The Scottish Government

« Previous | Contents | Next »

Listen

Social Justice ...a Scotland where everyone matters - Annual Report 2002

Every Child Matters

Our Vision

A Scotland in which every child matters, where every child, regardless of their family background, has the best possible start in life.

The challenges facing children

• Children living in poverty and disadvantage risk missing out on the opportunities and the quality of life that they deserve as a child, and also achieve poor outcomes later in life, which can impact on their own children and sustain cycles of poverty. ¹²
• Children who grow up in poverty tend to have lower expectations about the opportunities for their future.
• Children growing up in poverty are more likely to have lower educational attainment.
• Children who experience poverty are more likely to have lower self-esteem, play truant and expect to leave school early. ¹³
• Children growing up in low-income households have greater health problems.

Our long-term targets are to:

• Defeat child poverty in Scotland within this generation.
• Ensure that all children in Scotland are able to read, write and count to a level appropriate for their ability on leaving primary school.

Every Child Matters - case study

Louise Hawkins and her
baby Zack

When Louise Hawkins was seven months pregnant with her second child, her husband, Neil, lost his job.

With a daughter under 2, and another baby on the way, it was a difficult time for the couple. But thanks to the Best Fed Babies project - set up and run by the Blantyre and North Hamilton Social Inclusion Partnership (SIP) - they at least knew that they would get help with buying groceries.

Best Fed Babies is a scheme which offers mothers-to-be ?50 a month to spend in Asda on healthy food, for up to six months during pregnancy. For mothers who decide to breastfeed, the vouchers continue until the baby is three months old.

"It was a great help," says Louise. "Neil is a good cook and he used some of the vouchers to buy vegetables to make soups. Because he'd lost his job he was at home and had the time to do it. He's got another job now, though."

Almost 140 mothers-to-be in Blantyre and North Hamilton have so far signed up to Best Fed Babies. "It was set up as a response to the high number of low birth-weight babies in the area," explained Elaine Little, Development Officer at the SIP. "The scheme offers mothers and babies practical help during those vital months. Health professionals believe that birth weight is an early predictor of health in later life - an acceptable birth weight can ensure adequate maturity of metabolic and immunity systems, as well as influence early learning and development."

Louise's baby, Zack, weighed a very healthy 9.6 lbs when he was born in February this year. Although breastfeeding hadn't come easily when she'd given birth to her daughter Chloe two years ago, Louise was determined to give it another go with Zack. "With Chloe I tried for nearly a month," she says. "With Zack, the vouchers encouraged me to keep breastfeeding. It gave me an incentive to keep trying. And vouchers got posted out at the same time every month so you could rely on them."

This time round, Louise managed to keep breastfeeding for 15 weeks. Not surprisingly, her midwife, David Cunningham, was delighted with her progress. "You need to breastfeed for four to six weeks to get the benefit," says David, who is the community midwives' team leader in the area.

While he is optimistic that Best Fed Babies will be a success, particularly by encouraging mothers to breastfeed for longer periods, David admits that persuading women to breastfeed who wouldn't normally consider it, is not an easy task. "There's a stigma attached to breastfeeding in some families. It's to do with people's upbringing and their background. It's a cultural thing," he says. "Also, breastfeeding can worry some mothers because they don't know how much milk their baby has had."

Around 250 women become pregnant each year in the SIP area, with 11% of babies curently being born at weights under 2.5 kg (5.5lbs) - almost double the Lanarkshire average of 6.4%.

Best Fed Babies also gives mothers-to-be an information pack containing advice on foods to avoid, such as liver, and foods containing folic acid, such as beans and pulses, which is vital for the growth and health of all the cells in the body, particularly in the early stages of pregnancy. And mothers who breast-feed are offered support through Breast Feeding Buddies groups run by specially-trained health professionals.

Best Fed Babies was officially launched at Asda in Blantyre in January this year by Deputy Minister for Health and Community Care, Mary Mulligan, and Scottish Food and Health Co-ordinator, Gillian Kynoch.

