Inspired by the work of the children from Tranent who participated in StreetsAhead Tranent Project, East Lothian Council set an early commitment and intention to work towards becoming an organisation who place children’s rights at the heart of all that they do.
Lesley Brown, Executive Director, has led this work with a consistent message that children’s rights are everyone’s responsibility. From Children’s Services to transport and housing services, Lesley has ensured that all services have engaged to ensure that children and young people’s rights are taken seriously.
The intention to incorporate the UNCRC into Scots law brought the work on children’s rights into focus and Lesley Brown established the UNCRC Working Group to co-ordinate work on children’s rights across the Council. All Council service areas were required to nominate a representative to be part of the group. Aware that not all members of the group were confident in their knowledge about children’s rights, Lesley arranged for Together and the Children’s Parliament to provide a training session for members to ensure that they had a solid understanding of the UNCRC. UNCRC Working Group members soon became UNCRC Champions for their service area and were tasked with co-ordinating activity at service level. Lesley sought support from the Improvement Service UNCRC Implementation Project and together, they undertook a self-assessment of the council’s readiness for the new legislation. As a result of the self-assessment the Council now has a UNCRC Corporate Action Plan and associated service level action plans. The UNCRC Working Group continues to meet regularly to provide updates on service level activity and corporate commitments. Lesley continues to drive forward the work ensuring that colleagues have the time to commit to the agenda and challenge themselves and their service area to identify where further work is needed to embed children’s rights.
Examples of the type of activities undertaken by the UNCRC Service Champions include:
- Work to improve how very young children have a more of a voice in Child Planning Meetings
- Development of a Travel Passport for children and young people with complex needs to improve how they can express their level of comfort when using home to school transport
- Training Session on the UNCRC for Elected Members
- Development of a new Children’s Rights Impact Assessment resource
- Guidance developed on how to write child friendly documents for all service areas
- Information about the Child Friendly Complaints process shared with key service areas
- Intranet Pages with UNCRC information accessible to all staff
- Ongoing support for UNCRC from Legal Services UNCRC Lead
It has been a privilege to lead this work and to have the opportunity to influence change that will have a meaningful impact on children and young people across East Lothian. I am grateful to the UNCRC Champions who have committed to this work and who continue to drive improvement and change.
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Improving outcomes for people and communities affected by poverty, inequality, trauma and adversity: Joining the dots across key policy agendas (briefing)
There are a number of key policy agendas that are part of a broader ambition to improve outcomes for people and communities across Scotland affected by poverty, inequality, trauma and adversity. This briefing highlights the links across these and explores opportunities for re-framing these multiple policy ambitions as opportunities to work together around the common goal of improving outcomes for people and communities.
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Improving outcomes for people and communities affected by poverty, inequality, trauma and adversity: joining the dots across key policy agendas (infographic)
This infographic provides an overview of a small number of key national policy agendas, approaches and commitments, all designed to support a cross-policy, person-centred approach to improving outcomes for people and communities across Scotland affected by poverty, inequality, trauma and adversity.