For decades, and despite millions of pounds of investment, Governments and public agencies have struggled to change the experience of many people living in Scotland’s most disadvantaged communities. Problems of low life expectancy, low levels of employment and educational attainment persist. Link Up set-out to prove that creating the right conditions for change and the seemingly simple steps of working with what’s good in a community and using social activities (e.g. gardening, cooking, arts, crafts, sport, music) to build relationships between local people, could start to turn this intractable position around.
Inspiring Scotland commissioned Blake Stevenson to undertake an external evaluation of Phase 1 of the intandem programme, Scotland’s first national mentoring programme for children and young people who are looked after at home, from August 2017 to March 2019. This report details the key findings of that evaluation, looking at the benefits for mentees, mentors
Read MoreThe National Strategy for Self Directed Support (SDS) in Scotland recognises the need to build capacity of providers and develop the workforce to support the effective implementation and delivery of SDS. The SDS Innovation Fund (2015-2018) aims to support innovation and the piloting of different service models as well as help develop the capacity of
Read MoreIn 2018, we brought together a broad group of academics and organisations from education, childcare, healthcare, environment and government to create Scotland’s Outdoor Play and Learning Coalition. The Coalition created a bold position statement which committed signatories to working together to embed playing and learning outdoors as an everyday activity and a fundamental part
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