SallyAnn Kelly, chief executive of children’s charity Aberlour

NELSON Mandela was rarely wrong but the South African leader and global statesman was only partly right when he said a society’s soul is revealed in how we treat our children. How we treat our most vulnerable children and their families is even more revealing.

At present in Scotland, we know far too many are suffering despite our 32 councils stretching a safety net across the cracks of an unequal society and supporting young Scots picking their way through difficult childhoods.

Local authorities are not working alone, however, but in partnership with charities and voluntary organisations to ease the impact of poverty, poor mental health, addiction and many other issues blighting children’s lives and jeopardising their futures.

These young people, whose future is already under threat by forces outwith their control, need to be supported, secure in the knowledge they are not alone, that help is at hand not just today but tomorrow, not just now but for as long as they need it. That is why the imminent local government elections are both an opportunity and a challenge.

It is why the Coalition of Care and Support Providers in Scotland – representing more than 25 leading charities providing children’s services and whose children’s committee I chair – urges every council candidate to publicly pledge to help vulnerable young Scots and their families, to forge even stronger partnerships to ensure the earliest possible interventions and best possible outcomes.

These 25 charities support more than 150,000 children, young people and families, employ nearly 6,000 staff and provide public services worth around £150 million. These services, planned and built by our councils in collaboration with charities, must be delivered with compassion and, just as importantly, with consistency, day after day and year after year.

An election is a time of flux in our local government as councillors leave office – some willingly, some not – and successors take their place when it is more important than ever to focus on maintaining the consistency and continuity of these vital services.

Our charities want to create the very best support services for Scotland’s children; deliver the most effective help; put in place the most critical support; and deliver the best value for money. As our campaign says, we want to #plan4children.

When budgets are under constant scrutiny, the most pressing problems demanding the most urgent action are often prioritised at the expense of services with less immediate impact but more long-term value.

Sadly, those same services, particularly those working to provide early intervention and support at the earliest opportunity to prevent fixable problems becoming intractable family crises, are often most at risk.

Intervention aimed at identifying and easing the impact of potential problems as early as possible must be the starting point in planning for children and families, not an optional afterthought. It is about identifying and tackling problems promptly before they become too challenging to manage.

We know that well-resourced early intervention and prevention services can deliver successful outcomes for children and families and prevent the need for much more intensive support at a later stage. We hope our campaign will ensure council candidates know this, too, and we encourage them to prioritise early support for families to prevent more expensive but less effective interventions later.

We will, in the weeks ahead, tell our council candidates that they could not be more crucial in helping build and deliver these services but, while the election will be an exciting time for them, it will also be a nerve-jangling time for those depending on their support.

Our local politicians, newly elected or veterans of the council chamber, must understand their pivotal role in improving the lives of, and life chances for, Scotland’s children and be encouraged to involve both families and charities to help most effectively plan and deliver support services.

Our local politicians are the voice of their communities and will hear many first-hand accounts of the difficult, often chaotic, lives being led by children growing up in their wards.

Local services, not national politics, should be at the heart of May’s elections and there can be no more important service to our communities than protecting the lives and improving the futures of the children who will live there.

Nelson Mandela was right again when he said our children are our greatest asset, the rock on which our future will be built.

The most effective support for the most vulnerable children should be the rock on which our politicians build this council election campaign.

SallyAnn Kelly, chief executive of children’s charity Aberlour