Whole Family Wellbeing Funding
Holistic whole family support
In Scotland, family support is a range of services to help families meet their individual needs, to thrive and to stay together.
The vision is for family support to be readily available to families that need it. We want to make sure that families are able to access the help they need, where and when they need it. This will enable us to create a Scotland where more children will only know care, compassion and love, and not a ‘care system’.
Holistic support should address the needs of children and adults in a family at the time of need rather than at crisis point. This will help families to flourish and reduce the chances of family breakdown, and of children entering the care system. The same preventive interventions should also support parents’ ability to engage with the labour market. These interventions could help parents/carers to pursue qualifications or progress in employment, thereby enabling them to improve their financial situation.
Family support services should take account of thepromise.scot. It clearly highlights the importance of unstigmatised access to effective universal and intensive family support with early intervention and prevention at its core.
A Coronavirus (Covid-19) Children and Families Collective Leadership Group was set up in May 2020 to respond to concerns during the pandemic Coronavirus (COVID-19): Children and Families Collective Leadership Group. It developed a Holistic Family Support Vision and Blueprint for Change. Subsequently, a sub-group, the Family Support Advisory Group (formerly Family Support Delivery Group) was established which developed a Routemap and National Principles of Holistic Whole Family Support to deliver the vision.
A toolkit has been developed for Children’s Services Planning Partnerships to use to support consistent and structured planning discussions about the local design and delivery of holistic whole family support as part of each area's Children's Services Plan.
Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF)
The Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) is a £500 million investment over the life of this Parliament (2022 to 2026) to:
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support the whole system transformational change required to reduce the need for crisis intervention
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shift investment towards prevention and early intervention
Our ambition is that by 2030 at least 5% of all community-based health and social care spend will be on preventative whole family support measures.
WFWF is not a fund to which individuals can apply. The aim of the funding is to help family support services to make transformational system changes to reduce the need for crisis intervention and to shift investment towards prevention and early intervention.
We provided over £33 million in 2022 and 2023, which was repurposed from across SG portfolios, not drawn from a reduction or cut to existing grants or funding streams. £50 million has been allocated this financial year (2023 to 2024), including £32 million to local Children’s Services Planning Partnerships on a recurring multi-year basis.
Funding is focused on:
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supporting capacity building at local and national level
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supporting the scaling up of existing transformational practice in line with the National Principles of Holistic Whole Family Support
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demonstrating positive impact for families
It is split into three elements:
- providing direct support to Children’s Services Planning Partnerships to scale up and drive the delivery of whole family support services in their areas, and build capacity for transformational change
- supporting local transformation through National Support for Local Delivery. This includes a national Learning Into Action network, an online Knowledge Hub, intensive support to 3 Children’s Services Planning Partnerships, to drive whole system change, evaluation and research
- supporting projects which take a cross Scottish Government approach to system change which progress the aims of WFWF
A WFWF Interim Evaluation Report has now been published. This report presents the interim findings from a process evaluation of Elements 1 and 2 of the programme in its first year of operation. A full Evaluation Report of Year 1 will be available early 2024.
WFWF will cease at the end of the financial year 2025 to 2026, as it is expected that local investment will have realigned to support the new systems and services enabled by the funding.
Related documents
- Best Start, Bright Futures: tackling child poverty delivery plan 2022 to 2026
- Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF): year 1 - process evaluation - interim report