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DRAFT - COMMUNITY PLANNING ADVICE NOTE - ENGAGING CHILDREN AND YOUNG PEOPLE IN COMMUNITY PLANNING
INTRODUCTION
Children and young people have a right to have their views taken into account in decisions made about matters that affect them, and adults in a position to help them have a duty to provide them with support. Community Planning provides a mechanism for everyone's views to be included in developing the public services in their communities, from childhood on.
This Advice Note adds to existing Community Planning Advice Notes (especially Advice Note 5 on Effective Community Engagement), published to build on the Statutory Guidance issued under the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003, and on the Standards for Community Engagement (Communities Scotland, 2005). During the passage of the Act, Peter Peacock, then Deputy Minister for Finance and Public Services, made a commitment to include children and young people in guidance under Act. During the Stage Three debate he said:
"There are many examples from throughout Scotland in which young people are being actively encouraged to participate in local decision making processes in ways that we have never previously seen. We expect that engagement to be enhanced in the future."
This Advice Note aims to help Community Planning Partnerships ( CPPs) and their individual partners to interpret their responsibilities under the Act and other relevant legislation and to stimulate an exchange of ideas, experience and learning. In order to do this, the Advice Note includes examples (at Annex B) of engagement in practice that others have found effective or have learned from. This does not imply that these are exhaustive or right for all situations: there is no easy, off-the-shelf game plan for engagement, and new ideas are constantly evolving. The potential audience for the Advice Note is very broad and it therefore gives a high level overview and offers further contacts and links for investigation; it is not intended as a hands-on toolkit.
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