The phrase “under one roof” has become shorthand for what Bairns’ Hoose offers. It’s a compelling image — police, social work, health, justice, and recovery services all in one place, so children don’t have to be passed between agencies, repeating their story in unfamiliar buildings to unfamiliar professionals.
But our evaluation of Scotland’s first Bairns’ Hoose in North Strathclyde has shown us that co-location is a starting point, not a destination. Putting services in the same building doesn’t automatically make them work together. What actually drives partnership is harder to see — and harder to build.
What worked
From the earliest stages of the North Strathclyde project, the evaluation identified several enablers of effective partnership. A strong shared vision was critical. The partners — Children 1st, Victim Support Scotland, the University of Edinburgh, and local authority services — committed to a common set of values grounded in children’s rights and trauma-informed practice. This wasn’t just a document. Practitioners across agencies described a genuine sense of shared purpose.
Clear governance helped too. The partnership established structures for decision-making that were transparent and respected the different accountabilities each agency carries. When disagreements arose — and they did — there were forums for working through them rather than retreating into organisational silos.
The shared office space within the Bairns’ Hoose itself has also been significant. Recovery workers, police officers, and social workers occupying the same physical environment has created opportunities for the kind of informal, day-to-day communication that formal referral pathways alone can’t replicate. Relationships between professionals deepened not through protocols but through proximity.
What’s been harder
The evaluation also found that not all partners have been able to commit to the same degree or at the same pace. This is perhaps inevitable in a project that requires multiple agencies — each with their own structures, pressures, and priorities — to change how they work. But it highlights the importance of sustained engagement, particularly from justice sector partners where the pace and culture of change can differ from that of children’s services.
Health services integration has been identified as an area requiring further development. While the Bairns’ Hoose Standards set out a clear expectation around health assessment, the practical pathway for embedding paediatric and mental health provision within the model is still being worked through. This is not a failure of willingness — it reflects the genuine complexity of aligning NHS systems with a multi-agency service model.
There is also the question of what happens beyond the building. Partnership working inside the Bairns’ Hoose is one thing. Ensuring that the child-centred, collaborative approach extends into the wider systems that children move through — courts, schools, Children’s Hearings — is a much larger challenge that requires systemic change well beyond the walls of any single building.
The lesson for other partnerships
As Bairns’ Hoose development expands across Scotland, the North Strathclyde experience offers an honest picture: partnership working is not a fixed state. It requires constant attention, honest reflection, and a willingness to adapt. The Making Sense of Bairns’ Hoose event held in September 2024 — bringing together practitioners, academics, and international experts — was itself an example of this commitment to collective learning.
What “under one roof” really means is not a building. It’s a way of working.