Tackling child poverty - place-based, system change initiatives: learnings

6. Conclusions

This report has collated and synthesized evidence from across a range of initiatives focused on place-based system change in order to tackle child poverty. The findings highlight that there are early signs of positive development and implementation, with those initiatives at the implementation stage often seeing changes to structures and cultures which are seen to be creating the building blocks for longer-lasting system change. Further, it is notable that there appears to be support, and desire, across the system and across stakeholders to change ways of working and practice to ensure that support is delivered in a more place-based, person-centred way, which is a fundamental aspect of system change.

However, it is also clear from the evidence that system change initiatives will take time to implement, and embed. The development and implementation of initiatives to date has not been without struggles, with the time taken to effect system change being central to a number of challenges seen in implementation on the ground. For example, the extended timeframe for system change is relevant to challenges seen in relation to funding constraints, concerns surrounding the sustainability of initiatives, the development of monitoring frameworks and the motivation of staff.

It is also important to consider the difficult socio-economic context in which these initiatives are currently being developed, designed and implemented. Initiatives are often working to effect change across complex support systems and multiple service areas, challenging structural, organisational and cultural norms, and against a backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

However, what has been highlighted by these findings on the design and early implementation of system change initiatives for tackling child poverty, is that system change requires involvement, and collaboration, by all those within the system. It requires all stakeholders to consider their role in assisting and bringing about positive change. While there have been positive developments and progress made in partnership working, across the published outputs to date, the role of national stakeholders, including Scottish Government, in supporting system change has largely been unexplored and this may be a future area of focus for system change initiatives.

In the context of needing to make progress in reducing child poverty and to meet our child poverty targets, the next stage for evaluations of systems change initiatives is to consider the impacts on those families accessing services, particularly the impacts on different groups of people in poverty (e.g. exploring impacts for the priority family groups) in further detail and as policies become more embedded. This will allow for greater understanding of the positive and negative impacts for families living in poverty and those experiencing the greatest barriers to moving out of poverty. It would also allow for the monitoring of initiatives to ensure they are not resulting in unintended consequences for families. However, it is important to note that system change initiatives take time to implement and as a result will take time to see impact for families. Further, due to the challenges in evaluating initiatives seeking to effect system change , it will likely be very difficult to directly attribute reductions in child poverty to system change initiatives, and it may be more appropriate to consider approaches that focus on understanding contribution rather than attribution. Finally, the design and early implementation findings drawn on in this report highlight the importance of values and principles in designing system change initiatives. Place-based and person-centred approaches are fundamental to the design of all of the initiatives in scope for this research. These principles were reported by stakeholders to be key to the potential success and scaling up of initiatives. In particular, these values and principles allow for localised, and unique, contexts to shape the design of services and systems that work best for families living in poverty.

Next steps

Reporting on evidence and learning from place-based, system change initiatives to tackle child poverty is planned to take place annually as a standalone report, with a summary included within annual child poverty progress reports.

We intend to publish the next report in 2025. Learning and feedback from this report, alongside engagement with stakeholders, will feed into the development of the next iteration. However, as noted in the evaluation approach to system change, this will be dependent on information from evaluations being available at the right time and able to address the research questions.

How to access background or source data

The data collected for this:

☐ are available in more detail through Scottish Neighbourhood Statistics

☒ are available via an alternative route. All data can be accessed by following hyperlinks throughout the report.

☐ may be made available on request, subject to consideration of legal and ethical factors. Please contact for further information.

☐ cannot be made available by Scottish Government for further analysis as Scottish Government is not the data controller.