Last autumn I applied to become a panel member for the Glasgow Children's Panel - the process in Scotland that all (with very few exceptions) cases involving children go through, criminal and protection. I completed my training on Wednesday and become officially appointed by Scottish Ministers on May 16th.
Now the point of this post. A panel comprises three members of which one must be male and one must be female - no panel can exist with three people of the same gender. In Glasgow, we are desperately short of MALE panel members, making it difficult to run a full schedule. Normally there is one intake a year, in the autumn, with training between January & April. As a result of the desperate need to find more males, they are currently considering running a fast track intake soon, which will be soley for male applicants.
I won't lie, it's a major undertaking. Just applying took a good chunk of my time and the training consists of 7 full days, 3 evening sessions and 3 observation session of real panels before you beging, with a further few days per year being required for ongoing training. You would be expected to sit on around 17 panels per year, each consisting of three cases and each case needing a good couple of hours set aside to study the documents sent out a week or so before you sit.
With all that said, if anyone is in reasonable travelling distance of Glasgow and would like to get some more information on it, please PM me and I'll pass on contact details for the people who are taking a list of interest. From the observations I've done, just being able to keep a sex offender's children safe when there isn't enough evidence to prosecute or seeing children removed from abusive parents thriving with foster carers is incredibly rewarding ... and over 2/3rds of cases are protection rather than criminal - not that the tabloids would tell you that!