Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund: Child Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment

CRWIA Stage 1 – Screening

1. Brief Summary

The Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund (referred to as ‘the Fund’ in this impact assessment) aims to enhance an geographical area’s approach to tackling child poverty and ultimately, drive progress towards the statutory child poverty targets^[1]. It will support small scale projects to generate evidence on a known problem, adapt a promising approach from elsewhere to work in an area, or re-design a service or services to deliver greater impact on child poverty.

As set out in ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’ (‘the delivery plan’) we are committed to delivering place-based projects, testing different approaches to how we provide person centred solutions particularly for priority families^[2].

That is why we are seeking to work in partnership with a small number of areas to deliver accelerator projects, trialling and evaluating new ways of working to overcome known challenges in tackling child poverty and sharing the learning from these projects to inform national policy and practice.

The Fund aims to deliver on the priorities set out below:

• Tackling one or more of the three key drivers of child poverty^[3]
• Prioritisation of one or more of the six priority family groups at greatest risk of child poverty
• Engagement with people with lived experience of poverty in project design and implementation
• Potential scalability/sustainability of the project, if successful
• Enhancing local partnership working
• Generating evidence through rigorous evaluation, building the local and national evidence base
• Innovation to accelerate practice to tackle child poverty

Applications to the Fund will be assessed on these priorities.

Successful bids to the Fund are required to monitor and evaluate their project and will be supported by a national monitoring and evaluation coordinator. This is to ensure rigorous evaluation of projects, to capture and share learning across Scotland to inform local and national policy and practice.

Start date of relevant proposal: 16 October 2023

Start date of CRWIA process: 25 August 2023

2. Which aspects of the relevant proposal currently affects or will affect children and young people up to the age of 18?

The proposal relates to funding which aims to accelerate action to tackle child poverty at local level, driving reduction in child poverty and improving outcomes for children and their families.

Article 1 of the UNCRC provides that for the purposes of the UNCRC, a child is anyone under the age of 18. However, for the purposes of the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017, a child is "(a) a person under the age of 16, or (b) a person who is a qualifying young person for the purposes of Part 9 of the Social Security Contributions and Benefits Act 1992."^[4] With regard to the latter, a “qualifying young person” is currently a person under the age of 20 (and over 15) who is in “relevant education” or “approved training” under the 1992 Act.^[5]

Accordingly, the statutory targets underpinning the delivery plan and the Fund pertain to children under the age of 16 years and qualifying young persons aged between 16 and 19. However, action focused on tackling child poverty is likely to have wider impacts. The uses of the Fund and its likely impacts are also dependent on the specific projects proposed by local authorities and health boards. The Fund can be used for action such as service redesign or increasing uptake of support which may have wider positive impact, including children under 16 as well as 16 and 17 year olds.

The delivery plan and the Fund place particular focus on the priority families which includes families with mothers under 25. Therefore, mothers under 18 are likely to benefit positively from funded projects.

3. Which groups of children and young people are currently or will be affected by the relevant proposal?

Evidence shows that six types of families are at highest risk of child poverty. These priority families are: larger families (3+ children), families with young mothers (<25yrs), families with a disabled adult or child, minority ethnic families, families with a child under 1 year old, and lone parent families. The Fund places particular focus on delivering for these families.

For assessments of the impact on families with children in island/rural communities, see the Island Communities Impact Assessment. See the Equalities Impact Assessment for assessment of the Fund’s impact in relation to the protected characteristics.

Declaration

4. Is a Stage 2 Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Impact Assessment required?

CRWIA required

5. Sign & Date

Policy Lead Signature & Date of Sign Off: Emma Teale, 26 October 2023

Deputy Director Signature & Date of Sign Off: Julie Humphreys, 27 October 2023

Date SGLD contacted 6 September