The Scottish Child Law Centre (SCLC) is the only specialist hub advising children of all ages, across all areas of child-related Scots law. SCLC provide free and confidential legal advice about Scots law relating to children and young people.
Following a 250% increased in demand for their free legal advice service from January 2024 to July 2024, SCLC organised an Access to Justice Roundtable in summer 2024 to discuss arising issues children and young people were navigating when trying to claim their rights.
Following the roundtable discussion with experts on children’s rights, SCLC have identified several significant issues and recommended short-term and long-term solutions to them in their ‘Access to Justice’ report. Recommendations include working to increase children’s knowledge of their rights, a simplified process for accessing legal aid and reducing financial barriers for children seeking remedy for rights violations.
Independent advocacy recommendation
SIAA welcome a key recommendation in the report on independent advocacy: “Free, consistent independent advocacy should be expanded to cover all children and young people for all life situations, including for babies and very young children and those in secure accommodation.” (page 6)
Provision of independent advocacy for children and young people
Currently, independent advocacy provision for children and young people is inconsistent across Scotland. Children and young people should be able to access independent advocacy under the following pieces of Scottish legislation:
Despite many areas of Scots laws creating the basis for independent advocacy to be available across various settings and for specific groups of children, this is not the case in reality. For example, the right of access to independent advocacy in the 2003 Mental Health Act is a broad right that does not just apply in mental health settings. However, many areas of Scotland only have independent advocacy provision linked to the 2003 Act starting at 16 or 18. Children and young people are therefore not able to access their right to independent advocacy under the 2003 Act.
Children can access independent advocacy if they are offered it when going through a Children’s Hearing. SIAA member organisations have told us that this is the most consistent provision of independent advocacy for children and young people that they currently have the funding to provide.
Next steps
SIAA and our member organisations strongly support increased access to independent advocacy for children and young people, as recommended in the SCLC report. We know independent advocacy increases children and young people’s understand of their rights and claim their Article 12 right under the UNCRC, which says: I have the right to be listened to and taken seriously.
There are clear opportunities to consider increasing access to independent advocacy within the upcoming UNCRC Children’s Rights Scheme, which is the area of the Act that mentions advocacy provision for children. As UNCRC implementation continues, we urge the Scottish Government to take note of the SCLC report recommendations and enact the solutions.
