Children’s Advocacy in the Children Hearings System - Expert Reference Group minutes: October 2025

Attendees and apologies

• Chair, Pam Semple, Scottish Government 
• Alicja Piliszczuk, Borders Independent Advocacy Service
• Alistair Hogg, Scottish Children’s Report Administration 
• Annmarie Denny, East Ayrshire Advocacy Service
• Athena Lynch, Scottish Government
• Claire Grant, Scottish Government
• Elaine Adams, Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection 
• Eve Manderson, Borders Independent Advocacy Service
• Heather MacMaster, Angus Independent Advocacy 
• Gordon Main, Our Hearings, Our Voice (OHOV) [joined for the early part of the meeting]
• Jane Crawford, CAPS Independent Advocacy
• Julie Hutton, Independent Advocacy Perth and Kinross 
• Jayne Brinded, Partners in Advocacy
• Kay McKerrell, Who Cares? Scotland 
• Leanne Mackenzie, Advocacy Western Isles
• Louise Piaskowski, Scottish Government
• Mel McDonald, Children’s Hearings Scotland 
• Rebecca Scott, Clan Childlaw
• Sarah Fogg, Independent Advocacy Perth and Kinross 
• Selwyn McCausland, Barnardo’s 
• Suzanne Swinton, Scottish Independent Advocacy Alliance [joined for the early part of the meeting]
• Vivien Thomson, Social Work Scotland [joined for end part only]

Apologies

• Bryan Evans, Children First 
• Kevin McBeath, Advocacy Service Aberdeen
• Melissa Hunt, Scottish Children’s Report Administration 
• Jillian McFadyen, Partners in Advocacy
• Tom McNamara, Scottish Government

Items and actions

This note provides an overview of the agenda, discussion, and action points from the meeting of the Children’s Hearings Advocacy Expert Reference Group (ERG). Once agreed by members the meeting note will be published. 

The meeting was held by videoconference on Thursday 23 October 2025. Papers issued for this meeting included: the agenda; minute of the last meeting 26 June 2025; Scottish Government (SG) update paper; Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) update papers; and addressing practice issues. 

Welcome, introductions and apologies

The Chair welcomed members, noted apologies, and introduced attendees joining for the first time including Jayne Brinded from Partners in Advocacy and Leanne Mackenzie from Advocacy Western Isles. The Chair introduced SG colleague Claire Grant supporting agenda item 3 input at this meeting. It was also noted Vivien Thomson would join for the last half hour.

minutes and actions from previous meetings

The Chair invited any changes to the draft note of the 26 June 2025 meeting. Two changes requested were made to clarify where members attended for only part of the meeting. The note was agreed, and it was confirmed it will be published on the SG website. 

The Chair provided an update on the actions and activity from the last meetings.

Actions carried forward from March 2025

Action 2: Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) agreed to check the circulation details of the Reporter Practice Notes used for the advocacy query answers and would update on whether the notes can be shared with ERG members.
Update: Ahead of the meeting Melissa provided the following update - SCRA’s practice notes are not published, as they are very much focused on Reporter work / activity. A copy of the Practice Note has been shared with the group before, and it can be shared again if wanted.

Action 3: All members to consider SCRA paper on the working model of advocacy in the Children’s Hearings System and offer feedback directly to Melissa on how useful this is, and any suggestions for development. 
Update: Ahead of the meeting Melissa provided the following update - we have not had any feedback about the materials which were developed. These have not been circulated and SCRA are now of the view that they are not agreed / approved. This action will be marked completed.

Action 4: SCRA will arrange to have an initial conversation with Social Work Scotland (SWS) about process of checks at future review Hearings and consider whether this needs to be addressed more widely.
Update: Ahead of the meeting Melissa provided the following update - SCRA have contacted SWS (Vivien Thompson) about the review hearing question. However, there are recently developed materials which have come out of our work on child friendly scheduling that could be helpful to share.

Action
•    SG will share on behalf of SCRA the child friendly hearings resources after this meeting. The information is provided in links here, there is a pdf to explain Child Friendly Scheduling for Professionals and an animation to explain what is available to children Cartoon animation Child Friendly Scheduling. 

