Chamber and committees

We are working closely with The Promise Scotland and partners across local government, social justice, health and the third sector to design and deliver the funding. We are expanding our engagement to test ideas about where the funding will have the most sustained impact. We spoke earlier about having the voice of lived experience at the absolute heart of that. We need to understand and reflect the opinions of families—that is absolutely crucial—and the experiences of those who help us to deliver family support, to ensure that it has the impact that we want it to have.

We want an on-going process of learning and development over the course of the funding. The intention is not to set in stone the profile of the spending for the next four years; rather, we want to listen and learn about what can best support transformation and have the greatest impacts for families, and to allocate the funding accordingly.

It might be helpful to ask one of the officials who are with us to give a bit more policy detail on how we anticipate measuring the impact of the funding. I ask Gavin Henderson, who is deputy director of keeping the Promise, to expand on the answers that the cabinet secretary and I have given.

The independent evaluation of Scotland’s baby box, which was published on 13 August last year, highlighted the scheme’s positive impact on families, particularly first-time younger and low-income parents, with a 97 per cent satisfaction rate for the box and its contents and 91 per cent of families reporting financial savings, which is obviously very relevant to the committee’s inquiry.

The evaluation also highlighted key impacts, including saving money on essential items that are needed for the baby and learning about positive parenting behaviour, such as bonding with the baby through playing, talking and reading. Indeed, more than half the families reported reading to their baby earlier as a result of the baby box, which is obviously good for promoting attachment and positive parenting and for child development, particularly in speech and language. As we know, reading to younger children can help them to develop those important skills. I think that we have demonstrated through both the research and parental uptake of the baby box how valued it is.

I want to go back to the cabinet secretary’s point about our having to mitigate some of the impacts of decisions that have been made elsewhere on reserved benefits. In the past couple of weeks, we saw statistics about the number of children who have been affected by the benefit cap that the Westminster Government introduced a few years ago. In essence, their families do not receive benefits for more than two children. In my constituency, at least 215 children have been affected by that. The impact of it on family incomes is huge in one constituency in Scotland.

We must consider the effects of child poverty and what the Scottish Government can do. We are not powerless; we can do things to alleviate child poverty but, at times, it feels like we are fighting with one hand tied behind our back.

Yes, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee, convener. Overall, the work of the Scottish Government, with our partner agencies in health, happens through pre-conception care, antenatal care, perinatal care, the baby box, and the best start grants that are available. Those give our children and families the best start in life with the tools and opportunities to have healthy babies and to supported people when they become a family—when someone gives birth to a child.

One of the most obvious examples is the baby box, which the Scottish Government introduced in our programme for government in 2016. That is a universal measure. As of January this year, more than 200,000 baby boxes have been delivered across Scotland and have had an impact on 98 per cent of expectant parents, who took up that offer of support, clothing and information. That demonstrates how valued that particular intervention and offering is.

I move on to the expansion of early learning and childcare. In August last year, all local authorities across Scotland were offering 1,140 hours of free early learning and childcare. As the cabinet secretary mentioned, that offer is also made for eligible two-year-olds.

The Government is looking to expand that offer, which we hope will mitigate some of the effects of poverty on families, which the cabinet secretary also mentioned, including the ability to access work, training and education. In addition, our manifesto commitments include expanding the childcare offer by considering wraparound childcare, out-of-school childcare and holiday childcare. That will provide families with some of the support that is necessary to enable them to access services, education and work opportunities that will alleviate the poverty in which they find themselves.

Our vision is for all children and young people to participate in a range of progressive and creative outdoor learning experiences. As Collette Stevenson indicated, there are a range of commitments in the programme for government that relate to outdoor learning and school trips. During the course of this year, the Government will engage with key partners in local government and the outdoor learning sector to progress those commitments. That work will build on our Covid-19 outdoor education recovery fund, which provided an additional £500,000 for outdoor learning experiences last year, reaching many pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. A report from last year’s funding programme will be published soon.

I met representatives of the outdoor education sector on 9 November. The meeting was also attended by Councillor McCabe, the children and young people spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. Since that meeting, Scottish Government officials have held a series of meetings and further discussions with the sector. I am pleased to confirm that an additional £2 million in support funding will be provided to the sector.

I thank Liz Smith for her welcome of the additional funding and for her question. She will be aware that, in the 2021-22 programme for government, we committed to providing financial support to low-income families, in order to ensure that all children can participate in curriculum-related trips and activities—not only trips to residential centres but all forms of school trips that have a curriculum-related purpose. The programme for government makes a further commitment to ensure that secondary school pupils will be supported to go on at least one optional residential centre trip during their time at school.

I add my thanks to Rona Mackay for bringing the motion to the chamber. I also thank all those who have spoken in the debate for their important contributions. There were many considered contributions from across the parties about the impact of poverty and the need for a compassionate and trauma-informed approach. However, I am sure that we would all agree that the most powerful contribution was that from my colleague Karen Adam, who shared her personal experience, which was very moving to hear. I congratulate her on her bravery in being able to do that.

I whole-heartedly share the ambitions of the WAVE Trust’s campaign, and I am extremely grateful for the strength of the cross-party input to the debate. I thank the WAVE Trust and the many third sector organisations and public services that work tirelessly to campaign for and support children and young people. In particular, I thank all the children and young people—and adults—who have bravely shared their personal experiences of the impact of adverse and traumatic childhood experiences. Without a doubt, that has led to an increased understanding of ACEs and action to tackle them.

