This Easter, Dobbies, the UK’s leading garden centre, partners with The World of Peter Rabbit™ to celebrate the iconic bunny’s 120th birthday with an exclusive Peter Rabbit™ Easter Breakfast.
Tickets are now on sale for this exciting, themed celebratory breakfast in Edinburgh between 14-18 April, bringing friends and family together to explore gardening fun. Attendees will take part in a wide range of family-friendly gardening activities plus receive a Peter Rabbit gift to take home.
In addition, there will be a great range of breakfast options, including a traditional cooked breakfast or a vegetarian cooked breakfast. For an alternative option, children can enjoy a portion of cheesy beans on toast.
Dobbies’ Partnership and Events Manager Sarah Murray said: “We’re excited to be the official garden centre partner for The World of Peter Rabbit this year. Peter is synonymous with gardening and outdoor adventures and so he is the perfect fit for our family audience at Dobbies.
“We’re really looking forward to welcoming Peter Rabbit fans to our themed breakfast to learn more about his story and gardening during this celebratory year.”
Izzy Richardson, Global Brand Director, Penguin Random House Children’s, said: “We’re delighted to have launched this partnership with Dobbies Garden Centres during Peter Rabbit’s 120th birthday year.
“Dobbies are a perfect partner to help us celebrate Peter’s connection to nature. At the same time, the breadth of locations of Dobbies Garden Centres, helps us continue to make The World of Peter Rabbit accessible and enjoyable to a wider, and more diverse audience of families and communities across the country. The themed Easter breakfast is a wonderful way to bring friends and families together to celebrate with Peter, and learn more about gardening and spending time in nature too.”
Children can enjoy A Peter Rabbit™ Easter Breakfast for £9.99, and adult tickets start from £6.99. The series of events will be taking place between 14-18 April across 66 selected Dobbies’ stores including Edinburgh. To find out how to get involved and book your slot, visit dobbies.com/events
Attendees are invited to get involved in the conversation by tagging @DobbiesGardenCentres and @OfficialPeterRabbit, as well as using the hashtag #PeterRabbit120.
In addition to this children’s event, Peter Rabbit will continue his work with Dobbies as a Little Seedlings Ambassador. There will be updates on what Peter has been up to with the Little Seedlings Club on the dedicated Ambassadors blog at dobbies.com
The Department for Work and Pensions is laying emergency regulations today (Monday 21 March 2022) so those arriving in the UK from Ukraine as a result of the Russian invasion can access Universal Credit and jobs support immediately.
Ukrainians will also be eligible for Housing Benefit, Pension Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Child Disability Living Allowance and Carers Allowance, and Attendance Allowance. Contributions-based Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), and Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) are also available for those Ukrainians who meet the criteria.
Translation services are available to help new arrivals with phone applications, with Work Coaches in DWP Jobcentres on hand to support people making claims online.
DWP staff are also delivering additional face-to-face assistance to those who need it – including tailored support to find work and advice on benefit eligibility – and will continue to do so.
Without the emergency legislation people arriving from Ukraine would be subject to the Habitual Residence Test, meaning they would have to wait up to three months before being able to receive income-related benefits, including Universal Credit.
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Thérèse Coffey said: “My priority is that people fleeing the unimaginable horrors in Ukraine to seek safety here get the support and help they need from day one to move forward in their lives immediately.
Financial Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Frazer said: “It is vital that families coming from Ukraine can support their children from the moment they arrive, and by adjusting child benefit rules and ramping up our support, the tax system is pivoting to ensure this happens.
Salvation Army Refugee Response co-ordinator Major Nick Coke said: “We welcome the news that Ukrainians coming to the UK will be able to access benefits immediately and for those who are able, help to find suitable work.
“With offices on the ground in Ukraine and the border countries providing emergency food and shelter, The Salvation Army sees first-hand the trauma those displaced by war have experienced.
“It is fitting that they receive targeted help when seeking refuge in the UK.”
A humanitarian mission launched within 24 hours of the conflict breaking out in Ukraine is delivering thousands of boxes of essential items and collecting refugees at the Ukraine/Poland border to bring them to safety in the Czech Republic, Poland and Switzerland.
