First Children's Rights Scheme: child rights and wellbeing impact assessment

Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment

1. Brief Summary

Type of proposal:

• Decision of a strategic nature relating to the rights and wellbeing of children

Name the proposal, and describe its overall aims and intended purpose.

The Children’s Rights Scheme (“the Scheme”) is a statutory requirement under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 (“the UNCRC Act”). Section 14 of the UNCRC Act requires the Scottish Ministers to make a scheme, to be known as the Children’s Rights Scheme , which sets out the arrangements that they have made, or propose to make, to ensure that they comply with the compatibility duty under section 6 of the Act and to secure better or further effect of the rights of children. The compatibility duty makes it unlawful for public authorities to act, or to fail to act, in way that is incompatible with the UNCRC requirements, as set out in the schedule to the Act.

As set out in the UNCRC Act, the Scheme must include arrangements for the Scottish Ministers to:

• ensure that children are able to participate in the making of decisions that affect them with access to such support and representation (for example from children’s advocacy services) as they require to do so;
• identify and address any situation where a child’s rights are (or are at a significant risk of) not being fulfilled;
• raise awareness of and promote the rights of children;
• promote complaints handling procedures that children can understand and use;
• ensure that children have effective access to justice;
• protect the rights of children in relation to their interactions with persons, other than public authorities, who provide services which affect children;
• consider the rights of children in the Scottish Government’s budget process;
• ensure that their actions contribute to any national outcome for children determined by them under Part 1 of the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015;
• prepare and publish child rights and wellbeing impact assessments; and
• use, and promote the use of, inclusive ways of communicating that ensure that children are able to receive information and express themselves in ways that best meet their needs (in relation to speech, language or otherwise).

However, the Scheme need not be, and is not limited to, setting out only these arrangements.

The Scheme is grounded in the principles of the Children’s Human Rights Approach, as discussed in the Non-statutory guidance on taking a children's human rights based approach that was produced by the Scottish Government for public authorities (“the five principles”):

• Embedding: putting children’s human rights at the core of planning and the delivery of services that affect children;
• Empowerment: giving children the knowledge and confidence to use their rights and hold organisations and individuals that affect their lives to account;
• Participation: listening to children and taking their views seriously;
• Accountability: taking steps to monitor children’s rights standards and provide remedies where there is failure to meet these standards; and
• Equality and non-discrimination: ensuring that every child has an equal opportunity to make the most of their lives and talents.

This Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA) assesses the likely impact of the Children’s Rights Scheme itself. It does not cover the wider impacts of the UNCRC Act, which are addressed in a separate CRWIA which can be found through the following link: CRWIA for the UNCRC Act - updated June 2024.

Start date of proposal’s development: September 2023

Start date of CRWIA process: Potential children’s rights impacts were continually considered from the start of the development of the scheme, but the CRWIA document was started in August 2025 when stakeholder engagement had concluded.

2. With reference given to the requirements of the UNCRC Act, which aspects of the proposal are relevant to/impact upon children’s rights?

The Scheme sets out 41 commitments that, collectively, support each of the five principles of the Children’s Human Rights Approach listed in section 1 above. All of the commitments set out in the Children’s Rights Scheme are intended to support Ministers to comply with the compatibility duty under section 6 of the UNCRC Act and to secure better or further effect of the rights of children. All aspects of the proposal are therefore relevant to/impact on children’s rights.

3. Please provide a summary of the evidence gathered which will be used to inform your decision-making and the content of the proposal

The content of the Scheme was influenced by General Comment No. 5, which was issued by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2003 and provides a useful account of the general measures of implementation of the UNCRC. The content of the Scheme was also influenced by the Children’s Rights Scheme that was published by the Welsh Parliament. However, the main source of evidence for the Scottish Government’s Scheme was the feedback from extensive engagement with key stakeholders including children and young people.

