First Children's Rights Scheme

Annex A: How Consultation On The Draft Scheme Shaped The Final Version

Following consultation with the UNCRC Strategic Implementation Board and targeted consultation with: the Commissioner for Children and Young People in Scotland; the Scottish Human Rights Commission; Together; and UNICEF (UK), the draft Scheme was amended to reflect their feedback in the following ways:

• More concise presentation, so that some of the detail of how we will deliver the arrangements is included in the annual updates on the Scheme and some material is moved to annexes.
• Scheme structured around the principles of a children’s human rights approach articulated in the Scottish Government’s ‘Guidance on taking a children’s human rights approach’.
• Inclusion of 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.
• Inclusion of a commitment to work constructively with the UK Government to seek and remove any legislative restrictions that currently limit the Scottish Parliament's ability to enhance human rights protections across all areas devolved to Scotland.
• Inclusion of a commitment to the review of legislation, if discussions with UK Government do not make meaningful progress by November 2026.
• Enhancement of the commitment on meaningful engagement with children and young people so that policy teams are supported to do this well.
• Inclusion, in the commitment to maintaining the Skills and Knowledge Framework, of a commitment to evaluate and review it.
• Removal of the reference to working with stakeholders to identify a rolling list of five high priority children’s rights that are concerning them and engaging with policy teams on these. The commitment is now: to invite the CYPCS, Together, UNICEF UK and the SHRC to keep the Scottish Government informed of the children’s rights issues that are most concerning them; and to use this information from key stakeholders, alongside other internal and external sources, to help determine Ministerial priorities for the year ahead.
• Inclusion of a commitment to conduct regular evaluations of awareness raising and training across the Scottish Government on the statutory requirement for CRWIAs.
• Commitment to a quality assurance process to monitor use of CRWIAs within the Scottish Government.
• Addition of 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.
• Inclusion of 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.
• Inclusion of a paragraph about how we raise awareness and promote ‘Supporting Scotland’s Children: Core Knowledge and Values’.
• Inclusion of 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. Our assessment was that there was already enough work underway or planned to deliver what children and young people highlighted was necessary. Not all of that work could be included in the Children’s Rights Scheme, which is focused on new work for the future rather than work already delivered or underway. For that reason, the child friendly version of the Scheme includes an annex that summarises the feedback from children and young people and provides an explanation of what we are already doing to address this.