Tag: Children and Families

Voting opens for city youth work projects

Young people in Edinburgh are being asked to decide how £160,000 of City of Edinburgh Council funding should be spent on youth work projects.

CYT2018

A total of 55 projects now face a public vote in Choose Youth Work – the latest participatory budgeting project in the Capital. Voters can cast their vote online with a Young Scot card or at events being held in schools and other community venues.

The Communities and Families Youth Work Grant Programme allowed groups to apply for grants of up to £10,000 each, to be spent on open-access, universal youth work that will benefit young people in Edinburgh. The youth work can be locally-based or city-wide.

Submitted applications were assessed by a team of young people and Council officers, and those that met the required criteria are now being voted on by young people.

Voting

Young people aged 11-25 years who live in Edinburgh have two votes: one for projects taking place across the city, and another for projects in their local area.  Young people will be able to use their Young Scot number to vote. Temporary registration numbers can also be provided, and there will be paper ballots at locality events.

Voting opened on Monday and will close at 5pm next Friday – 16 March 

During this time, voting will be available online at: https://young.scot/edinburgh-pb/ and in selected community and education centres in Edinburgh.

 

 

Closing schools: putting families and staff first

Education Convener Councillor Ian Perry writes about how decisions are reached when closing schools:

Closing just one school for a day is not a decision anyone takes lightly so Tuesday night’s move to close all our schools was taken after much consideration.

Always at the forefront of all our planning is the health and safety of our pupils, staff and parents/carers. The advice we received from the Met Office, Police Scotland and the Scottish Government on Tuesday night was that travel into and within the amber weather warning areas was a risk for anyone making those journeys – that was a message we could not ignore.

With the red weather warning issued yesterday by the Met Office for Edinburgh and surrounding region we kept our schools, nurseries and early years centres closed today and they will remain closed tomorrow.

We recognise that parents and carers appreciate the earliest possible notice of any potential closure and of course we need to balance that with changing circumstances that might result in schools being able to open.

The unique aspect of the weather warnings this time has shown that initially the forecast for severe weather was amber and was escalated yesterday to red during what would have been a school day. We anticipate that the weather warnings will be updated over the coming days and hopefully will indicate more settled circumstances.

I expect that normal services will resume on Monday but should there be any need for further school closures these will be communicated direct to parents, via the Council website, social media channels and local radio stations.

And lastly can I thank all the Council staff, including our road services teams and health and sopcial care staff, and members of the public who have rallied round during this extreme weather situation to keep the city moving.

I would remind everyone to visit our website www.edinburgh.gov.uk/schoolclosures, listen to media broadcasts, especially local radio, visit the Traffic Scotland website, follow @edintravel and Police Scotland on Twitter to get the latest updates about the weather situation over the coming days.

 

NHS Lothian: severe weather update

Statement issued yesterday Thursday 1 March:
Due to severe weather conditions and transport difficulties, NHS Lothian has taken the difficult decision to cancel all routine, non-urgent  elective procedures and all hospital outpatient appointments today (Thursday 1 March) and tomorrow (Friday 2 March).   

Continue reading NHS Lothian: severe weather update

Holyrood committee to explore impact of poverty on school attainment

What is the impact of experiencing poverty on the attainment of young people at school? This is one of the questions the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Skills Committee will be exploring in a new inquiry. Continue reading Holyrood committee to explore impact of poverty on school attainment