School of Education

Children’s Neighbourhoods Scotland

Children’s Neighbourhoods Scotland (CNS) is a partnership between the University of Glasgow and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) that has been developed in response to one of the wicked issues of our time. Despite record levels of investment, levels of child poverty in Scotland continue to rise and children growing up in poverty continue to fall behind across a broad range of outcomes.

CNS is a distinctive and innovative approach that brings together people, organisations and other resources in a local area so that they can all work more collaboratively to promote better lives for the children and young people living there. Put simply, CNS aims to ensure that activity within a neighbourhood has more impact than the sum of its parts.

Through collaboration and partnership working, CNS supports practical developments on the ground within communities - including building children and young people’s capacity and engagement whilst researching and evaluating activity. This research and development approach draws on the expertise and experience within the University and GCPH, and combines this with local insight and intelligence from within the community and across the public, private and third sectors.

The first pilot site was officially launched in 2018 in the communities of Bridgeton and Dalmarnock in the east end of Glasgow. This was subsequently supported by the Scottish Government’s Every Child, Every Chance: Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan (2018- 2022) to expand to a further five sites in a range of urban, town and rural settings.

As the programme evolves and expands over the next twelve months, the research and evaluative activity will inform and refine the approach taken locally, support community activity, and will develop networks to share learning and lessons between CNS sites, across Scotland and more widely through our national and international networks.