PARENTS and young people attending children's hearings are being denied key rights, one of the system's former champions has claimed.
John Anderson, who was deputy chairman of Glasgow Children's Panel for five years and who has been a panel member for 20 years, has written to children's minister Aileen Campbell asking for a judicial review of the way new laws are being implemented.
Mr Anderson's complaint relates to the children's hearing system, under which children's panels discuss the needs and deeds of young people at risk or in trouble. A panel of three volunteers takes legally-binding decisions in discussions with others involved in the child's life, such as parents, social workers and teachers.
Some are identified formally as relevant persons, always including parents and perhaps grandparents or foster carers, giving them legal rights to attend meetings and receive documents about the child.
Under new laws, Pre-Hearing Panels (PHPs) can be held to decide whether a given person has enough significant involvement with a child to be called a Relevant Person.
The law states such decisions can be appealed - such as a parent objecting to someone else being declared relevant, or a carer, such as a grandparent, objecting to being denied relevant person status.
However, Mr Anderson says such meetings have routinely been held in Glasgow just 15 minutes before a panel goes on to consider the child's case, so denying participants, including the child, the opportunity to appeal decisions.
In his letter to the minister, Mr Anderson also raises a number of other concerns about practice under the new Children's Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011, alleging panels are routinely influenced and even coerced by reporters, the officials who call children to hearings, and by social workers when making their decisions.
Mr Anderson said he had been told by the Scottish Children's Reporter Administration (SCRA) that arrangements for PHPs were not illegal, but he was not satisfied with this. "There is a clear appeal process. Anyone deemed relevant or not relevant has a full seven days to appeal that."
Panel members had been told it was reasonable to go ahead with a hearing if nobody was going to appeal a pre-hearing decision, but participants should have the opportunity to go away and think about it, he said, while some people not present might also have the right to appeal, he argues.
In his letter, Mr Anderson says: "In the past year I believe panel members in Glasgow have broken parents and children's (European) convention rights (not that it was their fault). In every hearing where a relevant person was denied the right to appeal a decision to name another person relevant or to remove relevant person status the right to a fair trial was subsequently denied."
His letter concludes by asking Ms Campbell to suspend the system entirely until his concerns can be addressed.
A spokesman for SCRA said it was permissible to hold pre-hearings before a children's hearing where it was impractical to avoid it. However, he said it had been policy to encourage this only while the new act was bedding in. "The practice is no longer in force," he said. "Rights of appeal over any decision made still exist regardless of whether the decision has been made by a pre-hearing panel or by a children's hearing."
Morag Driscoll, director of the Scottish Child Law Centre, said there were times when PHPs had to be held at the same session as the full hearing. "It is all about the child. You can't put decisions on hold while you are deciding these issues. There isn't always time," she said.
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "We will consider the concerns Mr Anderson has raised and respond to him directly."
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