New Study of Safeguarders 

Dr Claire McDiarmid has been successful in securing a grant for £35,000 from the Scottish Government to undertake a 6 month study of the role of safeguarders in the Children’s Hearings system. She will lead a team which includes Dr Monica Barry, Michelle Donnelly and Dr Stephen Corson (a statistician in the Department of Mathematics) and with advisory support from the Law School's Prof Kenneth Norrie. 

The Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011 created a national Panel of Safeguarders to offer consistency in recruitment, training, appointment and support of safeguarders across Scotland, overseen by Children 1^st.

The aims of this study, within the context of that move to a national service, are: 

• to explore the effectiveness and added value of the safeguarder role from the perspective of practitioners and professionals (including safeguarders themselves); 
• identify the skills and qualifications deemed essential to that role; 
• to identify the support and training needs that are required to ensure the future effectiveness of the safeguarder role and safeguarder panel.