Action 5: All members invited to get in touch with Mel to discuss any ideas on feedback mechanisms or to provide feedback on how Hearings are being experienced in the views of the children they are supporting or from their own professional role and perspective. The contact information for e-mail feedback to feedback@chs.gov.scot or via the feedback section on the website Give us feedback as a professional 
Update: Mel would cover this under members updates agenda item. 

Action 7: SG to reflect on the discussion of NIA and will identify and support collaborative action to agree a plan to move the conversation forward constructively.
Update: On-going. Ministerial direction is being sought. 

New actions from 26 June 2025 meeting

Action 1: SG to share updated SCRA projections for change in age of referral to the Children’s Reporter, and the Financial Memorandum that supported the Bill. 
Update: Completed. The information was shared after the meeting with the draft note of the meeting. 

Action 2: SG to share the suite of published information supporting the introduction of the Children (Care, Care Experienced and Services Planning) (Scotland) Bill.
Update: Completed. The links to the information were provided with the June meeting note.

Action 3: SG to share the link to the published Redesign Board remit, membership and minutes. 
Update: Completed. The contact details were provided with the June meeting note.

Action 4: Louisa Brown welcomed contact on matters relating to foster and kinship care. SG will share Louisa’s contact email for any members to get in touch.
Update: Completed. Details were provided with the June meeting note.

Action 5: All members to contact Mel McDonald, CHS, if interested to speak with Angela about Children’s Hearings Scotland outreach work.
Update: Mel updated that no contact has been made but the offer remains open.

Action 6 and 7 taken together -  
Action 6: Advocacy organisations to contact Clan Childlaw email advocacy@clanchildlaw.org to discussion and suggested any relevant training topics that would be useful to cover.
Action 7: Advocacy organisation managers are reminded to ensure advocacy workers are signed up for one of the mandatory training sessions in the year period. Contact Clan Childlaw to check any details.
Update: Rebecca would provide an update on these matters under the members update agenda item. 

It was also mentioned in June, SG advised the group that a meeting of the Training and CPD sub-group took place on 29 April. Actions from that meeting have been progressing slowly and apologies were made for not being able to make quicker headway due to other demands. The sub-group will be reconvened to discuss next steps as soon as fuller research and enquires are completed and information is available.

Action
•    SG to progress work on training and scoping options for a children’s hearings advocacy worker qualification. A meeting of the Training and CPD subgroup will be set up as soon as fuller research has been completed, as per actions noted at the sub-group in April.

Progress with cross border regulations and advocacy offer – Claire Grant, Scottish Government 

The Chair invited Claire to provide an update. Claire outlined work has been moving at pace to prepare draft regulations for cross border placements in residential care in Scotland, due to be laid in parliament in November 2025. The proposal is to extend the advocacy offer for all children and young people in cross border placements in residential care, just like the offer in place for Deprivation of Liberty Order placements. This means Scottish Ministers would be required to source and fund this advocacy. If the draft Regulations are passed, work already underway will clarify training and funding needs required. The Regulations will undergo scrutiny by the parliament, with the anticipated implementation date of 3 February 2026. The recent count of live cross border residential placements was 112, and it is thought not all children and young people will require to be offered advocacy immediately, therefore a triage process is being developed.

Questions were invited. The Group discussed a view that on a practical level early information of training for staff at induction stage and external/additional training provided by Clan Childlaw would be helpful, noting the frequency may not necessarily facilitate alignment with recruitment timeframes. Another view was made on the premise that only newly recruited staff would require training on this topic, noting this will not be the case for all organisations. It is more likely the full staff team would need to have the same training to be able to manage the referrals and caseloads appropriately within the local children’s advocacy team/s. There was general agreement from advocacy providers at the meeting this would be the case for all of their organisations. Further discussion was had on the necessity to ensure recognition that content of the training the basic/common issue is understanding with the English legislation requires and what this means in the Scottish context.

For example, what the legal Order type is and what that means in respect of entitlements. Claire confirmed discussions with Clan Childlaw are at an early stage and would share details when there is a more developed plan. Rebecca from Clan Childlaw commented the necessary content may not fit so neatly as an add on topic to the current children’s hearings advocacy training sessions and may be better arranged as a standalone session. It was noted the points made were helpful and Claire confirmed these will be considered as the plans are worked up.