Section 15 of the UNCRC Act sets out the procedures that the Scottish Ministers must follow to prepare and make the Scheme. It states that Scottish Ministers must consult on their proposals with children, the Commissioner for Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland (CYPCS), the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC), and such other persons as the Scottish Ministers consider appropriate. On this occasion the “other persons” consulted have been members of the UNCRC Strategic Implementation Board, through which the Scottish Government also received detailed comments from Together (Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights) (“Together”) and UNICEF (UK).

Consultation began with the circulation of an early draft of the Scheme to the Strategic Implementation Board in November 2023 before formal targeted consultation with CYPCS, SHRC, Together and UNICEF (UK) between early July and late September 2024 and engagement with children via a survey and workshops undertaken by Young Scot between mid-February and the end of March 2025.

Children and young people aged from 9-18 were involved in two strands of engagement:

• A national survey which ran across February and March 2025 and received 195 completed responses; and
• in-person sessions run at Young Scot’s offices in central Edinburgh for 11-13 year olds and 14-18 year olds, and at Newcraighall Primary School for 9-10 year olds.

The sessions were designed to explore the results of the national survey in more detail in an age-appropriate manner. They were focused around three main themes and additional questions:

• Theme 1: Making Complaints and Asking for Support
• Theme 2: Monitoring and Evaluation
• Theme 3: Supporting Organisations to Protect Children’s Rights
• Additional Questions: Scheme Review and Terminology (ages 11-13 and 14-18 only)

4. Further to the evidence described at ‘3’ have you identified any 'gaps' in evidence which may prevent determination of impact? If yes, please provide an explanation of how they will be addressed

No.

5. Analysis of Evidence

Stakeholders suggested they were generally positive about the Scheme and its potential to help embed children’s rights in Scotland. However, there were many suggestions about how the Scheme could be strengthened by including stronger or additional commitments that would strengthen access to all of the rights within the UNCRC. The suggestions were as follows and were all given careful consideration as we finalised the Scheme:

• report annually on resourcing of the Children’s Rights Unit within the Scottish Government;
• strengthen the commitment about UNCRC awareness raising;
• ensure all children have access to legal support and representation, including by removing barriers faced by children in disadvantaged situations and expanding the types of support provided under the legal aid budget;
• officials working with children in the justice system should be adequately trained on children’s rights and child-friendly proceedings;
• ensure that children whose rights are at risk have access to well-resourced independent advocacy services to support their right to be heard;
• work constructively with the UK Government to remove any legislative restrictions that currently limit the Scottish Parliament's ability to enhance human rights protections across all areas devolved to Scotland;
• proceed with the planned review of UK Acts in devolved areas without further delay and in parallel with engagement with the UK Government, with the aim of identifying provisions that could be re-enacted within Acts of the Scottish Parliament to broaden children's access to justice and strengthen the enforceability of their rights;
• consistent core funding for organisations to allow for engagement with diverse groups of children in policy development;
• inclusion of babies and very young children in participation efforts;
• enhance the Scheme’s commitment on meaningful engagement with children and young people so that policy teams are supported to do this well;
• work with babies, children and young people to provide regular in-person training sessions or workshops to Scottish Government officials across all Directorates and levels;
• include in the commitment to maintaining the Skills and Knowledge Framework, a commitment to evaluate and review it;
• include, in the commitment about ensuring that public sector leaders are supported to understand and promote the value of children’s human rights, a commitment to working in partnership with the Improvement Service;
• include, in the commitment about co-ordinating a Child Rights Regulation and Improvement Working Group, a commitment to publish regular updates about the agreed actions being taken forward and the steps being taken to involve babies, children and young people in their work;
• include a commitment to use the annual update on the Scheme to update on progress with any recommendations made by the CYPCS;
• include a commitment to conduct regular evaluations of awareness raising and training across the Scottish Government on the statutory requirement for high quality CRWIAs;
• provide more detail about the quality assurance process for monitoring the use of CRWIAs;
• commit to including feedback from babies, children and young people in the quality assurance process for monitoring the use of CRWIAs within the Scottish Government;
• the inclusion of child rights-focused wording in Scottish Government grant letters should be mandatory rather than optional;
• develop a dedicated children's rights and business strand within the UNCRC implementation programme to protect children's rights in the business sector; This will include clear expectations for businesses, guidance on impact assessments, child-friendly remedies, and a suggested reporting framework for businesses;
• include more about how the Scottish Government will protect the rights of children when they interact with private businesses that are not delivering duties of a public nature;
• include a commitment to publish a child-friendly 'children's budget' that clearly tracks resources allocated to children across sectors;
• include a focus on legislative change to strengthen children’s rights;
• commit to direct engagement with children and young people in work to refresh the National Outcomes;
• add a commitment about how legal judgments with regard to children’s rights will be made available to public authorities so that they can consider how their policy and practice should be changed to avoid future violations;
• include a paragraph about how the Scottish Government raises awareness and promotes Supporting Scotland’s Children: Core Knowledge and Values;
• add a commitment about the Scottish Government sharing and exchanging good practice with other governments and UNICEF; and
• include information about the process for reviewing and revising the Scheme.

