Children's Legislative Review - Practitioner Engagement Workshops

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Practitioner workshops: help shape children's care legislation in Scotland

Two practitioner small group workshops are taking place in June as part of the evidence gathering for the Independent Review of Scotland's Legislative Framework for Children's Care.

This review, announced by the Scottish Government, is running from February 2026 to February 2027.

With the new Children (Care, Care Experience and Services Planning) (Scotland) Act 2026 now in place and ongoing work to realise The Promise of the Independent Care Review, the review is gathering new evidence and insights about what’s needed to declutter and streamline the legislative framework to support the people who care for and protect children every day, with children’s rights and wellbeing at the centre of its approach and recommendations.

Find out more about the Review here.

Interested in taking part?

Do you work with and support children and their families in Scotland? 

To inform the review, these practitioner workshops are one of the opportunities to share how children's care and protection law affects your everyday practice or care. 

We're looking for people to take part in a half-day workshop and to choose from either:

• An online workshop on Wednesday 17 June 2026, from 9.30am to 1.30pm: or
• An in-person workshop which will be held in Glasgow on Wednesday 24 June 2026, from 9.30am to 1.30pm
  

Your experiences matter. The workshops will be interactive, focused on day-to-day impact in practice, with conversations in small groups.

To understand a mix of experiences and how legislation is having an impact, there are seven individual topic areas that the workshops will look at, with each group discussing one topic each.

Please choose three from this list of topics when you register your interest to take part:

• Children and Families: The needs of children who are 'looked after at home' and their families, and children and families who are involved in child protection process
• Kinship Care: Children who are being cared for by wider family members or family friends
• Foster Care: Children who are being cared for by foster carers
• Residential Child Care and Secure Care: Children being cared for in residential child care or secure care
• Youth Justice: Children who are in conflict with the law
• Permanence Planning: The systems, processes and practice that support children being care for in a permanent home, including adoption
• Continuing Care: Children and young people who are being care for under Continuing Care.
  

Who these workshops are for:

Whether you're a practitioner or manager, or you work alongside children and families, your experience matters. We welcome insights from:

• Social workers and social care staff
• Practitioners in health, education and early years
• Local authority solicitors and people working in child and family law, youth justice or policing
• Practitioners in the third sector and community-based services

We are keen to hear about how experiences of how the legislative framework in Scotland:

• Supports your ability to help children and families; or
• Creates challenges and barriers in practice for you or for children and families

What you don't need to take part in this opportunity:

• To have responded to the national survey
• Detailed knowledge of the legal system or the laws applying to children's care and protection
• Extensive practice experience
• To be a service leader

Register your interest

Please register for one workshop only - online on 17 June or in-person on 24 June - and choose up to three topics of interest.

Deadline: Register your interest before 8 June, and save the date of the workshop for now. We will be in touch from 10 June to confirm places.

Why this review matters

Your experiences and insights will help the review understand what currently helps, what gets in the way, and what needs to change so that children, young people and families get the right support at the right time.

These insights will shape a range of evidenced-based and practical recommendations that will inform Ministerial decision making for improving and reforming the legislation for children’s care.

About the Children’s Legislative Review evidence gathering

These workshops are part of the evidence gathering work to inform the Children’s Legislative Review. This independent review is being led by Professor Kenneth Norrie, a leading authority on family law in Scotland at the University of Strathclyde, in partnership with CELCIS, the Centre for Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection. This strand of work is being led Laura Quinn and Nadine Fowler at CELCIS.

If you have questions about the Review, need support to take part, or want to share something that doesn’t fit through the survey or workshops, you can contact us directly. You can email us at: childrenslegislativereview@strath.ac.uk.

The information you give us when you register will be stored securely on Ticket Tailor’s system and the University of Strathclyde’s IT servers until the end of the Review, February 2027. We will only use the information you give us to contact you about the Review and arrange your participation in our workshops. This might include contacting you any time until February 2027 to share details about future workshops for the Review and to invite you to take part in these. Registering your interest now does not mean you will be obligated to take part in any future workshops.

We will keep the information you tell us safe, in accordance with the University’s Privacy Notice. If you have any questions about how we are using your information, or think we should do it differently, you can email: dataprotection@strath.ac.uk.