A Human Rights Approach to Justice for Survivors of Abuse in Care: The Scottish Human Rights Commission InterAction on Historic Abuse of Children in Care

In 2004, following calls for justice from victims/survivors of historic abuse, the First Minister for Scotland gave an apology on behalf of the people of Scotland which acknowledged that some children in residential care had... [ view full abstract ]

In 2004, following calls for justice from victims/survivors of historic abuse, the First Minister for Scotland gave an apology on behalf of the people of Scotland which acknowledged that some children in residential care had suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and that they deserved ‘full recognition by us of what happened to them’. A range of activity took place to address issues of historic abuse of children in care but this was not comprehensive. In 2010, the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) carried out work to develop a human rights framework to secure remedies for historic child abuse in Scotland.

In order to take forward the recommendations of the Human Rights Framework, SHRC proposed an InterAction, a facilitated dialogue involving key stakeholders, including survivors of historic abuse, service providers, professional organisations, Scottish Government and academics. The purpose of the InterAction was to agree an Action Plan to implement the recommendations of the Human Rights Framework.

The Centre of Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland facilitated the 2 year programme of events for the InterAction, and this culminated in December 2014 with the Scottish Government making a number of commitment to take forward different elements in the Action Plan, including a National Inquiry on Abuse of Children in Care, a Survivor Support Fund, work on memorial and commemoration, an Apology Law, and work on civil and criminal justice.

This paper will present the findings of an evaluation of the InterAction process. It will discuss the stages in the InterAction process and the role of the various participants in different aspects of the InterAction, and present the experiences of the different participants in the InterAction.

The research involved:
- documentary analysis of a range of InterAction documents: minutes of meetings; material produced for InterAction events and the reports of the events;
- Semi-structured interviews with key individuals in the InterAction process; and.
- An online questionnaire for a wider group of InterAction participants.

Participants in the InterAction were largely positive about the process and outcomes of the InterAction. There were clearly tensions that arose throughout the process, and these impacted on the way in which some participants were able to engage with the InterAction, and their views on the effectiveness of the process. The InterAction took much longer than originally intended which underlines the need to have realistic expectations about the length of time that such a project will take and the level of resources required to support the process and the participants in the process. A significant amount of preparation was needed to introduce the model of the InterAction and to enable stakeholders to engage fully with the InterAction process.

The model of the InterAction on Historic Abuse of Children in Care, a facilitated dialogue involving key stakeholders, has shown that a participatory approach based on a human rights framework can produce positive outcomes even when addressing contentious and sensitive issues. It is to be hoped that the learning from this process can inform the development of policy and practice in a wide range of areas, and take forward justice for survivors of historic abuse in care.