Action
•    Claire and Rebecca provided their contact email addresses and invited members to contact them with any views about what the training content should cover, and any other considerations around timing and delivery that should be thought about in the planning. 

Member updates

The Chair asked Louise to lead on this part of the agenda.

Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration (SCRA) Update – written papers accompanied this item.

•    SCRA Advocacy Data 01/05/25 to 31/08/25 Report 
•    SCRA Programme Update

Louise thanked Melissa and SCRA colleagues for the written papers and invited Alistair to speak about the content of the papers.

Alistair referred members to the programme update paper. The programme activity is rooted in The Promise, and one project is about arranging and setting up hearings including when notifications and papers are issued. There was a lot of different local practices that had evolved over decades. This work is a move towards a more standardised process so there should be a same experience for all. Alistair extended thanks to everyone, including advocacy providers, solicitors, and other group members/organisations, who contributed to giving views over the summer on how notifications and hearing information should be sent to children and relevant persons. The feedback was helpful and consistent across key themes which has shaped a more inclusive and trauma informed approach to children’s hearings at a national level. Action is being taken to standardise the approach to help people prepare for the child’s hearing. Specific actions mentioned are notification and hearings information packs will be sent together to children and relevant persons at 3 weeks before the hearings, with any additional hearing information packs being sent at 2 weeks if required e.g. for social work reports to be ready. There will be some exemptions for short notice hearings. New standard notification letter templates have been developed with the support of speech and language therapy. There is a template specifically for advocacy.

Members thanked the SCRA team for their work on consistency with letters, timings and practice. Contributions were made about the results with an example shared of early notification having been noticed already. For children and young people in the hearings system consistency demonstrates and supports the ethics of care and caring for their experience. It was queried whether the new template could or should include the reasons for the hearings being held. This information was provided in some areas before but seems to have been stopped. The change raises issues where reliance is put on the children to know. Often, they do not which can cause confusion and upset. Advocacy needs to have some basic awareness of the purpose to help the children understand and prepare for their children’s hearing. An experience was shared where some postal issues have caused delay with receiving the notifications (some after the hearing data). Alistair asked for local level feedback on matters like delays to continue to be shared with the local SCRA teams. The standardised approach should make earlier notifications better and reduce this type of situation. Any challenges to roll out should be raised and reported back at a local level. 

Actions
•    SCRA will consider the concern raised regarding the reason/s for the hearing being scheduled being provided as part of the notification letter for advocacy.
•    Advocacy organisations and any other members receiving hearings information should report any concerns with timings to the local SCRA teams.

The second paper presented SCRA data for the period 1 May to 31 August 2025 with summary headlines mentioned:
•    The counts of children with an advocacy worker present at their hearing is similar to the last period 923 or 20.4% (total for the period is 4532 children).
•    The variations are striking in the data for children with linked advocacy support and hearings with child advocacy worker present, by local authority. For example, the lowest count of children with advocacy is 4.2% in Stirling and as high as 76.9% in Orkney with variations in between.
•    The data is also provided for children with linked advocacy support and hearings with child advocacy worker present, by age.

Alistair commented the variations in advocacy across local authority areas could be useful to look at as it may have been expected to see something more equalised. 

Contributions noted that the National Provider Network continue to discuss and use the data in local contexts. In discussion a question was raised about who will analyse and bring all the data together. SG colleagues commented the network is a good place for sharing good practice and discussing ways to improve practices. Also, the external evaluation report identified that work should be undertaken to develop simple, robust and standard methods for gathering monitoring information. The NPN have been looking at developing a standard report template. The NPN subgroup, have been considering consistency, and purpose to get the balance of information right.

