This evidence review and briefing offers practicable steps to support local authorities and community planning partnerships to mitigate and prevent child poverty and identify early trigger signs that may suggest an increased risk of poverty.
Summary
This review presents evidence to support local authorities and community planning partnerships (CPP) to:
- identify factors that may mitigate the effects of child poverty
- make suggestions on how the local authority can act to prevent child poverty occurring
- identify early trigger signs that may suggest an increased risk of poverty
These three issues are explored for families through pregnancy, in the child’s early years and in the primary school years, under the themes: income maximisation, education and childcare. A fourth theme, lone parenthood, will be explored as a stand-alone cross-cutting theme.
There are other critical areas of work that are within the remit of the local authority and the CPP, which are not addressed in this review but strongly contribute to the incidence, prevalence and experience of child poverty; namely health, disability, housing, transport and area regeneration.
Local authorities have duties under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and the broader social policy framework of the Scottish Government, to improve the health and wellbeing of children living in poverty. The 2017 Child Poverty (Scotland) Bill places a requirement on local authorities to prepare and publish a local child poverty action report.
Local authorities and community planning partnerships (CPP) do not have control over the macro-economic or political factors that drive the incidence and prevalence of child poverty. They can harness their resources to the prevention and mitigation of child poverty locally, and exert their influence on Scottish and UK policies to support them.
Bearing in mind the considerable resources, people and skills at the disposal of local authorities and CPPs, this report sets out practicable steps to mitigate and prevent child poverty locally.
Download the publication
- Actions To Prevent And Mitigate Child Poverty At Local Level – Evidence Review (PDF)
- Tackling child poverty: Actions to prevent and mitigate child poverty at the local level – Evidence Briefing (PDF)
More details
This report was produced by the What Works Scotland Evidence Bank. It was edited by Cara Blaisdell, Charlie Mills and Sarah Morton.
Author: Dr Morag Treanor (lead researcher and author). Supported by Alexandra Macht (research assistant); Sarah Morton (What Works Scotland co-director; Karen Seditas (Evidence Bank lead, review co-ordinator)
Peer reviewer: Professor John McKendrick, Glasgow Caledonian University
User reviewers: Marion Fairweather, Child Poverty Action Group; George Howie, Principal Health Improvement Officer, Aberdeenshire Health & Social Care Partnership; Annette Johnston, Tackling Poverty and Inequalities, Aberdeenshire Council
Publication date: August 2017
The report was launched at an event in Edinburgh. See the presentations and discussions from the event.
Publication type: Evidence Review
Copyright:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
To cite this review:
Treanor, Morag C. (2017) Actions to prevent and mitigate child poverty in Community Planning Partnerships, Edinburgh: What Works Scotland.
Related resources
This evidence review presents evidence to support South Ayrshire local authority and community planning partnership to mitigate and prevent child poverty and identify early trigger signs that may suggest an increased risk of poverty.
April 2017