We have declared a national mission to tackle child poverty, calling on the whole of society to work with us to drive change. The Scottish Government is doing all that it can within our devolved powers to help families who are impacted by the pandemic and by the current cost-of-living crisis. We have repeatedly called on the UK Government to make fundamental changes to universal credit and to reinstate the £20 uplift that was made to it during the pandemic, in order to make it a proper safety net and to help struggling families.

In the year ahead, we are making £197 million available to support the doubling of the Scottish child payment to £20 per child per week, from April. That will immediately benefit 111,000 children under the age of six. Ahead of the full roll-out of the payment to all eligible children under the age of 16, we are also continuing to deliver bridging payments—which, this year, are worth £520—for as many school-age children as possible. In addition, we are investing in the expansion of early learning and childcare, free school meals and grants for school clothing, and we are increasing access to good-quality, affordable homes.

Those actions are crucial to addressing ACEs overall. We know that experiencing poverty and inequality increases the risk of other adverse experiences and that it impacts on people’s capacity to overcome such experiences.

Preventing and responding early to adversity and trauma are central to our long-standing national approach of getting it right for every child—GIRFEC. That multi-agency approach is currently being updated and refreshed, building on the valuable experience of practitioners and professionals across Scotland.

We continue to invest in our enhanced health visitor home visiting programme and the family nurse partnership programme, providing innovative support for first-time mums and their newborns. We have also invested more than £16 million in perinatal and infant mental health, as well as £16 million a year in secondary school access to counselling support.

Our £500 million whole family wellbeing funding will run over the course of this parliamentary session. The current priority is to work with partners to develop and test proposals for the initial £50 million spend. That will start from April. Quality holistic whole-family support is central to the wide-ranging actions that we are progressing to meet our commitment of implementing the promise by 2030.

As members know, the Scottish Government is committed to giving children’s rights the highest possible protection in Scotland. By incorporating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, we will be providing children with positive, nurturing experiences and ensuring that their safety and protection are enshrined in law. The UNCRC requires a clear and unified approach to protecting children from all forms of neglect, abuse, exploitation and violence, as well as to supporting parents, families and carers. Scotland’s approach is consistent with that principle. It is rooted in accessible and responsive universal services and in a holistic, proportionate approach to statutory intervention, while acknowledging that third sector expertise will often be key to reducing risk without stigmatising families.

That shift is made in the revised national guidance for child protection in Scotland, which we published in September last year. It integrates child protection with the GIRFEC approach, recognising that all children must receive the right help at the right time. Through the work of our national implementation group, local child protection committees and practitioners across services, we are working to ensure that robust child protection procedures are in place wherever there is a likelihood or a risk of a child coming to harm.

We are also taking action to help children who are affected by domestic abuse and by harmful parental alcohol or drug use, and we are currently creating a national bairn’s hoose model to provide a child-centred approach to delivering justice, care and recovery for children who have experienced trauma.

Before I end, I will briefly highlight the ground-breaking work of our national trauma training programme, which progresses the joint ambition of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and the Scottish Government to develop trauma-informed workforces and services across Scotland. It supports workforces in understanding the impact of ACEs and trauma and in responding in ways that support people’s recovery and prevent retraumatisation. I have seen the difference that can be made to the lives of children and young people by dedicated, compassionate practitioners who work in such trauma-informed ways, which foster safety, trust and collaboration.

The Scottish Government has also committed to developing during 2022 a national strategy on trauma and adverse childhood experiences. That will build on the types of cross-portfolio actions that I have outlined and will further support the local and national embedding of trauma-informed approaches.

Again, I thank Rona Mackay and all the members who have contributed to what has been an important debate, as well as all those who are working so hard to give children and young people across Scotland the best start. The Scottish Government is firmly committed to tackling child poverty and adverse childhood experiences, and I will continue to do all that I can, working in partnership, to ensure that children grow up safe, loved and respected, so that they can all reach their full potential.

As Mr Smyth will be aware, the Scottish Government provides school clothing grants to school-age children. That provision has increased over the years, and we will continue to support families who need our assistance to provide adequate school clothing.

Childcare providers have worked creatively over the pandemic to increase opportunities for outdoor learning, as evidence shows that the risk of transmission is reduced outdoors. To support that, we launched in December 2020 a £1 million outdoor clothing fund for providers of funded early learning and childcare as part of our wider winter support package. The fund was used to buy outdoor winter clothing for children who needed it most. A total of 1,040 childcare providers successfully bid for that funding, and children continue to benefit from the clothing this year.

We continue to work closely with the childcare sector to monitor the impacts of the pandemic and to keep the need for further financial support under review.

We are supporting the growth of outdoor learning and practitioner confidence in that area in a number of ways. During the pandemic, we funded a virtual nature school programme, which supported more than 2,000 practitioners and 40,000 children and family members to have quality outdoor experiences. We funded Inspiring Scotland through the early learning and childcare expansion to increase outdoor play and learning activities. We continue to add to our “Out to Play” practitioner guidance series, and the national practice guidance “Realising the Ambition” is also supporting practitioners to deliver more outdoor play. We will work with practitioners to develop strong communities of practice.