Vulnerable children and young people in Glasgow are to benefit from the first UK trial of a radical US approach to cutting the harm caused by abuse.
The Big Lottery fund has awarded £1.07 million to the NSPCC's project to assess the impact of the New Orleans Intervention Model, designed at Tulane University, Louisiana.
The cash will allow a four-year clinical trial of the model, which sees public authorities working with families after children are taken into care for issues such as neglect and abuse.
The families are given every opportunity to prove they can care safely for their children, but in America a ticking clock is provided by the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act, which obliges a child to be placed for adoption after a set time has elapsed.
In Scotland, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and Glasgow City Council, who are partners with the NSPCC trial, are keen to establish whether the system can prevent the delays commonly experienced by many children who are removed from families.
On average, a child removed and placed in foster care in Scotland spends around four years before a decision is taken about whether to remove them permanently from their parents' care.
In many cases this period includes frequent, damaging moves between foster families and back to and away from their biological family home, to attempt rehabilitation or work out the best way to help them.
The New Orleans System was already being tested in Glasgow, but the new funding will allow for a four-year gold standard clinical trial, working with Glasgow University, which will involve children aged between six months and five-years-old, the ages at which experts believe there is the best chance of avoiding long-term harm.
Matt Forde, head of service for the NSPCC, said the funding would allow a much more thorough assessment of how the New Orleans Approach might benefit children's services in Scotland.
"What we all want is to set children on the path to having a happy, healthy childhood," he said. "The evidence from New Orleans is that this comprehensive package leads to families being offered support and treatment, which improves relationships between the child and the parents and the parents capacity improves."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article