Best Fed Babies is funded mainly by Blantyre and North Hamilton Social Inclusion Partnership and Lanarkshire Health Board, with significant input from Asda, South Lanarkshire Council and Lanarkshire Primary Care and Acute Hospital Trusts.

What we are doing

Jobs

• We are supporting the UK Government's New Deal initiative. In Scotland, at least 18,100 jobs have been gained through the New Deal for Lone Parents (NDLP), among 15,900 individual lone parents. Over 38,000 lone parents have agreed to participate in the programme. NDLP is now one of the largest new deal programmes which will lead to a reduction of the number of children living in workless households.
• The main route out of poverty is through work, and the UK Government's modernisation of the tax and benefit system complements the work we are doing to make work pay for many families. Approximately 125,000 families in Scotland are in receipt of Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC), boosting their earnings by on average ?81 per week, and making work pay. 78,600 of the families in receipt of WFTC are lone-parent households.
• Through the childcare tax credit, families on low-income are receiving financial support for their childcare costs. There were 16,700 awards of WFTC with Childcare Tax Credit as at May 2002. ¹⁴ The average amount paid for the childcare component was ?37 per week.
• Childcare provision has been expanded to increase the options open to parents, particularly lone parents, to allow parents to return to work. We are investing in childcare and pre-school education. We have a commitment to provide out of school places for 100,000 children by 2003 and 53,700 places were created by September 2002.

Care & Education

• We are investing in supporting lone parents into college through providing additional support for their childcare costs and needs. In the academic year 2001-02, nearly 1,600 higher education students who are lone parents benefited from a 1,000 childcare grant. The interim evaluation of this grant shows that 79% of lone parents claiming this grant, are entering higher education so they can support their children.
• 96% of 4 year olds and 85% of 3 year olds now receiving grant funded pre-school education; as the provision is non-compulsory, we would not expect all children to take up places, and this rate is fully meeting parental demand.
• The Childcare Strategy - continued investment to supply and expand affordable, quality childcare.
• Sure Start Scotland is working for the families who are under additional pressure, targeting a range of support on deprived and vulnerable children from 0-3 years. We have met our Programme for Government commitment to reach at least 5,000 extra children through our support for Sure Start Scotland.
• We are investing to support the integration of children's services across local authorities, NHS Boards and the voluntary sector. Following the Scottish Budget enhanced support will be available in 2004-06.
• New Community Schools have the twin aims of raising achievement and promoting social inclusion. They are at the forefront of providing integrated services for children and their families. We have piloted the approach in 430 schools. From 1 April we are rolling out this approach across Scotland with the aim of every school adopting the New Community School approach by 2007.

Health

• We have launched the Scottish Health Promoting Schools Unit to support all schools in becoming health promoting schools. This includes sport through the Active Primary Schools programme and School Sports Co-ordinators programme.
• Through the Health Improvement Fund we are investing to redress the inheritance of too many Scots suffering poor health and dying too young. Many services for children have been supported through the fund, such as fruit for pre-school children, family centres, and breakfast clubs.
• We have consulted on the interim findings of the Expert Panel on School Meals. This set out a series of recommendations to set standards for the nutritional content of school meals, eliminate any stigma attached to taking free school meals and to improve the presentation of school meals with a view to improving general take-up.
• To help improve oral health in children we introduced the distribution of a free toothbrush and toothpaste to all children at the age of eight months and targeted distribution to pre-school children aged 1-3 years in areas of deprivation.
• We have also introduced a dental decay prevention scheme for all 6 and 7 year olds in Scotland who are registered with a general dental practitioner.
• We are in the sixth year of supporting the Scottish Diet Action Plan and are providing support to improve the diet of Scotland's people.
• As part of our commitment to the promotion of breastfeeding throughout Scotland and towards our breastfeeding target, we are funding and supporting the Scottish Breastfeeding Group and the National Breastfeeding Adviser who actively promotes breastfeeding.

Housing

• The ballot result in favour of the transfer of Glasgow City Council's housing stock to the Glasgow Housing Association will result in better quality housing. This will mean better health outcomes for children, and an improved environment for them to grow up in.
• We have made funds available to the 15 local authorities making the highest use of unsuitable B&B accommodation to provide alternatives for homeless families.

