Children’s Rights Report 2026 - 2029

Introduction

This is our first Children’s Rights Report published under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 which places a duty on public authorities, including the Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR), not to act incompatibly with the UNCRC requirements.  We are also designated as a listed authority within the legislation. This means that we are required to meet the reporting duty of listed authorities and report on actions we have taken and intend to take for the purpose of ensuring compliance with the duty not to act incompatibly with the UNCRC requirements. We aim to meet this duty through the publication of this report.

Who we are

We are the independent regulator of social landlords in Scotland. Social landlords are Registered Social Landlords (RSLs), housing associations and co-operatives, and local authorities that provide housing and homelessness services. 

We were established by Part 1 of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010 and are classified for administrative purposes as a Non-Ministerial Office.  This means we are independent from Scottish Government.

Our organisation is led by a Board of non-executive members, appointed by Scottish Ministers following an open public appointments process. The Board sets our strategic direction and is responsible for oversight of our aims, objectives and performance.

As of April 2026, we employ 53 members of staff (50 Full Time Equivalent). Our organisation is split into two Groups, each with a Director. Our Chief Executive and Directors form our Executive Team which is responsible for providing strategic management and leadership. Our Management Team supplements the Executive Team and is responsible for oversight of operational management. Our Management Team comprises the Executive Team along with our four Assistant Directors of Regulation and our Assistant Director of Digital.

Our role

The Scottish Parliament has set us one statutory objective:

“To safeguard and promote the interests of current and future tenants of social landlords, people who are or may become homeless, and people who use housing services provided by registered social landlords (RSLs) and local authorities.”

It also gave us statutory functions to achieve our objective. These are the things we must do:

• monitor, assess and report regularly on the performance of social landlords and the governance and financial health of RSLs;
• make regulatory interventions where appropriate; and
• maintain a register of social landlords.

We are a risk-based regulator, and we target our resources at addressing the issues that present the greatest risk to tenants’ and service users’ interests.

You can read more about our how we work and our current strategic priorities in our Strategy. Our Regulatory Framework explains in detail how we regulate social landlords. You can also watch a video about who we are and what we do.  We have also developed a range of information for tenants.

How we regulate

We expect landlords to meet regulatory requirements. This means that organisations need to be well-run, financially healthy and deliver good quality homes and services for their tenants and service users.

We do our work in four main ways. We:

• Gather and publish information in ways that tenants and others can use - this means we let tenants know how their landlords are doing so that they can speak with their landlords about performance and hold them to account. 
• Get assurance from landlords – this means getting landlords to tell us whether they meet the standards and what they will do to fix this if they don’t.
• Take action where we need to – this means we will use our legal powers to act, if we need to, to protect tenant’s and other service user’s interests.
• Carry out thematic work to look at specific areas of work – this means we may look into how a landlord is doing in one area that matters to tenants such as how it delivers its repairs service.  

Children’s Rights

What are Children’s Rights and what are our duties?

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) sets out the fundamental rights of all children and describes the specific rights that all children have, to help fulfil their potential, including rights relating to health and education; rest, leisure and play; equality and non-discrimination; protection from exploitation and the right to be heard. The Convention has 54 articles that cover all aspects of a child’s life. The UK ratified the UNCRC in 1991 and came into force in 1992.

Under the UNCRC, a child means “every human being below the age of 18”. A child has all the rights in the UNCRC until they are 18 years old.

Each of the rights enshrined within the Convention is interlinked and no right is more important than another.  Notwithstanding this point, the UNCRC requirements most relevant to our work and where we can make the most impact include:

• Article 3: The best interests of the child must be a primary consideration in all actions concerning children.
• Article 12: Children capable of forming their own views must be assured the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting them.
• Article 27: Every child has the right to an adequate standard of living, which includes access to secure housing.

Until recently, we had been required under part one of The Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 to publish a Children’s Rights Report on the steps we have taken to secure better or further effect within our area of responsibility of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). We have continued to meet these duties and published a Corporate Parenting and Children’s Rights Report in 2017, 2020, 2023 and 2025.

This requirement was superseded by The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 (UNCRC Act) which received Royal Assent on 16th January 2024 and was enacted on 16th July 2024. The Act is a landmark piece of legislation that incorporates the UNCRC into Scots law and empowers children and young people to claim their rights. The Scottish Government is the first devolved government in the world to directly incorporate the UNCRC into domestic law.

The intent behind the UNCRC Act is to deliver a proactive culture of everyday accountability for children’s rights across public services in Scotland. It requires all of Scotland’s public authorities to take proactive steps to ensure the protection of children’s rights in their decision-making and service delivery. The Act makes it unlawful for public authorities to act incompatibly with the UNCRC requirements as set out in the Act (compatibility duty). Children, young people and their representatives also have a new ability to use the courts to enforce their rights.

