First Children's Rights Scheme

List of Arrangements

The following is a summary of the arrangements included in this Children’s Rights Scheme. The ordering here is intended to help highlight the relationship between arrangements of a similar theme and does not exactly match the order in which they appear in the main body of the Scheme. These arrangements should be read and understood in the context set out in the main body of Scheme and so a hyperlink to the relevant section is provided.

The Scottish Government 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.

The Scottish Government will publish a Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA) on the annual Scottish Budget, as required by our statutory obligations.

The Scottish Government will continue to publish annual budget lines that will allow the identification of spend to support children and young people and their families.

The Scottish Government will continue to look for opportunities to demonstrate and share good practice in child rights budgeting.

The Scottish Government will undertake awareness raising and training on the Scottish Ministers’ statutory requirement in relation to statements of compatibility for relevant legislation, as well as the requirements for CRWIAs.

The Scottish Government will conduct regular evaluations of its awareness raising and training on the Scottish Ministers’ statutory requirement in relation to CRWIAs for relevant legislation and decisions of a strategic nature related to the rights and wellbeing of children.

The Scottish Government will maintain a quality assurance process to monitor the use of CRWIAs for relevant legislation and decisions of a strategic nature related to the rights and wellbeing of children within Scottish Government and Executive Agencies. To help us with this, we will invite feedback on individual CRWIAs, from those who access them from our website.

The Scottish Government will highlight the benefits of CRWIAs to both public authorities and private, voluntary and independent organisations, should they choose to use them, by continuing to provide guidance and templates.

The Scottish Government will encourage other public authorities to publish any CRWIAs that they prepare.

The Scottish Government will ensure that all staff within the Scottish Government and its Executive Agencies have access to guidance and training on children’s rights and taking a children’s human rights approach.

The Scottish Government will implement, maintain and review the Children’s Rights Skills and Knowledge Framework to support public authority workforces to understand children’s rights and take a children’s human rights approach within frontline practice, service development, and strategic planning and decision-making.

The Scottish Government will ensure that public sector leaders are supported to understand and promote the value of a children’s human rights approach on outcomes for children and young people, and all of society.

The Scottish Government will co-ordinate a Child Rights Regulation and Improvement Action Group to support scrutiny bodies such as regulators, inspectorates and ombudsmen to embed children’s rights considerations into their practice and the practice of the organisations they reach.

The Scottish Government will source and share good practice examples of taking a children’s human rights approach, to support peer learning across public authorities.

The Scottish Government will develop a case study approach to explore the extent to which children's rights are being considered in policy-making and driving decisions in some key areas.

The Scottish Government will continue to provide optional wording for grant letters to all organisations (including those who are not subject to the duties in the UNCRC Act) on promoting, respecting, protecting and fulfilling the rights of children and young people, which grantees may choose to accept.

The Scottish Government will ensure that Supporting Scotland’s Children: Core Knowledge and Values (formerly The Common Core) for all of those working with children and young people, continues to emphasise the importance of understanding children’s rights and taking a children’s human rights approach.

The Scottish Government will work with our grant-funded and other partners to develop and implement a comprehensive UNCRC Awareness Plan in collaboration with the UNCRC Awareness Raising Communications Network, who will also be engaged annually in reviewing progress. The Plan will include content directed specifically to children and young people (who will be involved in designing this) and well as parents and carers, and to the early years, with consideration given to how this can be integrated into educational settings.

The Scottish Government will identify particular groups of children and young people whose rights are most at risk and for whom we need to develop more targeted awareness-raising about their rights.

The Scottish Government will continue to ensure that children and young people have the opportunity, and are supported, to represent the views of their peers in their annual meetings with the Scottish Government Cabinet and Executive Team and to hold the Scottish Government to account on a rolling list of six ‘calls to action’ chosen by the children and young people.

The Scottish Government will support its policy teams to adapt their processes and to commission meaningful and high-quality engagement with children and young people, through the Children and Young People’s Participation Framework Agreement, where this is the most appropriate approach.

