School attendances have improved and social work interventions avoided thanks to various forms of support provided to North Lanarkshire families.
The latest report on how North Lanarkshire Council’s Resilient People Programme, which covers a range of support services offered to families by the local authority as well as partner organisations highlights the positive outcomes which have been attained.
Barnardo’s Scotland, Action for Children, Impact Arts and Home-Start provide a whole family support service in the community, based in the Newmains and St Brigid’s community hub. This provides help in many forms, including one on one support, groups, drop in sessions, family days out and activities during school holidays.
Between April and July this service worked with 24 families, and in nine cases successfully prevented the need for social work intervention.
Half of these families had poor relationships with their schools while many were also struggling due to poverty. The service is therefore working with the families to ensure they receive the correct assistance while Barnardo’s will soon also have the ability to give them direct payments.
Impact Arts us currently working on peer mentoring, community engagement and co-production projects and these are being rolled out across North Lanarkshire, expected to cover the entire local authority area by early next year.
School attendances have also grown compared to last year’s figures, especially in additional support needs and early years. Schools have improved their attendance tracking systems and the use of data to identify the root causes of absence.
This is reinforced by the work of family support engagement workers, backed by Scottish Equity Funding. These officers offer families practical support such as routines, connecting them with the Tackling Poverty Team and communicating with schools. Of 192 children and families approached by these staff, attendance levels have improved in 56 per cent of cases.
There are also support workers who specialise in neurodivergence, offering support at home, the community and at school. The success of this activity is evidenced by low numbers of referrals to other services such as social work.
The neurodivergence support workers are also running a project for children from Primary 7 to S2 who have disengaged with school, with almost all of them successfully transitioning from primary to secondary.
Over the last year, around 1,000 children were offered activities held in partnership with local organisations with the intention of encouraging them to engage with education. These sessions included art therapy, outdoor experience, equine therapy and sports, and the majority showed improved outcomes.
Kinship carers look after traumatised children with additional needs, and many of them also need to address other priorities such as looking after family members.
Increased funding has allowed the council to improve its support for kinship carers, while the Virtual School programme supported 38 children through 2023 and 2024. Only one young person in kinship care was excluded from school during that period while five S4 pupils gained National 3 and 4 awards.
The report was approved at a meeting of the council’s education, children and families committee.
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