Cash-First - towards ending the need for food banks in Scotland: plan

Conclusion

This Plan sets out nine actions that we will take forward over the next three years to improve the response to household financial crisis. While we cannot know for certain what the economic situation will be in three years time, we expect that delivering this Plan will provide a body of evidence for how to deliver cash-first interventions effectively. It will put us in a strong position to engage further with others on how to scale up and spread this work, moving us closer toward our longer term ambition of a Scotland without the need for food banks. To support this, we will monitor and assess the impact of these actions over the three years of this Plan.

Collaboration will be key to the success of each and every action, and we will continue to listen directly to the people most affected by food insecurity and work closely with the services and organisations that support them. Tackling poverty, and the systemic inequalities that underpin it, requires urgent action and ownership from all partners across Scotland – government alone cannot make the change required. The objectives set out in this Plan are ones that anyone involved in responses to financial hardship can work toward – together, we must make the most of every opportunity to improve the response to crisis and prevent it from happening again.

The next three years will not be easy, but the core human rights principles set out in this Plan will help us all to respond to the unprecedented cost of living crisis. A Scotland without the need for food banks is possible – it is central to our Good Food Nation ambition, and we will continue to work towards this to the fullest of our power and resource.