Freedom Boxes was created by Stuart Watkins, who also owns a software company which has offices in Prague and Cambridge. When the conflict began, Stuart, his family, and his team set about to do something to deliver help and provide hope to those affected by the invasion. With Freedom Boxes, the team has created an immediate way to directly help those in need.
The team is made up of people from the UK and across the Central and Eastern European region, including Russia and Ukraine, who have pulled together to prepare, pack, and deliver Freedom Boxes.
The Freedom Boxes are delivered across the border directly to those in need – in bunkers and war zones – with the team’s drivers risking their lives on every trip.
Two of the four people working on the project in Ukraine are Stuart’s team members and they are helping deal with the coordination of getting people to the border and out of the areas under siege.
Stuart Watkins, founder of Freedom Boxes, said: “During war, it is always the vulnerable who suffer the most. We are dropping off truckloads of Freedom Boxes for distribution to those who need them and bringing Ukrainian refugees to safety.
“As a private company located in Prague and with colleagues in Ukraine, we had the ability to mobilise our assets, people, and connections very quickly to get up and running and begin helping. Larger organisations are less agile and take longer to mobilise, whereas Freedom Boxes provides a way for people to have a much more immediate and direct impact.
“In just two weeks since the war began, we have already delivered over 450 Freedom Boxes and transported over 70 refugees to safety. We will continue to do whatever we can to get essential items into Ukraine while getting as many people as we can out and away from danger.”
“As the humanitarian crisis worsens, bordering countries are filling up with refugees. They are having to travel further afar which can add days onto their journeys. The Freedom Buses are helping solve this problem.”
With their tech background, Stuart and his team have been able to quickly build solutions to utilise their assets for the greater good, with QR codes to help understand what people need and tracking devices to verify receipt of items.
Visit www.freedom-boxes.com to purchase a Freedom Bus ticket for someone fleeing Ukraine or choose from a range of Freedom Boxes tailormade for families, children, and the heroes who have taken up arms to defend their country.
Children who want to let families and children who are victims of war in Ukraine know they are thinking about them are uploading messages of hope at www.messagesofhope.uk – the messages will be delivered directly to Ukrainian families via Freedom Boxes.
Children everywhere are encouraged to upload their messages of hope.
FRASER of ALLENDAR INSTITUTE: – taking stock ahead of the second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan
This month is a big month for tackling poverty in Scotland. It sees the publication of the Scottish Government’s second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery plan. March usually, however, also sees the publication of the official Poverty and Inequality statistics – the primary measures of success of action to reduce poverty. They should have given us the main poverty statistics for the first year of the covid pandemic, i.e. 2020/21.
That Scottish Government has warned, however, that the estimates will not be robust enough to be published as official statistics, due to issues with data collection during the pandemic, which means that they are unlikely to be able to tell us whether relative child poverty rose or fell in 2020/21.
Persistent poverty, which measures whether children have been in relative poverty in three out of the last four years are in persistent poverty uses a longitudinal survey (Understanding Society) which has been less affected by pandemic restrictions and will be released as normal on the 31st March.
However, measures of relative and absolute child poverty, and measures of material deprivation, will effectively be void for 2020/21.
This gap in data is clearly problematic, particularly for those trying to understand the impact of the pandemic on people’s financial situations.
Looking over the long term however, 2020/21 would have no doubt been an outlier due to level of disruption and the impact of things like the furlough scheme and the temporary uplift to Universal Credit.
An important question (which future data will answer) is the extent the pandemic has permanently impacted financially on households, while for some the flux of 2020/21 will have been short-lived, for many it has added the challenges they already face and could have longer-term impacts.
It will be a number of years until we fully understand the long term scarring. In the meantime, as we discussed this time last year as we awaited 2019/20 data on incomes and poverty, pre-pandemic data is as good a benchmark as any to plan for future policy delivery as long as we bear in mind that there is more uncertainty than ever over these figures at the moment.
The second tackling child poverty delivery plan
Future policy delivery is exactly what the Scottish Government will be planning at the moment as they get ready to publish their second tackling child poverty delivery plan and a key part of this will be estimating the impact of measures in the first delivery plan, as well as the impact of announcements at UK Government level[i].
