Participation
8th annual Cabinet meeting with children and young people 2024
November 18, 2024 by Children's Rights Team 1 Comment | Category Children & young people, Guest blog, Our work
This is the first of five posts by the Children’s Rights Unit to celebrate World Children’s Day. This week’s posts will highlight some of the ways the Scottish Government engages with children and young people and the organisations that support them to ensure their voice is an integral part of our collaborative approach to help make Scotland the best place to grow up.
UNCRC Article 12: “Every child has the right to express their views, feelings and wishes in all matters affecting them, and to have their views considered and taken seriously.”
The evening of Monday 18th November will be an exciting time for 9 children from the Children’s Parliament and 8 young people from the Scottish Youth Parliament. Many will have travelled from across Scotland to spend the night in Edinburgh, in anticipation of their meeting the following morning with the First Minister, and his Cabinet, who we are sure will be as equally excited as the children!
While heads will be filled with speeches and presentations and wondering what it will be like to meet the Cabinet and present the 6 big issues that currently matter most to children and young people from across Scotland, there is sure to be films and pizza and games and activities to calm the nerves!
The purpose of this annual meeting is:
- for children and young people (CYP) from across Scotland, to represent the fresh and lived insights of their peers on the issues they see as requiring action, these are called their Calls to Action
- for Cabinet Ministers to identify ways that CYP can be part of the decision making processes involved with progressing these actions at all levels of Government
- an opportunity for CYP to reflect on the progress the Scottish Government has made on these same actions that they brought and discussed with their Executive Team Takeover in June
- to create space for dialogue on longer term thinking on the actions
This important meeting contributes to Scotland being the best country in the world for children to grow up and shows the Government’s commitment to hearing first-hand the issues that are important to CYP, making sure that their voices are heard, valued and taken seriously as decisions are made on matters that affect them.
The Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament (MSYPs) and Members of the Children’s Parliament (MCPs) have engaged with thousands of CYP to arrive at these Calls to Action, striving to ensure the issues being discussed have been arrived at democratically. The issues are:
for MSYPs:
- end gender based violence
- invest in and protect youth work services
- increase mental health training and support
for MCPs:
- climate crisis education
- vaping
- bullying and mental health in schools
We are already seeing significant progress on these actions since the Executive Team Takeover in June 2024. MCPs have been engaging with the Vaping policy team, with further work planned. MSYP’s have been meeting with the Programme for Government team. Other developments include an SYP debate on Violence Against Women and Girls which is going to help inform the development of a motion for an anticipated debate in the Sottish Parliament as part of the 16 days of activism.
“Being a part of Executive takeover was a fantastic opportunity to share the views of young people with senior civil servants from the Scottish Government. It was so inspiring to see how keen the directors were to involve young people in their work and we look forward to seeing how our conversations might influence their planning and decision making in the future” – MSYPs who attended the Executive Team Takeover in June 2024.
This progress, which is just the start, illustrates the power and potential of these Takeovers and demonstrate that the Scottish Government is listening to CYP on the issues that matter most to them.
Tags: children and young people, children's rights, UNCRC, young people
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Brilliant blog! Its great to see young people having their voices heard at the heart of government!