TRAINING AND THE NEW ACT BARBARA REID JOAN ROSE

LESSONS FROM THE PAST 1996  Creation of the NDPB – Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration  Move from Regional to Unitary local government – 32 new authorities  Children (Scotland) Act 1995

The fears / tensions  Everything was changed  New people, new roles and new responsibilities  Everyone had to be re-trained  There would be mass resignations  Need for an extra large recruitment

The problems  Training staff – 2 in Glasgow; 1.5 in Edinburgh; 1.5 St Andrews and 1 Aberdeen to undertake the work  Staffing limited the availability of training  No-one to learn from – no past experience on this scale  In the West the very large groups and even in other areas larger than was usual  Resistance by some to retraining  Re-training and induction training running in tandem

The reality  Training officers coped  Members on the whole were understanding / tolerant  Training was well received and prepared everyone for the brave new world  These was no mass resignation  The system went on without any major problems

THIS TIME ROUND?...  Likely to be January to April 2012  At this stage can’t predict length with any accuracy – possibly one and a half days  Need to know final shape of Bill and secondary legislation  Need views of national convener

Taking account of views  We will try to ensure training is only as long as it needs to be  No padding!  We will provide advance reading so face to face sessions more about clarifying and exploring issues in groups

Who will be trained?  All serving panel members  CPAC (or whatever they are called)  Safeguarders  Reporters: essential training is co- ordinated with pm training  No new intake in January 2012  Changes need to become familiar before new pms unleashed

What we will need from you  Commitment to respond on time and attend training you sign up for  One of the lessons of 1997 is there will need to be a cut-off date  Everyone will know what it is  Only exceptional cases will be taken into consideration for catch-up  PMs will need to complete training before they can go on rota