Spend and impact of the Child Accelerator Fund: FOI release

Information requested

1. Information about how many people have been impacted by the Child Accelerator Fund, so in other words, what is the total number (or rough estimate) of people who have been impacted by the 9 different organisations that received funding through the scheme.

2. How much the Government has spent to date since the programme’s launch in July 2023.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reasons why we don't have the information are explained below. 

The answer to your question is:

1. Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund (CPAF) projects are working across several themes and areas of focus, not all of which are about direct delivery for individuals and families. For example, some projects are focussed on how data can be better used to identify people and to support service design and delivery. As such, we do not routinely collect information of this type from all projects and therefore cannot provide an estimate of people impacted by the nine projects. Scottish Government is proactively evaluating CPAF and exploring learning from the projects. We plan to publish three reports from an external evaluation partner, with the final report providing more detail on impact due around March 2026. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.

2. Since the fund’s launch, Scottish Government has spent a total of £238,880 on the programme, including independent monitoring, learning and evaluation support for projects.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.