Community Planning Aberdeen is to strengthen partnership working to build on success in meeting the needs of children and young people.
Members today considered report Our Board - Community Planning Aberdeen that highlighted ways to achieve this, including greater data-sharing across organisations and improving access to services in the city’s most deprived communities.
Community Planning Aberdeen is a local partnership of public, private, third sector organisations and communities working together to improve people’s lives across the city through the Local Outcome Improvement Plan (LOIP).
Councillor Christian Allard, Co-Leader of Aberdeen City Council, Chair of Community Planning Aberdeen, said: “There are many children and young people facing enormous challenges across Aberdeen and this report highlights the challenges and limited successes we have had in helping to address these.
“We are determined to look at new ways of partnership working to engage with our children and their families.
“Through equality of opportunity in and outside school, we are committed to helping people build their confidence, take more control over their lives and increase their aspirations for the future to create a stronger, more resilient city.”
Shantini Paranjothy, Grampian Deputy Director of Public Health, said: Giving every child the best start in life and supporting young people to achieve their potential are key areas where we can work together to take action and in doing so we can begin to ensure equitable health for all.
Areas identified for exploration include:
- Accessibility: Understand how people in the city’s more deprived communities want and need to access services.
- Shared data: Utilise shared systems.
- Autonomy and agency: Helping vulnerable people feel more in control of their destiny.
- Public Protection: Putting public protection arrangements at the heart of the Family Support model.
- Mental wellbeing and resilience: A clear strategy to address these changing trends.
- Shifting resource: testing changes and directing resource to where it can best be used.
Opportunities for partner organisations to play a different role to how they currently operate include:
- Continue development of ABZCampus
- Drive to share evaluation and data through the Family Support Model in collaboration with the Centre of Excellence for Children’s Care and Protection (CELCIS)
- Future Libraries Model
- Whole system financial advice
- Whole system approach to healthy weight.
Areas that are working well and can be built on to achieve even greater improvement include:
- Education: A rise in the proportion of children meeting developmental milestones from 87.4% in 2021/22 to 89.8% in 2022/23; more effective data sharing has helped realise a 12% increase in uptake of ELC for eligible 2-year-olds.
- Nutrition: An increase in the number of children registered for free school meals across primary 6 and primary 7; the percentage of primary 7 children with poor dental health has decreased.
- The number of presentations at National 5 increased to 11,236 in 2024 from 10,660 in 2023, the highest number on record for the local authority.
- Communities: 92% of the city’s communities are performing well compared to their comparator communities when looking at child poverty in isolation. There is clear evidence that far more people are now claiming the benefits they are entitled to.
- Bairns Hoose: Plans are progressing well with agreement from NHS Grampian and the Courts now required on how they will utilise the space to help realise the full benefits of co-location.
- Re-organising resources: The Edge of Care pilots are better supporting those who are on the edge of care and helping to prevent risk from escalating.
- Prioritising those who are care-experienced: The Promise report outlined good progress made in delivering The Promise.
The report said these opportunities will need shared governance and different commissioning arrangements, including similar approaches to the Granite Consortium.