Our Hearings, Our Voice

A step forward today on our collective journey towards increased participation of young people in the development of the children’s hearings system. There is a still a long way to go – in particular finding funding to ensure any development is sustainable – but we did move on one more notch.

I was in Glasgow today with Lesley Taylor to review progress with our partners on developing a Young Person’s “Board” for the children’s hearings system. Not just for our organisation ( Children’s Hearings Scotland or for our sister organisation SCRA – although each of us will need to engage with and be informed by what emerges) but for the system as a whole.

Led by Neil Hunter we have spent many months working with young people to understand what they want out of a grouping and, very importantly, how young people might best be supported to engage. We are considering an age range, initially, from 12- 21. They have been involved in scoping out how the grouping might work, how we might recruit and involve young people from different backgrounds and different parts of Scotland. We've been careful not to immediately classify the grouping as a “Board” but to leave the freedom for the young people to decide how it might work and relate to the various bodies. Today we learned of the outcome of a consultation with those young people involved who have concluded that, as a start, the grouping be called: Our Hearings, Our Voice.

Thanks to the cooperation and input from a number of public and third sector organisations we have scoped and planned and developed key principles. But to take all of this forward we have to source funding and we currently await the outcome of an application that has been submitted. So no formal launch yet and much to be done even if we get the funding before we publicise in a lot more detail. But we can now talk about Our Hearings, Our Voice and what it might do.

Our discussions were informed by a presentation and discussion with Bethany and Jen from the Family Justice Young Persons Board in England and Wales. This started off nearly a decade ago looking at specific service provision and over the years and with increasing backing from the President of the Family Division of the High Court of England and Wales,, Lord Munby, it has become a recognised vehicle for feeding the views of young people into the family justice system in England and Wales. They have learned over the years what matters in the development of such a body and how a dedicated core team is needed. So lots of food for thought and hopefully, funding permitting, we will be hearing more of Our Hearings, Our Voice in Scotland.

All of this came too late for us to amend our Business Plan for 2017-18 which we published today – so action point 23 still refers to a Young Person’s Board. This year for the first time we have highlighted where our work supports our corporate parenting obligations.