There was discussion about the Clan Childlaw enquiry line for all. The information children and young people receive would suggest the way advocacy is offered and how they are informed about their rights can be experienced differently. It was questioned if there needs to be more consistency and formal recording of the child having been informed about and offered advocacy. It is imperative to note that advocacy is not instead of legal representation or vice versa. A child or young person can take up the support of both advocacy and legal representation. Advocacy can help a child early and can identify a matter that may need a solicitors help. Alistair clarified making an offer of advocacy is not a decision of the hearing so it is not something that would be recorded as part of the hearing report. This type of data might be possible to capture for statistical purposes. Information about advocacy is provided in communications in written letter and on the website but it is a valid point that this does not all land in the best way for the child. The provisions in the Children (Care, Care Experienced and Services Planning) Bill are aimed to improve this with SCRA and other public bodies to improve signposting for children to advocacy services. 

Further contributions noted this matter is something that continues to be raised and often talk about. How can we reach the children we do not know about? Clan Childlaw is doing the right thing to say to children/young people they can get advocacy support and encouraging them to contact the local provider. 

A query was raised about advocacy capacity and waiting lists. Pam mentioned there are wait times and capacity issues for other children's advocacy but should not be for children's hearings advocacy. The hearings advocacy operates as a demand led model, and SG should be informed of any waiting lists to be able to address issues. Reasons for waiting lists can be a variety of reasons other than capacity. As is noted in the SCRA data, some hearings have been deferred where advocacy support has been discussed, and the child wants to take it up. On the issue of waiting lists, conversation confirmed a variety of reasons may exist. This can include elements of gatekeeping rights, best interest, capacity that all lead to no referrals. Advocacy services only know about children and young people referred to them, not all who would be eligible. How advocacy is portrayed to children and young people is significant. If there is a duty in the Bill, it was thought there needs to be data ‘tick box’ to capture this has been done. The action should have a duty to act and also record. It was suggested to Rebecca that an overview of issues raised through the helpline could be considered with the NPN to triangulate what they are hearings with what organisations are experiencing.

There was support for all the points made about making the advocacy offer much more consistently available to children. As well as the expectations, guidance and rules any real uplift is likely to be most influenced by strengthening the ability, capacity, time, and relational approach from those (such as social workers) that will in turn champion and refer to vital advocacy support.

Further points were explained on why an opt-out model could make a shift, as it is operated in areas of child protection.

Actions
•    SG to convene a group to carry out a deep dive, drilling down into available data, e.g. SCRA official statistics, to determine where variances exist across Scotland in terms of uptake of children’s hearings advocacy, and what steps could be taken to address any identified barriers.
•    NPN sub-group looking at consistency of reporting to feed into the deep dive work. 
•    Clan Childlaw to consider if any themes from the helpline information can be gathered and discussed with the Expert Reference Group and or/National Provider Network specifically to gain learning and support practices.

Children’s Hearings Scotland (CHS) Update

Mel McDonald was invited to provide an update. Mel spoke about the internal delivery group’s work focusing on participation, practice and communications. Partnership coordinators are part of the group moving work forward. The aim is for consistent culture of improving services through learning and practice improvement. It is recognised work needs to be done to help demonstrate and explain actions clearly and purposefully for children and young people. Partnership working is key to identifying opportunities. There will be a children and young people video, general push to encourage views sharing, and a QR code for how to share feedback is now on letters from SCRA (this replaced the postcard pilot). Feedback to date has been ad-hoc and some anonymous but equally helpful and powerful. Professionals including advocacy workers sharing their own views about how they experience a hearing are helpful too. 

There was no direct contact or feedback received in respect of the action from the previous ERG but feedback from some advocacy workers has been gained through direct contacts. However, ways to create the environment to receive and act upon feedback from children and professionals about their experience of hearings remains an ongoing matter.

Mel raised a query with SG about content on the hearings advocacy website “Will my parents need to give permission for me to be able to have an advocacy worker?” in response it says “if you would like advocacy support but a parent/carer will not give their permission, your social worker can let the children’s hearing know that you would like an advocacy worker or more information about advocacy”. Mel asked what the expectation of the panel may be to do something. The panel can not resolve the issue, and the wording may be confusing.