In the three years to 2019/20, relative child poverty was 24%. The continuing impact of the two child limit and the benefit cap are expected to exert upwards pressure on poverty, in the region of 1 to 2 percentage points by 2023/24.
However, there have been two major policy changes which should more than offset this upwards pressure. In the last year, we have seen the Scottish Government announce the doubling of the Scottish Child Payment to £20 a week and some significant changes made by the UK Government to Universal Credit to the work allowance and the rate at which the benefit is tapered away for those in work. Holding all else equal, these will have increased incomes for many low-income families with children, and therefore decreased poverty.
Our best estimate at the moment suggests that the Scottish Child Payment (£20 paid to all children under 16) will shift poverty downwards by 2 to 3 percentage points by 2023/24, with an additional downwards shift of 1 to 2 percentage points due to the changes to Universal Credit.
This implies that policy changes have put child poverty in Scotland on a downwards trajectory. However, even taking these into account, based on policies announced to date our modelling suggests that there is still likely to be a 3 – 4 percentage point gap between expected poverty in 2023/24 and the interim target of 18%.
There are other policy changes that may reinforce this further, for example, employability policies such as Fair Start Scotland and the rollout of 30 hours of free childcare to all 3- and 4-year olds that took place in August 2021 could help boost incomes by 2023/24 but even taking these into account, we are still likely to be above the target level unless new policies are announced.
After the tackling child poverty delivery plan has been announced we will be able to reassess these estimates.
Beyond relative poverty
Inflationary pressures are unlikely to impact the relative poverty measure too much, as long as the impact on incomes is reasonably spread through the income distribution, which seems likely given that neither social security levels nor wages look likely to keep up with inflation. That being said, the huge jump in energy prices will clearly impact on the spending power of low-income households in particular. It is worth remembering, though, that energy costs are not included in the relative poverty measure, even though they are a significant area of expenditure.
Relative child poverty is often referred to as the headline measure of child poverty, but it is only one of the measures specified in the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017. The other measures, by design, provide greater insight into the impact of increases in the cost of basic goods and services.
Absolute poverty measures whether living standards for those in poverty are increasing over time. Large increases in the cost of living, both now and those expected in the future, will mean that meeting this target will be increasingly difficult. Meaning that while people’s incomes may improve relative to others, they will not see the same improvement in their standard of living. It will also impact on the material deprivation measure which measures whether or not people can afford basic goods and services.
Persistent poverty is based on a relative measure and therefore is also not likely to be impacted severely by inflationary pressures
Uncertainty still reigns, but meeting the 2030/31 targets will require new policy
Tackling child poverty is a long term aim of the Scottish Government, and by the time the final targets need to be met in 2030/31, the pandemic should be long behind us.
Work published by FAI, MMU and the Poverty Alliance earlier this year found that structural policies such as childcare, social security and employability programmes could make substantial inroads in meeting the 2030/31 targets, with potential for some significant economic benefits as a result. However, the cost implications of these kinds of policies are large.
To get to the 2030/31 targets, waiting until the next delivery plan in 2026 to do all the heavy lifting may be too late for the required development and implementation (the Scottish Child Payment was first announced under the guises of an income supplement 4 years ago).
Much, therefore, rests on the soon to be published Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan. While the 2030/31 targets are some time away, the required action to meet the targets is significant and will take time. We will be working with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to assess the potential of the plan to meet these ambitions once it has been published.
Adoption UK has provided expert advice in the end pages of Baby Love, theheart-breaking, compelling, and timely new novel from best-selling author Jacqueline Wilson, out today, 17th March 2022.
Set in 1960, Baby Love is a story for older readers (aged 12+) about teen pregnancy, family trouble and unlikely friendships.
At the end of the novel, Adoption UK provides the reader with context around how both societal attitudes and adoption have changed since the 1960s. It also highlights some of the issues adopted people still experience today – including identity and the complexities of having two families – and signposts anyone affected by any of the topics raised in the novel, to Adoption UK’s helpline.
