Do Scottish Children and Young People have a right to contribute meaningfully to the Covid-19 Crisis Response?
During lockdown, young people’s views have largely been missing from the news and the crisis response. Noting this in early April 2020, A Place in Childhood (APiC) sought funding for a Covid-19 Project with Scottish Children and Young People. The goal was to understand and track the issues they face. This was both to highlight potentially critical interventions and to provide a valuable historical record. These applications were rejected on the basis that exploring needs was not classed as an essential ‘frontline’ issue.
APiC did not agree. It was evident that the lives of children and young people were under significant pressure from the control measures. This included direct curtailments on their right to education, to play, rest leisure and access cultural life, and to gather and organise their own activities within public space. The widespread consensus was that schools and their wider social life could not function as it used to. Measures were exacerbating existing inequalities between young people of different ages, backgrounds, and circumstances. They also posed a wider threat to human rights intended to ensure an adequate standard of living for all children, without discrimination.
Above all, we felt this position contravened United National Convention on the Right of the Child, Article 12, which gives all people below the age of 18 the right to participate meaningfully in the matters that affect them.
The Project
Consequently, APiC’s Board of Trustees elected to self-fund a pilot project to demonstrate the importance of hearing and tracking young people’s voices at this time. This project would be led by young people from across Scotland in collaboration with each other. It would ask them what the challenges are and will be for them, and how they would address these if they were in charge.
We convened 4 project teams of 4-6 young consultants from across Scotland:
- Team Aberdeen (Northfield) (Our engagement with the Aberdeen team builds on work and relationships formed with children through Children’s Parliament Imagining Aberdeen programme).
- Team Edinburgh (Leith) (with warm thanks to Leith Community Crops in Pots for their support with recruitment).
- Team Glasgow (various Locations across the City)
- Team Rural Stirlingshire (a range of villages)
Teams were a mix of girls and boys, all aged between 10-16 years old. Members of each team had experience working together, so as to enable more effective online collaboration.
The Workshops
The first workshops for the Covid-19 Project with Scottish Children and Young People took place on Saturday 16th May and Sunday 17th May. Each was around 90 minutes long. We used a collaborative online environment, which integrated video conferencing and a digital workspace. This enabled each project team to work together creatively in breakout sessions. They then reconvened to share their experiences and ideas with the whole group. (This was easy because all teams were working on different territories of the same (ginormous!) whiteboard).
At the outset, some “golden rules” of being a facilitator were explained to all participants. A member of each team then volunteered to take the role. In this way, all activities were led and facilitated by the young people themselves, with APiC largely assuming a support role.
The first Workshop on Saturday 16th dealt with introductions and getting to grips with the online environment. Then the project teams discussed and agreed the big changes that lockdown had made to young people’s lives in Scotland.
The themes they identified then provided the frame for the second Workshop, on Sunday 17th. Project teams took a deeper dive into, and prioritised, those areas where they faced significant challenges which they felt could be mitigated by reasonable amendments to current control measures.
Two of their overriding priorities were improvements to remote school working practices and outdoor access.
All the participants fully understood and supported the control measures, and had adapted remarkably well to these. However, they also felt small changes to these could have a disproportionate impact for them in terms of their education, health and wellbeing.
What’s Next?
A third Workshop is planned for the last weekend in May. In this, project teams will further develop their recommendations in those areas they identified. They will also discuss ways in which their transition back into their (new) normal life and schooling might made easier. In the meantime, the outputs of the first two Workshops are under analysis and will be released as and when they are ready.
Having demonstrated the importance of enabling young people’s voices at this time, APiC is now seeking to secure further project funding. This would support, progress and hopefully, expand the Covid-19 Project with Scottish Children and Young People. This would allow all of us to understand their changing experiences, needs and priorities over time, and give us vital insight as to how we may respond appropriately. Please do get in touch if you can help us and give Scottish young people their rightful say. A full research report will also follow in the coming weeks.
- If you would be interested in funding the continuation of this unique and important project, please email us, we’d love to hear from you.
- Like APiC, Children’s Parliament are also keen to share how the Coronavirus Lockdown is experienced by children. Created by the Members of Children’s Parliament, the Corona Times Journal is helping adults to understand the impact that the coronavirus is having on children’s lives. They are also inviting children from the ages of 8-14 to take part in a national wellbeing survey.