Pam clarified this is to ensure if a concern is identified where parent/s prevents a child speaking to advocacy it can be raised in awareness with the panel and other professionals such as social work. It was mentioned that this is in part to mitigate the myth that parental consent for advocacy is required. The child has a right to give a view, and this can be facilitated by advocacy if the child wishes. Further contributions were offered to say if a hearing can place an order on the child, acting as legal right of a parent by placing an order, then legally is there something that can be done. Also noting advocacy is not a right at the moment. However, in promoting children’s rights if it were possible to make a recommendation on an intervention, one that forces children to access advocacy that they may not want would not be helpful. The key consideration is at the discretion of the child. It was highlighted parental dynamic is huge, at the centre of parental disagreement is the child who has to manage all of the emotional distractions.

Action
•    SG, SCRA and CHS to work together to review the wording to the question on the website. SCRA and CHS will also consider a scenario discussion to bring clarity on expectations.

Children’s Hearings Advocacy National Provider Network (NPN) Update

Kay McKerrell, Chair for the NPN was invited to  provide an update. Kay commented on good work that has been happening including examples of good panels backed by feedback, she detailed an example of a hearing being the most child centred an advocacy worker had attended. Talking about barriers to be resolved (connected to agenda item 5) the NPN have started to capture and address problems with an understanding of where isolated local matters or national matters are arising, and to discuss solutions to support good and consistent practice. The issues noted may not need aired with the full ERG, but it was suggested that individuals could be invited to discuss with the forum things relevant to their organisations interest and influence to working in collaboration on improvements. Kay mentioned some of the recent themes including: 

•    advocacy workers needing to know basic reasons/grounds for the hearings to best support a child. There should not solely be a reliance on the child sharing details they may not understand or know about. A few examples of unintended consequences were shared. 
•    a few examples of children not being informed about advocacy or reasons given by social work for blocking access.
•    timescales of referrals made, and notifications of hearings received still varying, noted the SCRA project work as discussed at this meeting should be beneficial and improve this.
•    non-instructed advocacy continues to be a topic of interest and work is ongoing.

NPN members contributed with support for more focussed discussions with partners particularly SCRA and Social Work Scotland on matters including the social work role and promotion of the independent advocacy offer.

Action
•    Kay as Chair of National Providers Network to schedule a focussed discussions on practice improvement matters as identified including with SCRA and Social Work Scotland.

Clan Childlaw – training and legal advocacy service for children’s hearings advocacy workers

Rebecca Scott provided an update on the training for advocacy workers. A session following completion of the self-learning was held on 26 August with 16 new starts. The follow-on training for all advocacy workers is in 2 x 2-hour sessions to better support attendance and learning. There was a great level of engagement from those workers who have attended sessions. Clan Childlaw offered a legal case clinic at the end of the sessions to introduce how the helpline works. Rebecca mentioned a team change with Alison Drennan, Training and Membership Co-Ordinator, taking over the contact role and Michael Phelan departing. Alison would be in touch and contact details would be provided. Some advocacy organisations asked if the next new start session planned for January could be changed to end of the month to avoid a tricky time at the turn of the year when help people settling after the holiday period.

Actions
•    Advocacy organisations to note new contacts at Clan Childlaw and raise any questions or concerns with Alison or Rebecca.
•    Clan Childlaw will look at changing the date for the January session for new starts and communicate with advocacy organisations directly about this.

Our Hearings, Our Voice (OHOV)

Gordon Main was invited to give an update particularly on the excellent Rise Up event held the day before. The event was attended by the Minister for Children and Young People and the Promise and some of the ERG group members and was spoken of as highly inspirational. Gordon confirmed it was an excellent day celebrating the work of the OHOV children and young people where a brand new interactive, online guide ‘Seeing Beyond the Surface’ was launched Guide – Our Hearings, Our Voice. The guide has been created by young people from OHOV built on their research with young people across Scotland. The guide is aimed at adults who work with children in any capacity, teachers, healthcare workers, care providers, police, social workers, and more. It is hoped adults will be inspired by children’s voices to ‘see beyond the surface’, improve practice where they can and strengthen the good work they already do to ensure that every child and young person in care receives the care and support they need.

Action
•    SG to circulate the link/s to the Seeing Beyond the Surface Guide. These were circulated in email and included as hyperlinks in this note.

Scottish Government Update – a written paper accompanied this item.

