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

4 Interventions to tackle rural and island child poverty

This section describes some existing interventions that were explored for this study. The recently published annex to the second child poverty delivery plan (2022-26) also summarises the latest evidence on what works in tackling child poverty (in all types of communities) (Scottish Government, 2022b).

4.1 Employment and skills-development interventions

The Parental Employment Support Fund (PESF) is one example of such an intervention, providing person-centred support to parents facing barriers to entering or progressing their careers. The support includes help to gain qualifications, improving skills or work experience, money advice and motivational support. This is a new employability offer for parents including upskilling and training opportunities, a dedicated keyworker and support to access childcare and transport.

The research team spoke to two local authority representatives engaged in delivering the PESF in their region. The key issues related to delivering this support in a rural/island context are summarised in Box 1. The lessons learned from these rural experiences will be important in informing the scaling up of investment in the No One Left Behind approach as set out in the new 2022-26 Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan and the Empowering Communities Programme to ensure that it is as relevant in a rural and island setting as in an urban setting.

Box 1: The Parental Employment Support Fund (PESF)

Key challenges associated with delivery of the PESF in rural/island contexts:

• Short-term allocation of funds has made it challenging for local authorities to recruit PESF co-ordinators/key workers in rural regions. This is because the funding is only guaranteed until the end of the financial year, making it difficult to advertise long-term posts that appeal to applicants.
• Responses to advertised posts have been low, with only six applicants for five key worker roles and two applicants for one co-ordinator in one local authority region.
• Like social care roles in rural areas, it is assumed that people often ‘do not want to work on their own patch� as these types of support roles can be hard to do when you are known in the communities you work in.
• Similarly, for those adults engaging with the training/skills sessions, some would prefer to travel further or not take part, because they do not wish to be visible in the community as ‘needing support�.
• There are also challenges related to public transport for those wishing to attend skills/training sessions funded through PESF. Lack of childcare is also a challenge.

Opportunities

• The individual approach taken in the PESF by key workers is enabling relationships to be built with parents/carers and increased understanding of what they need/what their aspirations are.
• There is scope to think about how this type of support could be delivered via/with pre-existing community organisations/groups that have good relationships with the community at the local level. There has been some success with channelling PESF funding through these partners and allow them to identify/target families needing support.
• Some of the challenges with delivering support like PESF highlight the importance of community venues/buildings to deliver support services, combined with online/phone support. As one interviewee noted, ‘child poverty isn�t 9 to 5�.
• A longer-term commitment to the PESF (beyond one financial year) is likely to help recruitment and other issues experienced during delivery in a rural and island context.

Families may also be supported through investment in business units or providing support for those wishing to set up businesses (e.g. through the Scottish Government�s proposed Islands Bond), or investment in affordable, energy efficient housing or in terms of tackling adult physical and mental health challenges. Any intervention needs to be focused on tackling the challenge/s that is/are most acute in a particular local area and identifying that/those requires local place-based evidence gathering, hearing the voices of those families and children experiencing poverty. The Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-26 includes a commitment to strengthen Local Employability Partnerships (LEPs) which will enable the provision of locally tailored responses and, more broadly, the No One Left Behind approach which is based on:

�a long-term, scalable and flexible place-based model of delivery where Scottish and Local Government work with partners from across the public, third and private sectors to deliver person-centred solutions to labour market challenges as they arise.� (Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-26, p31).

4.2 Early years interventions

Evidence suggests that offering intensive support to those who are most vulnerable to experiencing poverty and starting young (e.g. pre- and post-natal support and interventions, home visiting in infancy, parent support programmes, and pre-school day care) is important and may achieve more ‘success� (Save the Children, 2018). From an economic point of view, Heckman�s (2016) work showed that the rate of return on investments in early childhood development for disadvantaged children can be 13% per child, per year, due to improved outcomes in education, health, sociability and economic productivity (including earning higher incomes and being less likely to become involved in crime) (Save the Children 2018, p.22).

However, it is also worth noting that, while early interventions are critical in enhancing the wellbeing of children, investment in interventions throughout the life course up to post-school and tertiary education which build on these early interventions, are critical too. In Scotland, this is recognised in Best Start, Bright Futures, which includes a new Youth Work Strategy focused on providing services to young people most in need.

