Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund (CPAF) round 1: reflections and lessons

Executive summary

The Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund (CPAF) is a Scottish Government-led bid-in fund that is open to local authorities and health boards. It supports ‘small scale projects to generate evidence on a known problem, adapt a promising approach from elsewhere […], or re-design a service or services to deliver greater impact on child poverty.’

Nine projects, which are diverse across timescales, aims and objectives, target populations and overall approaches, were funded in Round 1. Projects were awarded up to £80,000 to use between late 2023 and March 2025.

Given the trial and test nature of CPAF, the Scottish Government is keen to embed monitoring and evaluation to ensure evidence-based learnings. Urban Foresight was appointed as an independent research and evaluation support partner to design an evaluation framework and deliver an evaluation support package to the successful projects. A combination of workshops and one-to-one support was delivered.

As a result of this package of support, a series of learnings around what works when providing evaluation support have been identified and are detailed in this report. This report also provides emerging ideas on what works for the CPAF projects.

Key learnings around what works when providing evaluation support

Adopting a collaborative approach to designing evaluation support tools

A collaborative approach maximises buy-in from delivery partners. Involving participants in the development of the Evaluation Framework also gives them insight into the process of creating a Framework and further supports the upskilling of CPAF project leads and partners.

Providing flexibility in terms of timing of support and the support on offer

Partners often do not know all their needs early on, or as projects change, more needs may arise. Being flexible in terms of when support is delivered and what it focuses on is therefore important.

Recognising and responding to the diversity of support needs

The diversity of types of CPAF project as well as the diversity of people working on them means it is important that support provided reflects this diversity. Providing multiple avenues for accessing support is helpful.

Developing mechanisms for peer sharing of learning via a community of practice

Partners bring and develop important knowledge and expertise that can support other projects to make effective decisions. Ensuring there are mechanisms for projects to hear from one another is important to facilitate a strong culture of learning.

Key reflections – what are the Round 1 CPAF projects’ emerging findings?

Project design and implementation

Embedding co-design principles from the outset is important to ensure interventions are developed in ways that address the needs of local populations. Engaging those with lived experience of poverty as well as those with experience of professional practice in tackling child poverty is important.

Impacts and outcomes

The test-and-trial nature of CPAF projects means that impacts may take a while to be realised and that impacts may adapt and change as thinking develops (likely as a result of findings from co-design). It is important that both funders and those designing and delivering interventions are comfortable with this flexibility in order for innovation to happen.

Partnership working

Collaborative, partnership working is important to develop the conditions for long-term change. Bringing together different organisations supports effective and efficient project design and implementation and should be prioritised where possible. However, it does take time to develop effective partnerships.

Developing the knowledge base

CPAF projects have further developed their knowledge and understanding about child poverty in their local areas and effective ways to tackle it through co-design activities. Core learnings should be shared with other organisations tackling child poverty across Scotland and the UK, while learnings around partnership working and fund management have relevance for other policy areas. Important lessons include:

• qualitative data is vital to better understand child poverty and to evaluate the success of interventions.
• communicating the success of interventions to local decision-makers is an essential, but difficult skill.
• bringing services to people, rather than expecting people to find services is vital.
• person-centred approaches are important to ensure engagement with those with lived experience is appropriate and effective.
• income maximisation is unlikely to be achieved through a short term project, but is important to develop progress towards.
• Although it is important to share lessons, it is also useful to remember that ‘best practice’ may not exist - place-based contexts should not be forgotten when considering how to scale or replicate interventions.