Greendykes Children and Families Centre and LDC yesterday!

Local Development Committee (LDC) meeting for Edinburgh Central yesterday evening - was so busy all day long that I failed to have any time to make a blog entry - desperate state of affairs ;-((

LDC was enjoyable - honestly! A few presentations on planning issues and how the Council deals with developer contributions (section 75 planning gain); which were followed up by small discussion workshops. There was a good level of debate and some robust views aired about how aggressively (or not) the Council was pursuing developers for additional infrastructure contributions.

Also a paper on the small grant awards that have been given to date, and Central LDC still has a fair bit of a budget left - so any Central Groups out there with a good project idea; get it into the system quick ... if you're not sure how it all works, have a look at this LINK The stalwarts from Hutchison and Chesser Community Council were there of course, and I'm hoping they'll get an application in quickly!!

Greendykes Children and Families Centre visit this afternoon ... was my first Children's Centre visit since taking on the new post and it was a real eye-opener. Management and staff I met were absolutely first-class and the service/s being provided were obviously being fully utilised by the wider local community. There were some really challenging children (from very challenging families) in the centre but there was an unquestionably positive atmosphere and approach being followed. Great to see.

Did prompt a question in my mind though - all the children there are 'referred' through social work and/or other avenues and by its very nature the centre is providing completely first-class services ... but it's not including the children in mainstream provision of these services (or vice-versa for that matter) and it's certainly a different approach than if these children were more general special needs, where they would be included in mainstream provision if at all possible as that's widely seen as a much more powerful route to improve their (and others) experiences and life-chances. Would genuinely welcome any thoughts on this??