Board members of Community Planning Aberdeen have today (Wednesday 19 April) approved Aberdeen City’s Children’s Services Strategic Plan 2023-26.
The Children’s Services Strategic Plan details how key outcomes will be realised for local children, young people and families over the next three years and will help to coordinate work across the Community Planning Partnership.
The plan is one of a suite of statutory plans which support delivery of the Local Outcome Improvement Plan (LOIP). The Stretch Outcomes 4-9 of the Local Outcome Improvement Plan 2016-26 will now be amended to reflect this new plan.
The shared vision remains to make Aberdeen a place where all children and young people can grow up loved, safe and respected so that they can realise their full potential.
Community Planning Partners have looked at a range quantitative and qualitative data in developing this Plan and engaged with around 500 stakeholders and listened to what children and their families thought of the work to check that the right themes for improvement were identified.
The six priorities of the Children’s Services Plan are:
- Ensuring babies and children aged 0-5 years old have the best possible start in life.
- Improving the mental health and wellbeing of children and families.
- Ensuring children and young people with care experience have the same levels of education, health and emotional wellbeing and opportunities as their peers.
- Improving attainment in schools so that children and young people have positive options when they leave school.
- Reducing the number of young people coming into conflict with the law.
- Increasing the number of young people with additional support needs or a disability going onto further education, employment, training, personal skills development or voluntary work.
Aberdeen City Council Co-Leader Councillor Alex Nicoll, chair of Community Planning Aberdeen said: “Aberdeen City’s Children’s Services Strategic Plan 2023-26 is a truly collective effort with input from 500 stakeholders including local young people and families, who have all helped to identify key priorities.
“This Plan will support the further integration and collaboration across services supporting children and families to help realise improved outcomes for all in Aberdeen now and in the future.”
The approved statutory plan will now be submitted to the Scottish Government and then delivered from April 2023 to March 2026.
To read the Children’s Services Plan in full:
To read a summary version:
To read a child friendly version:
There are many strategic plans for children and work has been undertaken to integrate the full range of statutory plans into this Children’s Services Plan. The Plan is also linked to work being coordinated through the local Autism and Carers’ Strategies.
Delivery of this Plan will be overseen by the Children’s Services Board and progress will be reviewed on a yearly basis to ensure that Community Planning Partners continue to respond to the changing needs of our children and families.
The preparation of this Children’s Services Plan satisfies the duty placed upon the Council and Health under section 8 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014.
The Community Empowerment Act (Scotland) 2015 requires community planning partners to come together in each local authority area to form a community planning partnership. Under the CEA, community planning has a statutory purpose focused on improving outcomes, which is explicitly about how public bodies work together and with the local community to plan for, resource and provide services which improve local outcomes.
Community Planning Aberdeen is the name for the local partnership of public, private and third sector organisations and communities working together to improve people’s lives across Aberdeen City. For more information: https://communityplanningaberdeen.org.uk