UNCRC Strategic Implementation Board minutes: May 2024

Attendees and apologies

Board members

• Andrew Watson (Chair), Director for Children and Families 
• Dragan Nastic, UNICEF UK 
• Lucinda Rivers, UNICEF UK 
• Juliet Harris, Together Scotland 
• Eleanor Kerr, NHS 
• CS Faroque Hussain, Police Scotland (Deputising for ACC David Duncan) 
• Kay Tisdale, Institute for Inspiring Children’s Future’s (Deputising for Jennifer Davidson) 
• Laura Caven, COSLA 
• Katy Kelman, Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service 
• Nicola Anderson (LIT), Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service 
• Gina Wilson, Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland
• Aileen Nicol, Care inspectorate (Deputising for Craig Morris) 
• Ben Farrugia, Social Work Scotland 
• Emma Young, The Promise Scotland 
• Norma Ruettiman, Care and Learning Alliance 
• Michael Cameron, Scottish Housing Regulator 

Scottish Government supporting officials 

• Gita Sharkey, Joint Unit Head, Children’s Rights Unit 
• Liz Levy, Joint Unit Head, Children’s Rights Unit 
• Lyndsey Saki, Embedding Children’s Rights in Public Services Programme Lead 
• Paul Gorman, Empowered Children and Young People Lead 
• Andrew Preston, UNCRC Programme Assistant 
• Rowan Hendry-Horne, Children’s Rights Unit (Deputising for Dean Snape) 
• Anna Munro, Scottish Government Legal Directorate
• Kavita Chetty, Deputy Director, Human Rights and Mainstreaming

Apologies, Board members 

• Margo Williamson, SOLACE 
• Helen Fogarty, Social Security Scotland 
• ACC David Duncan, Police Scotland 
• Craig Morris, Care Inspectorate 
• Laura Pasternak, Who Cares? Scotland 
• Brian Taylor, Deputy Director, Children’s Rights, Protection and Justice
• Ian Donaldson, Deputy Director: Children’s Rights, Protection and Justice 
• Jennifer Davidson, Institute for Inspiring Children’s Futures 
• Amy Woodhouse, Parenting Across Scotland 

Items and actions

Welcome and apologies 

Andrew Watson (AW) welcomed the Board. Apologies were given for those not in attendance. Lucinda Rivers (LR) was introduced as part of her handover from Dragan Nastic, who will be retiring later in the year. 

• action: AW and LR to arrange an introductory meeting

Minutes and actions from previous meeting 

Gita Sharkey (GS) advised that minutes were circulated on 6 March 2024. One amendment was received from Jennifer Davidson and has been made. 

There had been nine actions raised at the March meeting as follows:  

• Lyndsey Saki (LS) to share link to Child Rights Regulation and Improvement Working Group page once available  

• LS to share Child Rights Regulation and Improvement Working Group ToR with SIB  
• Carola Eyber (CE) to share revised draft of CRS with SIB for further comment once available 
• CE to share CRIL with SIB ahead of the May meeting  
• Liz Levy (LL) to consider if the proposed exemption to the compatibility duty should come with a duty on public bodies to report to Scottish Government and the Commissioner's office any occasion where they become aware of a requirement in law to act in a way that is not compliant with the UNCRC requirements 
• LL to find out more about the internal assessment that the roads closure team have to do to assess access issues and share this with the CYPCS 
• LL to give consideration to whether there’s need to exclude any legislation from the requirement for a statement of compatibility, other than for reasons of consistency with the approach to CRWIAs 
• LL to provide a written response to the CYPCS and copy in SHRC, Together and UNICEF UK who were also consulted. Any other SIB members who wish to be kept engaged in writing, were invited to let Liz know 
• SIB members to provide comments in writing on the draft business plan by end of April

All but one of the actions had been closed as detailed within the action tracker circulated on 21 May 2024. The action still open was the circulation of the revised CRS. Work on this would be delayed until a replacement team leader for Rights Reporting and Monitoring was recruited and in post.  

