The first national Citizen Leadership conference took place on Wednesday 23rd April. People from across the country came together to discuss how to take more of a lead in the services they use and in their own lives.

The Principles and Standards of Citizen Leadership is a document that sets out how to make Citizen Leadership a reality. This brand new document was launched at the conference. The Principles and Standards of Citizen Leadership will be available soon on the Social Work Scotland website. We will put the link on this page as soon as it is available.

This was funded by the Changing Lives Team (Scottish Government). 

The User and Carer Forum performed a drama and gave a presentation to explain what Citizen Leadership means. Bill Ellis, from the Changing Lives team, also spoke. He said how much they support Citizen Leadership and the work of the User and Carer Forum. After that, people went into workshops to plan how to spread Citizen Leadership more widely. At the end of the day we looked at the main actions that people said were needed. There were a lot! One was to have training to build up people’s leadership skills and to show organisations how they need to change. Another was to let more people know about Citizen Leadership and get them to back the idea, especially politicians.

The delegates did not want the conference to be all talk and no action. They want to see changes happening quickly. We plan to pass on the views of people at the conference to the Scottish Government and ask what they will do to continue their support. We want people who use services, family carers, people who provide services, social workers and politicians all to know about the Principles and Standards of Citizen Leadership. 

We will be adding photographs from the conference and images of the graphics that were drawn on the day soon.