By sharing and amplifying participation guidance and best practice, the Scottish Government will support its policy teams to strengthen their knowledge and skills to meaningfully engage with all children and young people.

The Scottish Government will continue to produce child friendly and accessible versions of guidance and reports to ensure children and young people can receive information about their rights, and the duties on Scottish Ministers and public authorities in relation to their rights.

Through its funding to Young Scot, the Scottish Government will ensure that children and young people have access to inclusive digital communication from a trusted source about a range of policies and support that is available to them.

By including, in its guide to using the Children and Young People’s Participation Framework Agreement, a section on accessible and inclusive communication, the Scottish Government will ensure that policy teams using the Framework promote and use inclusive communication.

The Scottish Government will consider the need for child friendly communication tools and approaches for all, including children and young people, as part of its programme of work on inclusive communication support to Public Sector Equality Duty duty bearers.

If there is existing legislation in an area that is devolved to the Scottish Parliament that may not be compliant with the UNCRC requirements, Ministers will seek to address this.

Nonetheless, the Scottish Government will ask relevant public authorities, at least annually, i) 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 ii) 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.

The Scottish Government will provide an update on progress in addressing all of the Concluding Observations for the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child that are relevant to Scotland in 2026.

The Scottish Government will maintain a compiled list of children’s rights issues that children and stakeholders have highlighted, in published sources, are a concern to them and invite CYPCS, SHRC, and Together to review this on a regular basis.

The Scottish Government will share a compiled list of children’s rights issues that are concerning stakeholders at least every 6 months with relevant Scottish Government policy teams.

The Scottish Government will include, in our update on progress in addressing the Concluding Observations, an update on its consideration of other key children’s rights issues that stakeholders have highlighted in other published sources, as appropriate.

The Scottish Government will invite the CYPCS, Together, the SHRC and UNICEF (UK) to keep the Scottish Government informed of the children’s rights issues that are most concerning them and use this information, alongside other internal and external sources, to help determine Ministerial priorities for the year ahead.

The Scottish Government will use the annual update on the Children's Rights Scheme to set out the issues Scottish Ministers have prioritised for action and any progress that has been made, as well as use this to provide an update on progress with the six calls to action that children and young people raised in their meetings with the Scottish Cabinet.

The Scottish Government will scope the development of indicators that can be used to measure the extent to which children in Scotland are accessing rights in the UNCRC requirements which stakeholders consider are of particular risk of not being fulfilled for all children. We will start by focusing on articles 37 and 40 which relate to children’s interaction with the justice system. Learning from that, we will then consider whether it is feasible to extend the development of indicators to other articles in the UNCRC requirements.

The Scottish Government will continue to use the Children, Young People and Families Outcomes Framework, amongst others, as a measure of whether the sum of our collective actions is improving the lives of children and young people in Scotland.

The Scottish Government will collect data to help understand children and young people’s experiences of raising an individual rights issue to identify if and where children and young people encounter barriers and gaps in support, information, and services that they need to claim their rights. We will use this to consider where additional investment may be required, including, for example, the provision of advocacy support.

The Scottish Government will provide grant funding: to support the continued external and independent provision of legal information for those who provide advocacy and other support to help children and young people to access their rights; and to support the continued external and independent provision of free child-centred legal representation to help empower children and young people to enforce their rights.

The Scottish Government will progress engagement 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.

If, by November 2026, the Scottish Government considers that progress in finding a more straightforward and effective route to extending protection for children’s rights has not yet been sufficient, we will also commission a review of provisions in UK Acts in devolved areas to identify any key provisions that interact with children’s rights to such an extent that it may be worth re-enacting them in Acts of the Scottish Parliament to bring them into scope of the compatibility duty. The purpose of the review would be to make available a list of provisions to support consideration of re-enacting them when the content of relevant Bills in future legislative programmes is being decided.

The Scottish Government will launch a strategy for mainstreaming equality and human rights into everything it does, with a supporting action plan and toolkit, in 2025.