Children’s rights – improving staff understanding
Respecting, protecting and fulfilling children’s rights is central to the work of Skills Development Scotland (SDS).
A key part of this is ensuring colleagues understand the ways in which they can embed and advance children’s rights through their day-to-day work with customers, partners, and each other.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act came into force in 2024. To help colleagues understand how the new legislation applies to their work, SDS partnered with Together (Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights) to develop resources translating the principles of the legislation into examples of practical activities that colleagues undertake every day.
Together interviewed SDS colleagues from various teams to understand the detail of their job role and used this information to list the ways children’s rights were applicable to that job role, highlighting areas where that team are already meeting their children’s rights obligations, and reflecting on areas where children’s rights could be strengthened or further embedded into their work.
This information has been shared with colleagues to help them understand what the legislation means in practice and to have more effective and meaningful discussions as a team about how they can support children’s rights through their work.
The resources will be used to support colleagues’ learning, to identify actions we need to take to advance children’s rights, and to help us develop our children’s rights report, due to be published in 2026.
Susie McKain, Equality Mainstreaming Manager said “Working with Together gave us the benefit of their expertise in children’s rights and helped make rights practical and understandable for our colleagues. Having an impartial, outside perspective on our work really challenged us to think differently, highlighting areas of strength and reflecting on ways we could improve.”
Sarah McDermott, Development Manager at Together added “It has been inspiring to hear all of the different ways the Skills Development Scotland team works to support children and young people to access their rights, from co-designing online platforms through to meeting young people in their communities to empower them to make the best decisions about their next steps. The passion from the team to continue to progress children’s rights has been clear throughout, and we have been delighted to work with them and share our insights on taking a Children’s Human Rights Approach in their work.”
SDS Equality Mainstreaming Report
Read more in the report