The Smith Family�s work in Australia (2012, p.13) confirms the importance of long-term effort and perspective, for example through a ten-year strategy and plan, but with progress regularly checked and reported over that time period. The impacts of any interventions also need to be measured over the long-term and in an inclusive way, recognising that they may be hard to measure. Particularly interesting from a rural/island perspective, The Smith Family (2012, p.14) note:

�Government contractual arrangements for such initiatives should reflect the period of time required for change to occur and be cognisant of the inefficiencies inherent in short term initiatives, particularly in regional communities where staff recruitment can be challenging.�

However, these early (and indeed later) interventions are likely to be more challenging and expensive to provide to rural and island families where distances are larger and the cost (both financial and time) of home visits is higher than in urban locations. These additional pressures on service providers (at organisational and individual level) need to continue to be acknowledged. This is recognised in the ‘Income Maximisation� section of the new Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan, with the aspiration to enhance access to advice and support in places that families already visit (e.g. placing money advisers in GP surgeries and furthering the Family Nurse Partnership).

There is some existing evidence on the provision of early years and pre-school childcare in rural locations (see Scottish Government, 2021g). Key challenges in rural areas (as compared to urban areas) include: fewer services, resulting in pressure on existing providers; sustaining provision in more remote settings with lower numbers of staff and children; a shortage of transport provision, including drop-off services and public transport; a shortage of suitable venues, with many shared with other groups; and difficulties recruiting staff, particularly for senior roles.

To contribute towards reducing child poverty in rural and island locations, childcare provision needs to be affordable, accessible, of good quality, and as flexible as possible to take account of the working patterns of many of those in the labour market in these areas, such as those working long or irregular hours in agriculture or in hospitality, and where those hours may vary across the year. Flexible childcare is also required to support those families for whom childcare may be needed on a more limited, unpredictable basis, such as to attend welfare-related meetings or to access mental health support services, especially where informal childcare from family and friends is not available.

The research team spoke to representatives from the Mull and Iona Community Trust childcare pilot, which has been supported financially by Scottish Government. The key points raised in that discussion are summarised in Box 2.

Box 2: The Mull and Iona Community Trust (MICT) Childcare Pilot

This island childcare pilot, funded for 12 months by the Scottish Government, has enabled MICT to provide childcare to school age children, ‘testing the limits� and trying to develop a model that could be rolled out to other communities. Provision includes after school care and some summer holiday activities. There is no childcare for under-3s in this area.

Key challenges:

• Most of the challenges for a community trust wishing to provide childcare relate to Care Inspectorate regulatory requirements, Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) workforce requirements, and other national rules that limit how creative/flexible they can be. For example, playworkers require a childcare practitioner qualification that takes two years to complete.
• This also raises the question of adequate supply of qualified childcare practitioners available in remote and rural island communities. At present, there is nobody with the required qualifications on Mull, meaning that the establishment of a traditional school age childcare service is extremely difficult.
• This means that the childcare provision on offer has to ‘fit the rules� rather than ‘fit the need� of local parents and carers. To comply with the rule that after school provision can be for no longer than two hours (due to the level of training of those offering the service), it can be impractical for parents to take up the provision for such a short time, especially when the travel time to pick up/drop off a child is included.
• There is no permanent indoor venue available for after school club/childcare provision. In response, MICT tends to base its provision around outdoor activities, which is challenging in poor weather.

Opportunities:

• Understanding childcare need is vital to ensuring the best provision. A survey of childcare need in 2016 revealed that 53 families were looking for childcare and unable to secure it.
• Relaxing/adjusting the Care Inspectorate rules for their context would have a significant impact on what they could deliver. There is the need for dialogue between the Care Inspectorate and initiatives like these to think about place-based alternatives while still ensuring child safeguarding.
• An extension of the trial would enable the development of more solutions and provision of school age childcare linked to the local school estate, as well as more thought about how to support these types of initiatives in other places.

4.3 Cost of living interventions

Recognising the breadth of drivers that lead families and children to experience poverty and the extent to which those experiences vary, interventions may target their support at different aspects of peoples� lives. For example, fuel costs are known to be a particular contributor to fuel-related poverty in rural and island communities (for various reasons, including, on average, larger and older housing stock and more homes that are off-mains gas grid meaning that households are more reliant on expensive oil or electric heating), so interventions for focusing on reducing costs for these households might be particularly helpful. These might include, for example, schemes to improve house insulation to reduce energy bills, which would also result in net zero benefits too, as well as reduce the likelihood of additional health problems for children (e.g. relating to mould and related problems such as asthma).

