Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government values the benefits of outdoor learning for children and young people, which includes the specific role of outdoor education centres. We have supported outdoor education centres with £4 million of Covid emergency funding to prevent closures during the Covid pandemic, and we have provided guidance to encourage and support visits by schools.

Ministers, Government officials and representatives of outdoor centres continue to discuss a wide range of issues relating to the sector on an on-going basis.

The latest data available on take-up in 2020 shows that 98 per cent of expectant parents took up the opportunity of receiving a baby box. As of Friday 10 June 2022, we had distributed 220,788 baby boxes to families across Scotland. The independent evaluation of Scotland’s baby box programme, which was published in August 2021, highlighted the positive impact of the scheme on families, particularly first-time, younger and low-income parents. It showed 97 per cent satisfaction with the baby box and its contents, and 91 per cent of families reported financial savings as a result of receiving a box.

I agree with the member. It is fantastic that Ireland has decided to pilot its own version of the baby box, which has been informed by our approach in Scotland, and I wish the project every success.

Scotland’s baby box strongly signals our determination that every child, regardless of the circumstances, should get the best start in life by ensuring that every family with a newborn has access to the essential items and support that are needed in the first six months of a child’s life. I believe that universality is a crucial aspect of the success of the scheme in Scotland. As I said previously, there has been a 98 per cent take-up of the scheme, which helps to underpin our ambition that every child should have the best start in life.

Mitigating Tory cuts!

I hear the member’s criticism of the Scottish Government’s benefits; however, would she recognise that the UK Government’s benefit cap, the £20 cut to universal credit, benefit sanctions, the two-child limit, the rape clause and a decade of austerity are contributing to child poverty in Scotland?

I thank the committee for its inquiry report and for the opportunity to give evidence to its cross-portfolio inquiry. I am grateful for its focus on the health and wellbeing of children and young people and for the opportunity to speak about the Scottish Government’s work in the area.

My ministerial colleagues and I place huge importance on the wellbeing of our children and young people. They are our future and it is vital that we do all we can to support their healthy development, the relationships that they build and their overall wellbeing.

The committee’s report highlights the adverse impact of the pandemic on the health and wellbeing of our children and young people. As we recover from the pandemic, it is important that we get it right for every child and young person.

That is why improving the wellbeing of children and young people is one of the three key priorities that are set out in the Scottish Government’s “Covid Recovery Strategy: for a fairer future”. The strategy sets out key actions that we are undertaking to improve the wellbeing of children and young people, including action to support more active and healthier lives and targeted investment in our communities and schools.

We are also committed to delivering, over the course of this session of the Parliament, the £500 million whole family wellbeing funding that will enable the building of universal, holistic support services, which will be available in communities across Scotland and give families access to the help that they need, where and when they need it, for as long as they need it.

The wellbeing of children can be supported and promoted through the simple act of play, which gives our children the fun, excitement and friendship that can support healthy development as they grow through life. In 2021, I was delighted to see so many exciting projects and activities being funded by the £20 million get into summer programme, which offered enhanced opportunities for all children and young people to socialise, play and reconnect with their local communities and environments. I am pleased that a further £10 million has been invested in a targeted summer 2022 offer, which is designed to reach the school-age children and their families who can benefit most from access to free holiday childcare, activities and food.

Holiday childcare, especially over the long summer break, can be a cause of concern for families. We will build towards embedding a holiday childcare offer into a year-round school-age childcare system, which will help to reduce inequality of access to a wide range of activities around the school day and in the holidays.

Scotland is seen as a world leader in play as a result of the publication, in 2013, of the “Play Strategy for Scotland: Our Vision”. The strategy has helped to deliver major improvements in how Government and our partners deliver play opportunities in our communities.

We are reinforcing our commitment to the importance of play by providing £60 million to local authorities for playpark renewal over this parliamentary session. The funding will support the acceleration of local plans to improve play opportunities for all children in Scotland. Ten million pounds of that funding has already been allocated, underpinned by a set of national principles that ensure that we prioritise engagement with children and young people, in order to meet their needs.