• action: CRU to update the minutes of the last meeting to note that only Laura Caven attended from COSLA

Highlight report 

GS noted that the programme Highlight Report, which was shared with members on 21 May 2024, set out progress against previous activities, upcoming priorities for the next 2 months and the current status of deliverables associated with the implementation programme. Members had been asked to consider this report ahead of the meeting. Projects delivered had been moved to a new section of the report for completed projects as previously agreed. 

Dragan Nastic (DN) and Juliet Harris (JH) stated that their organisations would be interested in seeing the draft Children’s Rights Scheme (CRS) when possible.

DN asked whether Scottish Government had awareness of the current level of knowledge of children’s rights as a baseline for measurement of an awareness raising campaign. This was discussed later in the meeting.

DN asked whether the new Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA) would be available externally. LL confirmed that a version for external use would be made available soon.

There was a brief discussion of the organisations involved in the Regulation and Improvement Group. JH offered to share the names of any other organisations she thought would be useful to include on the Group. 

Gina Wilson (GW) asked whether any work was being done to prepare the tribunals or support them with rules development. LL explained that the Unit had been in touch with the tribunals leads in SG who confirmed this was in hand.

DN asked about the duration of the Child Rights Regulation and Improvement Working Group as there was an inaccuracy in the terms of reference. LS confirmed that it was originally intended for the group to meet monthly for six months, however, attendees agreed that it should meet every two months for a year.

Kay Tisdale (KT) noted that it would be appreciated if the Children’s Rights Skills and Knowledge Framework could support organisations beyond public authorities, for example the third sector. LS confirmed that, while the primary audience for the framework was public authority workforces, others would be able to make use of the framework, training plan and resources.  

JH asked for details on the Pathway to Remedy resource, whether the new CRWIA on the UNCRC Act would cover the amendments being made to the Act, for information on the complaints process and for further details on the Innovation Fund. LL explained that the revised CRWIA would cover the amendment that had been made via the Children’s Care and Justice Bill but not those that were planned but not yet made. 

• action: LL to share revised version of the CRS to Together and UNICEF UK, in addition to the statutory consultees
• action: LS to bring an interim update to the next SIB regarding the Innovation Fund
• action: Paul Gorman (PG) to update the wording in the SIB Highlight Report on Pathways to Remedy to clarify the expectations that it covers

Support for public authorities on commencement 

LS provided updates on the UNCRC Act statutory guidance, the Children’s Rights Skills and Knowledge Framework and support to local authorities and health boards through the Improvement Service and NHS Education for Scotland. 

The consultation on the draft Part 2 and Part 3, section 18 statutory guidance closed on 16 May 2024. There had been 92 responses. Analysts were in place and would assess the time required to provide both an initial analysis report, followed by detailed analysis.
While the SG still hoped to publish statutory guidance ahead of commencement, it might not be possible given the tight timescales. The responses to the consultation would have a bearing on that.

LS shared that the 6 month optional extension to the Skills and Knowledge Framework contract had been invoked, as the outputs did not fully meet the intended objectives and required publication standards by 31 March. LS expressed thanks to Together for their support in finalising the framework and training plan. Several resources had been signed off, and the SG expected all outputs to be signed off in June.

We continued to explore options for hosting and ongoing support of the digital framework. It looked likely that there would be a soft launch, with pdf versions of the framework and training plan, ahead of commencement. The full digital interactive version of the framework would launch later in the year.

LS confirmed that SG was continuing to fund the support to local authorities and health boards through the Improvement Service and NHS Education for Scotland, respectively in 2024-25. Local authorities would continue to receive a variety of support, such as: presentations, peer support & learning opportunities to understand the requirements of the Act, including reporting requirements; tailored support to individual authorities to develop action plans to support implementation; awareness raising webinars to Elected Members, and supporting local authorities to work with their Elected Members to raise their understanding of children’s rights and the UNCRC.

