Councillor Bell: 'Where Glasgow is leading, others are following'

Glasgow Times

3 days ago

One thing the break provides is the opportunity for me to see firsthand one of the most successful and trailblazing policies to emerge in this city – Glasgow's Holiday Programme.
From Pollok to Easterhouse, Castlemilk to Drumchapel, thousands of youngsters have been taking up the offer of an exciting range of activities across the school holidays.
And, of course, enjoy some delicious and nutritious meals along the way.
This summer, 59 community and third sector organisations, supported by over £2.2 million of council funding, have been providing meals and activities across all of Glasgow's wards.
As well as the ever-popular arts and crafts, day trips, sports sessions, and cooking classes, this summer young Glaswegians can have a try at Brazilian martial arts, go along to an 80s dayglo disco, head out on bike rides, and take part in science and technology lessons.
And over these six weeks, an incredible 300,000-plus breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks will be served to the young people attending.
This week I got along to a number of organisations delivering meals and activities across the city, including two groups who work closely together in my Govan ward.
At the Pearce Institute, on top of dance classes, youngsters were taking up lessons in circus skills, while nearby the Govan Youth Information Project was laying on a whole range of sports for scores of kids.
Across the city at COJAC in Castlemilk, it was great to see a programme dedicated to providing summer activities to youngsters with additional needs, while over at the Tollcross YMCA a very busy carnival atmosphere was in full swing, complete with fruit kebabs and pasta.
This is now the eighth year of a programme which continues to go from strength to strength, which recognises that one approach doesn't work for everyone, and which guarantees great fun while tackling exclusion.
Shortly after it was elected back in 2017, the new SNP City Administration wasn't surprised by the scale of child poverty in Glasgow and the impact this had on families during the summer months.
What was surprising was that no previous administrations had made efforts to tackle it.
We knew straight away that to address that particular challenge we couldn't stigmatise kids and families.
And we recognised that across Glasgow there were groups with much better reach, relationships, and track records in communities than the council.
Our job was to build the partnerships and provide the resources which could not only provide nutritious meals for young people and families over the summer without labelling them but also keep the kids occupied (and give parents and carers some much-needed respite).
The sheer variety of the offer within the Holiday Programme and the spread across the city shows how successful we've been in achieving that.
And just look at the numbers.
Last summer alone over 21,000 Glaswegian schoolkids attended our Holiday Programme.
Over eight years, that's well in excess of 150,000 young people.
It's little wonder that local authorities across these islands are now putting their own similar policies in place or being funded to do so.
Where Glasgow is leading, others are following, and that's something we're exceptionally proud of.
(It's also worth pointing out that the programme now allows us to make our Financial Inclusion Support Officers available to provide support and guidance over the summer months.
Experts in tackling child poverty agree that financial inclusion officers are a really effective way of delivering practical and meaningful support to families and now we're doing so year-round.)
Remarkably, for a policy that has been so effective and popular with families, at this year's budget, only the SNP allocated funding to continue the Holiday Programme.
Glaswegians can be assured that while the SNP is the City Administration, we will not let up in ensuring our Holiday Programme builds on its pioneering successes.