Secure care: consultation – summary version

Glossary

• Care Inspectorate: The organisation that checks care places to make sure they are safe and meet the needs of children and young people
• Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS): services that support children and young people experiencing poor mental health, difficult feelings or experiences.
• Children’s Hearing: A legal meeting where trained adults listen and decide what help a child needs.
• Community hub: A place near where children live where families can get help at an early stage, to prevent problems from worsening.
• Compulsory Supervision Order (CSO): A formal decision that says a child must get certain help and support.
• Deprivation of liberty: when a child or young person is not allowed to leave a place where they are staying because it is needed to keep them safe. Only used when really needed and for the shortest time.
• Education Scotland: The organisation that checks the quality of education in secure care centres.
• Flex Secure: An idea for a new type of accommodation where rules can change depending on what a child needs.
• Liberty: The freedom for a child to move around and make their own choices.
• Local authority / council: The organisation that provides services like social work, education, and housing in an area.
• Multi‑Disciplinary Team (MDTs): A group of professionals (like social workers, teachers, health staff) working together to support a child.
• Nationalisation: When the government takes over a service, so it becomes one service for the whole country.
• Remand: When a court says a child must stay somewhere safe (like secure care) while waiting for a final decision on their court case.
• Rights: Things every child should always have — like being safe, respected, listened to and treated fairly.
• Secure care: A locked, safe place where some children stay when they need help, support or protection.
• Secure transport: Safe transport for children who need to be taken to or from secure care.
• Sentence / sentenced: A decision from a court about what will happen after a child is found guilty of an offence.
• Single Point of Contact (SPOC): one place people will be able to get information and support if they have been harmed by a child’s behaviour
• Trauma ‑ informed: Adults understand that hard or scary things may have happened and they try not to make things worse.
• Welfare grounds: When a child is placed in secure care to keep them safe because professionals believe they are at risk of harm or need intensive support, not because they have broken the law.