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 Empowering communities, she says, will have a


direct effect on a baby’s development. “If parents aren’t listened to, and children observe parents not being listened to, from very early on they learn dis- advantage. Tey learn their place in society by how their parents are treated.” In fact, over the next few months Kirsty’s mind is going to grow faster than at any other point in her life. Approximately 1000 synaptic connections are formed every second during this period, according to research for UNICEF. In each of those connections, the choices of Caley, her family, the services around her and the policies that affect them and their community, will be reflected. Research psychologist Dr Suzanne Zeedyk says Kirsty’s brain has been


“Urban planning is


really important to the debate.


You need usable, safe community spaces”


developing an attachment with Caley already, especially since February. “Many people don't realise how much babies’ brains are developing before birth, especially during the last three months of pregnancy. Or more specifically, they don't realise how much the brain is developing in a way that will let it fit into the particular world that will greet the baby when he or she is born,” she says. “When a baby is born, they already recognise the voices of the people they've been hearing on a daily basis. So they will know Mum's voice


or Dad's voice or Granny's voice. "Tey will also know if Mum and Dad speak hap- pily to one another or argue a lot. If they argue, the baby's brain will already be producing higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol at birth, because the baby's brain has been anticipating a world that is filled with scary shouting. When there's a lot of cortisol in a baby's brain, it changes brain develop- ment in ways that most mums and dads don't want for their baby. “All of this information helps us to think about the connection that babies bring with them at birth. Teir brains are already preparing for the world they will live in.


“Tat's the point of being born with a brain that's as immature as infant human brains are. It lets you grow a brain that matches your particular world - whether that world feels connected and reassuring or uncertain and scary. “What we need to be doing, as parents, families and a society, is


using the neuroscientific insights that we now have so that we can think more deeply about creating the world we want our babies to live in. We are failing to achieve that in ways we don't realise and wouldn't choose if we did.” ⌜


Voices Colin Mair, Chief Executive, Improvement Service Inequality by numbers


▏ The Kirsty infographic, with its challeng- ing predictions about her likely life chances, gets across the hideousness of inequality in a succinct and literally graphic way. The idea of using a child as a reference point for public policy is certainly more likely to get political attention than a more analytical account of the complexities of modelling the impact of deprivation on outcomes, but it does so at the risk of simplifying. This suggests three points of concern: the ‘personalisation’ of aver- ages, the focus on a snapshot rather than trends and the apparent lack of curiosity about why Kirsty is born into these circum- stances in the first place. Firstly, the figures quoted in the info-


graphic are not predictions for a person, they are averages for areas and SIMD deciles. Averages blend good and bad out- comes, and while it is ethically proper to


26 www.holyrood.com 23 May 2016


remain concerned with the bad, stigma- tising areas and people can mean good outcomes go unrecognised. Secondly, the figures give a snapshot and don’t tell us how we got there or show change over time. For instance, we recently reviewed the trends in educational attain- ment over the decade 2003 to 2013 and the attainment of kids from the five per cent most deprived areas in Scotland in S4 was the fastest improving, and in that time deprivation moved from explaining 50 per cent of the variance in S4 results to explaining 30 per cent. That is still hor- ribly high but knowing the trend allows us to better assess the impact of new policies and practices. Snapshots make things seem fixed while trend data shows they are not. Finally, all analysis shows a very pow- erful relationship between economic


inequality and inequality in health, learning and safety. We tend to take that for granted but we need to be much more curious about why poor households and areas exist in an afflu- ent country like Scotland in the first place. At minimum, we need to be aware that while we are rightly asking public services to strive to reduce inequality, that often happens against a background of UK fiscal and welfare policy that does quite the opposite. Of course, all of that is quite dull, and does not pack the punch of Kirsty’s infographic. So it is good that Holyrood is running with this and will stick with it over time. It gives face to a defining issue for Scotland and one that should matter to us all. ⌞


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