We are one of the 14 public authorities who are listed in the UNCRC Act.  This means that in addition to the compatibility duty mentioned above, we are also required to meet the reporting duty by publishing a Children’s Rights Report every three years.

The report should address the following four areas:

1. Action taken during the reporting period to ensure compatibility with the UNCRC requirements as defined by the Act.
2. Action taken to secure better or further effect of children’s rights.
3. Actions it intends to take in the next three-year reporting period to ensure compatibility with the UNCRC requirements as defined by the Act.
4. Actions it intends to take to secure better or further effect of children’s rights.

The reporting period is defined as:

• the period beginning 16 July 2024 and ending on 31 March 2026, and
• each subsequent period of three years.

We are required to publish both a standard report and a child friendly adaptation. The reports must also be submitted to Scottish Ministers.

Our Monitoring Role in relation to the UNCRC

Our Regulatory Framework requires local authority landlords, local authorities which provide housing services and RSLs to comply with legal duties and obligations incumbent upon them.

Organisations subject to the UNCRC requirements who act incompatibly with the UNCRC could breach the Regulatory Framework and engage our monitoring role.

RSLs are not specifically mentioned in the UNCRC Act. At the time of writing (Spring 2026) case law has not yet provided an authoritative ruling on whether RSLs are required to comply with the duties. Our current view is that RSLs are likely to be regarded by the courts as public authorities in respect of at least some of their functions and acts that fall within the definition of “housing services” and “housing activities” under the Housing (Scotland) Act 2010. This means that RSLs should therefore proceed on that basis and consider how best to ensure that they do not act incompatibly with relevant UNCRC requirements.

Local authority landlords are public authorities who are listed in the UNCRC Act. This means that in addition to the compatibility duty mentioned above, local authorities are also required to meet the reporting duty by publishing a Children’s Rights Report every three years and should include appropriate information concerning the authorities’ housing activities. As public authorities, the housing activities of local authority landlords also require to be compatible with the UNCRC requirements so far as relevant to housing and falling within the concept of “relevant functions”.

The Scottish Government has published guidance to support organisations to understand and fulfil their duties in relation to the UNCRC Act:

• Statutory guidance on Part 2 of the UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024
• UNCRC (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2024 - part 3: statutory guidance - gov.scot

We also recommend organisations seek their own independent legal advice if in doubt around their requirements and obligations under the UNCRC Act.

Our Work and Children’s Rights

We perform a range of functions which are covered by the duty to act compatibly with the UNCRC requirements and so we must act compatibly with the UNCRC requirements when exercising those functions.

Our approach is one of ‘progressive realisation’, meaning we will take steps to improve our work on children’s rights over time.

We are different in some important ways from many of the other public bodies who have UNCRC reporting responsibilities. We don’t provide a direct service, and our engagement is mainly with organisations that we regulate.  The actions that we take are a combination of targeted regulatory activities, awareness raising, information sharing and providing advice. We also collaborate with other organisations in this work wherever possible. Taken together these proactive steps help to ensure the protection of children’s rights in the delivery of our regulatory functions.

Children with certain characteristics, identities and/or experiences face an increased risk of not having their rights fulfilled. We know that children and young people who are homeless, who are Gypsy/Travellers and/or who are Care Experienced are more at risk of having their rights not fulfilled. And so, our work to monitor service quality, alongside our targeted, thematic work in areas such as homelessness and on Gypsy/Travellers, shines a light on issues that are important to children and young people.

Monitoring Service Quality

One core element of our work is to monitor all social landlords’ service quality against the Scottish Government’s Scottish Social Housing Charter. The purpose of the Charter is to help improve the quality and value of the services that social landlords provide. The Charter’s seven sections include equalities, housing quality and maintenance, neighbourhood and community, and access to housing and support.  The Charter supports the Scottish Government’s National Outcomes on Communities, Environment and Human Rights which describe the kind of Scotland the Scottish Government wants to see. Each year we publish reports about each social landlord’s performance against the Charter. Find out more about our role in the Charter.

We monitor social landlords’ service quality through our regulatory assessments, published analysis and thematic work. We do not focus our regulatory activities specifically on children, but the figures from the Scottish Household Survey demonstrate that around a quarter of the households living in social rented homes in Scotland are families with children.

Homelessness

As previously mentioned, through our regulatory work we also focus on homelessness to give us assurance that local authorities are meeting demand and providing help, advice and accommodation to vulnerable people who are or who may become homeless.

