Social workers admit Scottish smacking ban is hindering parental support

Scotland’s smacking ban has been in operation since November 2020. The Children (Equal Protection From Assault) (Scotland) Act implementation group, which includes representatives from the police and social work, has had the job of ensuring the ban is implemented effectively.

But minutes from the group’s latest meeting confirm the concerns we and others repeatedly raised during the Bill’s passage.

We warned that a ban could result in ordinary parents facing police investigations. And that trivial cases would flood an already overstretched child protection service, making it harder to help genuinely vulnerable children.

During the meeting in February this year, Social Work Scotland advised that “there are still some challenging issues arising for Social Work”.

It stated: “It can be difficult sometimes when parents need support to establish how best to provide them with that support. When a matter is reported to the Police it has to go through the usual procedures that the Police have to follow in relation to a criminal offence. There are issues about the boundary between supporting parents and about child protection. It is still uncertain how well aware some families are of the legislation.”

Social Work Scotland seems to be admitting that colleagues are finding it difficult to support parents in light of the ban. Concerning, to say the least.

A Police Scotland officer with 29 years experience, of which the last 10 have been in Child Protection as a Detective Sergeant, warned about this eventuality in a response to the Scottish Government’s public consultation on the smacking ban.

He said prior to the ban child protection services were able to work together to support a family and use their discretion to record incidents as ‘reasonable chastisement’.
But that following a ban, child protection agencies “would no longer have discretion to record incidents as ‘reasonable chastisement’, and they would all become full blown criminal investigations”.

Describing the investigation procedure, he said: “Since the victim is a child, this is an aggravating factor, therefore would have to be treated more seriously and with a degree of urgency. The Government’s own Scottish Crime Recording Standards would dictate that this must be recorded as a crime (as the legislation would now deem even a light tap to the wrist as a criminal offence), and due to there being a ‘named suspect’, police would be duty bound to fully investigate, which includes arresting the parent.”

Using the example of a boy who tells his teacher his mother smacked him, the officer explained: “that would mean interviewing all other family members, arresting the mother (for several hours), and where there is a sufficiency of evidence, charge her and put her before a court. Bail conditions may be set which would prevent her from ‘interfering with any witness’ (i.e. her family members). With a court case likely to be at least a year in the future, this would massively impact on the whole family. And the resulting court case would also be stressful for the ‘victim’ in this case. Sheriffs would no longer have discretion, and would be required to convict the mother of child abuse. I’m unclear what the expectations would be for authorities in relation to whether a parent would be allowed to see their child again unsupervised due to having a child abuse conviction.”

He concluded: “My experience of working in child protection shows that despite a massive injection of staff over the years, the current workload on investigators is virtually unmanageable. Should this law be passed, the workloads of both the police and social work would be massively impacted, meaning these already thinly spread groups would have to do much more.”
His concerns echoed that of a social worker in the audience of a Kilmarnock BBC Question Time, who warned that a smacking ban would be impossible to police and that the burden would fall on professionals such as herself.

What’s worse is that this is not the first time Social Work Scotland has voiced concerns about the smacking Act.

Minutes from a September 2022 meeting noted: “Social Work Scotland advised that the implementation of the Act is still presenting challenges in some local areas in terms of interpretation of the legislation.”

And minutes as far back as November 2021 reported: “Social Work Scotland advised that the implementation of the Act is presenting challenges in some local areas”.

Sounds like almost four years on from banning smacking, social workers, who already have a very difficult job, are facing ongoing challenges because of it.

Advice issued by the Scottish Government as part of its awareness-raising campaign tells children to report their parents to the police, and urges the public to dial 999 if they see a parent smacking a child.

The smacking ban means that even the mildest tap on the back of the hand or leg is illegal and should be reported to the police, who are under obligation to investigate.

Even if a police investigation does not amount to a prosecution, the process is still extremely traumatic for ordinary families. Often families are torn apart and children taken away during the process of investigation, which can sometimes be long and drawn out.

The reality is that this legislation is not helping anyone.

It is hindering support for parents and diverting valuable child protection resources away from vulnerable children who genuinely need help.