SCLD Chief Executive Bruce Adamson recently took part in Eurochild’s annual conference which brought together children and young people, civil society organisations, public authorities, academics and child rights advocates from across Europe. The conference focused on many of the issues that sit at the heart of rights-based systems: participation, inclusion, disability, mental health, deinstitutionalisation, digital safety, poverty, protection and the need for stronger public services.  

The programme was co-moderated by Bruce in his role as Vice-President of Eurochild with representatives of the Eurochild Children’s Council leading the introductory interactive discussion and later co-moderating the closing panel with senior representatives from the European Commission, Council of Europe, EU Agency for Fundamental Rights and Irish Government.  

Several workshops spoke directly to SCLD’s priorities in Rights. Equality. Inclusion.: human rights and law reform, independent living, health and wellbeing, and inclusive design of mainstream services. SCLD’s own priorities are shaped by people with learning disabilities, their families and supporting organisations, and focus on tackling discrimination, ending inappropriate institutional placements, addressing health inequalities, and ensuring mainstream services work for everyone.  

A workshop on Access to Justice and Effective Remedy for Social Protection, led by Professor Ann Skelton and Laura Marchetti of Leiden University, explored how legal frameworks, accountability mechanisms and effective remedies can make social protection systems genuinely rights-based and responsive to lived experience. That has a clear link to SCLD’s work on human rights, law reform and accountability, including the need for stronger routes to challenge decisions when people with learning disabilities are denied support, excluded from services, or left without effective remedy.  

The workshops on Sustaining Child Protection and Care Reform Through Policy and Practice, The local programme builder for local costed planning of care reform, and Concurrent Planning: a way to deinstitutionalisation in early childhood all focused on shifting systems away from institutional responses and towards family- and community-based support. That resonates strongly with SCLD’s call for independent living and an end to inappropriate hospital or institutional placements for people with learning disabilities in Scotland.  

The workshop on Strengthening Families, Preventing Poverty: Advancing Integrated Child Protection Systems in Europe examined how early intervention, integrated support services and family strengthening can help prevent poverty, reduce family separation and improve long-term outcomes. This connects closely with SCLD’s concern that people with learning disabilities and their families often face fragmented systems across health, social care, housing, education and employment support. As this previous SCLD blog made clear: if systems are fragmented, rights cannot be claimed; if participation is absent, rights are not shaping decisions.  

Participation was a strong thread across the programme. Future Voices: Now it’s our turn! Turning Children’s Voices into Policy Action focused on peer-led participation and practical ways of translating children’s voices into local policy and practice. From Children’s Voices to Action: Strengthening Trust in Child Protection Systems explored child participation as a way to build trust, legitimacy and responsiveness in protection systems. These sessions mirror SCLD’s own commitment to ensuring that people with learning disabilities are not just consulted, but supported to lead change through work such as Include For Good and other lived-experience-led initiatives.  

The conference also included sessions with clear links to SCLD’s work on inclusive communication and accessible services. The Including Me plenary explored how to create inclusive child-friendly documents with children, while the handbook Children at the centre, published by Eurochild and Terre des Hommes through the Daphne-CHILD programme to which Bruce is an advisor, sets out principles for meaningful participation, including that information must be accessible, methods must be adapted to children’s ages, abilities and communication preferences, and marginalised children, including disabled children, must be able to participate fully.  

The Daphne-CHILD handbook includes a project led by Asociación Síndrome de Down de Valencia on bullying and violence against children with Down’s Syndrome. The project involved children with Down’s Syndrome in design, implementation and evaluation, using accessible tools to support expression of ideas, interests and emotions, and describing children not as passive recipients but as co-creators of safer, more inclusive communities.  

A Human Library session on Inclusive Physical Activities for Children with Disabilities as a Community-Based Social Protection Measure also linked directly to SCLD’s interest in inclusive communities and mainstream services, while the session Do children’s rights change systems – or do systems change children’s rights?, led by Together Scotland, connected the conference back to Scotland’s own developing children’s rights landscape.  

Taken together, these sessions reinforced a message at the heart of both Eurochild’s work and SCLD’s mission: rights-based systems must be accessible, accountable, community-based and shaped by the people whose lives they affect.