In Baby Love, Wilson – best known for her much-loved character, Tracy Beaker – recreates the world of suburban 1960, when so many issues were swept under the carpet, and most tragically, when many young mothers were pressured to give up their babies because they were unmarried.
The book follows Laura, whose life changes forever after a French exchange student insists on walking her home one afternoon.
When her family discover Laura is pregnant, they send her away to a Mother and Baby Home to have her baby given up for adoption.
Alison Woodhead, Adoption UK’s Director of Public Affairs and Communications said: “We are so proud to be included in this moving book about teenage pregnancy, motherhood, and adoption in the 1960s, which gives a voice to girls like Laura, who had little choice in how their lives turned out.
“Thankfully, adoption has changed radically since then. Today, a child is only placed for adoption when it is not safe for them to stay with their birth family because of abuse, violence, or neglect. But we owe it to these women and their children to face up to the wrong that was done to them in different times.
“What happened to them is heart-breaking and indefensible which is why we once again call on the Government to do the right thing and apologise to them.”
A NEW, ten-issue digital magazine is launching next month, aiming to help children prepare for school.
Using storytelling and character-led material, and developmental activities, the magazine promises to give families loads of fun learning and sharing together.
With content that is designed specifically to build strong foundations for starting school, the engaging characters also teach children about building learning resilience through working on a ‘Growth Mindset’.
The magazine’s founder also hopes that the structure and activities will support families concerned about the impact Covid19 has had on younger learners, both preparing for primary and those who may have recently started at school.
Creator of the ‘Get Set Yeti’ universe, Carol Arnott, is a seasoned educator who champions the importance of parents as ‘their children’s first educators’.
Carol explained: “We want to give parents and carers the material to enable them to do the little things at home that have a big impact on their children’s readiness to start learning at school with confidence.”
One parent, experiencing Get Set Yeti’s material, said: “This has all been fun and will go a long way to help and support my child while he’s learning.
“We really enjoyed everything we made and my child loved the fact that Mummy made them with him.”
Another commented: “I feel the material made things that I would like to achieve more enjoyable, as I’m more confident in what I’m doing with my son.”
‘Get Set Yeti’ magazine will be launching mid-April, full of comic strips, stories, songs, puzzles and printables.
At only £4.99 an issue, check out the ROARSOME yetis at:
Professor Jacqueline Taylor has been appointed as the chair of a National Audiology Review Group.
The former NHS Clinical Director and Associate Medical Director will oversee the review of hearing services provided to both children and adults in Health Boards across Scotland.
It comes after a report published in December 2021 outlined a series of errors in the treatment provided to children by Paediatric Audiology in NHS Lothian. The group will provide recommendations for a national plan for the service.
Health Secretary, Humza Yousaf said: “I would like to thank Professor Taylor for agreeing to take on this important role which will help shape the future of audiology services in Scotland moving forward.
“Professor Taylor is one of the most respected medical figures in Scotland and I know that she will provide the necessary leadership and oversight for this vital work.
“I am determined that our hearing services are fit for purpose in Scotland following the unacceptable failures in NHS Lothian which came to light last year and this group will help identify any wider issues and areas for improvement.”
Professor Taylor said: “I look forward to working with this group over the coming months. “We expect to engage with the widest range of professionals and stakeholders in this area, identifying any gaps in provision but also learning from good practice.
“NHS Scotland provides some of the best healthcare treatment in the world, but where issues emerge it is important to understand what went wrong and how this can be rectified.”
The remit of the review, its full membership and timetable for reporting is now being finalised with the Chair.
The National Deaf Children’s Society has responded to the Scottish Government’s announcement that Professor Jacqueline Taylor has been appointed as the chair of a National Audiology Review Group.
Mark Ballard, Head of Policy for Scotland at the National Deaf Children’s Society, said:“We welcome the appointment of Professor Taylor and it’s a clear signal that the Scottish Government is treating this issue with the gravity it requires.
“The total number of families affected by NHS Lothian’s failures is still unknown. Among those that were, there are deaf children who have been left dealing with life-changing consequences.
“We need this review to not only right a serious injustice, but also to make sure that this isn’t happening in other areas across Scotland.
“It is a crucial step towards making sure that no family ever has to go through this again.”
