| YMCA Edinburgh has been working to make The Promise Scotland a reality for the young people, families and community we work with since the Promise was launched in 2020. The Promise aims to ensure that all children and young people across Scotland “grow up loved, safe and respected”. This seems like a sensible enough ambition doesn’t it, how hard could it be to achieve? If we look at the number of barriers to people experiencing this such as poverty, bias, lockdown , insecure housing , being care experienced, restricted access to resources and information we start to see that its not so straightforward. That’s why The Promise is so important, it helps us remain mindful of the changes we need to make across Scotland and the standards we need to consistently uphold and protect through its foundations of Voice, People, Care, Family and Scaffolding. Vision 24-30 was launched in June this year and to celebrate this YMCA Edinburgh will be looking at each foundation of the promise in a series of monthly blog posts, this month we will be looking at the foundation of Voice. Voice is “about ensuring the voice of children, young people, their families, principal caregivers and care experienced adults is prioritised. When the promise is kept, voice will always be heard and no decision will be taken about lives without clear, documented evidence of views being taken into account”(https://thepromise.scot/) This foundation and principle helps us to all look at and create social environments that support young people to advocate for themselves and systems that are best equipped to respond to what they are hearing. YMCA Edinburgh is proud to be part of that change and we seek out and welcome all feedback on how we can best meet the principles of Voice. Through this we have launched new activity groups based on feedback from our members, collaborated with different community activism groups to support their goals and looked at how systemic barriers can be removed. Voice promotes empowerment and asks services to think about how they can support people empowering themselves. This year the YMCA youth service worked closely with Bethany Christian Trust and the Cables Wynd Forum to ask the council to re-examine the decision not to replace the faulty, outdated lifts in Cables Wynd. Young people came together in a video to use their voice and tell the council directly how the malfunctioning lifts negatively affected their quality of life. This powerful statement helped to get approval for the lifts to be replaced. Most importantly the young people involved felt empowered and heard. The YMCA strategic plan aligns closely with the foundations and aim of the Promise. Part of our vision is to increase opportunities for community participation to shape the future direction of YMCA Edinburgh. The voice of members will inform service developments through a process of collaboration and we will work with them to increase opportunities for collaboration and decision making across the community. Participation and engagement is a supporting element of the Voice, in 2022 YMCA Edinburgh created a support and engagement service to uphold this. Through this we were able to work with people to help create meaningful opportunities for lasting change with our members Voice at the center such as our youth forum and our adult forum that will launch in 2025. The Voice promotes compassion being an essential part of conversations and the voice of young people being central to each conversation. Decisions made around care for young people will ensure they are “meaningfully and appropriately involved” and that they are heard. Essentially Voice asks all of us to ask questions and listen, a voice can’t be heard if there is no one to listen to it. Language needs to be clear and accessible including all records. Steps such as asking young people to get involved in policy reviews and drafting are part of this, the YMCA Youth Forum is helping us meet the Promise by shaping policy development and being involved in recruitment . YMCA believes in the power of young people and communities to promote and advance justice, peace, equity and human rights for all. |
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