Child interviews

Michelle Miller, president of the Association of Directors of Social Work, offers comment upon your articles and commentary (Letters, 17 July) on the interviewing of children in cases where abuse has been alleged. We agree with much of what she wrote.

However, we are concerned to highlight that improvement in interviewing in such cases is being hampered by the failure to routinely capture interviews on video or DVD.

This is a critical failure because it prevents proper assessment of the whole circumstances of the interview itself.

It also removes the opportunity for review of the interviewers' professional performance in ongoing training in this sensitive and specialist task.

Without routine video capture of joint investigative interviews with children it is impossible to embark upon quality assessment of our interviewers' skills in accordance with the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development system of quality assessment.

It is the failure to implement such quality assessment that is responsible for poor interviewing practices.

We are concerned that the sensational focus upon one particular case; the absence of focus upon the real issue in the political sphere; and the public attack on named individuals have served to distract from the central issue specific to joint investigative interviewing of children in Scotland.

JOHN HALLEY & (DR) DAVID LA ROOY

ARNOT MANDERSON

Edinburgh & Dundee