The Scottish Government

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METHODOLOGY

The consultation and engagement work by Young Scot involved a combination of the following methods:

• Incentivised online survey via the national youth information portal ( www.youngscot.org)
• Offline paper-based surveys
• Four workshops with groups of young people
• Five Local Investigation Teams of young people carrying out peer-led research in local areas
• Awareness-raising sessions on children's rights run by the outreach team

NATIONAL SURVEY

A survey was developed to measure awareness of children's rights and gather the views of young people on aspects of the UNCRC. The survey was drawn up in partnership between the Scottish Government Children's Rights Team and Young Scot and used as a foundation some of the questions developed by the Scottish Commissioner for Children and Young People ( SCCYP) in their Being Young in Scotland ( BYiS) 2007 survey. However, the survey was not designed to be statistically representative of the Scottish population and as such the findings are not directly comparable to the BYiS survey (see appendix A). The survey was accessible via the Young Scot website where it benefited from a prominent position on the homepage for the duration of the consultation. The website ( www.youngscot.org) is the award winning national youth information portal for Scotland, providing a comprehensive range of online information and services for young people. The website receives an average of 400,000 page views per month and has 23,000 registered Young Scot members.

As evidence shows that incentives have a positive impact on participation in surveys one respondent who will be drawn at random will win a Nintendo Wii with Sports Pack.

The survey was promoted via the following:

• Young Scot's networks across the voluntary and statutory youth work sectors, including Dialogue Youth.
• The UNCRC Partnership Group
• Young Scot's Bebo, MySpace and Facebook presences
• A text message and eBulletin sent to Young Scot's registered website users

In addition to the above, Young Scot identified and approached intermediaries working with young people to ensure specific groups of young people across Scotland had the opportunity to take part in the consultation including:

• Young people with disabilities
• LAC (including those looked after at home)
• LGBT
• BME
• Gypsy/Traveller
• Young people seeking asylum/refugees
• Young people who offend

The survey was also promoted offline using the Young Scot outreach team. This allowed the survey to be taken directly to young people participating in sessions in schools and youth groups across Scotland, ensuring we reached a wide range of young people including those considered 'hard to reach' / 'seldom heard'.

WORKSHOPS

We used workshops to get more in-depth qualitative information from young people. In particular we wanted to find out what they thought about the Concluding Observations and which of these should be priorities for the Scottish Government to tackle first.

Young Scot worked with Local Authority partners via the Dialogue Youth initiative, voluntary organisations and also the UNCRC Partnership Group to recruit participants for four workshops. In each selected area we attempted to recruit a core group of 8-12 young people. The groups were split by age (8-11, 12-13, 14 -15, 16-17), with two groups being held in rural locations and two in urban areas. Recruitment for the groups also sought to ensure that young people from the hard to reach backgrounds detailed above were invited to participate (see table below). An equal gender mix was also sought.

As we were working with a diverse range of young people, in terms of their age, experience and numeracy and literacy skills, it was appropriate to create slightly different session plans for each group. These are available for review in the appendix. However, there is an overview of the processes we applied for each group below.

Workshop groups were provided with:

• Information on what their rights are (verbal input, booklet, posters)
• CYP version of concluding observations from UN Committee.

The session plans were designed to prompt the groups to discuss what they thought about the recommendations from the Committee and attempted to cover the following questions:

• Are these issues for you?
• Are the recommendations 'right' for the issue? / Have they addressed your concerns?
• Are there issues they haven't mentioned?
• What do you think the Scottish Government should do about it?
• What are the most important issues? / What should the Scottish Government do first?

Pilot Session - Edinburgh

This workshop was attended by 24 young people (aged between 15 and 18) who are members of the Young People's Advisory Group from Learning and Teaching Scotland who advise on citizenship education. Each young person is nominated onto the group by their Local Authority (16

Local Authorities are represented in this group) and many are members of their Pupil Council. For this group we used our draft session guide ( see appendix B).

The participants were asked to review posters that we had placed around the wall which highlighted the main themes from the UN Committee's Concluding Observations. These being:

1. Non- discrimination
2. Respect for the views of a child
3. Freedom of peaceful assembly
4. Corporal punishment
5. Children with disabilities
6. Standard of living
7. Mental health
8. Education
9. Right to leisure and play
10. Asylum seeking and migrant children
11. Administration of juvenile justice

We then asked the young people to comment on the posters using post-its if they wanted to, and then to align themselves with the 'issue/ theme' they felt was most important to them. The number of participants at each 'station' was recorded.

This generated a good debate which was carried on into two smaller group sessions where the issues were discussed in more depth. After that they were asked to again align themselves with the poster that they felt was most important to them, to see if the more detailed discussions had had any impact on what they thought.

The final part of the session involved the young people looking at how they would address the theme that was the most important for them, or how they would like the government to address the issues involved.

