PUPILS who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex in Glasgow are suffering at the hands of bullies, a report has warned.

Children and young people who experienced homophobic bullying were also more likely to say that they “didn’t feel supported."

Compounding the problem, counselling services and school nursing provision for vulnerable pupils was found to “limited and patchy,” across the city.

Children from ethnic minorities and those with special needs were also more likely to be affected by bullying.

Despite improvements in waiting times, some children and young people had to wait too long for counselling, according to a joint report on children’s services, led by the Care Inspectorate.

As a result, “services were not always able to respond quickly enough to meet the emotional and mental wellbeing needs of children and young people at an early stage.”

The report was carried out in partnership with Glasgow City Council, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

The team met with 181 children and young people and 98 parents and carers to gauge their experiences of services.

Generally, young people were confident that bullying was being effectively addressed in schools.

However the report found that, “those identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex LGBTI or pupils from ethnic minorities were more likely to experience

bullying and sometimes did not feel supported within their schools.”

Cara Spence, of LGBT Youth Scotland, said: “Our research shows that almost 70% of LGBT young people experience bullying in school settings across Scotland, it’s therefore not surprising that Care Inspectorate report recommends taking steps to address this.

"At present we support many young people in the Glasgow area who are experiencing bullying and are working with 15 schools to improve responses to bullying incidents.”

The report also found that there was a high levels of absconding from children’s units and in some cases, risk assessment and management had not been robust enough.

Too many children who had been removed from parental care were not moving to permanent care such as fostering or adoption quickly enough.

Just over a quarter of plans were progressing fairly well, while the remainder were either not progressing well or progress was unclear.

Parents also reported problems accessing nursery placements.

In particular in the south of the city parents were often offered nursery places which were not close enough to their home communities to enable attendance.

A spokeswoman for Glasgow City Council said: “The key finding of the report to assess how well we are working with partners to make a difference in children’s lives, is that services for children and young people in Glasgow are improving lives and having a positive impact.

“We are pleased that inspectors have highlighted the effectiveness and major strengths of numerous joint services - covering education, health and wellbeing across the city - that are delivering better outcomes for our children, young people and their families.

“We will continue to focus our attention on this vision and look at the areas for improvement that have been raised.

“However, we questioned inspectors over some areas of the evaluation in relation to the assessing and responding to risk and need and planning.

“There is always room for improvement and we will of course pay particular attention to improvements in this area but feel that inspectors took too narrow a focus.

“We want our children to stay safe, life healthy and active lives and achieve to the very best of their ability."

What Glasgow is doing well

Overall, performance in improving the wellbeing of children and young people was very good.

There were reductions in anti-social behaviour, violent crime and fire starting and "promising reductions" were reported in young people smoking, drinking and using drugs.

Attainment was improving overall and this included looked after children and young people from deprived areas.

The response to child protection concerns was robust in most instances,

There had been significant reductions in exclusions and more young people were entering positive destinations when they left school.

Teenage pregnancies are reducing.

There were improving trends in the rates of low birth weight babies and those born affected by maternal drug use.

In 2015/2016 in Glasgow the rate for mixed feeding (breast and bottle) was just greater than the figure for Scotland.

Facts about Glasgow's children

There are 116,343 children and young people aged up to 18 years living in the city.

Of these 19% of the Glasgow school population aged 0-15 are from an ethnic minority, compared to 4.9% nationally

There are 119 languages spoken in schools; 11,190 pupils do not have English as their first language

33% of Glasgow children are reported to be living in poverty (19% nationally) and this figure rises to over 50% in some areas of the city

28,000 live in households where no adults work

5,282 children are estimated to be affected by parental alcohol or drug misuse

10% of Glasgow children (0 -15) have one or more long erm health condition