Inspectors have identified areas for improvement to help protect vulnerable children and young people in Falkirk.

The Care Inspectorate has reported on the Falkirk Community Planning Partnership, made up of representatives from the council, health board and police service.

It graded the services across nine key indicators of performance, rating five as good and four as adequate.

The inspectors said: "We found examples of positive approaches aimed at tackling inequalities and closing outcome gaps but limited measures to demonstrate progress.

"Partners can demonstrate that the performance of services is leading to improvements in some aspects of children's well-being.

"The outcomes for some groups of vulnerable children and young people, including those who are looked after, are more variable and affected by some long-standing gaps in services."

The joint inspection of services for children and young people in the Falkirk Community Planning Partnership area took place in November and December 2015.

It covered the range of partners in the area that have a role in providing services for children, young people and families.

Karen Reid, chief executive of the Care Inspectorate said: "Protecting young people and ensuring that the services they and their families use are of the very highest standard is crucial.

"However, going forward, strong collective leadership will be required to challenge traditional ways of working to enable partners to build on their successes and deliver sustainable improvement and change."

Council leader Craig Martin, the partnership's chairman, said: "We will now focus our attention on the indicators assessed as being 'adequate' and ensure that we raise the bar and progress improvement actions in these areas."

This included the need to improve the use of information and data to inform service planning and to establish a collective vision for corporate parenting at the highest level.

NHS Forth Valley's director of nursing, Professor Angela Wallace said: "We have seen increased rates of early antenatal bookings, which helps us to provide advice and support to women at an early stage.

"However, I recognise that we need to continue to work with our partners to drive forward further improvements in child health and local breastfeeding rates."

Detective superintendent Wilson Gill said: "I'm very pleased that multi-agency child protection work carried out in Falkirk has been positively commented upon within this report - we work closely with all our partners in Forth Valley to carry out risk assessments and take any necessary action to keep children safe.

"However, we will not be complacent and we will take forward the findings of the inspection to ensure those who are most vulnerable in our society continue to get the high level of service they deserve."

The findings of the Joint Inspection of Services for Children will inform improvement planning for the Partnership and a robust action plan for improvement will be progressed through the Children's Commission and reflected in the Integrated Children's Services Plan.

Inspectors made five recommendations for improvement at the Falkirk partnership.

These included providing stronger accountability, ensuring partners maximise their collective resources with robust performance management and measurable outcomes.

Inspectors also recommended the partnership establish a shared vision at the highest level and ensure that children, young people and families are involved in service planning.