We know that there are significant numbers of households with children in temporary accommodation. Data from the Scottish Government’s Homelessness in Scotland: update to 30 September 2025 publication shows that there were 7,304 children associated with households assessed as homeless between April and September 2025, and that there were 10,480 children in temporary accommodation on 30 September 2025.  Data from the Scottish Government’s Homelessness in Scotland: 2024-25 publication also highlights that households with children spend longer in temporary accommodation than those without, 52% of households with children spent seven months or more in temporary accommodation compared with 40% of households without children. 

In early 2023 we published a Thematic Review of our work on the services provided by councils to help people experiencing homelessness. Over the preceding two years we had engaged with every council about their homelessness services.  We did this principally to allow us to focus on their response to the challenges in delivering these services during the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Our review found that councils have been making considerable efforts in very challenging circumstances to deliver effective services for people who are or have experienced homelessness, and a number have had success in moving toward an approach with rapid rehousing at its centre. They face three major strategic challenges in providing homelessness services:

• dealing with the significant numbers of people currently in temporary accommodation;
• maintaining a sufficient supply of appropriate temporary accommodation; and
• ensuring access to the number of permanent homes that are needed.

Some councils are finding it increasingly difficult to meet these challenges, and so to fully meet their statutory duties.  Our review found that there is evidence of increasing, and more widespread, breaches of statutory duties around the provision of temporary accommodation, and that some households with particular equality characteristics do not always receive a service that meets their specific needs.

Our review found considerable pressure on councils in the provision of homelessness services, and there are actions councils should and can take to respond to these challenges and to meet their statutory obligations; however, for some there is an emerging risk of systemic failure.

Our review concluded it is in this context that the Scottish Government may need to consider what further urgent measures it can take to support councils to respond to the immediate challenges they face in delivering services for people who are homeless.

In December 2023, we published a Statement which updated our thematic review. In this statement, we concluded that the risk we had identified had materialised in some councils and there is now systemic failure in the delivery of homelessness services in some areas of Scotland. We said that in in our judgement, the demands on some councils now exceed their capacity to respond and in others it soon will. We will continue to engage with the councils we believe are experiencing systemic failure. We are also continuing to engage with local authorities where we have identified the need for improvement in the delivery of homelessness services.  Information on this engagement is set out in published Engagement Plans for each local authority.

We have also had early conversations with the organisation The Rock Trust, with a view to becoming involved in the ‘Pathways from Care’ project, which will look at routes for Care Experienced young people to avoid becoming homeless.

Our approach to engagement on Children’s Rights

We reviewed a number of consultation documents carried out by other organisations as found on the Children & Young People’s Evidence Bank, collated by the organisation Children in Scotland. We also discussed approaches to consultation and engagement via some of the networks that we are involved in including the UNCRC Peer Support Network, hosted by the Scottish Government’s Children’s Rights Unit.

We also decided to carry out our own engagement with young people to help develop this report and asked the organisation Who Cares? Scotland to support us with this work. Who Cares? Scotland facilitated inclusive, trauma-informed consultations with 13 Care Experienced young people aged 12–24 in early 2026. Participants took part in supported group discussions designed to be safe, accessible, and voluntary.  Participants provided comments on a draft version of a joint Corporate Parenting Plan and Children’s Rights Report, as our original intention had been to publish a joint publication. 

The workshops explored the following key areas:

• An overview of the work of the SHR.
• Whether participants would like more detail on the actions listed within the ‘progress to date’ sections of the plan.
• Whether participants felt the SHR needed to provide further explanation of the categories used within the action plan. 
• Whether participants felt the format of the action plan was clear.
• Whether there were any additional actions participants would like to see included in the SHR’s planned work on Corporate Parenting and Children’s Rights.
• Preferences for future engagement mechanisms with children, young people, and those with Care Experience.
• The publication of a ‘Child Friendly Version’ of the document.
• The key UNCRC articles relevant to the work of SHR.
• Any other relevant or emerging issues.

Wherever possible we have incorporated the feedback from the workshop participants.  This includes the following:

• We decided to publish a separate Corporate Parenting Plan and a Children’s Rights Report to provide greater clarity around these distinct areas of work.
• We have called our ‘Child Friendly’ version of this report a ‘Summary Version’ to be more inclusive.
• We have recognised in this report that all UNCRC articles are equally important but that our work has more of an impact on Articles 3, 12 and 27.
• We have simplified the format of our action plan to make it more engaging.
• We have simplified the language in this report to make it more accessible and engaging whilst meeting our reporting requirements.

We offer our thanks to all the participants of the workshops and to Who Cares? Scotland for facilitating the discussions.

