Children's Services Partnership

The Children's Services Partnership strives to recognise that all children and young people in South Lanarkshire require the right support at the right time.  Our Children's Services partners are committed to working together to get it right for every child, young person and family in South Lanarkshire.

Our work is informed by the following:

  • The Independent Care Review and the resulting Promise to keep children with their families where it is safe to do so and value the importance of relationships with families.  Keep the Promise is at the heart of all we do;
  • Transformational change aspirations to support Whole Family Wellbeing;
  • UNCRC incorporation and a child friendly approach to respecting rights;
  • Community access to mental health services and support;
  • Ensuring a best start: bright future approach to challenging child poverty;
  • Making the Getting it Right for Every Child ethos central to everything we do as a partnership; and
  • The key guidance provided by the National Performance Framework and related outcomes.

To support our shared vision, our work will focus on activity carried out by partners working together to make best use of resources more efficiently and provide a more integrated approach to meeting families' needs.

We will work together to strengthen our planning and investment in services where possible and make sure we have in place effective support for our most vulnerable children and families.

Through effective partnership working and implementing the agreed actions in the Children's Services Plan we will work to achieve our vision and ambition to ensure:

'Children, young people and families will be safeguarded and supported to reach their full potential and thrive within their communities".

The vision is underpinned by a commitment to:

  • Tackling inequality, discrimination and poverty;
  • Promoting early support and prevention;
  • Focussing on those areas where working together will make the biggest impact on children, young people and families;
  • Ensuring a multi-agency approach to continuous improvement;
  • Implementing a Workforce Development Strategy that builds the competence and confidence of our staff; and 
  • Ensuring meaningful participation and engagement of children, young people and families.

The depth and breadth of the partnership work required to achieve wellbeing for all our children and young people is summarised within 3 overarching themes.

The high-level themes and their linked outcomes act as the main drivers for our working together and provide a strong link to key national policy areas and funding streams:

  • Whole Family Wellbeing: Every family gets the right family support at the right time for as long as needed;
  • Mental Health and Wellbeing: Every child and young person will be able to access local community services which support and improve their mental health and wellbeing: and
  • Keeping the Promise: Children and young people grow up loved, safe, respected and listened to.

The Partnership meets quarterly and membership consists of:

  • Police Scotland;
  • South Lanarkshire Council;
  • NHS Lanarkshire;
  • South Lanarkshire Health and Social Care Partnership;
  • South Lanarkshire Child Protection Committee;
  • Scottish Children's Reporter Administration (SCRA);
  • Skills Development Scotland;
  • South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture; and
  • Voluntary Action South Lanarkshire (VASLan) on behalf of voluntary organisations working with children and families.

Key documents:

 


Information pages