The Chair and Louise signposted to a few updates in the written paper including: 

•    Grant claims and monitoring - SG are expecting the second quarter July to September claims and reports after end of October. 

•    Webpage analytics – between 14 June to 9 October - 1278 views, almost half on the homepage but a significant number on others, 265 views – on the contact someone local page, and 77 visits, an increase from the last 3 months – on the questions and answer page.

•    The Children (Care, Care Experienced and Services Planning) Bill is currently at stage 1. Some members will have been part of the evidence gathering sessions or provided written evidence and will have been a very busy time for everyone. The Minister will attend a session in the coming weeks. SG officials remain open to discussion, to providing more information as needed, and continue working closely with stakeholders as the Bill progressed through the parliament.

Supporting implementation solution focussed discussion – all members

Pam led the item, noting this agenda item is a new addition to our ERG meeting structure. SG with partners’ views invited have been thinking of ways to make these meetings a bit more dynamic – and to take full advantage of the expertise, knowledge and willingness to assist, of the people and organisations represented on the group.

In the note of the last meeting and mentioned under the National Provider Network update today, a mechanism for barriers to advocacy has been created, whether a local issue or a more national issue to be discussed and solutions found. This was exactly what the NPN was set up to do and the draft template shared in the meeting papers was the formalisation of recording of issues and barriers.

The template is simple where issues are recorded, a careful eye will be kept on whether this is an isolated incident, or if it becomes more widespread or applies across all of Scotland. At the last NPN it was suggested the ERG was the ideal place for discussion of the issues to take place, whereby the Group’s collective knowledge could present solutions, or indeed rationale for what are being noted as barriers to advocacy.

In that spirit of co-operation, problem solving and recognition of each other’s roles and responsibilities, a discussion was invited on the mechanism and issues on the template to produce solutions.
 
A point was reiterated that matters noted may not all need aired with the full ERG but suggested that individuals could be invited to the NPN forum to discuss specific things relevant to their interest and influence and agree a way forward. Others might also have good ideas and solutions - even if not experiencing the same issue. 

Vivien commented on the Hearing Redesign work and Culture workstream. Noting it may be of interest that while the core Culture Workstream membership is tight the approach includes a reference aspect where work and proposals will be informed by relevant stakeholders in the hearing system. This ensures that the work can progress while still being informed and having as a central aspect, the views and experience of stakeholder – lawyers, advocacy worker, hearing members, safeguarders etc – as well as children and their families. Culture also threads through all the other workstreams, and the preparation or hearings group has already engaged widely with children, young people and families.

Any other business

It was asked if independent advocacy was represented on the Culture workstream as raised at June ERG. The Chair of the Culture workstream confirmed the approach the Planning Group agreed was an initial tight group, with a wider core stakeholder / reference which will absolutely include advocacy groups. There was some disagreement with the rationale. 

Vivien added the Redesign Board work is all on the SG website and offered to feedback views from this meeting to the SG Secretariat. Currently three workstreams - Preparing for Hearings (Gordon from OHOV Chairs), Culture (SWS chair) Data (SG chair) and Referrals (SCRA chair) are all in early stages except the preparation for hearings group, which is further ahead.

On behalf of NPN, Selwyn is on the Planning and Preparation for Hearings Group. The group is in early stages with individual organisations considering their role in planning and who is all involved.

The NPN chair reflected that the Children’s Hearings Improvement Partnership (CHIP) meeting had discussed way to improve transparency and steps to remedy.

A point was made about ensuring to embed and keep up practice and culture links with OHOV work/what children and young people experience and want with no one excluded.

Actions
•    SG will contact Neill Hunter and Elliott Jackson to invite them to NPN to provide an update on the remits and work plans of the groups and how transparency of the Redesign work can be supported.
•    SG to send link to the Children’s Hearings Redesign Board webpage containing published minutes of the meetings.

Date of next meeting 

The provisional date of the next meeting is Thursday 29 January at 10:30-12:30. The diary invite will be sent.

The Chair thanked everyone for their attendance and participation and closed the meeting.

Action
•    SG to send the next ERG meeting details in a diary invite.