Eight years of helping young people find their voice

As My Rights My Say enters a new chapter, Service Manager at Partners in Advocacy, Sarah-Jane Crews, reflects on the achievements, challenges and lasting impact of a service dedicated to helping young people have their voices heard. 

Hello! 

My name is SJ and I am the service manager at Partners in Advocacy for the My Rights My Say service. I have worked for My Rights My Say (MRMS) for 7 years and I started as an advocacy worker, then a service co-ordinator and now I am the manager, I say I have MRMS in my soul and it’s true! When I am not working on MRMS and other services within PiA you will find me with my dogs, obsessing over Disney vlogs, parks and merchandise or combining my two loves of Disney and dogs and collecting loungefly bags of all the Disney dogs! 

I bet your wondering at this stage why am I even writing this piece and fair point, I will get back to MRMS. The advocacy part of the service has just been given another two years by Scottish Government through a process called a tender to deliver the service to young people, and I thought that might be a really good time to reflect on the service, it’s 8 years and all we have managed to achieve along with some highlights. 

MRMS has supported till the end of March 2026 – 1085 young people across the whole of Scotland in every local authority which is amazing. MRMS in case you don’t know is a service for young people to exercise their rights under the Additional Support for Learning Act (2004) as amended which extends education rights to young people from their 12th birthday if they have an additional support need. Additional support needs can be anything that means a young person isn’t able to access education in the same way as other young people – like Autism, ADHD, being a young carer, being care experienced, being bullied and the list goes on and on as every young person is unique. 

To reach 1085 young people supported we have a team of advocacy workers who work really hard to build up relationships with the young people, when advocacy workers work with Advocacy Partners (AP’s) – it is the young person who is in complete control, they decide how they want to see their advocacy worker, what they want to share and they are the boss in essence. We get to know our AP’s and take time to build up a relationship so that we can be a trusted adult who supports our AP with sharing their views in school and exercising their rights. We have a team of advocacy workers who are spread out across Scotland so there should be one close by any young person who needs them. 

Over the years we have worked really hard to make sure the service is known and respected throughout Scotland. We have worked hard with our partners at Children in Scotland, Enquire and Cairn legal to make sure local authorities know about us, what we do and what their responsibilities are. We have set up lots of different meetings and events to share the work that we do and to make sure the people who might need us, know about us. We set up letters for young people and their workers to send, set up easy to understand guides for young people to understand their rights and also had a lot of fun going to schools and doing sessions on Children’s rights. We have built up a knowledge and true understanding of the type of issues young people face and developed expertise in supporting young people to challenge these issues and supporting them while we do. 

I am so proud of the service, the workers and the young people. We have managed to support young people to be heard and to change things in their education and by extension their life that wasn’t working for them.

We have had young people who have went on to access university after being told they couldn’t attend mainstream classes due to their additional support needs, we have had young people who have went on to set up their own charities to support neurodivergent young people after being heard by our service and we have had young people who have been supported to challenge and change decisions about their education that was impacting their world. The highlight of all of this for me is that we are keeping going, there are so many more young people we have yet to help and support (and inform of their rights!), and eventually I hope we will get to a place where all young people know all of their rights and we are out of a job but until we get to there, we will continue to ensure that MRMS reaches all the young people who might need us and do our very best to support them and I hope I am here for the next 8 years to help that happen.

Click here to find out more about Partners in Advocacy.