Equally Safe

Equally Safe is Scotland’s strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls. As part of the strategy, SYP, along with partner organisations, collaborated on a joint project to ensure the meaningful engagement and participation of children and young people in the strategy’s implementation.

The project involved a number of partners, including Barnardo’s, Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women’s Aid, and The University of Edinburgh (School of Social and Political Science).

In 2017, the Scottish Government released a consultation on a draft delivery plan for the strategy (2017-21), and all partners consulted children and young people to investigate views on its content and implementation. This consultation directly engaged with children and young people’s views on their priorities for action and the content of the draft plan through three key themes:

• Gender equality and societal attitudes.
• Improving responses and services.
• Justice for children and young people

SYP developed a Scotland-wide survey focusing on the strand related to gender equality and societal attitudes. The survey was created by and for young people and facilitated across Local Authority areas by MSYPs.

To support this, Rape Crisis Scotland (RCS) delivered a series of focus groups with children and young people, and SYP will worked closely with RCS to develop the questions in line with their focus group sessions. This enabled us to gather views on this universal strand from a wide range of children and young people all over Scotland.

Barnardo’s coordinated a series of bespoke focus groups and one-to-one activities on service responses with children and young people, and Scottish Women’s Aid delivered focus groups and one-to-one activities with children and young people appropriately experienced in Justice responses to gender violence and abuse.