Children and Young People from all over Scotland took part in the Everyday Heroes programme to influence the Government’s plan of action The Equally Safe Delivery Plan. Young survivors of gender-based violence (like domestic abuse, rape and sexual assault) spoke out about how services and the justice system should be improved. Lots more children and young people gave their views on how to improve societal attitudes to abuse and achieve gender equality. Find out about young survivors’ top priorities for action here through our Child/young person-friendly reports, including BSL films, a survey infographic and posters.

The evidence and recommendations from children and young people were so powerful and important that the project team co-produced detailed reports and recommendations with Everyday Heroes lead Dr Claire Houghton, University of Edinburgh:

• Justice report written with Scottish Women’s Aid
• Report on Improving Services with Barnardo’s Scotland
• Report on Gender Inequality and Societal attitudes with Rape Crisis Scotland and the Scottish Youth Parliament
• Interested in them all? Here’s our Exec summary

Young advisors from the programme met with the relevant Cabinet Secretary in the Parliament to advocate for the inclusion of their recommendations in the Equally Safe Delivery Plan (Scottish Government 2017). The Government considered all their recommendations in the final drafting and gave feedback on how each and every one was being acted upon. The Minister for Older People and Equalities, the CoSLA lead and other people in power met with children and young people one year on, to celebrate their achievements and account for progress. See this section for evidence of impact…

The Everyday Heroes programme team developed an innovative way of researching through collaboration with 17 organisations, involving 125 children and young people, mainly young survivors, and surveying 439 more. This was through a tremendous effort from young and adult experts and children/young people’s support and advocacy workers in the projects involved. Read here about the value base which framed the whole process, an information comic devised by Everyday Heroes and Voice Against Violence experts and a short evaluation of how we all feel it went.

During the UN’s 16 Days of Action to End Violence Against Women the Cabinet Secretary in charge of implementing Equally Safe, Christina McKelvie MSP, will meet with some of the Everyday Heroes to discuss progress. Many other ‘people with power’ will join her, Councillor Kelly Parry, the Equally Safe lead for the Convention of Scottish […]