Embedding

Skills Development Scotland

This blog provides and overview of work that Skills Development Scotland undertook with the support of Together. If you would be interested in working with Together to help embed a Children’s Human Rights Approach in your work, get in touch to find out about our consultancy offer.

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 (UNCRC) (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:  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.

When Together was working with SDS, we used our knowledge of the five principles of a Children’s Human Rights Approach to structure the interviews and resources, highlighting the links different areas of work had with different principles. For example, the Digital and Transformation Teams undertake a lot of co-design and participation work with young people, Careers Advisers were empowering young people to make their own career decisions, and the National Training Programmes Team demonstrate equality and non-discrimination by identifying specific actions to improve outcomes for apprentices from equality groups. We were also able to provide some suggestions for other actions SDS could be taking, drawing on our knowledge of professional practice across Scotland and internationally.

It was clear to us how much work SDS were doing to embed children’s rights across all their departments. They have the UNCRC built into their Integrated Equalities Impact Assessment and have developed a range of training resources shaped by the needs of their teams. We were grateful that SDS brought Together onboard to let us learn more about the work they were doing and highlight the links between their work and children’s rights.

Sarah McDermott, Development Manager at Together: 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.

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Become a Together member!
Membership of Together shows your commitment to children’s rights in Scotland and gives you the opportunity to share your views and experiences on a local, national, and international level.  We’ll also make sure we keep you updated with the latest developments, news and events.  Find out more and become a member here!

Training and consultancy!

Together offers two types of training sessions based on the content of the Children’s Rights Skills and Knowledge Framework.

We have our Taking a Children’s Human Rights Approach in Practice session, which covers the five principles of a Children’s Human Rights Approach in your work and organisation.

We also offer sessions dedicated to each of the five principles – Embedding, Equality and Non-Discrimination, Empowerment, Participation and Accountability. These sessions are a deeper dive into how to apply each principle in your working practice and the links they have to the other four principles.  

Donate to Together!
By donating to Together, you can help us to promote children’s rights in Scotland and improve the lives of children and young people across the country.  Donate to Together’s work.

Take on an epic challenge to raise money for Together!

Together welcomes and appreciates volunteers who are keen to take on a fundraising challenge to help us achieve our vision for Scotland to become a place where every baby, child and young person grows up in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.

Select Together on JustGiving as your chosen charity when signing up to take the steps to support children’s human rights. We would love to share your experience with others in the membership by creating a blog. If you are thinking of registering and would like to chat further email caitlin@togetherscotland.org.uk