About the research project
CELCIS has been asked by the Scottish Government to carry out a research study to better understand how children and families can get the support they need, when they need it. The study aims to improve understanding of the current Children’s Services landscape in Scotland, including the range of service structures and delivery models, and how services can best support the needs of children and their families. It will also look at how public services are provided and configured elsewhere, drawing on a range of international evidence.
The study has five different strands of work, one of which is this survey of the Children’s Services workforce. You can find more information about the study and each of the five strands of work here.
Dr Heather Ottaway is leading the study, and Dr Alex McTier and Mihaela Manole are co-leading this workforce survey. If you have any questions about the survey or other aspects of the study, please contact us at celcis.csr-research@strath.ac.uk
About this survey – we want to hear your views and experiences
Thank you for your interest in taking part in this survey. It is focusing on the experiences and views of Scotland's Children’s Services workforce to help us understand more about the factors that bring about:
- High quality experiences and outcomes for children, young people and families using services.
- Close multi-agency working between professionals across different services.
- Continuity of support when young people transition to adult services.
- High quality support for the workforce.
- Transformational change of services.
Your experiences and insights will be vital in helping to understand the everyday realities of working to support children, young people and families. This includes the things that work well as well as the things that can get in the way of people receiving the support they need, when they need it. The findings from this survey will be used alongside the study’s other strands to inform the Scottish Government’s decisions about the future structure and delivery of Children’s Services in Scotland.
Who can take part
You can complete this survey if you or your organisation provide support, care and/or protection to vulnerable children, young people and their families. This includes working in the following roles and services:
- Senior leader, manager or supervisor, frontline worker and support staff.
- Social work, health, education, youth justice, police or third sector.
For professionals who do not work specifically with vulnerable children, young people and families, please note that there will be other opportunities for people to engage with the future delivery of Children’s Services in Scotland, and these will be publicised on our study’s website as they become available.
What will it involve?
The survey will take around 30 minutes to complete and asks questions about your experiences and views of:
- Local services for children, young people and their families
- Multi-agency working
- The different elements that support or hinder integrated working
- Young people’s transitions to adult services
- Relationships with children, young people and their families
- Support for the workforce
- Leadership and culture
We would encourage you to take your time completing the survey as we would like you to reflect on and share your experiences in your own words.
At the start of the survey, we will ask you some questions about your role, location and working pattern. This will help us analyse the survey results according to the different services, jobs and local areas in which people work. At the end of the survey, we will also ask for some additional information about you. These questions are optional but will help us understand whether the people responding to the survey are representative of Scotland’s children’s services workforce.
The survey is anonymous, and you do not have to answer every question. We encourage you to complete the survey in one go because some devices will not save your answers if you exit your browser window.
Your rights in taking part
If you decide to take part in this survey it is important to know that:
- It is up to you whether you take part.
- If you complete the survey and then later decide not to take part, that is OK. You can request that your answers are withdrawn from the study at any time until the report is being written, and we ask that you let us know by 01 August 2023 via the research study’s dedicated mailbox: celcis.csr-research@strath.ac.uk. As you will not be asked for your name in the survey, you will be allocated a randomly generated 'Response ID' number at the beginning of the survey, which can be used to identify a response, but not a respondent. The 'Response ID' number will be displayed to you at the beginning of the survey (on the next page), please note it for your records if you think you may want to withdraw your response. Without the 'Response ID' number, we will ask you some information (e.g. date and time you completed the survey, the local area you work in, your job title etc.), but if we cannot identify your response based on that, we will not be able to withdraw your answers.
- Your involvement in the study will be kept confidential. We might include quotes that you have written in your own words within our reports and materials but if we do, we will make sure that nothing that personally identifies you is included. Any information that could potentially identify you will be kept confidential, will only be accessible to the research team, and will not be included within any of our reports or materials. What you say will not be attributed to you and will remain anonymous unless something you say indicates that you or someone else are at risk of harm. In this situation, we will endeavour to identify the relevant authorities whom to share that information with, based on the details you shared, such as the local area you work in or other essential information you included in your answers.
- You will be asked at the end of the survey whether you would like the opportunity to take part in the final strand of our study, which will involve focus groups and interviews with the workforce to help us contextualise and build on the findings from this survey. If you would like to take part, we will ask for your name and email address. This ensures that the information you give us will be held separately and securely from your survey responses, so that they remain anonymous.
- We will only use what you share with us for research purposes. These purposes include using the information we collect for writing reports, publications, presentations, and for sharing what we have learned with other people with the aim of improving services and support for children, young people and their families.
- You have the right to ask us about, and see, the information we have about you. For this, we will ask you to provide us with your 'Response ID' number, to be able to identify your data.
How will the information you share with us in the survey be used?
The information that you and others share with us will be analysed and written up in a research report and a shorter summary report. We may create other ways to share the information, such as presentations, animations and academic articles so that the findings reach as wide an audience as possible.
This survey asks about your experiences and views based on the local area you work within. We will prepare summary reports for every local authority based on the data we receive from the workforces in each area (i.e. social work, health, education, 3rd sector, justice, police). These reports will protect the confidentiality and anonymity of everyone who completes the survey, so individuals will not be able to be identified. The purpose of these reports will be to support local areas to proactively respond to local issues and needs.
Data Protection
All responses received will be stored securely on University of Strathclyde IT servers for five years and only analysed by research staff at CELCIS, University of Strathclyde. We will also remove any potentially identifying information from all the data and securely archive it within the University of Strathclyde archives for a period of 20 years, until 2044. Archiving the data will allow us to undertake future research. We hope to run a similar survey to this one in the future so that we can understand how things might have changed.
We will keep the information you tell us safe, and this document CSR Research_keeping data safe.docx explains how, but if you have any questions about how we’re using it or think we should do it differently, you can email: dataprotection@strath.ac.uk.
You can read more information on how your information is kept safe here.
The University of Strathclyde Ethics Committee has approved this study. If you are not happy about the study, you can talk to someone from the committee by phoning 0141 444 8629 or emailing ethics@strath.ac.uk.
Thank you for thinking about participating in this research and please contact the CELCIS research team at celcis.csr-research@strath.ac.uk if you have any questions about the survey or wider research.
Your wellbeing
This survey is focusing on your professional experiences of integrated working. However, if you feel distressed in any way as a result of completing the survey, please do speak with your line manager in the first instance, or your agency’s well-being service.
Ready to take part?
Are you a member of the Children’s Services workforce?
As a reminder, if you are a social work, health, education, youth justice, police, or third sector professional whose job specifically involves working with vulnerable children, young people and their families in need of support, care and protection you can complete the survey.
By selecting the ‘Yes, take me to the survey’ option you agree that you:
- have read the information above
- understand what the survey is and why it is being done
- understand your rights and how the research team is safely protecting your data
- agree to take part in the survey.
Thank you for your interest in the research