Scottish Government Executive Team Takeover 2024

At Children’s Parliament, we support a team of Children’s Human Rights Defenders to participate in democratic processes at local, national and international levels. On the 25^th of June 2024, six Members of Children’s Parliament met with the Scottish Government Executive Team to discuss in detail their calls to action for the year. They were joined by seven Members of the Scottish Youth Parliament who raised their national campaigns objectives.

Meet our 6 fabulous Members of Children’s Parliament involved in this year’s Executive Team Takeover:

To get ready for this year’s Executive Team meeting, the team followed a new process, ensuring there were as many children’s voices included as possible:

• Desk Research: Staff from Children’s Parliament reviewed more than 30 different reports, videos, surveys and resources from children’s rights organisations.
• Members of Children’s Parliament Survey: Long list of issues from the desk research collated into themes and shared in a survey for Members of Children’s Parliament to vote on their top ten issues that they felt is most important to address now (completed by nearly 200 children from across Scotland)
• Key Issue Review: The Children’s Human Rights Defenders reviewed the 10 shortlisted issues from the survey alongside the desk research and narrowed down to three key issues to take to the ET meeting
• Calls to Action: Creative, arts-based missions were delivered to a wider group of children to hone the issues into precise calls to action

This process is how the following key issues were created:

• Bullying and Mental Health
  • Bullying is a big reason for mental health problems. Scottish Government needs to prioritise preventing bullying and supporting children with poor mental health in schools.
• Climate Crisis Education
  • Children are worried about climate change. They don’t learn enough about the environment or have enough opportunities to have a meaningful say on their future. Scottish Government needs to find solutions to these worries and put children at the heart of their climate action.
• Vaping
  • Vaping is often seen by children as a ‘healthy’, ‘cool’ alternative to smoking. Scottish Government need to reduce children’s access to vaping and increase their understanding of its impact.

The Children’s Human Rights Defenders investigated these issues in detail and came up with ideas they thought would help. You can find them, and more about the process as a whole in our Calls to Action leaflet:

Confidence Kingdom

The Members of Children’s Parliament who attended the ET meeting also took part in a residential for a Children’s Parliament consultation: ‘Democracy Matters’. In this, they, along with several other Members of Children’s Parliament, created a town named ‘Confidence Kingdom’. Confidence Kingdom is a town where all children have their rights realised, respected and have their views, ideas and opinions listened to.

To discuss their key issues with the members of the Executive Team, Confidence Kingdom was rebuilt within St. Andrews House. Before the meeting, each of the Members of Children’s Parliament made props relating to the Calls to Action they were going to discuss. These props supported the children explain the issues in a meaningful, engaging, child-friendly way.

Tree of Life

After the Children’s Human Rights Defenders finished discussing their Calls to Action, they asked the Executive Team to write down on leaves their key takeaways from what they said, and what action they were going to take moving forward. They asked them to write two identical leaves, one to put on the ‘tree of life’  and one to take away to remind and inspire them of what they want to change.

This meeting is the first step in ensuring children’s views, ideas and opinions are included in issues that affect them. Using this child-friendly approach ensured the Members of Children’s Parliament felt confident in delivering their Calls to Action in a space and process that felt comfortable to them. The Children’s Human Rights Defenders involved in the ET meeting did such an amazing job, and the team at Children’s Parliament couldn’t be prouder of them. We are looking forward to working with the Scottish Government on next steps.