Fighting child poverty. UNICEF ranks child-wellbeing in the UK as worse than all our nearest neighbours and levels of child poverty are a national disgrace. Compared with 2010, the UK Government has cut pregnancy and child-related benefits across the UK by £1.5 billion per year and the Institute for Fiscal studies forecasts a massive increase in child poverty in Scotland, with up to 100,000 more children living in poverty in 2020 than in 2012. We will continue to campaign against benefit cuts and push to fund health visitors and midwives to work with families to claim all the financial support they are entitled to. The Healthier, Wealthier Children project in Glasgow helped parents, the majority of whom were lone parents, gain an average of £3,000 in financial benefits over a year and a half. We support the Getting It Right For Every Child approach to child wellbeing and policies to give children a healthy start in life.
Improving early years education. Green MSPs will help tackle educational inequality at the earliest stage by working with local authorities to deliver meaningful access to a GTCS-qualified teacher in every nursery and 20 hours early-years education per week. Greens will focus on delivering high quality early years education that is child-centred and flexible enough to be useful for parents who work or study part-time. We recognise that nurseries also play a vital role in tackling women’s underemployment and access to education, and we support efforts to strengthen such support.
A compassionate care system. Scotland’s young people in care need a system of support based on compassion and care, not just risk-averse protection. Their voices must be central to determining the kind of support they need. All young people should have a planned, supported transition out of the care system, be supported in education and have a right to return to care if needed. The care system must be adequately funded to ensure help is pro-actively available before a crisis in a young person’s life develops and we will support ways to provide financial support to kinship care families at the beginning of a placement. Scottish Greens believe there should be parity of support, based on need, for all care leavers whether they are looked after at home, in kinship care or in rented accommodation.
