Poverty is a cross cutting theme throughout all local activity in Angus. The Angus Community Plan is the overarching strategy to influence and guide Community Planning partners towards the vision. The Community Plan has 3 high level priorities – Reducing Child Poverty, Improving Mental Health and Wellbeing and Improving Accessibility and Connectivity. Due to the changes from COVID-19 and the move towards Community Wealth Building the Community Planning Partnership will be refreshing the plan in 2022 with reducing poverty at the heart of all activity.
Internationally the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is a consideration for the steering group as it covers all aspects of a child’s life and sets out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights that all children everywhere are entitled to. Scotland is set to become the first country in the UK to directly incorporate this.
The Tayside Children’s Services Plan is aimed at reducing inequalities and improving outcomes for all of Tayside’s children. Building on the initial work in this plan there are now greater links with health through the subgroups which is showcased in the actions.
The overarching governance for this report comes from the COSLA Blueprint for Scottish Local Government which was launched in September 2020 shortly after the publication of the Angus year 2 report. This sets out how Local Government could begin to build around an ambitious vision for Scotland’s future – one based on the empowerment of people and communities. This very much complemented the way we have been working in Angus in the co-production of our plans and services. The document has six themes:
- Strengthening Local Democracy
- Funding Services and Communities
- Wellbeing – including Health and Social Care
- Education and Children and Young People
- Economy and the Environment
- Supporting Vulnerable Communities
For Angus and the Tay region the Blueprint provides a narrative around the kind of country we want, and about the changes that could make a real difference to communities across the country. COVID-19 has changed the way we live. But preCOVID-19, through COVID-19 and after COVID-19, Local Government will aim to be the anchor for communities in need.
Providing the local level engagement has been the Social Renewal Advisory Board. Created on 9 June 2020 with the aim of building on the shifts in policy and practice that took place because of working with frontline service deliverers in Governance 7 local government, the third sector and communities. It was tasked with considering how we could emerge from the pandemic whilst ensuring reducing poverty and disadvantage, embedding a human-rights based approach and advancing equality at the heart. The report ‘If Not Now, When?’ contains 20 ‘calls to action’: structured around three themes which have been embedded in the Angus Child Poverty Report:
- Money and Work – everyone should have a basic level of income from employment and social security.
- People, Rights and Advancing Equality – everyone should see their rights realised and have access to a range of basic rights, goods and services.
- Communities and Collective Endeavour – we believe that we need to work together to deliver a fairer society and we need to give more power to people and communities and empower frontline teams.
Next: Target/performance