Baby Boxes For Scotland

The SNP will put universalism at the heart of plans to support all children in achieving their potential with a package of proposals for new borns and their parents including a ‘baby box’ for every new born child in Scotland.
 
The baby box – an adaptation of the successful Finnish model – offers essential items for a child’s first weeks including bedding, clothing, sleeping mat and books. The box itself can be used as a basic crib or travel cot.  
Providing the baby box to all new borns helps to give all children a fair start from birth. The package, which will be available free to all families expecting a baby, will encourage more women to take up ante-natal care – contributing to ongoing efforts to reduce stillbirth rates – and help with early literacy. It forms a central part of the SNP’s focus on creating a fairer Scotland which prioritises new families – essential for equality and social and economic development.
 
Launching their manifesto on Wednesday, the SNP will also commit to recruit an extra 500 health visitors in the first years of the next parliament and ensure that every new mother receives advice and information on their employment and maternity rights. Women who have been out of work, caring for children, will also be offered support to get back into the work place.
 
Reversing Tory cuts to maternity support, the SNP will advance a Maternity and Early Years Grant – providing £600 for low income mothers when a child is born and further payments when a child goes to nursery and when they start school. The SNP will reinstate payments of £300 at birth for second and subsequent children which were abolished by the Tories. And the party will develop a new child health and wellbeing strategy, supporting our youngest children through health care and education.
 
Campaigning with Cathcart SNP candidate James Dornan in Glasgow today, Nicola Sturgeon said:
 
“I am determined that every child born in Scotland gets the very best start in life and have made clear my ambition that all children should have the same chance to fulfil their potential.“And that process should start before a baby is even born.  At the heart of the baby box is a message about fairness and opportunity that is also at the heart of our manifesto.“Our manifesto will set out how we will improve equality, address poverty and create opportunity for all our children.“We pledge to provide all families with the essentials that every child needs over the first weeks and months of life.
 
“The baby box – as well as a practical support package for newly born children – has been shown in other countries to encourage expectant mothers to take up ante-natal care at an earlier stage, contributing to reduced infant mortality and lower stillbirth rates.
 
“It will be a universal benefit to help us to tackle inequalities in Scottish society and close the attainment gap between the poorest and richest children.  
 
“While the Tories have trashed support for new mums and dads on low incomes we’re reversing these cuts and expanding support which would see a family with two children over early years receive £1900.    
 
“Alongside the material and financial support we will deliver, it is important that parents get advice when they need it – and we’ll recruit 500 new health visitors by 2018 to better support Scotland’s families and further extend the family nurse partnership, which supports some of our youngest and most vulnerable parents. 
 
“Scotland’s children are Scotland’s future and by giving both votes to the SNP on 5th May we can deliver our ambition to give all parents the right support and all children the best start in life.”
 
 The Plan is:
 
1.    Every newborn in Scotland will be entitled to a ‘baby box’, offering essential items for a child’s first weeks, adapting the successful Finnish model which has helped to improve lives for babies and toddlers. It will include existing SG resources including Bookbug bags, Play Talk Read materials eg playmat, soft playcube, Ready, Steady, Baby book provided by NHS Scotland, baby toothbrush, a basic layette of clothing  and bedding so the box itself can be used as a basic or travel crib.  To provide a Finnish style baby box will cost  approximately £6 million a year (£100 per box).
2.    95% of first time mothers in Finland choose to accept the baby box
Other countries providing baby boxes:
 
•        Finland: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22751415, http://www.kela.fi/web/en/maternitypackage
•        South Africa: ‘Thula Baba Box’ provides a plastic box to be used as a bath – a trial carried out by Stellenbosch University found that it encourages mothers to attend clinics at an earlier stage of pregnancy, and to attend more frequently.
•        Southern India: a doctoral student at Harvard University adapted the Finnish box for use in South Asia, and the Barakat Bundle project is now providing a box with a clean-birth kit and a mosquito net from a rural hospital in Jagadiya, India.
•        Fort Worth, Texas: all 4 hospitals rolling it out to try and reduce high infant mortality rate by discouraging parents to sleep with their baby in the same bed. 
o   Dyann Daley of Cook Children’s Hospital System: “We realised the community wasn't aware infant mortality was a big problem here. Our goal is to provide a box for every live birth in the city and give babies a safe sleeping environment because that is critical to preventing suffocation deaths."
•        Alberta, Canada: box, which includes a booklet especially for fathers, is being offered universally to all first time families with parents also identifying a mentor to build family and friends’ support to counter isolation of mothers being left alone with a new baby due to fathers being away working in the oil and gas industry – http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/baby-box-canada-is-adopting-of-one-of-finlands-smartest-ideas-a6833376.html
•        Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in London is about to start a pilot baby box project, in collaboration with the US company, Baby Box Co, which says the education component of its programmes is "crucial" to their success.
o   Karen Joash, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist behind the plan: “We take it for granted people have money for a separate sleeping cot or Moses basket but that might not be the case” and thinks the box will enable mothers to keep the baby in the same room with them, because it is so easy to carry, "which is good for bonding.”