VICTIMS of historic child abuse in care homes will be able to tell of their experiences in a £2.3m programme to be set up under proposals being unveiled by the Scottish Government this summer.
A consultation document on establishing a National Confidential Forum to acknowledge and record accounts of sexual, physical and emotional maltreatment is to be published over the coming weeks with the body expected to start work next year.
Two planning groups, which include former residents, are already discussing how the forum should take shape.
already earmarked funding of £1m a year over 2013/14 and 2014/15 for the forum and £300,000 for preparatory work.
The move is the latest response by the Scottish Government to calls from former residents for action over widespread abuse in children's homes which lasted decades.
It follows the Time to be Heard project in 2010 in which around 100 former residents of homes run by the charity Quarriers were given the chance to tell their stories in confidence to a three-person panel and explain how what had happened to them in care had shaped their lives. The aim of the process was to allow victims of historic abuse to achieve closure through a truth-and-reconciliation type approach.
That pilot was in turn part of the Scottish Government's response to a 2007 report by Tom Shaw, a former Chief Inspector of Education and Training in Northern Ireland on abuse in residential care homes in Scotland between 1950 and 1995.
His study found widespread systemic failures in the country's network of children's homes and residential schools run by the state, charities and churches and recorded many first-hand accounts of children's experiences in homes.
Mr Shaw's study was commissioned following a petition to the Scottish Parliament by a former children's home resident and a public apology from First Minister Jack McConnell.
Extending the remit to former residents of all homes as is expected has been welcomed.
But campaigners still fear the new forum will stop short of a full public inquiry – which the SNP supported while in opposition.
They also suspect it will have no element of holding institutions or individuals to account or lead to compensation payments.
"We do welcome the plans for a national forum. It is certainly a step in the right direction," said Chris Daly, 47, of Rutherglen, South Lanarkshire, a former resident of Nazareth House in Aberdeen, and the secretary of the support group In Care Abuse Survivors (INCAS).
"But we don't want it to be just a talking shop. It shouldn't stand alone. There should be other elements to the Scottish Government's response to abuse in homes, including holding the institutions responsible accountable for what happened and pursuing those who committed criminal acts."
He added: "The compensation element is important to a lot of survivors. Some people have accused former residents of gold-digging and just being 'out for the money' but in many, many cases people have had their lives shattered by what has happened to them in these homes and it is only right that they get some compensation."
It has been estimated at least 1000 children were abused in residential care between the 1950s and 1990s.
Homes where abuse took place included council-run ones in Edinburgh; Blairs College, a seminary in Aberdeen; St Ninian's, a school run by the De La Salle Brothers in Gartmore, Stirlingshire, and Nazareth House, a group of Catholic children's homes run by nuns from the Sisters of Nazareth Order.
However, the Time to be Heard pilot was criticised by some because it only included children who had grown up in Quarriers, excluding, for instance, those who had lived in homes run by the Catholic Church.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman: "Time to be Heard was a pilot set up to give adult survivors who were abused in residential care as children the opportunity to talk about their experience.
"This heard from former residents of Quarriers, which was chosen because it was one of the largest institutions providing residential care for young people from across Scotland. As a result of the pilot project, the Scottish Government is currently drafting a consultation on introducing a National Confidential Forum, which should be published by the end of the summer."
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