The engagement with children and young people suggested that overall, they were positive about the draft commitments but they highlighted other things that they considered necessary to strengthen access to their rights. Their responses made clear that they wanted the Scottish Government to:

• engage directly with them to understand how their rights are being upheld;
• make sure that they can see how rights issues are being addressed;
• monitor how well individual organisations are upholding children’s rights and ensure that these organisations are held accountable for this;
• raise awareness of children’s rights among children and young people;
• raise awareness of children’s rights among parents and carers;
• raise understanding of children’s rights among people working in public services;
• raise awareness of how to address a concern about rights;
• make sure that complaints processes are child friendly and confidential;
• ensure that children’s rights should be taught in schools, with special attention given to embedding rights in practice within schools;
• ensure that adults and organisations communicate with children in a way that they can understand;
• to protect children’s rights when they are online;
• provide child friendly information about how the commitments in the Scheme are being delivered;
• engage with them in developing the commitments in future Children’s Rights Schemes; and
• provide feedback on how views from children and young people shape the Scheme.

6. What changes (if any) have been made to the proposal as a result of this assessment?

A full account of how the engagement influenced the development of the Scheme is provided in Annex A of the published Scheme. Many of the requests from stakeholders listed in section 5 were addressed. These included, but were not limited to:

• commitments to grant fund the continued external and independent provision of: legal information for those who provide advocacy and other support to help children to access their rights; and free child-centred legal representation to help empower children to enforce their rights;
• a commitment to work constructively with the UK Government to explore the removal of any legislative restrictions that currently limit the Scottish Parliament's ability to enhance human rights protections across all areas devolved to Scotland;
• a commitment to the review of legislation, if discussions with UK Government do not make meaningful progress by November 2026;
• a section on ensuring that legislation is compliant with children’s human rights and inclusion of a commitment to ask relevant public authority networks, at least annually, if they are aware of any legislation which, in their view, may be incompatible with the UNCRC requirements and how this is affecting their service delivery and where they may require to rely on the exemption set out in part 2 of the Children (Withdrawal from Religious Education and Amendment of UNCRC Compatibility Duty) (Scotland) Bill; and
• a commitment that will ensure that the statutory reviews of the National Performance Framework are informed by the views of children and young people, including through direct engagement with them.

After carefully considering the feedback from children and young people, the Scottish Government’s assessment was that it could demonstrate that there is much work already underway or planned to deliver what children and young people asked for and that the Scheme therefore sufficiently reflected their views. The Scottish Government tested that assessment with the UNCRC Strategic Implementation Board and its members were content with this. Young Scot have publish the findings from its engagement with children and young people which can be found here. This includes an annex which provides a response from the Scottish Government explaining how the work already underway or planned should deliver what children and young people asked for.