Children and young people's voices matter: progress report - January 2020

Introduction

Our third annual meeting of Cabinet members and children and young people was held on 5 March 2019 at Bute House, Edinburgh.

Seven Members of the Children’s Parliament (MCPs) attended. They were Ben (11), Elisha (11), Hannah (12), Cameron (12), Mackenzie (12), Emily (13) and Dylan (14).

Seven Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament (MSYPs) also attended. They were Suki Wan (20, Chair, Glasgow Shettleston), Jack Dudgeon (19, Vice Chair, Eastwood), Zanib Ahmad (17, Trustee, Glasgow Cathcart), Josh Kennedy (16, Trustee, Renfrewshire North), Alice Ferguson (15, Convener of Health and Wellbeing Committee, Linlithgow), Bailey-Lee Robb (15, Convener of External Affairs, UK and International Relations Committee, Cowdenbeath) and Chloe Whyte (16, Convener of Education and Lifelong Learning Committee, Falkirk).

At this meeting MCPs and MSYPs represented children and young people’s views from across Scotland and talked about issues that were important to them. Our recent film about the meeting gives more information.

The meeting ended with everyone agreeing actions for the year ahead (as set out on page 5). These actions have been taken forward by the Scottish Government. This report covers the main areas of progress on these 18 actions. However, it does not include all the activity that has taken place. We would like to thank all the others who have helped to progress this year’s actions but have not been included in this report.

It is fantastic to see so much progress being made in realising children’s rights during 2019 - the 30th anniversary year of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

More information about some of these actions can be found in our recently published Progress Report on ‘Progressing the Human Rights of Children in Scotland: An Action Plan 2018 – 2021’.

In this report, all hyperlinks in the text are light blue.