Our Work and Children’s Rights between July 2024 and March 2026

As well as the work set out above, we have also delivered on a range of other actions in relation to Children’s Rights.

• We updated and published a new Corporate Parenting Plan and Children’s Rights Report in April 2025.
• We updated our Complaints Training Pack for staff to include information on the Child Friendly Complaints Handling Principles and Guidance as developed by the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman in 2024. We have also adapted some of our internal procedures on complaints handling to ensure that we respond and handle complaints either raised by someone who is, or on behalf of someone who is under 18 years of age, using the child friendly principles and guidance.
• We linked with the organisation NHS Education for Scotland (NES) to share an online training course on Children’s Rights with our staff.
• As part of the programme of research of our National Panel of Tenants and Service Users, we explored the experiences and priorities of people who have used local authorities’ homelessness services. We published reports with service users’ feedback in 2024 and 2025.
• As part of our annual risk assessment, we considered Gypsy/Traveller sites and landlords’ compliance with the minimum site standards set by Scottish Government and their obligations in relation to fire safety. 
• We published a thematic review on Tenant and Gypsy/Traveller Participation in Scottish Social Housing.
• We reported on serious failings at some Gypsy/Traveller sites, following reports of serious concerns to us by residents and their representatives, and engaged with the landlords involved around improvements.
• We reviewed and updated our guidance and templates on equality impact assessments for staff in 2024 and now also consider Care Experience to be a protected characteristic. This means we now also consider the potential impacts of our strategies on children and young people (and adults) who are Care Experienced.
• We delivered bespoke face to face Equality and Human Rights Training to our staff. Staff are also required to complete mandatory online Inclusive Culture Training annually.
• In our Annual Assurance Statement Guidance, we asked RSLs to provide us with assurance that they had an effective approach to the collection of equalities information in 2023. This was also provided by landlords in 2024 and in 2025.
• We published a thematic review of the provision of British Sign Language services by social landlords that we worked on with the British Deaf Association.
• We presented information at our Tenants Together Scotland Liaison group in April 2025 so that the tenant representatives had a better understanding of our requirements around children’s rights.
• We were involved in the early discussions around developing the approach to and overseeing the “Ask and Act” duty proposed in the Housing (Scotland) Bill, now the Housing (Scotland) Act 2025.
• We met with our Scottish Government colleagues to carry out a UNCRC Reflection exercise in February 2026, looking at areas where we could strengthen our approach to children’s rights.
• We used the UNCRC Implementation Framework resource in early 2026 to further develop our approach to meeting the requirements of the UNCRC Act.
• We shared information on our Tenant Advisor recruitment in 2026 with organisations that support young people including Who Cares? Scotland which resulted in receiving a number of applications from people with Care Experience.
• We attended regular meetings with groups looking at the implementation of the UNCRC Act in Scotland. The groups included:
  • the UNCRC Strategic Implementation Board which supports the Scottish Government make the UNCRC part of Scots law, by putting in place support for organisations, children and young people, and their families to help ensure that children’s rights are made real.
  • the UNCRC Listed Authorities Peer Support Network, facilitated by the Scottish Government, which provides a supportive space where listed authorities can come together to share, learn and collaborate on joint priorities to embed a children’s human rights approach and support UNCRC implementation across their organisations.
  • The Child Rights Regulation and Improvement Action Group, facilitated by the Scottish Government, which has a particular focus on the role that regulators and scrutiny bodies can play in the implementation of the UNCRC Act.

Actions we will take over the next reporting period

We will be continuing with our core work that may have an impact on children and young people, as we have done over the past reporting period and is set out in  Our Strategy 2024-2027.  We will also be taking some specific actions in relation to our duties around children’s rights over the next three years and these are set out here.

Governance and Reporting

Many of the actions we take in relation to Children’s Rights are ongoing without a clear end date.  We monitor the implementation of this plan on a regular basis and report progress via our internal governance structures including to our Management Team.   We also provide updates to our Board to provide them with assurance on our approach to meeting our duties. 

We will publish a report on progress on our website on an annual basis.

Summary Version

In line with the requirements, we have also published a ‘Child Friendly’ version of this report. This can be accessed on our website. Please note that we have decided to call this a ‘Summary Version’, following feedback from our engagement with young people that this would be a more inclusive title.

Read the Summary Version of this report 

Further Information

Further information on our approach to Children’s Rights can be obtained by contacting us in the following ways:

Call us:  0141 242 5642

Email us: shr@shr.gov.scot

Mail us:

Scottish Housing Regulator

5^th Floor

220 High Street

Glasgow

G4 0QW