What we will do

• We recognise that people from deprived areas face barriers to securing work. To help people in deprived areas into work, we will fund childcare as part of a package of intensive employment support. This will help towards our long-term target of defeating child poverty and our milestone for reducing the number of children in workless households by getting parents back into training and work.
• We will continue to work to improve the diet of children, particularly those on low-incomes, through the use of the Health Improvement Fund. Dietary improvement for children will also be developed as we take forward the recommendations of the Expert Panel on School Meals.
• Breakfast is the key meal of the day, and the Executive is committed to supporting and expanding breakfast services, particularly for vulnerable and deprived children.
• From April 2003, the Working Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit will replace the current tax credit system to build a seamless system of financial support for children. The Child Tax Credit will build on the foundation of universal Child Benefit. Support for working adults who face disadvantage either because they are in low-income households or have a disability, will be provided through the Working Tax Credit.

Trend

Improvement: 14% of dependent children are living in workless households in 2002 compared with 19% in 1997- the baseline year.

Chart 1: Percentage of dependent children in workless households

Source: Labour Force Survey, Office for National Statistics
Note: Dependent children defined as those aged 0 - 15 and those aged 16 - 18 in full-time education

Trend

Improvement: The proportion of children in relative low income households was 30% in 2000-01. In absolute terms (measured against 1996-97 low-income threshold uprated to remove inflation) the proportion of children in low income households is down from 34% to 21%.

When considering the information on the range of measures that describe income distribution, our broad conclusion is that the proportion of our children living in relatively low-income households has decreased since the baseline year of 1996-97, but has remained fairly constant since 1997-98. This must be set against the fact that incomes have been growing year on year, and the median income has increased by 14% since 1996-97. Good progress in raising incomes within households is evident because the proportion of children in low income households (in absolute terms) has fallen significantly since 1996-97.

We have worked with the Department for Work and Pensions to improve the methodology used to calculate low income statistics, and are now able to report estimates of the number of children in low income households. The latest figures reveal that there are around 230,000 children living in absolute low income households (after housing costs), compared to 380,000 in 1996-97. In relative terms, there are around 320,000 children currently living in low-income households.

Milestone 1 and 2 are inter-linked. Reducing the proportion of children living in workless households, means providing routes for households to increase their incomes and ultimately make inroads on the proportions of children living in low income households.

Chart 2: Proportion of children living in households below 60% of the median GB household income

Source: Households Below Average Income: Department for Work and Pensions

Trend

Improvement: Since 1999-00 there have been improvements across the board. There is an increase in the number of pupils achieving minimum levels in each subject. Girls continue to outperform boys, although both have increased at a similar rate.

Chart 3 : Percentage of pupils attaining national test levels ⁵

Source: National 5-14 Attainment Levels: Scottish Executive

Trend

Improvement: the proportion of children attending a pre-school facility has increased for 3 year olds but is fairly static for 4 year olds, where participation is almost 100%.

Chart 4: Participation in pre-school education

Source: 2000/01 Scottish Executive Pre-school Education Grant Scheme, 2001/02 Local Authority

Trend:

Smoking: Improvement on baseline figure.

Low birth weight: No change. The percentage has remained around 2.5%. Female babies are more likely to be low birth weight than males.

Breastfeeding: No change. Still around 35%. A continuing increase in the percentage of women in the most deprived areas breastfeeding.

Dental decay: not available until 2003.

Chart 5a: Healthy start indicators

Source: Information and Statistics Division: National Health Service in Scotland

Chart 5b : Percentage of 5 year olds free from dental caries

Source: Dental Health Services Research Unit: University of Dundee

Trend

We are now collecting information households with children, and the number of children, living in temporary accommodation. The number of households with children living in bed and breakfast accommodation is very low at around 7%. We do not have figures to show the situation prior to funding being available to local authorities to provide alternative accommodation.

Chart 6: Number of households in temporary accommodation

Source: Scottish Executive

« Previous | Contents | Next »