'I am delighted to be writing in the Politician’s Opinion Column once again.

World Children’s Day

November 20 saw #WorldChildrensDay be celebrated right across Scotland including with the celebrations at the Scottish Parliament. I was delighted to be invited along to present my work, alongside colleagues from SYP, on Childhood Adversity. We had a range of politicians and invited guests along, including the First Minister, Nicole Sturgeon MSP, who reiterated her government’s commitment to the incorporation of the UNCRC before 2021.

UNCRC Incorporation

I and the Scottish Youth Parliament were delighted to hear the commitment from the Depute First Minister John Swinney MSP, which the Scottish Government is going to have full and direct incorporation of the UNCRC into Scots Law. As an organisation, we have been calling for this to happen for a while now – simply because it makes rights binding, not guiding. It means public services will need to proactively think about young people’s needs, wants and opinions, and when that happens it makes the world a better place to live for all.

ACEs

I was delighted to launch the toolkit ‘Rights! The missing piece to childhood adversity’ in Dunfermline at the end of October, in doing so, we sent every MSP a piece of our jigsaw – you could say it was the ‘missing piece’. This was to raise awareness with them of the issue at hand, and to call for them to take a rights based approach to childhood adversity. I was delighted that the First Minister completed the jigsaw at the UNCRC@30 event in Parliament last week.

School Meals

The report on school meals was presented to the Cowdenbeath Area Committee at the start of October, which was really frustrating. Council officers had not followed through fully on the motion that was passed unanimously, with no young people being consulted in the making of the report which was disappointing to say the least. At this meeting, I was delighted to lay down additional recommendations which compels Council officers to bring the findings of the consultation with young people back in January, as well as recruiting a core group of young people to help with the co-design of service delivery. It will be interesting to watch this be followed through.

Register to Vote

Lastly, as we should now know, there is a General Election on December 12 and it may well be the most important one so far. Please ensure you are registered to vote, and if not go to www.gov.uk/register-to-vote and do so now.

If any young person (12-25) has an issue/concern they’d like me to raise, or wants to know more about my work, please get in touch by emailing Bailey-Lee.Robb.MSYP@sypmail.org.uk or following me on Twitter: @BaileyLeeMSYP '