The Children and Young People’s Centre for Justice (CYCJ) very much welcomes the opportunity to respond to the call for views on the pre-budget scrutiny process, from two Scottish Parliament committees.
We support the focus across both on tackling child poverty, and embedding a more preventative and joined up approach. Evidence shows that providing a more trauma-informed, rights-based and preventative approach for children and young people in conflict with the law will deliver better outcomes, which will also reduce future public service spend. However, we are concerned with the lack of framing around child rights throughout this process and this, combined with the very significant public savings being proposed, could undermine outcomes for children and young people. Our response calls for a rights-based approach to be embedded with improvements to be made to the budgeting process, as well as the recommendations of the recent Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment reviews to be taken on board.
Read them both here:
Call for views public service reform, pre-budget scrutiny 2027-28