Youth parliament targets young people health and safety for change campaigns

They are campaigns that in the past have triggered national policy changes and this year the Scottish Youth Parliament hopes they will have even more of an impact.

Members of the SYP have set targets to end gender-based violence and increase support for mental health.

The youth parliament is also calling for youth services to be legally protected from budget cuts. Scottish Youth Parliament (SYP) board vice chair Ellie Craig said that youth work services underpin all of their national campaigns and are essential for young people.

“I am a youth worker, and every MSYP has a strong connection to youth work. Because of that, we can all see clearly why it is such a lifeline for young people and needs to be protected.”

The SYP consulted with more than 4,000 young people across the country to finalise the three national campaigns which they will pursue over the next two years. Ellie said that each campaign will have a different focus and different measurements for success, but each will follow a plan that young people will design themselves.

The campaign for protection of investment in youth work might feature the most tangible action steps. In the SYP's manifesto and campaign materials, members and constituents said that they want to see youth work services protected from the recent rash of cuts to public services by local authorities.

In fact, 75% of the young people surveyed by SYP agreed that youth work services should be legally protected from budget cuts.

SYP board chair Mollie McGoran said that the national campaigns help Scotland’s young people to think for the future. Even though the work they do may not lead to tangible change in their tenure, they are laying the groundwork to pass the torch on to their colleagues and promote policies that represent the voices of young people, she said.

An important part of that work is teaching young people that there is no issue too complex for them to tackle, she added.

“We do a lot of future-proofing, a lot of legacy work.

“Each topic and each campaign will need different levels of training and sensitivity. But we are very keen on the idea that there is no sensitive topic that you cannot explain to young people.”

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Ellie and Mollie both said that they are proud to see how SYP represents such a diverse cross-section of Scotland’s population, including a membership consisting of 55% women and girls and 5% non-binary or gender-fluid young people and 42% of MSYPs coming from Scotland’s most deprived areas.

This led to growing support in the organisation to take on what Ellie called “systemic issues” facing women and minority genders, including issues as fundamental as prejudiced town and city planning.

From poorly lit pavements and alleyways to isolated bus and train stations, Ellie said that it will be important for future public planning to consider gender safety and begin to create more accessible public spaces to benefit everyone.

“We have gotten much, much better at discussing these issues in recent years. Now it is time to take action.”

Skye Allan MSYP, Convener of SYP’s Equality, Human Rights and Social Security Committee said that steps to prevent gender-based violence will have a knock-on effect for the SYP’s mental health goals as well.

“Young people are especially vulnerable to gender-based violence which makes them feel unsafe and unsupported in their communities as well as having a long-term effect on their physical and mental health throughout their lives.”

The three new campaigns will run through 2025, and they follow on the heels of a string of successful campaigns that MSYPs have waged in recent years. Mollie and Ellie both referenced recent campaigns–to enshrine the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in Scots law and provide free bus travel for young people–that led to policy changes at a national level.

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The UNCRC was finally incorporated this year, after the SYP included it in their 2016 manifesto and made it a consistent campaign topic for successive parliaments.

After the SYP launched their “All Aboard” campaign in 2018 to provide free bus travel for under-19s, the Scottish Government rolled out an initiative in 2022 which expanded on the campaign’s goals and offered free bus travel to young people ages 5-22.

Since it was launched, Transport Scotland has reported more than 100 million young people taking advantage of free rides.