As the SNP’s much lauded, revolutionary Child Payment begins to widen the gap between levels in Scotland and the rest of the UK, the First Minister, John Swinney has announced £16 million for childcare services to help deliver his vision of a Scotland free from child poverty:
In a statement to Parliament, the First Minister set out the four priorities that will underpin the work of his government. He said eradicating child poverty would be his government’s single most important objective.
Over the next two years, the Scottish Government will provide additional funding to expand access to childcare services within six Early Adopter Community (EAC) projects.
The funding will allow expansion into to new communities, including in Fife and Shetland, and inform what childcare should look like for younger children. The investment will support the development of local childcare systems that are designed to meet families’ needs, with funding targeted at those who are most at risk of living in poverty.
Earlier today, the First Minister visited a breakfast club at Capshard Primary School in Kirkcaldy to see the impact of innovative school age childcare services which contribute to the eradication of child poverty and grow the economy, by helping parents and carers access the childcare they need to find and sustain good jobs.
Read in full at: https://www.gov.scot/news/eradicating-child-poverty-1/
Talking-up Scotland / Facts on NHS, Crime, ferries and everything else you can think of 
O/T Just to say as it’s the 4July the Murrel sentence will be coming out.
LikeLiked by 1 person
FANTASTIC NEWS
<
div>AND WORTHY OF GRE
LikeLike
Had a look through Gordon Brown’s latest opus: ‘Partnership to end poverty – summoning a coalition of compassion to get Britain through the poverty crisis.’
Here is its opening para: ‘Britain is beset by a hidden emergency, whose forgotten and voiceless victims include hundreds of thousands of children behind closed doors, in homes without heating, bedrooms without beds, kitchens without food – and even toilets without toilet rolls, bathroom sinks with no soap, and showers without shampoo. Long years of austerity have been followed first by a pandemic with a locked-down economy, and then by extraordinarily rapid rises in energy and then food bills.’
As others have noted, Brown is consistent in making no mention of the SNP Government’s Scottish Child Payment (SCP) in interviews – and not in the above 50 plus page policy document either – even though his focus in all these instances is the relief of poverty, the prime purpose of the effective SCP.
It’s not as if he lacks knowledge of what’s being done in Scotland: in his ‘Partnership’ document he refers readers to the introduction in Scotland of ‘a programme of supervised toothbrushing’! Perhaps a useful initiative but mentioning it only makes his determination NOT to mention the SCP all the more noteworthy.
Is it his Labour Party and his precious Union first and foremost – and arguably NOT those in poverty? Why not acknowledge the value of the SCP’s direct beneficial impact? His support for actions to address the poverty seem to be conditional on who is acting: Labour’s Bain Principle in play again is it?
But then his approach to relieving poverty seems to be based not on financing it through redistribution of wealth through tax but by encouraging commercial companies to make generous, charitable contributions as part of their corporate social responsibility. Are all those prominent in the Labour Party now ‘small c’ conservatives?
‘Labour in Name Only’ (LINO) gets more and more an appropriate term.
LikeLiked by 4 people
II’d rather see an independent Scotland where there were no children in poverty even if we couldn’t afford a nuclear umbrella.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nice one… The irony of Swinney visiting Brown’s old constituency under the umbrella of ” the eradication of child poverty ” is not lost – Brown avoiding any recognition of what SG has done continued in his recent UK ‘initiative’ over child poverty…. Pretty poor judgement on Brown’s part given most of England’s electorate are aware of it…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Frankly Bob, given the state of the media in Scotland, the question has to be asked, are the Scottish public aware of this benefit? The difficulties the S.G have in getting good news out are enormous, and I doubt it will be forefront on any news bulletins, especially the B.B.C.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I agree Alex, but suspect trust in the BBC among Scots has almost entirely collapsed, distrust has grown rapidly in England over the past few years, and that has spread beyond as the BBC’s creation of a webpage to portray tailored news to those outside has demonstrated their manipulative obsession.
eg – I’ve no idea where English forum members got their information, but it was very clear from discussions on child poverty they were acutely aware of what had been done in Scotland, and the aspirations SG held – Pa Broon’s earlier (Telegraph ?) article painting Kirkcaldy as having gone downhill under the SNP was torn to ribbons, and they were neither Fifers nor SNP voters…
LikeLike
MOST SCOTS PEOPLE IN SCOTLAND
now the westminster smokeboys
do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING FOR SCOTS FAMILIES
LikeLike