Renfrewshire Council

Scottish Public Sector Awards Winners 2023 The double win for Renfrewshire is a fantastic result among peers in a celebration of the work of Scotland's public servants hosted at the Scottish Parliament.

The Alcohol and Substance Awareness Programme, which is a collaboration of colleagues from I Am Me Scotland, our Children's Services teams and Police Scotland, secured the Campbell Christie Public Service Reform Award for its innovative suite of educational resources, designed by children, young people and those who have experienced drug and alcohol use, addiction and recovery. Their second award in as many weeks following recent success at the COSLA Excellence awards.

I Am Me's development co-ordinator, Mhairi O'Rourke, said, "We are thrilled that the Alcohol and Substance Awareness Programme has won this award. This was the most amazing project to be a part of and this recognition is testament to the children, young people, people with lived and living experience, partners and many others who gave so much of their time to support the development of the resources - all 892 of them! We hope these resources continue to help and support children and young people throughout Scotland to understand the use of alcohol and substances, know where they can access support if needed, and tackle the stigma that is so often linked to addiction."

Children's services education manager Mairi Thomas said: "We are very proud of this fantastic programme which has delivered a relevant and interactive digital resource to support effective delivery of a vital element of the health and wellbeing curriculum - alcohol and substance use. We are so grateful to those people who shared their experiences and to our Health and Police Scotland partners for engaging in such meaningful consultation. Our teachers are making great use of this resource, helping to equip children and young people with the right information and tools to make informed choices in their lives."

The #YouDecide campaign picked up the Community Engagement Award in recognition of the team's stellar efforts to empower communities to vote for the projects they wanted to see happen in their neighbourhoods.

Kellie Howard from our policy and strategic planning team said, "This award for Community Engagement is a fabulous endorsement of a collaborative team effort to make the #YouDecide initiative such a success. As the Council's flagship participatory budgeting project, our aim was to ensure every local community had a direct say on how public money was spent in their area.

Climate and public protection manager, Gwyneth Heaney added: "Every Council service has played their part in delivering this democratic innovation for Renfrewshire and I'm delighted this hard work has been recognised. It's exciting to see local people engaged with projects which will make a real difference to where they live."

Published on Thursday 7 December 2023