Child Protection

That the Parliament welcomes the opportunities afforded by It's everyone's job to make sure I'm alright - Report of the Child Protection Audit and Review to tackle the problems in child protection; further welcomes the recommendations of the review, which offers substantial evidence that there is good and effective work being carried out by a number of agencies; regrets that, rather than acknowledge the positives and invest in initiatives to promote consistent good practice across the country, the First Minister has chosen to deride and threaten workers in front-line child protection, while having done little in his administration to resource or support such workers; considers that these remarks will only undermine and damage the Scottish Executive's Care in Scotland campaign to attract people into the social care sector and serve to further demoralise those trying to protect children in increasingly difficult circumstances; notes that the report maintains that, although social workers play the most instrumental role in child protection, the level of vacancies in childcare teams remains a critical issue, a situation that is not being addressed with the urgency it merits and will not begin to be alleviated until at least 2008, when the first graduates will have completed the new training course, and believes that the Executive should take responsibility for this unacceptable situation, introduce measures to tackle recruitment and retention of front-line staff as a matter of priority and, as a further practical step, move as soon as possible towards placing child protection committees on a statutory footing, with adequate resources and an increased status and thereby contribute meaningfully and positively to child protection.