to survivors, as follows:

• We use Trauma Risk Incident Management (TriM) as a mechanism to deliver support following potential exposure to trauma or harm. The objective is to support individuals that may be at risk of developing illness because of exposure to a traumatic incident and to facilitate appropriate support. TriM is a peer-delivered system. It is evidence based and conforms to NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidance on suggested responses to traumatic events. It has been tested and adopted by a wide range of organisations. Participation by an individual or group with the TriM process is voluntary.
• Following initial screening and discussion with individuals, we offer counselling or a referral to a clinical psychologist. These services are provided through third-party, accredited providers depending on where the person is based. Our approach is flexible and continually monitored.

We would be happy to provide more information on our pathway and providers.

During this reporting period, we have not had any contact or referrals from case workers relating to cases arising under the Scheme. We aim to refine our approach based on feedback from survivors on how it works in practice.

Providing assistance to survivors to access historical records

We have a contractual agreement in place with HETL to ensure our obligations to make historical records relating to Harmeny School available to applicants under the Scheme are met. This agreement sets out the basis for the control, protection and sharing of personal data between HETL and SCUK in line with data protection legislation, as well as forming the basis on which HETL and SCUK will co-operate with one another in relation to access to and use of the historical records relating to the School. Under our agreement, and in practice, SCUK and HETL work together closely to handle subject access requests by former pupils of Harmeny School. Such requests are generally received by the management at HETL, whereafter HETL and SCUK will jointly prepare the response to survivors to ensure that all appropriate records relating to their request can be provided. HETL maintain contact with the individual making a request by telephone and offer the opportunity to visit the school, or if they would like. A copy of the book, “Recollections of Harmeny: The First Fifty Years” is also available free of charge for any former pupil, should they wish a copy.

We supported four individuals to access their records during the period to which this report relates.

Providing assistance in tracing and reuniting families

We have had no requests to provide assistance in tracing and reuniting families during this reporting period.

Providing apologies to survivors

Apology is an important element of non-financial redress. During this reporting period we have not provided an apology to any individual survivors.

As set out in our response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the apology framework our approach is to tailor an apology to an individual, ensuring the individual is treated with dignity, respect and compassion.

We have a ‘survivor-centric’ approach to handling safeguarding incidents and apply that approach to providing individual apologies to survivors of abuse at institutions for which we were responsible. We are strongly in favour of providing a face-to-face apology where the victim and their families agree and/or request this. We believe this format to reflect more directly our survivor-centric approach to managing safeguarding matters (where circumstances make this possible and where the victim is willing and would prefer to receive an apology of this nature). We are equally willing and able to provide written apologies only, where victims express such a preference.

The key obstacle to providing the most meaningful form of individual apology is the availability of accurate and relevant information relating to the individual and the period in which they attended the institution at which they suffered abuse. The information available to the organisation from our records, if any, can often be basic – limiting what we can ascertain to basic facts such as the dates during which a student attended the relevant institution. This may mean that we lack, or are unable to provide, meaningful context to explain the situation at the institution in question at the time a victim attended, which we understand would be frustrating for victims, and which hampers our ability to expand more meaningfully on the content of any apology we provide.

Support for former pupils to visit HETL

We are working with HETL to develop a joined-up approach to supporting former pupils of the school during Save the Children’s period of management.

We are discussing how we can support HETL to facilitate visits to the school from former pupils, through providing financial assistance and other means. We will update more on this approach in next year’s annual report.

Our approach to safeguarding

Keeping the children and adults we work with safe is vital and our top priority. We take safeguarding extremely seriously. We expect all staff to demonstrate the highest standards of behaviour in both our professional and personal lives. And we do all we can to prevent, report and respond appropriately to abuse and neglect. We ensure that our approach to participation/any activity with children and parent or carers is carefully planned and considered to ensure it does not place children in harm’s way.

Our five pillars of safeguarding are prevention, reporting, response, learning and governance. We aim to be unflinching in learning from our mistakes, including historic cases, in how we implement our safeguarding policies in practice.

During 2022 we introduced “no fault/no harm” reporting. This is to help us become more transparent and open to learning, being aware of any gaps in our practice and making sure we try to fix them. It aims to boost a speak up culture to build confidence amongst staff and ensure we are continuously learning from practice. Safeguarding is something that everyone is responsible for and this approach trusts staff to act on that responsibility. In addition:

• we take a preventative approach and have taken steps during this reporting period to strengthen our approach to risk assessing our work with children and parents – in particular in relation to our planning framework and recording risks and mitigation. Safeguarding is an essential part of our planning framework (from designing and delivering our programmes to planning individual events or activities);
• every member of staff is required to attend safeguarding training during the first week of their induction and refresher training every two years after that; and
• we have invested in dedicated safeguarding expertise to help develop our approach in Scotland (and across the UK). This role is supporting teams to develop their confidence in reporting and to strengthen our risk assessment processes across all our engagements with children and vulnerable adults.

Conclusion

Our approach to supporting survivors and safeguarding is based on continuous learning and development. We aim to build on the steps we’ve taken this year to ensure a joined-up approach with HETL in providing practical and emotional support to survivors and learning from any historic cases that we become aware of through the Redress Scheme or outside of it.