A SMALL boy in pyjamas is spotted walking through darkened streets in the October rains. He is four years old. When police are called he is taken to hospital for health checks and found to be covered in so many bruises that a consultant paediatrician at first thinks that he may have blood cancer, leukaemia, or haemophilia.

The examination also reveals fingerprint bruising, consistent with the child having been grabbed, as well as crusted blood around his ear, consistent, in Dr Christine Findlay’s words, with “a blow to the ear”. She adds: “This is a child who has lots of signs of injuries.”

He is also under-sized for his age and underweight. And is ravenously hungry. When food is offered he quickly consumes five sandwiches, mince and potatoes, and an apple.

“That’s not normal behaviour,” as the doctor rather understatedly puts it. He’s a child who takes the opportunity to eat anything that’s put down before him, as if he doesn’t know when the next food will come.

The boy has escaped from where he was being kept, somehow squeezing through a six-inch gap between the sill of a window and the frame of the glass pane, before falling four feet to the ground.

Police also discover another child, a two-year-old boy, imprisoned in a makeshift wooden cage lashed together by dressing gown cords. His nappy is full and hanging from him, and he is crying.

The “carer” is 34-year-old Claire Boyle. And this will not be the first time she will appear in court charged with a catalogue of child abuse. In 2014, she was convicted after being found comatose on a couch with a highly-distressed baby at her feet. A year later she is again found guilty after trying to sell a baby for £1 million in Ayr High Street, shaking the boy, and then abandoning him in a wet and draughty close.

Boyle and her co-accused Timothy Johnstone appear at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court before Sheriff Michael Higgins in a summary trial. For some reason, the procurator fiscal’s office has decided not to pursue it at indictment, in a solemn trial before a jury where the penalties are much more severe than at jury-less summary, where the maximum sentence is one year imprisonment.

However, Sheriff Higgins decides, in what seems to be an unfathomably degree of beneficence, that there is “a more appropriate way dealing with you”, which is 250 hours of community service for Boyle and 180 hours for her co-accused.

That was two weeks ago. There is now a review of the way social workers handled the case and in due course one or two may get slapped on the wrists, although we will probably never get a satisfactory explanation of why a serially cruel woman was allowed to abuse children for a third time.

Illegal to report

THIS is a desperately harrowing and extreme case you actually get to hear about. But about the overwhelming number of those involving children – almost 13,000 kids, from babies to 16-year-olds appearing in children’s hearings – you hear nothing. Because it would be illegal if you did. These are not reported – the only participants are parents, social workers and lawyers, if there is representation, before a panel of three laypeople and a reporter, who isn’t always a qualified lawyer.

There is no shorthand note or audio recording, the reporter simply makes his or her own summary. Parents who feel wronged can’t take their case to the media because to do so is a criminal offence, both for them and any organisation which reported it.

It is clearly right that domestic cases involving children are unreported, but it’s surely wrong and unjust that there is no effective recourse to remedy when, in nearly all cases, the panel will simply rely on the social worker’s report and recommendations which are rarely evidence-based.

Children’s panels were set up after a report by a commission under Lord Kilbrandon in 1964 paved the way. There had been concern for years before about children getting into trouble and the focus of his report was not to punish them, as in the existing juvenile courts, but to help with their needs and welfare. Grave offences, like murder or assault which endangered life, remained with the courts. In 1971, the panel hearings began.

There are several grounds for an under-16 appearing before the panel, from committing an offence to being in moral danger or merely beyond the control of parents or carers.

What has changed in 50 years is that the overwhelming majority of cases are now brought on care and protection grounds, from taking away kids from parents and putting them into care, or deciding between warring ones which one should look after the children and with what conditions.

Kids have no say

ACCORDING to the latest figures, of 12,849 children referred, 10,823 were on care and protection grounds and only 2,026 for offences. This is a total reversal of the proportions that existed not even that long ago. Many of these children are infants. They can’t be heard from in any meaningful way, and are not usually present to say what they want at hearings which are determining their future.

The shocking fact is that the hearings system allows children to be removed from home and can reduce or even end contact with their families without any scrutiny by the court, and often without a parent or child receiving legal advice or representation.

And delay in the process, having it tested in court, means that children can be separated from their families for months, often never to return. At present, there are around 15,000 kids in care with lack of parental care the most common reason

Here is a not untypical example. Social workers and police turn up at parents’ door. A child protection order has been granted by a sheriff, unknown to the family, and based on a prima facie case. This is sentence before trial.

A hearing – not in front of the sheriff who granted the order – is then scheduled for within three working days (now stretched to eight because of Covid) where the panel will not, in almost all cases, return the kids to the family against the recommendation of the social worker, never mind that the kids have been in hysterics since they were lifted.

The parents are told they can’t tell the children why they’ve been removed, or that they love them and are trying desperately to get them back. And any meeting will be supervised by the social worker who can decide that contact was “poor” and either impose further restrictions or end the visiting rights.

If the parents are poor and on low income or benefits, as almost all are, they will qualify for legal aid, but not all are represented at hearings.

After they lose at the initial hearing, as they almost certainly will, they can appeal the panel’s decision to the sheriff, who will rely on papers – and heavily on the reporter’s account – rather than in a full hearing with all the parties present.

Lengthy delays

WHEN the sheriff decides not to overturn the panel decision, which he or she will do, it’s returned to a panel for review. In principle, it is possible to appeal to the Sheriff Appeal Court, but parties are discouraged from doing that because of the lengthy delays involved, and the effect that has on the children.

Any relevant person can ask for a review of the panel decision within three months, so the advice from the SAC is that it’s better to go to review rather than the court procedure. Which means that there is never any judicial determination and it is once more considered by laypeople.

It is the poorest people who end up in the system. Children living in the poorest 10 per cent of neighbourhoods are 20 times more likely to be taken into care than those in the wealthiest 10%. Their kids will be placed with foster parents who will be receiving around £200 a week per child, often more than the parents earn.

A hearing can only compel the local authority to put the children into care, not provide financial help, or housing, food, therapy, the reinstatement of benefits, or alcohol or drug treatment.

Over a year ago a major review of Scotland’s “fractured and bureaucratic” care system figured it was costing £2.7 billion a year. “It’s clearly not a system,” the review’s chair Fiona Duncan said. “It’s lots of different bureaucracies and rules that all operate alongside each other and bump into one another.”

She added: “We don’t have an enabling legislative environment in Scotland for us to do the right thing for children and families.” The care system, she went on, “has to provide safe, therapeutic and loving environments for children. It has to, as far as possible, put children in family settings where they can grow up and thrive and flourish”.

They are still being put before children’s hearings.