Health boards would also receive varied support such as: support to identify practical action which will further embed and improve the realisation of children’s rights across their services, not just within children’s services; a UNCRC peer network to share learning and good practice and advice to health programmes and professional networks to support and encourage them to share, promote and mainstream a children’s human rights approach.

The Improvement Service and NES were working together to ensure that they were sharing learning on what works, collaborating where useful and that potential joint activities could be offered to support more widely than local authorities and health boards. LS shared that the Children’s Rights Unit was considering how to provide support in future to integrated joint boards and community planning partnerships.  

KT asked if consideration had been given to engaging with organisations providing initial professional training, to ensure that child rights were embedded. LS shared that there was an aspiration to do so but that it was not a current priority given capacity. It might be possible to raise awareness with key organisations, through UNCRC programme updates. NES had engaged with the General Medical Council, as part of their work to support health boards with UNCRC preparedness.

Laura Caven (LC) suggested that if SIB wanted to pursue training for leaders in public authorities in terms of training for leaders, she could support with connections to SOLACE colleagues. LS welcomed this. (Update: The guide for the public sector on understanding children’s rights in Scotland was not shared at the meeting but was designed to support senior leaders and may assist).

• action: LS to share the name of the organisation contracted to analyse consultation responses

Update: The contract has now been signed by Wellside Research.

• action: LS to scope whether relevant organisations involved in early professional training could be added to the UNCRC programme update distribution list

Our strategy for identifying and addressing any situation where child’s rights are (or are at a significant risk of) not being fulfilled.  

LL provided an update on SG plans. The Act required Ministers to set out in the Children's Rights Scheme their strategy for identifying and addressing any situation where children’s rights were (or were at a significant risk of) not being fulfilled. The evaluation strategy agreed with SIB made clear that the SG’s main approach to identifying and addressing any situation where children’s rights were not being fulfilled would be to work in partnership with the children’s rights sector to develop a system for collating rights issues, highlighting them to SG senior management and relevant policy areas, and monitoring progress in addressing these.

LL provided with an update on proposals for how this system could be developed by:

• working in partnership with the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland (CYPCS), the Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC), Together and some children and young people to maintain a list of children’s rights issues raised by stakeholders (A first version of this list had been provided with papers for the meeting)

• sharing this list, at least every 6 months, with relevant SG policy teams and senior management;
• working with a prioritisation reference group (possibly comprising CYPCS, Together and some children and young people) to identify a rolling list of around 5 priority ‘asks’ that could be refreshed annually to reflect what was most important to children and young people in Scotland
• ensuring that for each of the priority asks there was space to bring policy leads together with relevant stakeholders to allow policy teams to understand the asks and provide regular updates and stakeholders to understand any challenges and push for appropriate action
• identifying and engaging with a DD/Director-level champion for each priority ask
• updating on progress with the priority asks via the annual report on the Children’s Rights Scheme and to SIB and the Children and Families National Leadership Group (This would be in addition to the update on progress with the Concluding Observations that the SG had committed to publishing in 2026)

SIB was generally supportive but GW highlighted how challenging it would be to arrive at 5 priority asks and queried what would cross the threshold of what should be an issue. GW, JH and DN all noted that the full list that had been circulated currently ran to 361 issues and was likely to increase in length. LL explained that, while the SG would not want to ignore any of the issues on the full list, there was a risk that the list would seem too overwhelming to maximise action. She suggested that we should at least try to prioritise some key issues for action to enable good progress on those that are most important to children and young people in Scotland. LL invited further feedback to inform the approach in the first draft of the Children’s Rights Scheme.