The actions under ‘Warm Affordable Homes� in Part B of the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan seek to address issues related to fuel costs, include the delivery of more affordable energy efficient homes in rural communities and the development of a ‘Remote, Rural and Islands Housing Action Plan�.

The work by Tighean Innse Gall (TIG) in the Outer Hebrides was cited in the recent Rural Lives project as an exemplar in terms of providing appropriate energy advice for islands residents. As the Rural Lives project found, not only was the service vital in itself but, when people were undertaking their energy assessment with TIG they could also do a benefits check, overcoming some of the challenges with the stigma felt by rural dwellers when they are considering seeking support. Since the Rural Lives project was published in 2021 much has changed for TIG in terms of their capability to support the communities that it serves. In March 2022 TIG released a public statement that was critical of both the UK and Scottish Government, highlighting their ‘lived experience� of trying to deliver against the PAS2035/2030 retrofit standards, which were introduced by The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS).

More information about TIG�s services is provided in Box 3.

Box 3: The services of Tighean Innse Gall in the Outer Hebrides

Tighean Innse Gall is a Registered Society under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 that is run primarily for the benefit of the Outer Hebrides community. It supports people to rent, buy and live in comfortable, affordable homes; promotes healthy independent living and assists communities and business to be more sustainable. Specifically, TIG delivers support to those disadvantaged by age, income or disability to insulate, heat and maintain their homes through a variety of advice and funding schemes (although this service has recently ceased).

The 2021 Rural Lives project highlighted that one of the main ‘added values� of TIG�s energy service was that when people were doing the energy assessment they could also do a benefits check, which helped to combat rural pride and an often experienced inability to ask for help. One specific example of such partnership working included TIG�s fuel poverty and home insulation team working with Stornoway CAB to assist benefit uptake in Harris. In the Rural Lives project, interviewees in Harris revealed many examples of successful and effective joint working, cross-referrals and informal partnership arrangements, involving health practitioners, CAB, TIG, electricity providers, Home Energy Scotland, Macmillan and, of course, the local council and the Community Planning Partnership.

For more information, see the Rural Lives Final report available online.

4.4 Health and wellbeing interventions

Interventions to support an increase in healthy, affordable food consumption for all households are important, but again perhaps particularly so for families in rural and island communities where there may be challenges around consuming adequate quality or sufficient quantity of food at affordable prices. For residents of remote rural and island communities, access to food is known to involve adaptation of living style and travel outside the local area as a normal and integral part of food shopping, to access wider retail assortment and lower food prices (Marshall et al., 2018).

It is recognised that when households cannot access appropriate and affordable fresh, quality food there is a trade-off in the sense that the nutritional quality of the diet is reduced to preserve quantity, which may in turn lead to health problems, including obesity. Fife Local Action Group is currently undertaking work to improve food security across south and West Fife with funding from the Scottish Government�s Rural Communities Testing Change Fund (Tranche 1). This project is working with communities to explore a range of issues including where people buy food from and how they shop, what they eat, attitudes to food waste etc. Learning from this project might be useful in terms of informing further work in the area of food poverty in future.

4.5 Integrated interventions

Many families will experience drivers of poverty at the same time and in inter-related ways, therefore interventions that recognise the inter-play of different factors and involve different partners are likely to be best placed to ‘succeed�. The Smith Family�s work in Australia has commended the Government�s Communities for Children Programme. One of the strengths of this programme is bringing together diverse sectors, organisations and individuals from a particular community so that they can identify gaps and priorities and plan together to implement, over time, a range of strategies to address those priorities.

The work also highlights one of the conclusions from the UK�s Children�s Trust Pathfinders which was that:

�working with the grain of previously established collaborative practices was essential, particularly where the organisational boundaries of different services overlapped� (University of East Anglia, 2007).

As suggested in this existing evidence, this partnership working is critical at local level but also by national government too where there needs to be cross-portfolio working so that the impacts of a change in one policy area are understood elsewhere and throughout ‘the system�. National government has a role to play in developing frameworks to enable and facilitate that partnership working at national, regional and local levels, and in ensuring that there are clear mechanisms for tracking progress over time. This includes cross-policy team working within Government, which includes rural and island policy teams to ensure that the specific circumstances of these communities are taken into account in decisions regarding policy priorities, design and delivery - and that an expectation for this to be the case is mainstreamed.

