UNCRC Implementation Guidance Reference Group minutes: 9 August 2021

Attendees and apologies

• Nicola Hughes (Chair), Scottish Government – NH
• Luiza Leite (Minutes), Scottish Government – LL
• Aoife Charles, Scottish Government – AC
• Deborah Davison, ADES – DD
• Jill Laspa, COSLA – JL
• Darren Little, Dumfries and Galloway Council – DL
• Colin Convery, Police Scotland – CC
• Maria Doyle, Together – MD
• Suzanne Brown, SCRON – SB
• Joanne Glennie, CCPS – JG
• Alison Sutherland, Social Work Scotland – AS
• Dragan Nastic, Unicef – DN
• Deborah Wason, Public Health Scotland – DW
• Kavita Chetty, Scottish Human Rights Commission – KC
• Morag Driscoll, Law Society of Scotland – MD
• Afson Barekat / Anna Munro, Scottish Government (as observers)

Apologies

• Julie Williams, CCPS
• Lawrence Mearns, Scottish Government
• Jeremy Slynn, Scottish Government
• Lucinda Rivers, Unicef
• Juliet Harris, Together
• Kenny Meechan / Nicola Hogg / Alistair Stobie / Sarah Rodger, SOLAR 

Items and actions

Welcome and updates from chair

Chair provided an update following the latest Strategic Implementation Board meeting on 29 July. All minutes, terms of reference, and membership are available to view in the new group page UNCRC Strategic Implementation Board - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

Introductory guidance update

Chair thanked members for all comments and suggestions recorded so far on Objective Connect and those who emailed in, and welcomed further feedback from the group. There was general agreement that this is a good starting point, it’s clear and captures those issues previously discussed when introducing the UNCRC.

Chair asked for comments to be made on Objective Connect by Monday 23rd August, but will confirm the exact deadline for feedback.

Concerns raised that some of the language in the guidance may not sound so supportive to families and asked if the language could be reviewed. Chair agreed to review that messaging. DW agreed to provide some written feedback on this on how we could enforce a more supportive message.

CRWIA update

Chair welcomed Aoife Charles (AC) from the SG Leadership for Children’s Rights team to present an overview on the CRWIA update. Aoife showed a diagram displaying the current CRWIA process, and where the proposed changes are.

Some changes in the process include:

• when there is an obvious impact on children and young people, you can skip straight to stage 2 to avoid repetition from stage 1
• stage 3 is now an evaluation template
• articles are now listed in the template itself

The following feedback / questions from members was captured:

• when policy is unlikely to have an impact, how can we encourage them to go back if an impact is identified after policy is implemented?
• prompts in the document relate to reactive work – how do we move the children’s rights agenda forward?
• international language and considering where that’s applicable in the document – (rather than “fulfil”, could we use “respect”?)
• assessment – “protect / infringes” or “positive / negative” impact – AC confirmed this language will be reviewed
• develop deeper understanding. Different caveats - 'maximum resources'
• rights and wellbeing are different impact assessments in other countries, should we look at wellbeing indicators more?
• template should be suited for central government and other public authorities. Current template may be too complicated
• for public authorities the CRWIA is useful for thinking about current policies and how future policy can be adapted
• optional protocol, worry lesser status as only heading. Optional protocol no.3 should be removed

AC invited members to get in touch if they wish to form part of further discussions on the CRWIA review. A number of volunteers were noted at the meeting.

Action: AC will follow up with members who wish to be involved in the CRWIA update.

AOB

The next meeting is scheduled for Monday 23 August.