According to research by Children 1st, children who have experienced abuse may have to tell their story to 14 different people before they get the support they need. Sometimes, children and young people have to tell their stories to people from up to nine different organisations—everyone from their schoolteacher to a High Court judge, which potentially adds more traumatic experiences to those they’ve already been through.
To help address this issue, the Standards and Indicators Team within Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) were commissioned by the Scottish Government to jointly develop standards which will outline what a Barnahus model should be like in Scotland.
Like many people, the term Barnahus was relatively new to me before I started to work on the standards project. I’d seen a video on social media of a house in Iceland that was designed to help children feel safe when they’d experienced abuse. It seemed like a brilliant child-friendly idea, but, as with all social media, I flicked past it after watching.
Like many people, the term Barnahus was relatively new to me before I started to work on the standards project. I’d seen a video on social media of a house in Iceland that was designed to help children feel safe when they’d experienced abuse. It seemed like a brilliant child-friendly idea, but, as with all social media, I flicked past it after watching.
Barnahus comes from the Icelandic word for ‘children’s house’. It refers to a European –wide model which has a shared set of principles but can look different depending on the place where it is introduced. In some places, like Iceland, the Barnahus is literally a house, where children and young people are seen in a residential area in a building designed to look like their own or their friends’ front rooms. In other areas it is a wide system of support, advocacy, children’s rights and ongoing support.
What are we doing?
Barnahus represents the next step in a whole system change. Standards are part of the culture of change and early evidence work that can pave way for the future in a real and meaningful way.
We don’t know what a Barnahus model will look like in Scotland yet. The standards we will be jointly developing with the Care Inspectorate will outline a blueprint for how these principles might be implemented alongside our legal system and what this might mean for NHS boards, staff, police, social work, justice, and someone going through this process. The standards will be applicable to any local or national body who might be involved in implementing a Barnahus model in Scotland, whether that is a physical ‘house’ or building, or a network with shared principles, given the geographical difficulties faced by some areas.
This work involves working with people and evidence from health, but also social services, the police, and justice (so I’m learning the intricacies of Scots law), child and human rights (I’m also learning bits of international law) and a whole host of support agencies, third sector organisations, and universal services.
What have we done so far?
On 19 June 2019, we held a day-long engagement workshop at the Raploch Community Campus. Fifty attendees from across a range of sectors, including health, justice, social work, and the third sector, came together to discuss what kind of model they would like to see introduced in Scotland, and what key principles underpinned it. We used the discussion from this workshop to inform what would be included in the standards (this is called the scope).
The discussion on the day was one of the most rich and varied I have ever seen. On my table, representatives from the police, social services, and academia were discussing how to teach children to recognise when they are being abused and feel safe to come forward; meanwhile, on the other side of the room, the justice representatives were engaged in a deep debate about the detail of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in relation to forensic interviews.
What have we found from the scoping exercise?
During this exercise, we found that many of the delegates had a shared understanding of what a Barnahus model meant, and in particular that the broad principles of fair justice, positive wellbeing, ongoing support, human rights, participation and child-centred designed were supported by a range of agencies. At the centre of all of this is the child’s needs, choices, and wellbeing. We use the phrase ‘trauma-informed’—for children and young people, this means that people who they come into contact with throughout their journey understand that they have experienced something traumatic, and that they may respond differently or need a different approach.
We found that many of the delegates had a shared understanding of what a Barnahus model meant, and in particular that the broad principles of fair justice, positive wellbeing, ongoing support, human rights, participation and child-centred designed were supported by a range of agencies. At the centre of all of this is the child’s needs, choices, and wellbeing.
What we learnt from this engagement exercise was that the Barnahus standards should stretch out far beyond children and young people who have experienced sexual abuse, to all children and young people who are victims or witnesses of violence. This was a significant step for us as a project team, as it means that not only are we widening the focus of the standards, but one of the recommendations from the report was that we complete a child rights and wellbeing impact assessment for the first time.
What will we do next?
Throughout the standards development process, the joint HIS and Care Inspectorate project team will continue to work with professionals and people with lived experience. A short life working group, known as the standards development group, will be formed to write the standards. The group will be made up of people from a wide range of organisations and sectors, including health, social work and justice, and co-chaired by leads from health and social care respectively. The standards development group will meet on a minimum of two occasions between August 2019 and December 2019.
As project officer on the development of the set of standards, it’s a privilege to be part of such a vital piece of work that will help change the experience of the child protection system for children who have experienced abuse.
In early December 2019, the Barnahus standards will go out for a 12-week consultation. I look forward to welcoming you all to comment, as we work to engage with groups from as far and wide as possible, to help shape the best standards for children in Scotland.
Please contact the project team at hcis.barnahus.standards@nhs.net.
Visit our website to read the scoping report.
Rachel Hewitt is a Project Officer with the Standards and Indicators Team at Healthcare Improvement Scotland.
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