However, it is critical that children and young people themselves, families, communities and schools all have a voice and work together at local level to ensure that children�s health and wellbeing are maximised. More information about the UK Government�s Children�s Trust Pathfinders established in 2004 is provided in Box 4, while Australia�s Children�s Centres are discussed in a little more detail in Box 5. The new Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan in Scotland sets out delivery of a Pathfinders approach initially in urban areas, with the approach potentially expanded to rural and island areas in due course.

Box 4: Children�s Trust Pathfinders in England

Thirty five Children�s Trust Pathfinders were set up in 2004 bringing together education, health, social services and other partners, to promote cooperation with the aim of improving children�s wellbeing. They were based on common principles, but local flexibility was encouraged in order to respond to local needs and opportunities. There are a number of over-arching lessons which can be learned from the Pathfinders with respect to interventions to support children and young people:

• Acted as a catalyst for more integrated approaches to the diagnosis and provision of services for children;
• Brought together a variety of statutory and local services with the aim of enabling them to make a difference to the wellbeing of children and young people
• Began to develop expertise in joint commissioning of services across traditional organisational boundaries
• Sometimes found it difficult to engage partners in key sectors, notably where there are funding difficulties or complex accountability frameworks;
• Enabled joined-up approaches to workforce development and training;
• Facilitated the development of new types of professionals able to work across long-standing organisational and professional boundaries;
• Reported early indications of local positive outcomes for children and young people;
• Learnt a great deal about the complexity of change management in children�s service provision.

A number of key policy messages were distilled from the evaluation which may inform thinking around the shaping of future child poverty interventions in Scotland:

• Development of these arrangements requires both enabling national policy and the enthusiasm and dynamism of local agents
• Those engaged in local activities should be involved in shaping national developments
• In partnership and collaborative working there need to be clear lines of accountability and decision-making; more successful relationships were built where there was a coherent and long-term vision
• Children, young people and parents/carers need to be fully and meaningfully involved in shaping local activities (e.g. through co-design and co-construction of projects)
• Mechanisms for involving under-represented sectors/individuals should be found, including GPs, police authorities, education and learning providers, private sector service providers, etc.
• Senior staff from all organisations need to be committed and visible in these arrangements
• School clusters were found to have an important role in service planning.

Information taken from: Department for Education and Skills (2007)

Box 5: South Australia�s Childrens� Centres for Early Childhood Development and Parenting

South Australia�s Childrens� Centres bring together a range of services for early childhood development, and for parents and families including childcare for children of a range of ages, education, health, community development activities and family services. Following the principle of placing the child/young person at the centre of service delivery, the Centres provide a range of learning and development activities for children in the context of their families and communities through a collaborative and partnership approach by service providers and local communities with services tailored to their local setting.

Research has found these Centres have had positive impacts on children�s health and wellbeing, and key has been not following an expectation that children and families will fit into services which are not designed to respond to their diversity of experience and their changing needs. Work by The Smith Family (2012, p5) highlights one Children�s Centre in Port Adelaide/Enfield which has led to a growth in the opportunities and services being offered to families. This includes a range of outreach programmes for young mums and some more disengaged families and some home-based initiatives such as Learning together@home. It is also noted that the Centre is well located and provides good access to potential users from across the surrounding area.

4.6 Digital and school-based interventions

Over the last two years in particular, the role of digital technology has expanded in terms of delivering a vast range of services, including relating to health and education. Work by the Smith Family in Australia (2012, p.6-7) has reviewed a number of programmes focused on building the skills of young people and enhancing their networks, both of which will, in turn, enhance their health and wellbeing.

One programme is i-Track which uses online technology to connect young people in more rural and dispersed communities with others elsewhere to receive mentoring and support for career and post-school pathways. This programme has been particularly effective in communities where employment, education and training options may be limited (which is the case in many rural communities) or where there are relatively low levels of post-school education. The s2s reading programme enables additional resources to be brought to communities to support young people whose reading age is behind their chronological age to support them to improve their reading. In general, The Smith Family highlight that:

�finding innovative ways to use technology and deliver programs is essential if young people in regional and rural communities are not to experience significant disadvantage.�

Having said that, though, it is important to recognise that not all rural children and young people will have access to adequate digital equipment and connectivity to participate in such activities, with those at-risk or in poverty most likely to lack access and therefore be excluded. The new Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan includes a commitment to invest in bringing more families online, particularly digitally excluded low income families (through the expansion of Connecting Scotland), so that they can better access the support available to them online, and a commitment to ensure that every school age child has access to a digital technology device by 2026.

