Chamber and committees

The Young Person’s Guarantee web portal went live on 5 November, as I announced in my statement to Parliament on that date.

For the Young Person’s Guarantee to achieve its aims, the Scottish Government recognises that it must meaningfully engage with a variety of stakeholders, participants and youth organisations. Implementation of the Guarantee will be a collective endeavour involving collaboration across partners.

We have established an Implementation Group for the Guarantee chaired by Sandy Begbie whose memberships consists of stakeholders from the public sector (including Skills Development Scotland, local government, education partners, and DWP), third sector (including equality groups and youth organisations), and private sector. The Group has developed a high-level Activity Plan , published on 5 November 2020, setting out the key activity to be taken forward and built upon when implementing the Guarantee. This includes activity around communications and engagement to promote the Guarantee.

The Scottish Government has been clear that young people must be central to the design and implementation of the Guarantee to ensure that the issues which matter to them are reflected. We are continuing to engage with young people themselves and trusted organisations that represent them, for example Young Scot and Intercultural Youth Scotland. Reports from this initial engagement activity were published alongside the Activity Plan. Young Scot are also currently establishing a Young Person’s Guarantee Leadership Panel and we have also committed to ensuring that a diverse range of young people and youth organisations are involved in the governance structures of the Guarantee.

Employer engagement and leadership are further key to developing the Guarantee and securing future employment for young people. Initial employer engagement saw a number of organisations, from both the public and private sector, step up to be early adopters of the 5 asks of employers. This work is set to continue and a comprehensive employer engagement strategy is underway to ensure employer commitment in supporting Scotland’s young people.

The Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Fair Work and Culture set out details on how the Young Person's Guarantee would be delivered, including details on the £60m of additional funding and how young people would be supported, in her statement to Parliament on 5 November.

Given the uncertainty around the labour market, with the extension of the furlough scheme and the impending impact of Brexit, no targets are being set.

The Scottish Government is supporting the commitment set out by Sandy Begbie, that within 2 years every 16-24 year old in Scotland will either be in paid employment for a period of between 12 and 24 months, enrolled in education, actively involved on an apprenticeship or training programme, or engaged on a formal volunteering or supported activity programme.

There is already a strong infrastructure in Scotland to deliver on the Guarantee. The Guarantee recognises the strengths in the existing work and programmes that support the needs of young people across many different sectors, at a local and national level. The additional funding will enhance existing support and provide more opportunities for young people.

Our commitment to producing a Measurement and Evaluation plan is set out in the activity plan , published on 5 November 2020. We are working with partners from Local Government, the Third Sector and business community to develop this plan which will help our understanding on how the Guarantee is working for Young People. It will also inform our assessment of the success of the Guarantee.

Scottish Government already publishes a quarterly national Statistics publication which measures labour market outcomes for young people. We will shortly publish a regular Youth Employment dashboard which will provide a breakdown of key employment indicators by Local Authority area and across Scotland.

The Scottish Government welcomes the Challenges from the Frontline – Revisited report by NSPCC Scotland and Barnardos’s Scotland. We are committed to continued collaboration with stakeholders and partners to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on Scotland’s families.

In highlighting the importance of addressing poverty, the delivery of the conclusions of the independent Care Review and supported incorporation of the UNCRC into Scots law, the report touches upon many cross-governmental initiatives that aim to improve the outcomes of children and young people.

The Scottish Government’s ambition to eradicate child poverty is set in statute in the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 and the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan sets out concrete actions to make progress on this ambition. The introduction of the Scottish Child Payment for eligible children under 6 aims to support up to 194,000 children this financial year. Together with Best Start Grant and Best Start Foods this will provide over £5,200 for eligible families by the time their first child turns six, for second and subsequent children this is £4,900. This compares to £1300 for first child and around £900 for subsequent children in the rest of the UK.

In accepting the conclusions of the independent Care Review, the First Minister committed the Scottish Government to work with all of its energy and focus, along with local authorities, care providers and all relevant stakeholders, to make the changes to the system that the review considered necessary. The Scottish Government has remained committed to keeping the promise it made to Scotland’s care experienced children and young people, despite the challenges that the pandemic has presented.

The principles of holistic family support that were outlined within The Promise have been at the heart of policies aimed at supporting families through the pandemic and will continue to do so. In partnership with SOLACE, the Scottish Government established the Children and Families Collective Leadership Group to consider the impacts of the pandemic on children, young people and families. The Group have developed a vision and blueprint, as well as recommendations on improving holistic family support which will be progressed as part of the implementation of The Promise.

Funding is being made available to support public authorities in fulfilling the duties under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill and embed children’s rights in decision making at all levels in public services.

National Records of Scotland has taken forward a range of consultation activities over a number of years to help inform the successful development of questions for Scotland's Census. The conclusions reached have drawn evidence from stakeholder events, public debate, written correspondence, Parliamentary scrutiny, expert advice, lived experience and has enabled NRS to bring together a set of questions which are accessible to people across Scotland, build on the learning from past censuses and will deliver outputs that will meet a wide range of census user needs.

One conclusion of this work was that Scotland's Census would continue to include a binary sex question. The consultation stage associated with question development for Scotland's Census has been completed. National Records of Scotland is now focussing its attention on working with people across Scotland to ensure that Scotland's Census in 2022 has the highest possible response rate so that the wide and varied needs of users for Census Outputs can be met.