Children's Poverty

Targets and strategies

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to have poorer levels of health, emotional difficulties, poorer educational attainment, difficult family and social relationships, lack of access to material goods, poorer quality/inadequate housing, and lack of access to leisure and out-of-school activities.

The following public bodies and organisations have a role in helping to improve the life chances of children and young people, and they implement targets and strategies in order to do so.

Glasgow City Council

  • Glasgow Community Plan

The Glasgow Community Plan has been developed by partners in the city to articulate the focus and priority areas where joint action can make a real difference. The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 requires the Partnership to publish a Local Outcomes Improvement Plan that sets out shared priorities for the city and where improvements are planned.  

The Glasgow Community Plan and the Glasgow Community Action Plan 2018-20, which implements the Glasgow Community Plan, can be found here.

Three focus areas are identified: economic growth; resilient communities; a fairer more equal Glasgow. There are two additional priority areas: childcare and transport.

The Community Plan is published along with 10 locality plans setting out how issues within specific communities across the city will be tackled; these plans can be found at: www.glasgowcpp.org.uk/thrivingplaces.

  • Poverty Leadership Panel

Specific work to tackle poverty in Glasgow City is being progressed by the Poverty Leadership Panel, made up of public, private and third sector organisations along with a Community Activist Panel, made up of people who have experience of living in poverty. The Panel is committed to making a difference to people's lives through their strategy, launched in 2016. 

Cost of the School Day and Cost of the School Holidays are Glasgow Poverty Leadership Panel projects, hosted by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland and working with Glasgow City Council's Education Services.

The project has worked with children and staff in Glasgow schools to identify poverty-related barriers to participation and develop school-specific and practical ways to overcome them. As well as identifying barriers and problems, a key focus of the project is uncovering effective approaches which are already taking place.

  • Glasgow City Council Strategic Plan

This plan sets out the priority themes and commitments that will be delivered between 2017 and 2022 by the council, its services and arm's length organisations. It aims to deliver a step change in how the Council:

  • Promote human rights and reduce inequalities across Glasgow.
  • Improve the life chances and choices for all our citizens.
  • Embed social justice in our policy making.
  • Empower our citizens, giving them a stake, and a say, in what happens in their local communities and communities of interest.

The plan can be accessed here.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde

To tackle Glasgow and Clyde’s poor public health record, six priority areas for action have been identified in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde's new public health strategy, Turning the Tide through Prevention, launched in August 2018. They are to:

  • Develop a better understanding of the health experiences of our population
  • Work with partners to tackle the fundamental causes of poor health, including poverty, housing and challenging personal circumstances
  • Promote health and wellbeing at all stages from early childhood to healthy ageing
  • Create a culture of health and wellbeing in our communities to help people make healthy choices
  • Improve health services to ensure they are fair, accessible and effective for all
  • Protect the public health from risks and disease

Healthier, Wealthier Children aims to contribute to reducing child poverty by helping families with money worries. The project is working closely with antenatal and community child health services to target pregnant women and families with young children experiencing, or at risk of, child poverty, as costs increase and employment patterns change around the birth of a child.

The project offers income maximisation advice for families experiencing child poverty and will aim to prevent families from falling into child poverty by working with health and early years services to identify families at risk at an early stage.

Scottish Government 

The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 sets out targets to reduce the number of children experiencing the effects of poverty by 2030.

The targets state that by 2030, of children living in Scottish households:

  • less than 10% should be living in relative poverty (how many families are on low incomes compared with middle income households)
  • less than 5% should be living in absolute poverty (how many low income families are not seeing their living standards improving over time)
  • less than 5% should be living with combined low income and material deprivation (how many lower income families cannot afford basic necessities)
  • less than 5% should be living in persistent poverty (how many families live on low incomes three years out of four)

The Act requires Scottish Ministers to publish child poverty delivery plans at regular intervals, with annual reports to measure progress.

Local authorities and health boards must also jointly publish annual reports on what they are doing to reduce child poverty in the local area.

The Child Poverty Act is part of the Fairer Scotland Action Plan, which sets our overall strategy for tackling poverty and inequality in Scotland.

The core principles of the Act are further strengthened by the:

They are all designed to ensure that children's interests and rights are placed at the centre of policy considerations.

The Scottish Government's overall National Performance Framework also contains aspirations and outcomes relevant to child poverty.

Other organisations and collaborations

  • The Early Warning System developed by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) in Scotland has been designed to track the impact of welfare changes on the wellbeing of children, their families and the communities and services that support them.
  • The Children’s Neighbourhood Scotland project in Bridgeton and Dalmarnock aims to develop services to reduce poverty, extend power within communities, and improve outcomes for children and young people. The programme is being extended into another urban centre, a small town and a rural community with Scottish Government investment of £2 million.