Audit Scotland’s Young Adviser’s Group

Participant Info Sheet

What is the Project?

Audit Scotland is seeking the support of 30 young people aged 10-18 to advise them on their work. They want to understand how they can work better with young people, and get your insights on how they can help make sure public money (what’s collected through taxes) is spent well. We’re recruiting from your community as well as some others, so that overall we will have representatives from Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Rural Falkirk and Rural Stirlingshire.

We hope that you’ll become one of the Young Advisers, and you’ll be supported the whole time by us at A Place in Childhood (Jenny, Jamie, and Anna) to make sure it works for you!

Who is Audit Scotland?

Audit Scotland are an organisation that is completely independent of Scottish Government, Councils, and other organisations, but checks their work to make sure they spend public money well. This public money comes from the taxes we pay to the government and funds lots of services, such as education and healthcare. You use these services all the time, so you’re already an expert on what they’re like and how they might do better!

Audit Scotland do three main things when they’re running an ‘Audit’. They:

• Check the work of Scottish Government, Councils and other organisations to make sure they’re achieving their aims, and if not, why not.
• Investigate what matters to people living in Scotland, to make sure they’re looking at the right things.
• Suggest how Scottish Government, Councils and other organisations can improve how they spend money, and support them to do it.

They’re a bit like a really good teacher that supports others to do the best work they can, and points out areas for improvement.

What We Will Do

If you become a Young Adviser, you can both help Audit Scotland make sure the work they already plan to do meets the needs of young people AND suggest some things to Audit Scotland that they might need to Audit too. There will be lots of opportunities for you to talk about the things that interest you.

The project will last for 2-years overall, and it’s OK if you don’t want to take part in everything. We will make sure that meetings are non-demanding and will be a mix of online and face-to-face which works around your timetable.

If you take part, we will also discuss Payments and Rewards for your views and expertise so that we value your time and understand what works best for you. We will also work with you to build a ‘community’ that makes a difference, while having fun and making new friends.

Why is it important to participate?

You will have opportunities to:

• meet and learn from experts about areas which interest you.
• represent issues important to young people nationwide.
• raise issues which matter to you personally, or your community!
• learn about how Government and Councils work, and how important decisions are made.
• Grow as a person, and develop your ideas and self-confidence.

We will codesign our approach to the project with you in our first couple of meetings. We promise to listen carefully to everything you say and do our best to find ways to work together that suit you best. Here are a couple of quotes from young people we’ve worked with before on similar projects:

“I always come out of APiC meetings feeling like I’ve actually said things that will be listened to and matter, which is unfortunately rare when you’re a part of groups at my age!” girl, age 15

“We loved working together as a team with APiC’s project. They always make sure everyone has a choice, is heard, and that we have fun too!” boy, age 11

More info for Parents / Carers or Young People Aged 16+:

Ethics:

Completion of a parent/carer consent form is required for all young people below the age of 16 before participation. If you’re over the age of 16, you can fill out the form on your own behalf. This takes 3-5 minutes to complete and will have been emailed to you. You may contact the project lead below through email or telephone should you have any concerns before, during or after the process of this Project. We consider consent to be an ongoing process, and so if a participant or yourself withdraws consent to take part in the project at any point, we will respect that decision immediately.

This Project follows APiC’s Ethics and Data Protection Policy, which in turn follows both legal and advisory frameworks around researching with children and young people. While it is not our intention to delve directly into sensitive issues with participants, we wish to recognise that sensitive issues can sometimes arise organically. We will always seek to create a child and youth friendly environment in any meeting – online and face-to-face – and participants will never be pressured to share information they do not wish to. If a difficult issue does arise for a participant, we will support them during and after any meeting where such a disclosure is made. This may include contacting you as the parent/carer, and if necessary we will instigate our child safeguarding policy.

Due to using video conferencing software in some meetings, we may not be able to provide the same level of comfort to a participant as we could in person in some situations. For example, if there is a disagreement between participants online, we may not be able to provide the same level of support in reconciliation as we would face-to-face. If you are a parent/carer we therefore require affirmation from you (via the consent for) that you will discuss this project with your child before and after the process to make sure they are OK and provide any comfort that may be needed. Please feel free to discuss any concerns you may have with us before or after the process if that would be helpful to you or to your child.

Data Protection:

APiC is the data controller on this project and upholds the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. Audit Scotland is also a Data Controller, however, no personal or contact information on your child will ever be shared by APiC with Audit Scotland. The only exception to this may be during the reimbursement for expenses, whereby a receipt may be seen by Audit Scotland that could include you or your child’s name and/or address. Where this is the case, Audit Scotland will store the information for only as long as required to process the claim. After this point it will be securely deleted.

The main form of data collected by APiC for this project will be the contact details for each participant (including parent/carer details where appropriate), level of consent as it pertains to photography and video recordings of meetings, and basic demographic details such as age. gender, and settlement you live in. We will also record notes of participant’s interests, needs, and preferences as they relate to taking part in the project. For further details of how your child’s data is processed and stored, you can contact the project lead below.

For Further Information:

Please contact Dr Jenny Wood, Co-director Policy and Research at jenny.wood@aplaceinchildhood.org or on 07964803787.