At Children’s Parliament, we support a team of Child Human Rights Defenders to participate in democratic processes at local, national and international levels. On the 10th of June 2025, seven Members of Children’s Parliament met with the Scottish Government Executive Team to discuss in detail their calls to action, alongside the Scottish Youth Parliament.
This meeting was part of a new, two-year cycle where the issues worked and decided on at the start of 2024 are taken to two Executive Team meetings, and two Cabinet meetings. This provides the unique opportunity to work alongside the Scottish Government in collaboration, to mark progress made on these issues and further drive change.
In November 2024, the children presented a ‘garden of ideas’ to the Cabinet, where they planted ‘seeds of change’ for Scottish Government to nurture alongside us over the next year. Since that meeting, the children have been nurturing their ideas, alongside Scottish Government, to further drive change.
Over the past year, the children have:
At this year’s Executive Team meeting, the children invited the change-makers back into their garden to share updates on progress made and highlight areas where they would like to see more. To do this, they created ‘pollinators.’ As Cara explained:
In the real world, you know pollinators spread pollen to help grow fruits, seeds and young plants. In Children’s Parliament’s garden, the pollinators spread change and the growth of ideas.
Cara, Member of Children’s Parliament
The issues the children brought to discuss with the Executive Team members were:
A lot of the flavours are something a child would want, like birthday cake and bubblegum.
Member of Children’s Parliament
We should have a say on how we learn about our climate, and we should have a say on how our school is designed to help the climate.
Member of Children’s Parliament
You should be able to trust all your teachers, but you don’t.
Member of Children’s Parliament
To read about the children’s issues, and the development of their work in more detail, please find our garden postcards here:
After sharing their pollinators, the children invited the Director-Generals to decorate bumblebees of their own, putting them onto a shared beehive of activity to commit to spreading change.
The Child Human Rights Defenders look forward to continuing their work with Scottish Government to make positive changes for children across Scotland.
To hear from the children, we have transcribed recordings of their discussions on the issues of Mental Health and Bullying, Climate Crisis Education and Vaping.
