Kirsty at 10: Fragile hope for a better future

It’s 4.30pm, well over an hour after school has finished. Caley hurries across the deserted playground of her daughter’s school and heads for the main door. She spots Kirsty through the glass. The 10-year-old is sitting on a chair outside the school office, kicking her heels. Caley squints at her: is she singing? She smiles in spite of herself. Poor jannie. Hope he likes Taylor Swift. 

The janitor, Mr McCombie, buzzes her in. At least he’s still smiling, thinks Caley. Kirsty runs to Caley and wraps her in one of her customary bear hugs. Her anxious face peers up into Caley’s. “How’s gran?”

“She’s OK but we’ll need to go up to the hospital,” replies Caley, apologising to Mr McCombie and ushering Kirsty out into the windy grounds. “You can eat this on the bus.” Caley hands

Kirsty a paper bag from the café where she works: a yum-yum. 

She knows Kirsty will miss these wee treats if she has to give up work, but it’s reached the point that she may have to. Her mum Jackie, Kirsty’s gran, has made it possible for Caley to work by having Kirsty after school, but this is the third time recently that the symptoms of her chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder have prevented her from looking after Kirsty. It looks bad this time as Jackie called an ambulance. 

Caley is trying to ignore a surge of panic that’s threatening to overwhelm her. Her lovely mum Jackie has been her rock, emotionally and practically. What does the future hold now if Jackie is seriously ill?

Kirsty is the ‘Holyrood baby’, a fictional child born in a deprived area of Scotland on the day of the Scottish election in 2016. Inspiration came from an independence campaign video in which Nicola Sturgeon asked people to imagine a child called Kirsty and consider what sort of world they wanted her to grow up in. 

Charting the progress of Kirsty and Caley has allowed us to consider how far politicians have fulfilled the promises they made to improve the lives of children living in poverty.
Since the pandemic, that story has been dominated by a grinding cost-of-living crisis. Getting the Scottish Child Payment has helped Caley and Kirsty, and since Caley started work, food has been more plentiful as she sometimes brings home items that have reached their expiry date, but the cost of everything just seems to go up.

Fiona King, head of policy, research and influencing at Save the Children Scotland, says the SCP, which will be worth £28.20 a week from April, is making a “huge difference” to Caley by making possible little extras like having a hot chocolate or paying for activities, adding: “It shouldn’t be underestimated, the difference it’s making to individuals, communities and families.” 

But it certainly doesn’t mean her money worries are over. Caley agreed Kirsty could start doing ‘acro’ (acrobatic dance) with her friends, even though the fee and bus fares together come to nearly £15 a week. But talk of more inflation is spooking Caley. Will acro have to go? Some of Kirsty’s friends are getting into clothes and Kirsty wants trainers for her birthday that cost £60. Caley would like, for once, for Kirsty to have what she’s asked for but doubts she’ll be able to afford them. 

Much has been said and done in 10 years to help make the lives of families like Kirsty and Caley more stable. In 2016, Sturgeon reiterated her government’s commitment to make Scotland “the best place in the world to grow up”. She pledged to “substantially eliminate” the educational attainment gap by this year. 

Child poverty rates are 35 per cent in the first year of life, compared to 22 per cent overall. Ministers introduced the ‘baby box’ in 2017, and Best Start Grants and Best Start Food grants in 2018 and 2019, replacing UK Government grants but extending eligibility. 

Other measures on child poverty have included extending free childcare to three- and four-year-olds and eligible two-year olds (now less than the offer in England, following Labour’s expansion of childcare, though the SNP promises a big expansion of after-school care), providing universal free school meals for all P1-5 children and for certain eligible children up to S6 (a better offer than south of the border), mitigating the bedroom tax and introducing the Child Poverty Act in 2017 – backed by all parties in Holyrood – setting a target of bringing child poverty under 10 per cent by 2030/31. 