There has been research work done internationally to explore the actual and potential role of schools in serving as hubs for the wider rural and island communities in which they are located. Schools are perhaps the most important contact points with children and young people, some of which involve other services (e.g. health professionals) while the school building itself is a significant piece of infrastructure in often small communities. However, recent work by Children�s Neighbourhoods Scotland (CNS) suggests a move away from schools as hubs, preferring green spaces (CNS, 2022).

One example of the school hub approach is the Rural Schools Program at Cornell University in New York State working with the State�s Rural School Association. Evidence from the US and UK relates to the importance of extended service or community schools which deliver a range of services (both on site and nearby) through partnership working, often with a wide range of different agencies (which may include before or after school care, adult learning opportunities or community use of the school facilities). Work by The Smith Family (2012) in Australia has also explored the role of rural schools, identifying their potential importance as ‘community hubs� or ‘one stop locations�. Schools in disadvantaged communities cannot be expected to realise the full potential of children alone given the resources available to them, but they can be a platform to build integrated and comprehensive support for children.

Work by the Foundation for Young Australians (Black et al. 2010; see also Lonsdale et al, 2012) revealed the range of benefits that such extended schools can bring, including: enabling earlier identification of needs and quicker access to services; increasing engagement and participation in school; creating a more positive school environment; improving communication between schools and families and enhancing family engagement in school; improving community connectedness and capacity; and widening the schools external contacts, networks and partnerships and enhanced social capital. Additional benefits include the generation of positive local economies and reducing the costs of service provision through tackling duplication of services and increasing shared responsibility. They are not necessarily easy to set-up and maintain and resources will need to be devoted to building collaborative relationships but they can deliver multiple benefits to individuals, families and communities, particularly if they are developed in a place-based way, tailored to specific local circumstances.

There have been interventions in Wales previously to support the work of schools as key actors in helping to reduce poverty and support those in poverty (and therefore to reduce the impact of poverty on educational attainment), such as through programmes including Flying Start (the Welsh Government�s early years programme aimed at improving outcomes for families with children under 4), Families First (a Welsh Government programme focusing on providing multi-agency systems and support for those living in poverty, emphasising prevention and early intervention) and Communities First (a community-focused Welsh Government programme aimed at reducing persistent poverty in some of the country�s most deprived communities). All of these programmes have emphasised the importance of families and other services working closely with schools.

In Scotland, there has been a significant amount of work undertaken through the Scottish Attainment Challenge (Scottish Government, 2021h)and Pupil Equity Funding. Further work to explore the actual/potential wider community roles of rural and island schools in Scotland would be useful. Issues to explore (perhaps through drawing in international experiences) might include:

• The extent to which children�s decision-making is impacted by their financial situation e.g. choosing subjects which place a lower financial burden on their family, rather than those which they are good at or are particularly interested in, or choosing to avoid trips, social events, etc. which would be beneficial to their health and wellbeing (although we note that charges associated with core curriculum subjects have been removed).
• The impact of poorly maintained school buildings or other learning environments on children�s wellbeing in terms of young people taking poor condition as a reflection on the level of respect in which they are held.
• Exploring the ‘good practice� ways in which children and families experiencing poverty are supported by schools and by school-community partnerships which can bring resources, support and opportunities together. Learning and social experiences in and out of schools (including creative enrichment, mentoring, recreational, etc) that enable young people to mix widely, at low or no cost to families, are critically important so young people experiencing economic adversity ‘can participate on an equal footing�.

4.7 Interventions to strengthen the voices of children and young people

The Smith Family�s work in Australia (2012, p.13) has explored interventions which are focused on further raising the voices of young people, in particular in South Australia. Amongst other evidence, their work highlighted a research project undertaken with the University of New South Wales and other partners which involved longitudinal interviews with young people to understand their lived experiences of economic disadvantage and their parents/carers and service providers. The report covered a variety of different issues, but importantly, revealed the importance of directly listening to, and therefore strengthening, the voices of children and young people in order to fully understand their experiences.

