Hearings for Children: The Report of the Hearings System Working Group

In April, I blogged about the (at that time) upcoming final report from the Hearings System Working Group (HSWG). The report has now been published and makes for significant reading for anyone with an interest in Scotland’s children’s hearings system. It contains in the region of 97 recommendations and as expected many of the issues highlighted have been around the system for years and have been the subject of previous work, including legislation. This should raise challenging questions for the agencies charged with operating the system. However, I will not concentrate on that here. Rather I will discuss two particular issues where what is recommended would mean a more significant departure from current practice and involve some element of legislative change: membership of children’s hearings and the abolition of ‘grounds hearings’.