Children and Young People Participation Framework Agreement

The Scottish Government intends to commission a Framework Agreement to respond to the growing need for children and young people’s participation in decision making and policy design across Scottish Government and to ensure approaches are meaningful, coordinated and sustainable. Specifically, the Framework is being created to establish an efficient and effective mechanism that provides the Scottish Government and other public bodies with a strategic, high quality and sustainable approach to meaningfully engage with children and young people as part of its decision-making and policy design process. The Framework will enable policy areas across Scottish Government and public bodies to identify, recruit and engage with organisations that have the skills and expertise required to design and deliver bespoke, high quality participation activities with children and young people. It is envisaged that the appointed suppliers will be both organisations operating at a national level and those working within specific communities. These organisations will engage with and represent a broad range of children and young people, with particular representation of those identified as being furthest from their rights. The Framework will be overseen by the Children’s Rights Unit to ensure a more collaborative, streamlined and strategic approach to participation by creating a database of all work commissioned. This will be an evidence bank for policy areas to pull from when carrying out Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessments (CRWIA) and help to reduce duplication and ad-hoc engagement whilst also tackling engagement fatigue felt by stakeholders. All information published in this Prior Information Notice is subject to change. The Scottish Government is currently engaging with internal policy areas and key stakeholders to finalise the Specifications for this requirement. Further updates and engagement with the market will take place in due course. The Scottish Government reserve the right not to proceed at any point with the procurement and award of this Framework Agreement.