Improving our understanding of child poverty in rural and island Scotland: research

Footnotes

1 See https://www.gov.scot/policies/poverty-and-social-justice/child-poverty/

2 See https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/family-resources-survey—2

3 See https://www.understandingsociety.ac.uk/

4 See https://data.gov.scot/poverty/cpupdate.html

5 See https://www.gov.scot/publications/local-child-poverty-statistics-january-2022/

6 Note that children are less likely than the Scottish average to live in families with limited resources if they live in an accessible rural area. They are slightly more likely to have limited resources if they live in a remote rural area.

7 Families are defined as on a ‘low income’ if the household income is below 70% of the Scottish median income after housing costs.

8 See https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/children-in-low-income-families-local-area-statistics

9 Similar local authority areas based on the groupings set out by the Improvement Service: https://www.improvementservice.org.uk/benchmarking/how-do-we-compare-councils

10 Intended to be of similar population size, each containing between 500 and 1000 households, but range from small neighbourhoods in urban settings to large areas with low population density.

11 The 20% nationally highest ranked datazones.

12 Presentation by Alistair Edwardes ‘Targeting low income rural households with the IMD’ (DEFRA), shared with the research team. The work implies a need for rural and urban distinctions to policy.

13 The priority groups in Scotland are: lone-parent families; a household where someone is disabled; families with three or more children; minority ethnic families; families with a child under one year old; and families where the mother is under 25 years of age.

14 All considered in the context of previous and ongoing work in relation to the National Islands Plan and the National Islands Plan Survey.

15 The lead contact for this work is Prof John McKendrick.

16 See a short animation about the project here.

17 The Northern Alliance is the Regional Improvement Collaborative between eight local authorities in the north of Scotland: Orkney, Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute, Western Isles, Highland, Moray, and Shetland. The collaborative focuses on improving educational attainment, closing the attainment gap, improving children’s health and wellbeing, and improving employability.

18 As noted in the Highland Council Year 1 Child Poverty Action Report. See also the Scottish Government’s Child Poverty system map: https://data.gov.scot/child-poverty-system-map/

19 See, for example, this account by a mother in Fife, shared by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as part of their work on raising awareness of poverty in the UK: https://www.jrf.org.uk/blog/how-people-experiences-poverty-can-help-unlock-solutions

20 Recordings of the sessions from the conference are available here.

21 Note the Early learning and childcare data transformation project: https://www.gov.scot/publications/early-learning-and-childcare-data-transformation-project/pages/advisory-group/

22 See https://www.gov.scot/publications/social-security-scotland-act-2018-benefit-take-up-strategy-october-2021/pages/9/

23 The new 10-year National Strategy for Economic Transformation commits to creating an inclusive wellbeing economy, to ensure issues such as child poverty (that have been exacerbated by the pandemic) are addressed.

24 The Fuel Poverty (Additional Amount in respect of Remote Rural Area, Remote Small Town and Island Area) (Scotland) Regulations 2020.

25 For example, the Skills Action Plan for Rural Scotland and Parental Employability Support Fund.

26 The importance of this has also been recognised by Children’s Neighbourhoods Scotland and underpins their action research approach in both urban and rural communities.