On the basis of their work, The Smith Family urged the South Australian Government to take further steps to strengthen the voice of young people, particularly those who are perhaps ‘less articulate� and less engaged in existing forums and advocacy channels. Save the Children (2018, p.22) also argued that it is imperative for stakeholders, including elected officials, to create space for rural voices to inform policy decisions. They argued that joint working is required to find and tailor innovative approaches for rural contexts and engage both public and private partners to replicate and scale solutions that work.

There is a range of existing initiatives in Scotland through which the voices of children and young people, including those in rural and island communities, can be articulated, including the Children�s Parliament, Scottish Youth Parliament, Young Scot, and particularly their Young Islander�s Network, and the Rural Youth Project. Rural and island specific mechanisms can serve as critically important sources of information on the experiences of children and young people in these communities, but it is also important to ensure that ‘mainstream� mechanisms also listen to and provide an outlet for the voices of rural and island young people.

The work of Children�s Neighbourhoods Scotland focused on reducing poverty and increasing participation in six communities across rural and urban Scotland and there may be important lessons to learn from this work from 2018-2022. As with the project focusing on food insecurity in south and west Fife mentioned earlier, a number of Local Action Groups are currently undertaking work with young people funded through the Scottish Government�s Rural Communities Testing Change Fund, including Cairngorms, Ayrshire and Fife. Again, learning from these projects in terms of how best to engage young people at local level is important. Ensuring that rural and island voices are heard through the Scottish Rural Parliament is vital, as is ensuring that children and young people are represented on an ongoing basis through the rural movement that is emerging in Scotland.

Finally it is worth noting that Scotland�s Climate Assembly, working closely with the Children�s Parliament, emphasised the incorporation of the voices of children and young people in their deliberations. It may be worth exploring with the Assembly�s Secretariat how this was achieved and any lessons learned. Box 6 below recognises the importance of local community voices in designing interventions.

Box 6: Save the Children�s work in Harlan County, Kentucky since 1923

The involvement of Save the Children in this county of Kentucky dates back to the 1930s and the need to support families affected by the Great Depression. The work is based on two core assumptions: (i) that community development activities are most successful when designed and implemented locally; and (ii) that those experiencing poverty and disadvantage (not only those who are not) in communities have great and often unrealised talents for solving their problems. For Save the Children, this means that taking a collective impact approach, where people from across the community – the church, local leaders, business, schools, statutory services (such as the police) – come together to create a unifying vision and set of objectives to be delivered through structural collaboration in order to positively impact children, is vital.

Information taken from: Save the Children (2018) Growing Up in Rural America (p22)

4.8 Recommendations to shape future interventions on rural and island child poverty

This final section of the report is organised into two parts: the first summarises some specific principles that, based on the evidence here, should inform the shape of future policy and practice interventions to support rural and island children at risk of and living in poverty. Based on these principles, the second part puts forward some specific recommendations for actions that could be put in place to tackle child poverty in rural and island communities, with reference to the newly published Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026.

Many of the points in the second part are based on the fundamental need to undertake rural and island proofing of all interventions to ensure that they are as appropriate for rural and island locations as they are for urban and more densely populated locations (considering the impact on island communities through Island Communities Impact Assessments is a requirement in the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018).

Guiding principles for policy and practice interventions

Based on the evidence reviewed here, it can be argued that interventions to tackle child poverty in rural and island locations need to:

1. Recognise the higher costs of living experienced by families in these locations.

2. Recognise the higher costs of service delivery in these locations.

3. Ensure interventions are place-based and community-led.

4. Be built on cross-issue, cross-sectoral partnership working at national, regional and local levels to ensure that interventions recognise the inter-related drivers of poverty which need to be tackled in a holistic way.

5. Ensure early intervention and a long-term approach as this is likely to be most effective (which is challenging under single year financial allocations).

6. Place children and families at the centre of the intervention.

7. Explore digital technology as a delivery mechanism, though recognising that this might not always be appropriate.

8. Involve schools as key partners in local interventions.

9. Ensure that all interventions are rural and island proofed (i.e. checked to ensure that they are equally as appropriate in rural and island locations as they are in urban locations and if not that modifications/mitigations are made to design and/or delivery).