Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-26: Evaluation approach to system change

Research scope

This project focuses on those initiatives in Best Start, Bright Futures targeted at changing the child poverty support system and creating better join up between local support services.

There is no clear definition in the Plan of what is exactly meant by changing the system or creating better join up in services. However, the Plan includes a commitment to:

• ensuring that systems work for the people who need them and that the range of support that people need to move out of poverty is joined up
• partnership working - with the Scottish Government and Local Government working together with partners from across the public, third and private sectors
• a place-based approach, with the design and delivery of services based in the distinctive needs of communities
• providing holistic and person-centred support, that wraps around the needs of the individual or family

To date, the following initiatives in the Delivery Plan have been identified as falling within the remit of this work:

• Dundee Child Poverty Pathfinder - a collaborative initiative between Dundee City Council, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), the Scottish Government, Social Security Scotland and other partners, aiming to support parents to move out of poverty on a sustained basis, working across boundaries to provide holistic approaches centred around a family’s specific needs.
• Glasgow Child Poverty Pathfinder - Glasgow City Council, the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Improvement Service are working together, using a ‘No Wrong Door’ approach, to achieve better outcomes for families by reforming systems and removing barriers, including siloes, data sharing and restrictive funding, to enable the delivery of holistic person-centred services.
• Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund - Scottish Government is launching a bid-in fund to support small scale, local projects to test and innovate ways of working and generate evidence on what works to tackle child poverty.
• The Social Innovation Partnership (SIP) - a partnership between Scottish Government and the Hunter Foundation, using a distinctive wellbeing and capabilities approach to tackling poverty and inequality, that supports people to live flourishing lives based on what matters to them.
• No-one Left Behind - an integrated approach to employability services, underpinned by a partnership approach to design and delivery between Scottish Government and local authorities. The programme aims to provide a flexible, user-centred system, that helps people to find, stay in and progress in sustainable work.
• School age childcare - building a system of school age childcare, offering care before and after school and during the holidays, by taking a person-centred and place-based approach, designing services collaboratively with families, childcare providers and the wider public sector, meeting individual and community needs.
• Whole Family Wellbeing Fund - supporting ‘whole system transformational change’ in order to reduce the need for crisis intervention in families and shift investment towards prevention and early intervention, so that families have access to the range of services they need, when they need them, and for as long as they need, to help them flourish and thrive.
• Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy – the ultimate aim is for mental health considerations to be integrated into all policy. This will be done via a phased approach, prioritising areas where there is already joined-up links, such as employability and child poverty.
• Empowering Communities Programme – a range of funds and grants with the aim to support system change through a place-based approach It is intended that system change will happen through coordination, collaboration and partnerships formed within local community delivery structures.

It is anticipated that due to the range of initiatives in scope, the research will yield learnings on designing local initiatives as well as on how mainstream services should operate.

Over time, it may be that other initiatives could fall within the scope of this research, including initiatives in health, transport, education, housing and potentially economic development. A review of the initiatives in scope will be undertaken by the Research Advisory Group annually.

A key early task is to further clarify the scope of this piece of work, taking into account its purpose and relationship to other existing work.