Kirsty at five years

Kirsty the Holyrood baby approaches her fifth birthday reeling from ongoing poverty, the disruption of lockdown and deep personal loss

The Holyrood baby approaches her fifth birthday

THE RAIN IS BEATING relentlessly against the window. It may be spring, but there’s little sign of it out there, where the late morning sky is slate grey.

Here inside, the blare of children’s TV overlays the sound of rain. Illuminated in its weak light is a small child, but she’s not watching. She’s lying on the floor thumping her feet against the wall.

Hungry and bored, she knows she’ll have to wait until Mummy gets up before she’ll be fed.

The preschooler feels a funny sick feeling in her tummy. She hopes Mummy is OK. Granda was in bed too and then he went to hospital and then he died.

Getting up, she goes next door and crawls under the covers with her mummy. Time for a hug.

Kirsty the Holyrood baby is nearly five. She is a fictional child from a deprived area of Scotland, born on the day the 2016 crop of MSPS took their seats. Kirsty lives with her mother, Caley, who survives on benefits and struggles with depression and anxiety.

Kirsty’s story closely resembles the lives of thousands of real-life disadvantaged children in Scotland and, over the course of this parliament, charting Kirsty’s progress has allowed us to consider how effective the promises politicians made in 2016 to improve the lives of children have actually been.

A few months before that election, Nicola Sturgeon said she was “absolutely committed to making Scotland the best place to grow up”.

Five years later, she goes into this election still reading from the same press release, insisting she is “more determined than ever to make Scotland the best place in the world to grow up”.

There has been progress on policy, and the small matter of coronavirus, but the hard truth is that child poverty was rising in Scotland even before the pandemic.

More than a quarter of Scotland’s children are now growing up in relative poverty.

Lockdown has been exceptionally tough for Kirsty and Caley, but the good news is that Kirsty is finally back at nursery during the week. After going through two extended periods at home, where her daily routine had broken down and social contact was severely limited, she desperately needed stimulation and the regular company of other children, particularly given that she will soon be taking the next big step in her life by starting school.

But she will do so at a disadvantage to many other children. Kirsty has not yet met some of the developmental milestones associated with a child of her age, a result of having experienced so much poverty in her short life.

And she is also struggling to come to terms with a profound recent shock: the death of her grandad Davey as a result of COVID.

Caley’s dad, Davey, was a steady and reassuring presence in his granddaughter’s life. He didn’t say much, but Kirsty liked that he smiled a lot. He and Granny would take Kirsty to the park when Caley wasn’t feeling good. Kirsty loved him and he made her feel safe.

Davey fell ill with COVID just before Christmas and by New Year’s Day was in hospital. He died 12 days later.

Davey’s story, sadly, is not unusual in Caley’s town. Death rates have been much higher in areas of deprivation than in affluent communities and men have been more likely than women to succumb to the virus.

Caley and Kirsty were able to visit Davey in hospital once, but Kirsty, at four, nearly five, is struggling to comprehend the finality of death and keeps asking her mother questions like whether Granda can see or hear, even though his funeral was months ago.

Davey’s death could hardly have come at a worse time for Caley. The pandemic has made her even more socially isolated and she has faced added stress over money due to the increased costs of heating, electricity and food while Kirsty was at home all the time. Up until recently, she was in charge of her daughter 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which left her no headspace.

Lisa Mcculloch, a senior practitioner and team leader for Barnardo’s in Aberdeen, says her impression is that the second lockdown has been harder for many families in Scotland than the first. Partly this is because children have been stuck indoors more than last time because of the weather. “Some children are physically harming themselves by doing things like banging their heads off the sofa. They are frustrated,” she says.

At least this time round the parks are open and Kirsty can play with other children – weather allowing. The deep snow was an unexpected novelty. Caley used part of her £100 winter hardship payment (available to families eligible free school meals) to buy Kirsty a winter jacket.