No exploitative or titillating images for this one. I’ll leave that to the Express or the Mail.
The MSM have gleefully jumped on the news:
Researchers at the University of Glasgow found claims that handing expectant parents around £160 worth of baby products, in a box that can double as a makeshift crib, had not saved lives as SNP ministers had claimed it would.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/09/sturgeons-baby-box-policy-failed-to-improve-child-health/#:~:text=Researchers%20at%20the%20University%20of,ministers%20had%20claimed%20it%20would.
Leaving aside a strong feeling that GU is a strongly Unionist and, indeed, Atlanticist institution, the above research, by Social Science staff, has a fundamental flaw, in that it simplifies a complex event with multiple causes and tries to suggest that flatlining infant mortality reveals proof of one factor, the apparent inability of just one factor on its own, the SNP baby boxes scheme, to maintain the longer-term reductions in infant mortality.
This is barely less stupid than the English research in 2017 claiming that the boxes were a fire risk.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is clear and seems to know a bit more about the complexity of infant mortality than these GU social scientists:
Infant mortality rates across all UK countries have declined markedly over the past 40 years. However, progress has slowed over the past 20 years, particularly compared to other European nations…The great majority of neonatal (first month) deaths are due to perinatal causes, particularly preterm birth, and are strongly related to maternal health.
https://stateofchildhealth.rcpch.ac.uk/evidence/mortality/infant-mortality/
Maternal health and associated baby health are the most influential factors and are clearly affected by the level of poverty in which expectant mothers must live. Those most disadvantaged have been living for more than a decade under Tory austerity policies which have inevitably weakened them.
So, it is possible that the baby boxes have helped to stem what might have been a decline rather than a flatlining in infant mortality. I make no such claim because, like the GU researchers, I don’t have enough evidence.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
That GU found no direct correlation is unsurprising, that Daniel Sanderson of the Telegraph seized ONLY on THAT observation to achieve his monthly “bash the SNP” target is equally unsurprising, but it does rather expose the myopic mindset of the audience the Telegraph purports to serve.
– Is it “a waste of money” giving new parents a little bit of a helping hand, do they begrudge a measly 160 pounds ?
– Is passing comment on “potentially” affecting “infant mortality” to be held as gospel because it came from a Scottish politician ?
How about it’s a “Once in a generation opportunity” every single day in Scotland’s maternity wards ?
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Telegraph holding company up for sale. Barclay will not pay the divorced wife £100,000. Contempt of Court. Tax evaders.
Baby boxes are appreciated. Unlike the Tory Press. The Tories on the way out. Especially in Scotland.
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your conclusions could very well be correct, for poverty is affecting life expectancy in other age ranges.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/10/rising-number-vulnerable-women-dying-early-north-east-england-report
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I recall the bile with which BBC Scotland and, Kaye Adams in particular, reacted when the baby box scheme was introduced. We had the ‘fact’ that when a blow lamp was held against a baby box it caught fire and so was ‘potentially LETHAL’. We had the cardboard box ‘expert’ from England who had clealy never heard of baby boxes invited to sneer at them. And most of all was the sheer anger in Adams’ voice throughout the programme as she invited callers to condemn baby boxes.
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