Young people helping to shape the Young Person’s Guarantee
The pandemic has already had an enormous impact on young people’s lives, and despite lockdown restrictions changing and the vaccine rollout, there is much more to come. The full extent of lockdown on young people is yet to be realised – but employment and the economy are key areas of concern.
In response, the Scottish Government launched the Young Person’s Guarantee. It will offer young people support to allow them to succeed – based on their own personal ambitions – and will be focussed on those who need it most. It aims within two years to give all 16-24-year-olds in Scotland, the chance to succeed through the opportunity of a job, apprenticeship, education, training or volunteering.
At Young Scot, we’ve been working with partners at Intercultural Youth Scotland, Prince’s Trust Scotland, Barnardo’s Scotland, Close the Gap and Enable Works. Together, we’ve been supporting 16-24-year-old volunteers from many different backgrounds and experiences to take part in the Young Person’s Guarantee Youth Leadership Panel and provided insight to support their work.
Since last year, the Panel of young people has been exploring the governance for the Guarantee to ensure it continues to meet the evolving needs of them and their peers. They are also helping to shape the Guarantee and decision-making processes by feeding in their views to the implementation group and Scottish Government Ministers.
The Panel has been meeting since November 2020. One of their key sessions was with Sandy Begbie, CEO of Scottish Financial Enterprise, and the team at the Scottish Government who are leading the design and implementation of the Guarantee. They spoke in-depth and identified some of the key needs of the Guarantee and uncovered some of the Panel’s key questions.
The Panel also took part in an insights session with Skills Development Scotland that focused on what young people wanted and needed from the Guarantee’s website. They are now supporting the co-creation of the brand and communications materials in collaboration with the Scottish Government and their partners. This process includes taking part in testing of the new Young Person’s Guarantee brand identity proposals.
Most recently, the Panel took part in a session to identify the priority issues. These will be used by the Scottish Government and will help them to focus their work on the issues that matter most to the Panel and other young people. The key areas of discussion at this session were decision making and governance; accessibility and inclusion; poverty and low-income households; urban and rural; conditions of the guarantee; guidance and support, and communications.
The future
To ensure that young people don’t become a generation negatively defined by the pandemic, it’s vital that new policies fully meet their needs – regardless of their background, status, stage of education, or employment. That’s why it’s essential that young people from a mixture of backgrounds and communities are at the heart of the Guarantee’s implementation. By sharing power with young people, policymakers are helping to ensure that the Guarantee will meet the needs of all current and future citizens – no matter their background.
Find out more