Scottish Child Payment ‘a game-changer’
Eligible parents and carers in East Kilbride and Strathaven can now benefit from an additional £40 every four weeks for each child under the age of six, thanks to the introduction of the Scottish Child Payment.
Social Security Secretary Shirley-Anne Somerville has welcomed the introduction of the payment .
The new Scottish Government benefit, which went live on Monday, will provide families with a muchneeded boost.
Parents and carers who receive other welfare support such as Universal Credit or unemployment benefits are able to apply for the payment for each child under the age of six, with the benefit being rolled out for all qualifying under-16s by next year.
Somerville said:“The Scottish Child Payment is the most ambitious anti-poverty measure currently being undertaken anywhere in the UK. Announced in late
June 2019 the new payment has been achieved at great speed.
“In 2021-22 we will invest £3.6 billion in social security payments supporting carers, young people, and low income families including £68 million for this new payment. Significantly more families are now relying on benefits due to the pandemic – some perhaps for the first time. Scottish Child Payment will help lift children in Scotland out of poverty.”
This last year some words and phrases have been well-used – pandemic, unprecedented, social-distancing are just a few.
We’re hearing some better news now though, with the success of the vaccine administration and take-up. Some children are back at school and at last visiting restrictions in our care homes are being relaxed.
Sorting through old photographs a couple of weeks ago brought back memories.
Photos of my grandparents invoked a vivid recollection of a doctor’s visit when I was ill as a child. Granny Fab told me how lucky I was that our Dr Fulton was just along the road and that our doctors and hospitals were for everyone. She told me of how she got the flu when she was a young woman – just after the First World War – and that she nearly died.
However, the neighbours all clubbed together and paid a penny for the doctor to visit her in the family home in Kinning Park. The thought of my granny dying was too much to comprehend but I was horrified at the idea that you had to pay for a doctor!
Of course the 1918 Spanish Flu was a pandemic too, a horrible experience for those who lived through it. Mortality was high in healthy young people and there were no antibiotics to treat bacterial infections.
There was no vaccine, although similar to now the medical advice was isolation, quarantine, limitations on public gatherings and of course good personal hygiene.
Thank goodness, in this current public health emergency we have a National Health Service, good communications, medical interventions and of course effective vaccines. Locally NHS Lanarkshire are now administering the second vaccination to care home residents and unpaid carers are being offered the first dose.
Absolutely everyone involved in the rollout of the vaccine deserves our gratitude and the best way of protecting you and others around you is to get vaccinated when the offer is made. The scale and pace of vaccine delivery is unprecedented – back to that well-used word, but in a positive sense this time! Take-up has exceeded expectations and it was announced just recently that, subject to supply, all adults will be vaccinated by the end of July.
We have become used to having a National Health Service, and perhaps we even take it a bit for-granted at times – interesting debate in parliament during the week about Scotland’s Highlands and Islands Medical Service, created in 1913, which arguably, 35 years later provided the model for the NHS as we recognise it. That’s a discussion for another day though!
Now we’re talking about the creation of a National Care Service. The Scottish Government commissioned an independent review on the future of social care provision.
The findings were clear – social care shouldn’t be a response to a crisis – with lots of recommendations as to how we can make our social care system better and more responsive to the needs of so many of us. We are living longer and want to stay in our own homes above all.
Anyone who has navigated the current home-care system will understand too well that it can be bureaucratic and difficult to navigate, with assessments and eligibility criteria adding to the stress. I couldn’t begin to count the number of constituency cases my office has dealt with where, at times of stress for individuals and families, all becomes over-complicated.
So, I am pleased that the Health Secretary has determined to work with local authorities to lay foundations for the next Scottish Government to take forward these recommendations.