Most importantly, the Scottish Child Payment was introduced in 2021. Initially worth £10 a week for qualifying children, it will be worth £28.20 per child from April. Children in the first year of life will receive the SCP at the rate of £40 a week from 2027/28.

Sturgeon also made ‘The Promise’ in 2020 to ensure care-experienced children grow up “safe, loved and respected” and John Swinney has since declared eliminating child poverty his government’s guiding mission.

So what difference has it all made? Where the attainment gap is concerned, not much so far. The difference in national school qualifications gained between children from the most and least deprived areas is bigger now than pre-pandemic, though £1.75bn has been spent on it.
The picture on child poverty is better. By 2021, children born in Scotland were more likely to be born in poverty than they had been in 2016, due to cuts in the value of social security at UK level. Twenty-two per cent are still living in poverty and the Scottish Government has missed its own interim target, but rates are lower than in the rest of the UK.

The Scottish Government has just published its latest five-year child poverty delivery plan, which is full of policies welcomed by campaigners like whole-family support, extra help with housing costs and helping employers to offer progression opportunities for workers, but Save the Children says there is not enough in it, adding: “We’re inching forward in meeting the 2030 targets, but what is required in the next parliament will take a huge leap.”

The key question is whether all this policy will mean children growing up now have better outcomes later in life than their predecessors from 15 years ago. Poverty is strongly associated with lower attainment, higher levels of mental and physical health problems and higher rates of drug use. 

In 10 years, will we see better health, higher attainment and fewer addiction problems among our young adults, directly as a result of taking children out of poverty now?

John Dickie, director of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, says that if ministers continue to invest more in social security and make the right policy changes “we will see real improvements”. 

He points to the fact that the impact of some significant changes aren’t showing through in the statistics yet: “Children like Kirsty have really benefited from the resource that’s been put into tackling poverty over the last few years.

“The thing that’s really making a big impact is the Scottish Child Payment. The last year of stats we have is the first full year of the payment fully rolled out but progress is now in the system.”
For Caley, getting a job felt like an important turning point. She received employment training and the support of family support workers to help her negotiate a flexible work pattern with her employer. Her mental health has been better. She lives with depression and anxiety, but the pride she takes in her job, the routine and the banter with colleagues and customers is something she has come to love, even though work can sometimes be stressful. She’s even met someone, a man who works for a supplier, though it’s early days.

But what now? Caley relies on Jackie to provide after school and weekend care and can’t afford to pay for it. 

“People’s childcare arrangements can be precarious, and it doesn’t take much to tip the balance so that it’s not possible to cover childcare needs,” warns King.

Dickie says: “We talk to parents who have to stop work because of the challenges with childcare and employers not giving them the time they need to respond to family crises.

“Parents want more job opportunities and more opportunities to progress. We’ve seen progress with the rollout of childcare but also disappointments that commitments to wraparound childcare haven’t materialised, so action on that is absolutely needed.” 

Research by the Flexibility Works consultancy has found that workers on low salaries and those in frontline roles least likely to flexible work options, though flexible working has increased in Scotland for these groups over time.

Campaigners are keen to stress, though, that work is not a panacea as some parents cannot work. “Social security needs to be sustained at a level that prevents those people from living in poverty,” says Dickie. 

Families who are at highest risk of poverty are black and minority ethnic families, single parent families and those where someone has a disability.

Under Labour, the UK Government has brought in a child poverty strategy, scrapped the two-child limit (which campaigners says will make a “huge difference” in Scotland), boosted the National Living and Minimum Wages and pledged to lift 550,000 children across Britain out of poverty. This is greatly assisting what the Scottish Government is doing, though inflationary pressures arising from the war in Iran make the job harder.

“Everything that’s happened – pandemic, cost-of-living crisis and war – have made progress in tackling child poverty difficult but we are on the right course and doing the right things,” says King. 

Still, she says more substantial actions are needed to have a credible route to meeting child poverty targets. “If they keep their foot on the gas we will see positive change.”