Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund: round 2 form and guidance

Who can apply

The lead applicant for CPAF Round 2 must be either a Local Authority or a Health Board. This is to ensure alignment with Local Child Poverty Action Reports (LCPAR) and to ensure any local action is coordinated.

Who can receive funding

Whilst the lead applicant must be a Local Authority or Health Board, the lead applicant can nominate another organisation to deliver the project and therefore receive funding. The process for selecting another organisation would be for the Local Authority or Health Board to determine. In this scenario the Local Authority or Health Board would act as an application sponsor, ensuring coordination with other relevant local activities and being responsible for prioritisation of applications to ensure no more than two applications are submitted, as per the criteria set out at page 3.

The third party could include, for example, a registered charity or statutory body leading the delivery of an approach being tested; or an academic partner leading the evaluation of an approach. However individuals, sole traders and for-profit organisations are not eligible to receive funding.

Geographical coverage of CPAF round 2 proposals

Proposals do not need to cover an entire Local Authority or Health Board area. We welcome proposals which cover:

• an entire Local Authority/Health Board area
• a subarea or community within a Local Authority/Health Board
• or multiple areas within local authorities/Health Boards working together to test an approach to a shared problem.

Number of applications permitted

Each Local Authority/Health Board may submit more than one application. This recognises the wide geographic coverage of many authorities or boards, and is designed to allow areas to both innovate and replicate promising practice. Applicants should avoid duplication and ensure projects are distinct, and not submit multiple applications for different elements of the same project.

Each Local Authority can submit up to 2 applications in Round 2. Given that some Health Boards cover multiple local authorities, they can submit more than 2 joint applications. The table below sets out the number and kind of applications an organisation may submit. This is further illustrated by a worked example.

Whilst not a requirement, joint applications between a Local Authority and territorial Health Board will be prioritised for funding. Joint applications can also take the form of sponsored applications, being delivered by a third party. In the case of a joint application, one partner must be identified as the lead applicant for grant management purposes.

*This refers to applications where a Local Authority or Health Board has identified a third party to deliver the proposed project . For details on sponsored applications, please see the ‘Who can receive funding’ section above.

Worked example:

Imagine ‘London’ is a territorial health board with 4 local authorities: Croydon, Ealing, Chelsea and Hackney.

London can submit up to 5 CPAF applications in total (i.e. 1 + the number of LAs it covers).

This could be a combination of:

• 1 solo application, where the health board is the only organisation involved, and up to 4 partnered applications with local authorities, or
• partnered applications only – e.g. 2 projects with Croydon, 2 with Ealing, 1 with a non-territorial Health Board – so long as the total does not exceed 5.

If London does not wish to partner with any of its local authorities, it can only submit a maximum of 2 applications – this is the maximum number of solo and/or sponsored applications permitted.

The local authority of Croydon can submit a total of 2 applications. This can be any combination of solo, sponsored and HB partnered applications so long as the total does not exceed 2.

A partnership application between Croydon and the London health board counts as an application for both of these partners. For example, Croydon cannot submit 2 solo applications plus a joint application with London, even if London has not reached its full allocation of applications.

Additional criteria

In submitting an application, the local authority / health board will be expected to meet all of the following criteria:

• commitment to prioritising tackling child poverty across the areas identified in the accelerator project, including commitment to identifying local resources to support the project and prioritising child poverty within relevant budget allocations 
• working towards embedding any successful project in future budget and policy delivery, for example through a plan to review resource allocation, identify paths to scale, work with service leads to embed changes as a result of evidence generated by the project 
• commitment to partnership working, for example across different public, private and third sector partners as locally appropriate
• commitment and ‘in-house’ capacity to work in partnership with the Scottish Government to agree the parameters of the accelerator project, and to work together on monitoring, evaluation and learning that meets the requirements of all partners

Monitoring and evaluation

The specific criteria for each grant will vary, and the Scottish Government will work with successful applicants to agree a suitable monitoring and evaluation approach.

Each application will be expected to include an approach to monitoring progress towards the intended outcome. For example, how will you know if a test of change is working, how will you know if low income parents are receiving a better service etc. This could include an externally commissioned evaluation or learning partner, or in-house monitoring and evaluation.

Successful applicants will be supported with their monitoring and evaluation. The Scottish Government will procure an Evaluation Partner to help projects with the set-up and embedding of effective monitoring and evaluation practices.

The primary purpose of this will be for grantees to understand whether the project is having the intended outcome, and to be able to share this with other interested areas.

Outwith this, we will seek to minimise any additional monitoring specifically for the Scottish Government. We will draw on the information being generated by the grant monitoring and evaluation to draw wider CPAF lessons, and will use minuted quarterly meetings as a record of quarterly progress. A final end of project report will be required.