Chamber and committees

Children’s Parliament was established in 1996. Their organisational mission is to lead the development of a rights-based culture in Scotland and ensure that children’s voices are actively engaged in shaping our world. They support the Scottish Government, local authorities, and other public bodies to fulfil their legal obligations to promote and protect the human rights of everyone and fulfil their duty of care toward children. Through their rights-based, creative practice, they provide children up to age 14 years old from diverse backgrounds across Scotland, with opportunities to share their experiences, thoughts, and feelings so that they can influence positive change in their lives at home, in school and in the community.

The Children’s Parliament have their annual accounts published on the Companies House website. These provide a breakdown of money received from the Scottish Government from 2020-24.

THE CHILDREN'S PARLIAMENT filing history - Find and update company information - GOV.UK

The 2024-25 annual accounts will be available on the Companies House website in due course, following the end of the financial year. However, at his point we can confirm that the Scottish Government currently expects to provide the Children’s Parliament with funding totalling £320,878 in 2024-25 (subject to relevant financial controls).

Children’s Parliament receives core funding from the Scottish Government via the Children, Young People and Families Early Intervention and Adult Learning and Empowering Communities Fund (CYPFEIF & ALEC) which is administered by the Corra Foundation. From 2018-19 to 2021-22 they were awarded £235,000. From 2022-23 to 2024-25 they received £246,750 annually. The Children’s Parliament is on track to meet the agreed outcomes by the end of 2024-25. Corra has indicated, through their formal grant reviews and monitoring, that the Children’s Parliament is delivering value for money and continues to demonstrate good progress towards the agreed objectives.

The Children’s Parliament also evidenced delivery of the aims of the three year grant funding, of £147,000 per year, that they received between 2021-2024 as part of the UNCRC Implementation Programme.

Children’s Parliament was established in 1996. Their organisational mission is to lead the development of a rights-based culture in Scotland and ensure that children’s voices are actively engaged in shaping our world. They support the Scottish Government, local authorities, and other public bodies to fulfil their legal obligations to promote and protect the human rights of everyone and fulfil their duty of care toward children. Through their rights-based, creative practice, they provide children up to age 14 years old from diverse backgrounds across Scotland, with opportunities to share their experiences, thoughts, and feelings so that they can influence positive change in their lives at home, in school and in the community.

The Scottish Government engages with a range of organisations when making policy decisions. It is therefore not possible to directly attribute and quantify the influence of any one organisation. However, it is important to acknowledge since 2007, the Children’s Parliament has worked closely with Scottish Government to impact various policy areas, including:

• Scotland’s Climate Assembly
• COP 26
• Learning for Sustainability Curriculum Development
• Anti Racist Education Principles
• Gender Equality in Education
• Education Reform
• Tobacco Action Plan
• National Performance Framework
• The development of the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024
• Scottish AI Strategy
• Mental Health Information and Support (Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Joint Delivery Board)

Children’s Parliament was established in 1996. Their organisational mission is to lead the development of a rights-based culture in Scotland and ensure that children’s voices are actively engaged in shaping our world. They support the Scottish Government, local authorities, and other public bodies to fulfil their legal obligations to promote and protect the human rights of everyone and fulfil their duty of care toward children. Through their rights-based, creative practice, they provide children up to age 14 years old from diverse backgrounds across Scotland, with opportunities to share their experiences, thoughts, and feelings so that they can influence positive change in their lives at home, in school and in the community.

The Scottish Government engage with a variety of organisations, including the Children’s Parliament, to ensure there are mechanisms and channels that help to ensure that the voices of children are considered in decision making processes.

In 2023, 13 organisations competed, through an open procurement exercise, to be part of the Children and Young People’s Participation Framework Agreement. The Framework Agreement allows policy teams, from across the Scottish Government to commission engagement with children and young people from a list of pre-approved providers. To be appointed onto the Framework Agreement organisations had to demonstrate their experience and expertise in meaningful engagement with children and young people and the scope, reach, and impact of their work. The Children’s Parliament is one of nine organisations appointed.

