Children (Care and Justice) (Scotland) Bill: child rights and wellbeing impact assessment

6. How have you consulted with relevant stakeholders, including involving children and young people in the development of the policy/measure?

The policy memorandum for the Bill gives full details of the consultation.

Key to the consultation process was listening to the views of children and young people themselves. To support engagement an easy read version of the consultation and young person's conversation guide were developed and published alongside the main document. Both of these resources were available for children and young people to use independently, as well as by professionals to facilitate individual or group discussions to help the children and young people they were working with to participate. As detailed above, these measures yielded a number of written consultation responses from individuals and groups including Our hearings; Our Voice; STARR; Youth Justice Voices; North Lanarkshire's Promise Team and Participation group TNT – Today Not Tomorrow; and the Good Shepherd Centre.

In addition, we worked with CYCJ and the Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) to carry out open and targeted sessions with children and young people.

The SYP WhatsYourTake Summer survey also generated 243 responses from children and young people. Although these were received too late to be part of the main consultation analysis, SYP's analysis was included in this report and informed policy development. The survey contained two questions which focused on maximising the use of the children's hearings system as opposed to the traditional criminal justice system, which the majority of respondents supported. Views were also sought on which, if any, potential changes in the criminal justice system should be made when it is dealing with children, with support across the different options varying. The children's hearings system, particularly information sharing, and criminal justice system were also the focus of a targeted workshop at the SYP Summer Sitting.