United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child - concluding observations 2023: SG initial response - child-friendly version

Basic Health and Welfare

What we are doing to support the health and wellbeing of children across Scotland.

The UN said…

Scotland should have a plan to make sure children and families have enough money for food and shelter.

Scottish Government said…

We know that some families need extra help. We want to focus on them to make sure they get what they need. We are learning more about what makes it hard for these families so that we can support them.

Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan

Some of the things we're doing include giving extra money to families on low incomes. We do this through our Scottish Child Payment. We also give extra money for housing costs for people who need it. We are also giving extra money to disabled children and their families We have also made a new rule to stop most rents from going up too much.

You can find out more about the action we are taking in our tackling child poverty delivery plan.

What's next?

We will keep looking at how to support families who need it most. We will do this in a few different ways. We will make new rules so that more families can receive help they need. We will also make the Scottish Child Payment more flexible so it is more helpful to families. We will also think about how the Child Disability Payment can be made better.

The UN said…

Scotland should protect the environment and make the air cleaner for children.

Scottish Government said…

We want Scotland to be a cleaner, healthier and happier place for everyone.

The National Bus Travel Concession scheme

To make that happen we are spending a lot of money to build more walking and cycling paths. Some of this work is already done but we have 290 projects across Scotland.

We also started the National Free Bus Travel scheme in 2022. This lets children and young people under the age of 22 ride the bus for free. We want to help young people in Scotland to choose buses instead of cars that make a lot of noise and pollution.

What's next?

The National Fee Bus Travel scheme has been very successful so far with over 116 million journeys made through the scheme. We hope that by continuing this scheme, more young people in Scotland will choose to use public transport. This will make Scotland a cleaner, healthier, and happier place for everyone.

The UN said…

Scotland should have a plan to make sure that people of all ages and backgrounds can get support for their mental health when they need it.

Scottish Government said…

We believe that Mental Health is very important. Everyone should be able to get help when and where it's needed.

Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy

In June 2023, we published our new Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy. This explains how we plan to help the people of Scotland with their mental health. We want children and young people to be able to get help and support as early as possible. We also want children and young people to have support in their local community when they need it.

We have also published a plan which explains how we are going to make the changes we want to make. We know that everyone has different needs, so our plan talks about how we will help ethnic minorities, disabled people, and LGBTI people.

What's next?

We are giving money to local authorities to help pay for community mental health services for children and young people. We are also making sure counsellors are available in secondary schools across Scotland. This will help children and young people with their mental health.

We are also giving money to the NHS to improve the mental health services we already have. This includes support for neurodivergent children and young people. It also includes help for young people experiencing eating disorders. We are also giving funding to Beat, the UK's eating disorder charity. They help children and teenagers through self-help and peer support groups.