The Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice (CYCJ) is pleased to see the Children (care, care experience and services planning) bill has passed the Scottish Parliament and now awaits royal assent.
In particular, a great step forward was taken with the places of safety amendment, put forward by Willie Rennie MSP, being accepted into the bill. This would enable police officers, once regulations have passed Parliament, and where appropriate, to take under 18s to an alternative location instead of police custody.
This is a small but significant step and one on which we have been working with many agencies over a long period of time to achieve. We would like to thank Willie Rennie MSP, the Minister for Children, Young People and The Promise Natalie Don-Innes and Martin Whitfield MSP, for all of their support in engaging with us on this and in the development of the amendment.
Professor Fiona Dyer, Director of CYCJ: “We’ve said for a long time that the number of children in police custody needs to be reduced. Children and Young People have told us that it is often the most distressing part of their justice journey and that they would receive much more appropriate support in an alternative place of safety. We are committed to working with the new Scottish Government after the election to make this change a reality on the ground.”
We also note that the bill includes other measures which we raised with MSPs, including placing secure care within financial transparency and profit limitation measures. We understand the bill will place considerable pressure on certain agencies and that significant resources will be needed for the changes to be implemented effectively. That said, we do believe it will bring Scotland closer to Keeping the Promise.
For more information on the impact of detention on children, you can read our research here: Children’s Experiences of Police Custody and the Implications for Trauma-Informed Policing – Nina Vaswani, Kristina Moodie, Donna McEwan, 2025
And see the briefing we circulated to MSPs ahead of stage 2: https://www.cycj.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Consultation-on-the-future-of-secure-care-CYCJ-key-summary.pdf