For children with additional support needs, listening is central to Getting it right for every child. But meaningful participation requires more than asking for their views.

Young people should be supported to express themselves in a way that works for them. Their views should be taken seriously, considered during decision-making and reflected in the support they receive.

Most importantly, they should be able to understand whether their contribution made a difference.

This distinction between hearing a young person and acting on what they say is particularly important in education, where decisions about additional support, school placements and learning environments can have a lasting effect on a young person’s life.

What is My Rights, My Say?

My Rights, My Say is a national service that helps young people aged 12 to 15 with additional support needs exercise their rights under Scotland’s additional support for learning legislation.

The service brings together advocacy, legal representation, independent support and help to understand educational rights.

According to a recent Children in Scotland article reflecting on eight years of the service, My Rights, My Say supported 1,085 young people across all 32 Scottish local authority areas between its launch and the end of March 2026.

The young people supported by the service have a wide range of experiences. Additional support needs can arise from autism, ADHD, bullying, care experience, caring responsibilities and many other circumstances that affect a young person’s ability to access education in the same way as their peers.

Our article on supporting children with additional needs through GIRFEC looks at how schools and families can work together on this.

The service demonstrates what meaningful advocacy can look like when it is built around the individual young person.

Giving young people control over the process

A key feature of the My Rights, My Say advocacy approach is that the young person remains in control.

Young people can decide how they would like to meet their advocacy worker, what they want to discuss and which views they want communicated. Time is taken to build a relationship so the advocacy worker can become a trusted adult while remaining guided by the young person.

This matters because participation cannot be reduced to a standard form or a single conversation, especially for young people with additional support needs.

Some young people may feel comfortable speaking during a meeting. Others may prefer to write, draw, use visual resources, record a message or share their views through someone they trust.

A rights-based approach does not ask every child to communicate in the same way. It creates different routes through which every child can participate.

What does the UNCRC say about a child’s voice?

Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have the right to express their views on matters affecting them and to have those views given appropriate weight.

This does not mean children must make every decision. It means adults must provide suitable opportunities for them to contribute and must take what they say seriously.

Children also need enough accessible information to understand the issue, the available options and the possible consequences. Without that information, being asked for a view can become a token exercise rather than meaningful participation.

Children should never be pressured to express an opinion. However, when they want to contribute, communication needs, disability, age or assumptions about capacity should not become reasons to exclude them. This is especially important for children with additional support needs, who may need extra time or different methods to share their views.

How does this connect with GIRFEC?

GIRFEC is built around placing children, young people and families at the centre of the support they receive.

The child’s voice should therefore influence every stage of the GIRFEC process, including assessment, planning, review and decision-making, particularly for those with additional support needs.

This is closely connected to several SHANARRI wellbeing indicators:

• Respected: The young person’s views are actively sought, recorded and taken seriously.
• Included: Barriers to participation are identified and addressed.
• Responsible: Young people are supported to contribute to decisions in ways appropriate to their age and understanding.
• Achieving: Educational support reflects what helps the individual young person learn and progress.
• Safe: Young people can raise concerns without fear of being ignored, blamed or treated unfairly.

Recording a child’s views within a plan can provide useful evidence. However, the record should show more than the fact that a conversation happened.

It should explain what matters to the child, what they would like to change and how their views affected the agreed actions.

From consultation to influence

There is an important difference between consultation and influence.

A young person may attend a meeting, answer questions and have their comments entered into a record without having any meaningful effect on the decision.

When this happens repeatedly, young people may understandably conclude that there is little point in speaking.

Professionals can help prevent this by creating a clear link between participation and action. This may involve:

• explaining what decisions can be influenced;
• giving the young person time to prepare;
• offering different ways to communicate;
• checking that their views have been understood correctly;
• recording their views in their own words where possible;
• explaining how those views were considered;
• identifying any action taken as a result; and
• providing an honest explanation when the final decision differs from what the young person wanted.

Participation should not promise that every request will be agreed. It should provide confidence that every contribution will be taken seriously.

The value of independent advocacy for additional support needs

Some young people may find it difficult to share their honest views with the professionals or family members involved in their education.

They may worry about upsetting someone, being misunderstood or experiencing negative consequences. Meetings may also involve unfamiliar language, several adults or decisions that feel overwhelming.

Independent advocacy can help address this imbalance.

An advocate can help a young person understand their rights, explore what they want to say and communicate their views without replacing their voice. This can be particularly valuable for young people with additional support needs, those who are care-experienced and those who do not feel confident challenging professional decisions.

The experiences shared by My Rights, My Say show the potential impact. Young people have challenged decisions affecting their education, returned to learning environments that better meet their needs and progressed towards opportunities that had previously appeared unavailable to them.

Questions for professionals

Organisations working with children and young people with additional support needs should consider:

• Are young people given accessible information before being asked for their views?
• Can they choose how, when and where they communicate?
• Do our records preserve the meaning of what they said?
• Can we demonstrate how their contribution influenced the decision?
• Are young people told what happened after a meeting or consultation?
• Do staff understand when independent advocacy may be helpful?
• Do young people themselves feel that participation is meaningful?

Listening should lead somewhere

Scotland has strong commitments to children’s rights, participation and child-centred practice. The challenge is ensuring those commitments are consistently experienced by young people, including those with additional support needs.

My Rights, My Say provides a valuable example of what can happen when young people are given information, trusted relationships and genuine control over how their views are communicated.

Listening is essential. But listening alone is not enough.

The real measure of participation is whether young people, including those with additional support needs, can see that their voice was understood, respected and capable of shaping the decisions affecting their education and their future.