Right There welcomes the implementation of The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into Scots Law which came into effect 16th July 2024.

This is a milestone in children’s rights and a journey towards positive change for children and their families. We know that human rights are required for us to live in a way that is safe and protected and the UNCRC will mean children and young people under 18 will now have their own specific rights protected in law. This act supports our work by setting out rights in a way so that they can be recognised, promoted and defended, which allows us to empower children and young people claim these rights and reach their potential.

Working with a rights-based approach is the way to keep rights at the heart of our work. For us at Right There this has meant us developing our ‘Equalities In Action’ initiative across the organisation. As part of this framework, we have been reviewing how our programmes and policies uphold the rights of the people we support and how we put these into practice. One way we have started this is by completing impact assessments for our programmes across all three of our models of support – For People, At Home and In the Community. In these assessments we review our work against the articles of the UNCRC and human rights legislation, looking at what the impact is and where we can enhance our positive impacts and mitigate any negative identified.

Our Equalities In Action approach also entails helping children and young people to claim their rights and voice their opinions, this aligns with Article 12 of the UNCRC about a child’s right to be heard, but also to the work Scotland does with keeping The Promise.

Right There is committed to supporting impactful participation for children and young people and hearing their views on our programmes and the issues that affect them and we will continue to develop feedback methods to gather these thoughts and ideas. We have been building our participation approaches in a number of ways: a group of young people in our mentoring programme attended a rally supporting people’s rights and we have recently signed the Young Carers Covenant to show our commitment to supporting young carers to meet their desired outcomes. In addition, the staff team have also been delivering human rights awareness sessions to help our team feel confident to support children and young people further.

The UNCRC legislation signifies an exciting time for the rights of children and young people in Scotland. Right There is committed to supporting these rights across our programmes and we will continue to embed our Equalities In Action work across Right There and increase awareness of the UNCRC and its impact.