Bringing up children: your views

What's this all about?

Aileen Campbell,Minister for Children and Young People

I want Scotland to be the best place in the world for children and young people to grow up. To achieve this, one of the key things we need to do is ensure that all parents feel valued and supported to develop their own potential, knowledge, skills and confidence to be the best they can be for their children. This is why we have made a commitment to develop a national parenting strategy. By this we mean a national statement setting out our vision to support parents and carers across Scotland.

When we refer to support for parents we mean anyone with a parenting role, not just mums, but also dads, grandparents, kinship carers, adoptive parents, step parents and parents to be. We're talking about children and young people of all ages including babies, teenagers and young adults.

To help develop the national parenting strategy and the way forward, we asked our partners (local authorities, health boards, third/voluntary sector) to help engage with parents across the country to seek views on their experiences as parents. This magazine represents the key messages we have received from a variety of parents and carers bringing up children and young people in Scotland.

There are many people I would like to thank, not least the 1,500 participants with a parenting role who contributed thoughtful and valuable insights. And this could not have been achieved without the support of all the people in our partner organisations who arranged over 150 discussion groups. Every local authority area in Scotland is represented, and views were gathered from working parents, parents to be, parents with learning difficulties, fathers, grandparents, mothers, service families, kinship carers, black and ethnic minority groups, parents with drug and alcohol issues, families affected by imprisonment, members of the travelling community and many more!

Aileen Campbell,
Minister for Children and Young People