Written by Christina Yuen, Together’s Policy Assistant
In March 2026, Together (Scottish Alliance for Children’s Rights) concluded its external review of ten Scottish Government Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessments (CRWIAs). Two years on from the commencement of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 (‘UNCRC Act’) on 16 July 2024, our review examined the progress that Scottish Government has made thus far, while establishing a baseline for CRWIA practice and identifying areas for further improvement.
Requirements of the UNCRC Act 2024
While Scottish Government has conducted and published CRWIAs on a voluntary basis since 2015, Section 17 of the UNCRC Act formalises and strengthens this commitment. This places a duty on the Scottish Ministers to complete and publish a Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment (CRWIA) for all new Bills, most Scottish statutory instruments (SSIs), and decisions of a strategic nature relating to the rights and wellbeing of children. This duty was reinforced in the first Children’s Rights Scheme published in November 2025, which commits Scottish Government to regularly evaluating its awareness raising and training on the CRWIA duty, as well as maintaining a quality review process for CRWIAs.
The review process
Of the ten Scottish Government CRWIAs chosen for review, five were selected by Scottish Government, and five were selected by Together. We selected our five so that the sample as a whole reflected:
- a broad cross-section of Scottish Government departments;
- key issues identified by children and young people;
- issues for which we had substantial evidence or expertise, and
- the priorities of our member organisations.
We drew on evidence gathered through our RightsOnTrack campaign, Rights Empowered project with Clan Childlaw, and Scottish Government’s List of Potential Children’s Rights Issues to identify CRWIAs that cut across these three strands of work. The final sample included the CRWIAs for the Natural Environment (Scotland) Bill, The Environmental Protection (Single-use Vapes) (Scotland) Regulations, the 2024-25 Scottish Budget, and the Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy, Delivery Plan and Workforce Action Plan, amongst others.
Once the sample was finalised, each CRWIA was reviewed by two members of the Together team. CRWIAs were assessed for alignment with the UNCRC articles, as well as General Comments and Concluding Observations from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Each was also assessed against the quality indicators listed in a process document provided by Scottish Government, which covered areas such as clarity and purpose of the proposal, evidence to support assessment, accessibility and communication approaches for children and young people, and monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. Using both enabled an assessment of rights-compatibility as well as procedural quality.
Each CRWIA was scored independently by two reviewers, who then met to agree consistent definitions and thresholds across the sample before finalising their scores. Our findings were set out in a confidential report to Scottish Government in March.
Summary of findings
Overall, the review identified several key strengths. The rationale behind most policy and legislative proposals was well-explained, and clear effort had been made to identify aspects of the proposals with relevance to children’s rights and their corresponding UNCRC articles. Many CRWIA authors showed a good awareness of the direct impacts of their proposals and based their assessments on evidence collected using various methods from a wide range of sources. Several CRWIAs also demonstrated promising practice, such as explaining how the CRWIA was being used as an iterative monitoring tool, and recognising the importance of robust, time-bound monitoring and review exercises.
The review also identified consistent gaps, four of which ran across the entire sample. None of the ten CRWIAs considered whether the proposal fell within the scope of the UNCRC Act, which matters because scope carries direct implications for children’s access to remedy, redress and justice. No CRWIA cited disaggregated data, raising questions about how proposals might affect children whose rights are most at risk. No CRWIA specifically referred to the progressive realisation of rights under Article 4, meaning CRWIAs assessed risks to rights without identifying opportunities to advance them over time. Finally, no CRWIA addressed how children and young people, their families, or organisations representing them could hold Scottish Government to account where their rights were adversely affected. Since these four issues are not covered in the current CRWIA template, revising it and the accompanying guidance could help to address these gaps in future CRWIAs.
Recommended next steps
Future CRWIAs can play an even more consistent and influential role in informing rights‑respecting laws and policies. Together made a number of recommendations to Scottish Government, which fall into five broad areas.
Start early enough to change the proposal. A CRWIA started late in the policy development process can only record impacts that are already fixed. Beginning the process as soon as a proposal takes shape gives policymakers the flexibility to identify children’s rights issues and put measures in place to address them, which is what makes the difference between a document that describes a policy and one that improves it.
Show the rights reasoning. Several CRWIAs identified relevant UNCRC articles without connecting them to the conclusions drawn. We would encourage a “coherence check” on each assessment: is every conclusion supported by reasoning, relevant evidence and an explicit reference to the articles engaged? That means cross-referencing each aspect of a proposal against the rights it affects. It also means framing proposals as impacting on children’s rights rather than on children in general, which tends to surface a wider range of relevant considerations and any necessary mitigations. Last but not least, it means looking beyond direct effects to indirect, unintended and differential impacts, particularly for framework or enabling legislation that creates duties, powers and systems whose consequences for children’s rights arrive later.
Build and explain the evidence base. Evidence should be gathered for all proposals, including those thought to have only an indirect or minimal impact on children and young people; demonstrating an evidence base even for limited impacts strengthens the reliability and completeness of the CRWIA. That evidence should be disaggregated, since understanding how a proposal affects different groups of children is essential to upholding their Article 2 right to be free from discrimination and avoiding unintended consequences. It should also draw from children and young people themselves: supporting them to express their views, whether directly or indirectly, is key to upholding their Article 12 right to be heard. Finally, CRWIAs should be transparent about how evidence was gathered and how far children and young people were involved, which allows readers to assess its validity and representativeness for themselves.
Make CRWIAs comprehensible. A “Key Terms” section near the beginning of each CRWIA, giving accessible explanations of any specialist terms, would aid understanding of the proposals in question and make CRWIAs more comprehensible to readers of all ages and backgrounds. A child-friendly version will not be necessary every time, but should be produced where a proposal significantly affects children’s rights or where children and young people have contributed to its development. Where a full child-friendly version is not necessary, alternatives such as short explainers, visual summaries or collaboration with children’s sector organisations can still ensure that children and young people understand how a decision may affect their rights.
Plan for monitoring, accountability and redress. Monitoring and evaluation plans should be clear and time-bound, with defined indicators, data sources and named responsibilities for review. CRWIAs should also take a long-term view of progressive realisation, looking beyond whether a proposal is compatible with children’s rights now to how it advances them over time, to the maximum extent of available resources. And they should address accountability and redress: making provision for child-friendly complaints procedures, alongside other non-legal and legal routes to hold Scottish Government to account, is important in ensuring that children and young people can access remedies where their rights are breached.
We look forward to supporting Scottish Government to implement these recommendations, and to the progress that will be made between the present review and the next, which we have committed to take forward in early 2027.
Looking ahead
Our review highlights the significant potential of Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessments as a tool for advancing children’s rights in practice. More than being just a procedural exercise, a well-executed CRWIA can support more transparent, evidence-based and rights-respecting decision-making, ensuring that children’s experiences and perspectives are considered from the earliest stages of policy development. As Scotland continues to strengthen implementation of the UNCRC, there is a valuable opportunity for public authorities – and decision-makers in the private and third sector – to embrace CRWIAs as a means of embedding a children’s human rights approach and improving outcomes for babies, children and young people. The more consistently and meaningfully CRWIA are used, the greater their potential to help build a Scotland where children’s rights are respected, protected and fulfilled across all areas of their lives.
Ends
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