Children’s Parliament was established in 1996. Their organisational mission is to lead the development of a rights-based culture in Scotland and ensure that children’s voices are actively engaged in shaping our world. They support the Scottish Government, local authorities, and other public bodies to fulfil their legal obligations to promote and protect the human rights of everyone and fulfil their duty of care toward children. Through their rights-based, creative practice, they provide children up to age 14 years old from diverse backgrounds across Scotland, with opportunities to share their experiences, thoughts, and feelings so that they can influence positive change in their lives at home, in school and in the community.

The Scottish Government is not involved in increasing children's engagement with the Children's Parliament. That is a matter for the Children's Parliament.

The Scottish Government does not hold comparative data on senior pay levels across publicly funded Scottish Universities and therefore has no plans to publish this information.

The Scottish Government does not produce projections of nursery closures.

As with other sectors of the economy the childcare sector – which operates as a mixed economy model with services delivered by public, private and third sector services, including childminders – experiences continued changes in the number of services operating. In a given year there will be new services entering the market and other services leaving the sector, as well as other changes to registrations (e.g. to increase capacity or changes in ownership).

Care Inspectorate data published in September 2024 shows that overall capacity within daycare of childcare services increased from 176,130 registered places at 31 December 2020 to 178,890 registered places at 31 December 2023.

The Scottish Government spend with Amazon Web Services in each of the last 3 financial years is detailed in the following table:-

The Scottish Government recognises that high quality, accessible and affordable early learning and childcare is vital in rural and island areas to support children’s outcomes and to enable parents or carers to train, work, or study.

At a national level, several work programmes are underway to support childcare access in these communities. This includes funding a new national childminder recruitment and retention programme, making grants available to local authorities via the Addressing Depopulation Fund (two of which contain a focus on addressing childcare issues) and investing £16 million over two years into our six early adopter communities, including those in rural and island locations.

Decisions relating to the school estate, including whether to temporarily close council schools and nurseries, are for local authorities to make in consultation with the local community. Local authorities have a statutory responsibility to make Early Learning and Childcare services available to all eligible children within their area and are responsible for local service delivery planning, this includes a duty to consult and inform parents every two years regarding local demand. We are currently reviewing guidance on mothballing to provide greater clarity on when it is an appropriate action to take. That will ensure that local decisions are based on effective engagement with the community, better reflect the needs of rural families and help to maintain access to early learning in those communities.

I would therefore encourage any families affected by planned service closures to engage with their local council about how the Early Learning and Childcare needs of their children will continue to be met.

The Scottish government does not hold information on the number of nurseries which are closed or mothballed.

Decisions relating to local ELC provision are for local authorities to make, in consultation with the local community. Mothballing should only be for a temporary period and should be subject to regular review, at least annually, against the same requirements which led to the original decision to mothball.

The Care Inspectorate publish a monthly list of all service closures which can be found here: Changes to registration, variations and cancelled services

The annual Care Inspectorate Early Learning and Childcare Statistics publication (Early learning and childcare statistics 2023) sets out information on the availability and quality of registered daycare of children and childminding services for children and families across Scotland. This also includes data on annual service cancellations across the sector.

Although there has been increases in homelessness applications and non-compliance with statutory duties in some areas, 12 local authorities reduced the number of households in temporary accommodation in 2023-24 compared to 2022-23 and 20 councils reduced the number of children in temporary accommodation.

Increasing housing supply is key to reducing levels of homelessness. As part of our £768 million investment in affordable housing in 2025-26, we are providing targeted funding of £40 million in 2025-26 to the local authorities with the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures. 80% of this funding has been targeted to five local authorities in the central belt experiencing the most sustained temporary accommodation pressures to help increase the supply of social and affordable homes through acquisitions, including, where appropriate, properties suitable for larger families.

We continue to work with our partners to increase the delivery of more affordable homes, the majority of which will be for social rent. We are taking all possible actions to help deliver more high quality, permanent homes, providing the right homes in the right places, and ensure a settled home for everyone.

We have a strong track record in affordable housing by supporting the delivery of more than 136,000 affordable homes since 2007, with more than 97,000 of those being for social rent. We remain focused on delivering 110,000 affordable homes across Scotland by 2032 with at least 70% for social rent and 10% in our rural and island communities.