Scotland can give children a healthy start to life:
Scotland can give children a healthy start to life:
Fight child poverty. Green MSPs will fight to ensure nobody who is pregnant is poor, cold or hungry. We will push to expand the Sure Start Maternity Grant to increase payments, include second children, and extend eligibility where possible to help provide financial stability for pregnant mothers at risk of poverty. We will fund health visitors and midwives to work with families to claim all the financial support they are entitled to. A similar project in Glasgow, Healthier, Wealthier Children, helped parents gain £3 million in financial benefits.
Healthy pregnancy. We will push to grow the network of community-based projects to help parents have the healthiest pregnancy possible and support to raise children. Abolishing Employment Tribunal fees will help tackle workplace discrimination related to parental leave and help everyone exercise their maternity and parental rights at work.
Child friendly society. Greens MSPs will focus on creating a child-friendly society. We will support programmes aimed at providing young people with confidence and self-worth and we support campaigns to reduce stigma and social pressures on children. We will support action on identifying child mental health issues early and addressing child trauma, bereavement and loss. Tackling child poverty and the impact of Westminster benefit cuts on the people they have put at risk, will be top priority for Local Authorities and Community Planning. This includes disabled people, refugees, women and their children.
Healthy habits. Healthy eating and active lives start from an early age. Greens will support local authorities to provide free fruit, practical food education and work towards free school meals for all primary pupils. We will work with local authorities to create safe and exciting outdoors spaces – more green spaces, more walking and cycling routes, accessible sports centres and more access to wild land.
Tackle food promotion. The way food is marketed must also change to reduce obesity. The food system focuses on selling sugar and fat because the profits are greater. Greens will push for a levy on retailers and caterers who have multiple outlets. A levy would aim to discourage the promotion of unhealthy foods. It would hit companies whose sales failed to meet nutritional targets and encourage the supermarket chains, who are the source of most of our food, to become much healthier places to shop. Greens will also support campaigns to ban price-promotions on sugary foods and to end unhealthy food and drink advertising aimed at young people.
