Beau

Hello, my name is Beau. I'm in my final year of high school. I'm also a member of Scottish Youth Parliament for Edinburgh Central and the Convenor of the Health and Wellbeing Committee and Scottish Youth Parliament. I’m visually impaired due to a brain tumour I had since the age of 2. Within my role as a MYSP I feel that I've been able to engage well with the Scottish Parliament, however, there are few barriers that my constituents might face. One reason that my constituents have raised as to why it is difficult to engage with the Scottish Parliament is because of lack of knowledge about Parliament and the activities that take place. I went to one Private School in my constituency to talk about my role as an MYSP as part of their political course in their sort of kind of core PSE classes. Although it is great that these young people have had the opportunity this isn’t a universal experience. My school which is a public school and many others don't have this is part of their core learning at school and I really believe that it should be. A second way in which I find it difficult to engages is time. Young people, especially my age category, are extremely busy right now with applying to Uni, trying to do well in exams, trying to work in order to be able to afford the cost that come with Uni, doing extracurriculars work experience and volunteering work in order to make our applications stand out. This doesn't even include the mental effects that all this this is having on us. Young people are exhausted and really have to prioritise their time at the minute. So young people are unlikely to engage in Scottish Parliament unless it teaches them useful skills that they can use in the next phase of their life. Or unless they can actually see they are having an impact you need to bring it to young people as an opportunity rather than just saying we need your help. It needs to teach them something or make them feel as though their voice is being listened to. So I think it's very important to be transparent about how their voice is being heard and what the follow on actions are from that. A final thing that I think is a barrier is communication. There’s a lot of use of jargon and kind of complicated terms and abbreviations for things that young people just don't get. Em, a lot of MSYPs have raised this to me as an issue as well, eh, when being on meetings with other MSPs and engaging in Scottish Parliament there's a lot of jargon that’s used. The final thing that I wanted to raise is the impact of physical disability and illness on young people engaging in Parliament. So I've been unwell since the age of 2 and me and my peers have had multiple times where we’ve been in hospital for longer periods of time you’d like. So some of my friends have been in for months and this acts as a massive barrier to young people being engaged in Scottish parliament because there's not an alternative for them. So I think either having groups that go into hospitals potentially as part of like the hospital charity like a lot of hospital charities do kind of youth groups, even if MSPs engage with young people in that way. Or having an online option for young people who are hospitalised to be able to take part is a great idea. In terms of increasing knowledge as well I think advertising Parliament activities on social media that young people actually use so things like Instagram and Tiktok as opposed to Twitter because many young people that I know don't use Twitter and wouldn't look there to look at what's going on with Parliament. So I think having information about Parliament so that young people almost can't ignore it so that young people know what's going on and when through good kind of promotion of Parliament.

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