• action: All to submit any written comments on the above strategy to the secretariat by Tuesday 4 June

Raising awareness of children’s rights 

Paul Gorman (PG) provided a brief update on plans for raising awareness of children’s rights among children and young people and their representatives. The Children’s Rights Unit (CRU) was not planning any targeted communications on this to coincide with the commencement of the provisions in July. This was partly because of the more limited scope of the duties and to avoid the suggestion that legal action is the best way of enforcing rights. Instead, in autumn, a ‘pathways to remedy’ resource would be published to support children and young people to understand their options when they feel their rights are not being respected and signpost to the organisations who can support them. 

PG highlighted how since 2021, the Scottish Government and its partners had been raising awareness of children’s rights in a range of ways, including:

• national funding for UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools Award.  The SG anticipated that by the end of 2024, 80% of schools in Scotland would be delivering the award, making an important contribution not only to raising awareness of rights among children, young people and their families but also to how these rights are experienced in schools
• a parents, carers, and families booklet on children’s rights on the ParentClub website (with links in other places such as the Ready Steady Baby website). We also plan to produce hard copies of the booklet this summer
• the Children’s Parliament’s children’s rights postcard distributed via the Book Trust’s Bookbug bag  
• videos made by young people during the Young Scot social media campaign in 2022

PG also shared examples of how other public authorities and partners are making children and young people aware of their rights, including Dumfries & Galloway’s guide to how children and young people should expect their rights to be respected when they interact with healthcare and Who Cares? Scotland’s Know Your Rights Resource. The CRU is maintaining a resource bank that has over 100 unique examples of awareness raising material for all age groups and the UNCRC Awareness Raising Network, which is co-ordinated by the Unit, will continue to support organisations to raise awareness of UNCRC through their work.

The CRU is working with Parent Club colleagues on a new resource for parents, carers, and family members to support them to have conversations about rights with their child/children and on a social media campaign through Parent Club channels signposting to this resource.

Members of the UNCRC Awareness Raising Network will be invited to a future meeting to give an update on what their own individual organisations are doing.  PG acknowledged that all duty bearers should be encouraged to raise awareness and that will include many members of SIB.  

GW highlighted some statistics from a CYPCS survey of school children. This shows that awareness of rights is lowest among younger children but increases as they get older. Children and young people in lower SIMD quintiles were less likely to have awareness than those in less deprived areas. 

There was a question about whether the awareness raising postcard should be included in the Scottish Baby Box. LL explained in the chat that material for the Baby Box was selected to prioritise material that would support health and safety. PG explained that the policy team who manage the Baby Box had suggested UNCRC awareness raising material would have more impact in the BookBug bag.

• action: All - SIB members to let the secretariat know if they would like to provide an update on how their organisation is raising awareness of children’s rights

Risk register 

LL explained that the risk register was reviewed by the CRU on 20 May. None of the risk scores had changed. Changes made are as follows: 

• at risk 1 (gaps in legal coverage) there was a new control to record that the SG would be considering whether, after the UK government election, there might be other opportunities to extend protection for children’s rights in Scotland, which would mean that re-enacting legislation as ASPs might not be necessary
•  at risk 2 (embedding children’s rights) there was an amendment from ‘Promoting a focus on the Concluding Observations from UN Committee on Rights of Child to address areas for improvement’ to ‘Engagement with children’s rights sector to identify where we could give further or better effect to children’s rights and encourage progress’ 

• at risks 2 (embedding children’s rights) and 3 (complexity of Bill provisions) changed the risk owner to the CRU generally

SIB members were invited to make any further suggestions for change. 

• action: Increase time allocated to Risk Register in next meeting

All other business and close 

The next meeting was scheduled for Tuesday, 30 July. Members were asked for their views on a meeting in June instead, before the holiday period. 

DN shared that UN Committee on the Rights of the Child were producing General Comment number 27 on Youth Justice which would be published in January 2026. He highlighted that anyone who wished to submit comments to the UN Committee on the possible content of the General Comment could do so by the end of August 2024. 

• action: All – Email CRU with preferences for date of next meeting by Friday, 31 May