We recognise the huge importance of our partners in the third sector who deliver vital work to support the wellbeing of thousands of children and families across Scotland. Since 2016, we have been providing £14 million of core funding to the sector via our children, young people and families early intervention and adult learning and empowering communities fund. Last year alone, 116 organisations received funding and supported more than 2.4 million people.

As recognised by the committee report, schools play a key role in supporting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, and we have continued to support them to deliver that vital role. We have committed to continued funding of £16 million per year to local authorities to provide counselling support services in all secondary schools in Scotland.

The personal and social education delivery and implementation group has already made good progress in delivering the recommendations of the personal and social education review. We remain committed to ensuring that the recommendations are delivered in full. That will help strengthen our excellent education system to help support our children and young people with the issues that they face as they grow up.

The Scottish Government is acutely aware that households across the country face a serious cost of living crisis—exacerbated by the UK Government’s approach to Brexit—which, in turn, will impact on the wellbeing of children and families across Scotland. Those on the lowest incomes are being hit the hardest, with many of those households likely to carry an increased burden of debt.

The recent measures that were announced by the UK Government are welcome, but they fall far short of what is needed to help the poorest households that are struggling now with the cost of living crisis. UK Government welfare cuts that have been imposed since 2015 have eroded the support for people who need it most. If those cuts were reversed, that would put an additional £780 million in the pockets of Scottish households in 2023-24, which would help to lift 70,000 people, including 30,000 children, out of poverty.

By contrast, the Scottish Government has declared that tackling child poverty is a national mission and has set out wide-ranging and ambitious action through “Best Start, Bright Futures: Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026”, which is our second tackling child poverty delivery plan.

Since publishing the plan in March, we have already doubled the value of our Scottish child payment to £20 per week for every eligible child under the age of six, and we have increased the value of a further eight Scottish social security benefits by 6 per cent, including our three best start grants. By the end of 2022, we will roll out the Scottish child payment for eligible children under the age of 16, and we will further increase the value of the payment to £25 per week for every eligible child. That will further enhance the already unparalleled financial support that we provide across the early years. By the end of this year, that support will be worth a maximum of over £10,000 for a family’s first child by the time they turn six; that is over £8,200 more than is available elsewhere in the UK.

Our plan commits to £10 million this year to mitigate the UK Government benefit cap as fully as possible within devolved powers—supporting up to 4,000 households with children. We have also committed to invest up to £81 million this year to deliver a new employability offer for parents, which is focused on providing the holistic wraparound support that they need to access and progress in work. Taken together, the actions set out in “Best Start, Bright Futures” could help to lift more than 60,000 children out of relative poverty in 2023-24.

We remain committed to incorporating the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law. In May, the Deputy First Minister set out in Parliament how we intend to address the Supreme Court judgment, bring an amended bill back to Parliament and secure royal assent. I am delighted that we can now move forward with legislation that will require all Scotland’s public authorities to take proactive steps to ensure the protection of children’s rights in their decision making and service delivery.

The health and wellbeing of children and young people is a key priority not just for the Scottish Government but for our whole society. I am passionate about that, and I will continue to work with everyone to ensure that Scotland’s children grow up healthy, happy, safe and loved and that they achieve their full potential, and I recognise that we need to support families to achieve that ambition.

The member will accept that I had only limited time. I referred in my speech to the whole family wellbeing fund, which is specifically for fulfilling the Promise.

I am keen to hear what representations Sandesh Gulhane has made to the UK Government on amendments to the Online Safety Bill that is currently going through Westminster, to which he referred.

As of January 2022, more than 111,000 children were benefiting from funded ELC—that is 97 per cent of eligible children.

Since 2017, the early learning and childcare workforce has expanded significantly. Since the ELC workforce expansion began in 2017, the number of graduates working in ELC with degrees relevant to the early years has increased by 52 per cent. That expansion meant that, by August 2021, every local authority in Scotland confirmed that they were able to offer 1,140 hours of ELC funding to all three and four-year-olds and the two-year-olds who needed that. That is great for the ability of families and children to access high-quality ELC that is delivered by a range of staff with different skills and qualifications, and it is a cornerstone of narrowing the poverty-related attainment gap.