First Children's Rights Scheme: child friendly version

5. Actions to check if children and young people are experiencing their rights and to support them to complain if they think their rights are not being respected

We will look out for where children’s rights are not being respected and try to help

In 2023, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child - the group of experts in Geneva who help countries to think about children’s rights - gave the United Kingdom a list of ideas about where more might be done to make sure that children’s rights are protected and respected. We are using these ideas to think about how to help children and young people in Scotland to experience all of their rights.

Children and young people helped to create their own child-friendly version of these ideas, known as ‘Scotland’s ‘to do’ list’. You can read this to find out what the UN Committee said.

Actions:

• In 2024, we wrote a report about the UN Committee’s ideas and what we are doing to help children’s rights in Scotland. We will write another report about this in 2026.
• Children, young people and children’s rights organisations have shared their own ideas about how to make children’s rights better in Scotland. We will share these ideas with others working in the Scottish Government, who can use them to make changes for children and young people.
• We will also ask the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland and other children’s rights organisations to tell us about children’s rights issues that worry them most, and use this to help us think about our plans for children and young people.
• If we find out that there are any laws for Scotland that are bad for children’s rights, we will make sure we try to fix them.
• We will think about how to collect better information to check whether the rights in the UNCRC are being respected across Scotland.

We are supporting children and young people to complain if they think their rights are not being respected

The Scottish Public Services Ombudsman (SPSO) helps people who are unhappy about their experiences with public authorities like schools, hospitals, and councils. We have given money to the SPSO to work with children to make it easier for them to complain when they think a public authority has not respected their rights. The new child-friendly complaints guide was published in July 2024.

The Scottish Government has also written a new guide to help children, young people, and the adults who support them, to understand how to complain and to seek support when they feel that their rights are not being respected. The information can be found on the Scottish Government website and a more accessible version for young people can be accessed on the Young Scot ‘Activate Your Rights’ webpage

The UNCRC Act says that children and young people can also complain to the Scottish courts if they think that their rights are not being respected when they are receiving some services.

Actions:

• We will collect information about experiences of raising a concern about children’s rights. This will help us to see where children and young people might need more support to speak out when they are worried about their rights.
• We will also give money to certain groups and charities who can help children and young people to complain in courts.
• We will look at ways to make it possible for children and young people to complain to the courts about more services if and when their rights are not being respected.