SO, we’ve reached the milestone of 100 days as Glasgow’s new City Government. In that short time we’ve achieved and progressed our immediate aims to start bringing about the change we were elected to deliver.

Some of that just needed a freshness of approach, some will take the lifespan of this administration to fully achieve and some requires us to lay the foundations for meaningful, cultural and lasting change. Many of our challenges as a city are generational in the making. Our ambition is to ensure they do not take as long to resolve but the solutions, like the problems, are complex.

This week, we'll hold our Safe Glasgow summit, where we'll kick off an important conversation about how the council should work with our colleagues in other organisations to make sure Glasgow has a positive story to tell. Massive strides have been made in reducing the impact of crime, antisocial behaviour, fires and accidents on individuals and communities.

But this is a story too many haven’t heard. And I am confident that working with those at the cutting edge of justice our council can begin to overcome the challenges still facing us.

I've long believed that criminal justice has a huge and often under-discussed role in delivering social justice. For a child, the effect of having a parent go to prison can have lasting and devastating consequences for their own life chances. The early effects of trauma can last a lifetime. Experts like Karyn McCluskey of Community Justice Scotland, a keynote speaker at our summit, tell me that too often the children they see as the young victims of abuse are the same people they see in their teens and early 20s in front of the courts. We will also hear from the pioneering work of Action For Children, which works on the frontline in our communities diverting our young people away from the glamour and attraction of organised crime, which is just a step away from the recreational violence blighting our neighbourhoods and scarring our youth.

If we are serious about making sure that every child in Glasgow has an equal opportunity to achieve their potential, and the City Government is very serious about social justice and life chances, then we have to change the way we think about offending and punishment. Too many people, many of them women and many of them parents, end up in prison for minor offences or for behaviour that's connected to mental health problems or addictions. Those issues don't improve while they're in prison, their children and families suffer, and society doesn't get any benefit.

Should the council and our partners be making it a priority to reduce Glasgow's prison population? Should we focus on finding different ways for people to pay their debt to society, while also getting the support they need to break destructive cycles? For the sake of future generations, that's a conversation we need to have.

OVER the summer the City Government has led on the recruitment of 200 new teachers and classroom support staff. Over 18,000 pupils will benefit from almost £22million the city secured through the Pupil Equity Fund announced by the Scottish Government earlier this year. My hope and that of our hard-working teachers and parents is that we can use this to build upon our record attainment results from this year.

This week, in another in our series of summits, we will bring together every head teacher in Glasgow, under the one roof, to discuss what we can do together to boost attainment and help every child reach their potential. Of course the scale of the challenges Glasgow faces are greater than elsewhere in Scotland but with the resources, will and cooperation I trust we can break down many of these barriers.

The keynote speaker at the summit will be Deputy First Minister and Education Secretary John Swinney. The event provides a platform for John and our education leaders to exchange views and ideas on the best way forward for our children. We said the new City Government would strive to open the doors of the city chambers and there are fewer more important audiences to host than our head teachers.

AWAY from the tooth-and-claw set-piece of events of parliaments and election campaigns, our politicians often work across party boundaries on shared agendas. This is perhaps more so within local government, the frontline for cherished bread and butter services.

On Friday, after a break of almost three years, the leaders of all 32 Scots councils sat together under one roof at the umbrella body Cosla. Amongst discussions on pressing issues such as Brexit and education, we discussed a paper on the so-called family cap, the two child limit for child tax credits and the resulting rape clause, one of the most reviled government policies of recent times. I moved an amendment for the SNP, condemning these policies and the attempt at social engineering that lie beneath them. The UK government has no business dictating the family size of people who receive tax credits - especially by forcing children into poverty.

I was very pleased that the Labour leaders backed the amendment. The Conservatives did not but the majority of our council leaders have spoken with a clear voice and Cosla will actively campaign against this policy.