Though the pilot session was generally regarded as successful by the participants and facilitators there were a number of learnings from the exercise. Feedback from the participants, observers and facilitators led to the following amendments to the session plan:

• Session was too long (lasted over two hours). One hour is optimum, therefore eliminate additional stages, opportunity to input via post-it notes and smaller group sessions
• Limit the session to one hour and accept that we may not be able to discuss all the themes contained within the concluding observations during that timeframe
• Differentiate between rights to education and rights in education as Scotland is considered by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child to deliver well in rights to education but has work to do, according to the UN Committee, on rights in education such as equalising outcomes for young people regardless of background
• Clarify that we are asking young people to identify issues they think are a priority for Scotland to take action on rather than what are the most important issues for the individual young person
• We also used the new UNCRC 2008 Concluding Observations booklet and posters, recently published by SCCYP and the Scottish Government, as communication materials rather than use the materials we had created ourselves.

Workshop 1 - Good Shepherd, Bishopton

The Good Shepherd is a secure unit for girls, therefore, there was no gender mix in this specific workshop. Even though the unit itself was in Outer Glasgow the girls who took part in the workshop were from surrounding urban areas so this was considered an urban group.

Five girls aged 14 - 15 took part, although one girl had to leave after the first activity so the majority of the session took place with four participants.

There were restrictions on the materials that could be brought into the unit so the session guide had to be altered accordingly ( see appendix C). Instead of using pre-made posters we used flipchart paper, and asked them to write their comments directly onto that during the discussions that followed.

Four of the different themes were discussed with time spent considering the specific recommendations that came under the selected heading.

Workshop 2 - Centre for Homeless Young People ( CHYP), Glasgow

The Centre for Homeless Young People in Glasgow is run by Queens Cross Housing Association, and is a residential centre for homeless young people. This workshop had 10 participants, aged between 16 - 18 years old, with an equal gender split. Some of the young people taking part were asylum seekers with one participant not able to speak English at all. This session was considered an urban setting.

Due to the size of the room the intended session plan could not be followed precisely as there was not enough room. Instead posters were placed around the walls and the facilitator read through each one and made sure everyone understood what was meant and generated debate by prompting participants (see appendix D).

Again we limited the session to one hour as this was felt to be an appropriate length of time for this group. This meant that we did not have enough time to go through each of the nine themes although the group did undertake the ranking exercise to determine priorities for action.

Workshop 3 - Hill of Beath Primary School, Fife

This primary school is in a rural setting and the workshop took place with eight young people aged between 8 - 11 years old. Two were from Primary Five, three from Primary Six and three from Primary Seven. The gender split was five boys and three girls.

As this was a young group we changed our session plan ( see appendix E) and used the game 'Jenga' with numbers on the bricks relating to 'rights' from the 2008 Concluding Observations booklet to make it more interactive. This also meant there was less of an onus on reading and gave us more time at the beginning of the session to introduce the topic.

We completed the session in just over one hour. In this time we covered a number of themes and asked young people to set out priorities for action but were unable to discuss all nine themes identified by the UN Committee.

Workshop 4 - Chirnside Youth Club, Scottish Borders

The youth club is located in the Community Centre in the village of Chirnside in the Scottish Borders and was considered a rural setting. The six participants were all aged 12 with four girls and two boys making up the group.

With this group we used the poster method to engage them in discussions about the Concluding Observations. The session lasted one hour with the participants engaging well with the subject matter.

LOCAL INVESTIGATION TEAMS ( LITs)

Local Investigation Teams ( LITs) are a peer research model Young Scot has developed which gives young people the opportunity to participate in consultations in an informed way.

There were five LITs recruited as part of this consultation and each was made up of young volunteers, aged between eight and 17 who were supported by Young Scot and the Local Authority Dialogue Youth network in their local areas to carry out their own research into the issues around children's rights. Each team was given a small financial contribution and research support from Young Scot and was tasked with engaging their peers in their project (see table below for an overview).

The groups were given license to structure their investigation as they wished but we suggested they consider the following questions:

• How aware are you and your peers of your rights / the UNCRC?
• What rights are most important to you and your peers?
• What rights are not being respected in your area?
• What do you think the Scottish Government could do to make it easier for you to enjoy your rights?

The groups were asked to discuss and record their findings and produce a video report with recommendations. Therefore all groups received a training input on:

• Children's rights
• The concluding observations from UN Committee
• Video equipment training
• Consultation techniques and ethical considerations

AWARENESS-RAISING SESSIONS

Young Scot's Outreach Team are also running a series of awareness-raising sessions across Scotland. These have already taken place in formal school classroom settings in Orkney and Tiree with a bigger event conducted in the Silverburn shopping mall in Glasgow. Further events are scheduled for April 2009. A summary report of this activity will be submitted in late April 2009.

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