Martin Crewe, director of Barnardo's Scotland says the office of the children’s commissioner needs to be adequately funded to be effective

In 2002, 13-years-ago, the Committee on the Rights of the Child – the international monitoring body for the United Nations – called on every state to have an independent human rights institution with responsibility for promoting and protecting children’s rights.

One year later, the Scottish Parliament passed the Commissioner for Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2003.

This achievement was in no small part due to 10 years of tireless campaigning by organisations, such as my own, Barnardo’s Scotland. We recognised the need to have someone who could speak up for children and young people when they could not speak up for themselves and who would ensure that their rights, interests and views were central to discussions about their lives. We recognised that a child’s stage of development can make them vulnerable and were especially concerned about children with particular vulnerabilities, such as disabled children and children in care, whose rights were regularly denied and who were all too often marginalised and excluded from mainstream society.

We were acutely aware that because children and young people do not vote, their role in the political process was limited and that their views were not always taken into account.

There is no doubt that the profile of children’s rights has been raised since the commissioner’s office was established. As well as promoting children and young people’s views and helping ensuring they remain central to decisions taken about them, the office of the commissioner has highlighted important children’s rights issues – from the age of leaving care, to the impact of parental imprisonment on children, child trafficking, the age at which children can be held criminally responsible and the non-statutory use of stop and search on children and young people.

Nor have the two commissioners in the post to date baulked at raising difficult issues – the call to end the use of physical punishment in the home being a case in point.

If ever there was a right time for ensuring that the office of the children’s commissioner has teeth, then this is it

Martin Crewe

Children and young people recognise the value of having someone independent to highlight such infringements, but also want to take forward their own complaints. In May this year, the commissioner explored how and why children complain and the results showed that while they were often nervous about doing so, they recognised that taking forward complaints when they felt their rights had been infringed was really important.

They spoke about how this addressed power imbalances, built their confidence and gave them a sense of being listened to and respected. They also spoke about having a trusted adult who could help them work through their complaints.

Traditionally children and young people have been without a voice in complaints mechanisms and this was recognised by the Scottish Government and parliament when they passed the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act in October 2014.

This addressed a gap in the 2003 Act, extending the commissioner’s powers to allow him to take individual complaints for the first time. This means that children and young people across Scotland will now have an effective means of redress if their rights have been violated.

To do this effectively will, of course, require the office to be properly resourced and therein lies the rub. Despite this Act having been passed last October, the commissioner’s office is in limbo, with no certainty about how these resources will be allocated, unable to recruit new staff and awaiting a decision from the Scottish Parliament’s corporate body on its funding.

In times of austerity, when public services are being cut to the bone, when difficult budgetary decisions are being taken and when access to legal aid is being cut, giving additional resources to the children’s commissioner may seem to be something of a luxury.

However, it is exactly such times when children and young people need their voices heard most, as this is when their basic human rights are most vulnerable to threat. It is also in times such as these that we need a commissioner to speak out and challenge government decisions in both Holyrood and Westminster and why children’s rights need to be protected and reinforced rather than diminished and sidelined.

In short, if ever there was a right time for ensuring that the office of the children’s commissioner has teeth and is properly resourced to implement the new powers effectively, then this is surely it.

Martin Crewe is director of Barnardo's Scotland.