At Young Scot, we’re proud to be supporting the Scottish Attainment Challenge and using the Young Scot National Entitlement Card (Young Scot NEC) to improve the health and wellbeing of young people.   

Our ‘Attainment Challenge: National Strategic Partnership’ (#YSAttain) is a collaboration between ourselves, Scottish Government, Improvement Service, Transport Scotland and NECPO. Together, we are trialling exciting new ways of using the Young Scot NEC to improve the health and wellbeing of young people. This work is building on the success of Renfrewshire’s Youth Services Model, which used the Young Scot NEC to provide free travel to young jobseekers and care leavers. 

The Young Scot NEC is available to all 11-26-year olds living in Scotland. Over 700,000 young people have access to the card, and they use it for discounts, money off travel, school lunches, Young Scot Rewards, legal proof of age, and much more. 

In 2018, we joined forces with North Ayrshire, Renfrewshire and The Highland Council. Each Local Authority used the Young Scot NEC to offer extra entitlements to young people who are facing barriers to their attainment. These included local information, travel tickets, weekend and holiday food provision, and access to leisure and extra-curricular activities. The young people who took part came from a variety of backgrounds, including those receiving free school meals, care experienced young people, and young carers. 

Scotland’s young people deserve the best – and we have a moral responsibility to close the poverty-related attainment gap.

Recently, Dundee, Falkirk and North Lanarkshire joined up. We supported them to offer entitlements that suited their care experienced young people, young carers, young people receiving free school meals and clothing grants, young parents, and young people in the criminal justice system.  

The Young Scot NEC is free, and we promote our discounts and services to all 11-26-year-olds. Those taking part in #YSAttain receive their extra entitlements for free and access them in the same way as their friends and peers. This creates a non-stigmatising way of supporting them – which is fundamental to this project.  

Over three years, the Scottish Government has invested nearly £1,000,000 of Attainment Scotland Funding into #YSAttain, with approximately 60% of this funding going directly to Local Authorities. We have worked together to develop and deliver smart services and applications to enable enhanced entitlements and opportunities – all without stigma for young people. The results are fantastic. Young Scot and our Local Authority partners have distributed travel, food and leisure entitlements to over 1,600 young people in communities across Scotland. These partnerships have allowed us to demonstrate exciting new ways to improve the health and wellbeing of Scotland’s most disadvantaged young people. Also, we’ve shown that the delivery model can be customised easily to suit the needs and priorities of local areas and their young people.  

Scotland’s young people deserve the best – and we have a moral responsibility to close the poverty-related attainment gap. We can only achieve this if we work in partnership and make sure that every young person fulfils their potential. Using the Young Scot NEC to offer additional entitlements to those most in need, is an innovative and proven way to help do this. 

Find out more about #YSAttain on our website or follow the hashtag.