Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry: Scale of foster abuse may never be known

The scale of child abuse in foster care may never be revealed due to historic issues with record keeping, the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry has heard.

The admission came as the seventh phase of the inquiry, highlighting abuse in local authority foster care, began.

Opening submissions from 14 of Scotland's local authorities were heard by inquiry chairwoman Lady Smith.

It is expected that the inquiry's foster care case study will last until the autumn.

Local authorities admitted problems with record keeping before regional councils were broken up in 1996.

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Records relating to children in council care were not kept as up to date as they could have been prior to the establishment of the 32 separate local authorities.

They also acknowledged that some survivors may not wish to come forward to share their experiences due to the trauma they had faced.

City of Edinburgh Council told the inquiry it was difficult to give an exact figure of the number of children looked after by them due to the way information had previously been recorded.

Councils in attendance apologised to survivors that had suffered abuse in their care and pledged to use the experience to learn from mistakes made in the past.

Lady Smith is leading the inquiry

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), Barnardo's and Police Scotland also gave evidence.

The COPFS told Lady Smith there were very few recorded cases of abuse of children in foster care because there was no "specific code" within the case management system used to record crimes that related to children who reported abuse.

The Crown has now taken relevant steps to ensure this does not happen in the future, and has introduced a code specifically for reports from survivors of abuse within foster care settings, the inquiry heard.

Family law expert Prof Kenneth Norrie, from the University of Strathclyde, gave an overview of the law with regard to foster care placements from the early 1930s.

He argued that regulations in place for children who were "boarded out" since the days of the Victorian Poor Laws were not always followed.

'Significant gaps'

Prof Norrie said: "You would think Scotland was at the forefront of doing really well.

"But if you asked 'are those regulations being followed?', you would find that very difficult to answer."

Prof Norrie's work also found that there were significant gaps in updating relevant legislation relating to children in foster care throughout the latter half of the 20th Century.

Banning the use of corporal punishment for children in foster care came into place in the Fostering of Children Regulations (1996).

Later this week, the inquiry will hear further expert testimony and scene setting as part of phase one.

Witness testimonies from survivors of abuse will begin in phase two later this month.

The Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry is examining historical allegations of the abuse of children in care and began taking statements from witnesses in the spring of 2016.