Isabelle Brodie

Violence and alternative care: a rapid review of the evidence

Abstract This paper focuses on the mechanisms through which international policy and practice relating to the safeguarding of children and young people living in alternative care is being implemented in national policy and practice. It is based on a rapid review of the evidence regarding the violence experienced by children and young people living in different forms of alternative care internationally. The evidence base indicates that children living in alternative care are especially vulnerable to violence and abuse, prior to and during their care experience and also in the longer term. The introduction of the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children has encouraged greater attention to this issue. The paper concludes that progress is variable according to a range of political, economic and social factors, and that greater attention to practice at national and community levels is required if more effective safeguarding practice is required. A more sophisticated evidence base is required to support this.

Young People, Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation: A View from Scotland

This chapter reviews evidence regarding child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Scotland. As devolution has progressed across the UK, there has been growing interest in the different routes taken in respect to social policy and welfare reform (see, for example, Arnott and Ozga, 2008 and Phillips, 2003 regarding education; Scott and Wright, 2012 regarding policy development; Smith and colleague 2009 regarding health). More recently, there has been a recognition that new alignments are appearing which may or may not present challenges to the coherence of UK policy and practice, or represent ‘real innovation’ in the way that services are delivered (Scott and Wright, 2012: 441). In turn there have been calls for more empirically and theoretically grounded work which examines the extent and nature of difference in the four nations of the UK (Paterson and Iannelli, 2007). Such calls can be linked to broader interest in evidence-based policy, and raise questions about how evidence is shared and interpreted across the UK. This chapter seeks to contribute to such sharing of evidence in respect to the issue of CSE and policy development on this issue in Scotland.