Royal Caledonian Education TrustRCET were delighted to receive funding from Officers’ Association Scotland in 2018 towards our Youth Participation Programme.
This tri-service project aims to improve support and services for children and young people from Armed Forces and Veteran families living in Scotland was given the green light thanks to funding from ABF – The Soldiers’ Charity as well as Officers’ Association Scotland.
The project, launched officially in September of 2018, will run for 3 years and was informed by the success of a pilot series of mini-conferences or ‘Teen Talks’ across Scotland bringing together over 100 high school pupils to share their experiences and tell us about the challenges that they face.
Lack of stable education, struggling to make friends or keep in contact with friends, moving around, not seeing parents when on deployment, different education systems and lack of understanding from civilian peers and teachers – were just some of the many issues that children highlighted to us.
During our first year of the project we have so far engaged with over 100 young people from schools across Scotland. The feedback from these events has been hugely positive with young people telling us they want more opportunities to share their voices and experiences.
We are particularly interested now in identiying and encouraging participation from a range of groups of young pepole who may have different experiences than their peers for example officers’ children.
If you are an officers’ child or have a high proportion of officers’ children in your school then we’d love to hear from you. You can contact our Participation Manager Nina on [email protected] or by calling 0131 240 2224.