Whole Family Wellbeing Funding Programme templates: year 3 analysis - 2024-2025

1. Introduction

Background

In 2022, the Scottish Government established the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) programme, committing £500 million over the lifetime of the 2021-2026 Parliament to support the delivery of holistic, multi-agency family support in line with the National Principles of Holistic Whole Family Support. In 2024, the Scottish Government provided an update on progress to date on delivering the Promise, which included a section specific to the WFWF and plans to extend the programme beyond the current end point of 2025-26. The WFWF programme was designed to drive systems change at a local level, primarily through Children’s Services Planning Partnerships (CSPPs).

The WFWF programme aims to help ensure that every family in Scotland can access the right support at the right time, reducing the need for crisis intervention and helping children to thrive within their own families. The fund supports a shift towards early intervention and prevention, and is built around the following four thematic areas (known as ‘core components’) identified by the Scottish Government and stakeholders as key to achieving the aims of the WFWF programme:

• children and families being at the centre of service design;
• availability and access;
• whole system approach;
• leadership, workforce and culture.

The WFWF programme’s Logic Model sets out a range of early, intermediate and long term outcomes under each component, illustrating how the programme’s inputs and activities are expected to contribute to improvements for children, young people and families.

The WFWF programme is delivered through three funding streams, known as “elements”. The analysis presented here looks specifically at reports related to Element 1^[1], which provides direct funding to CSPPs to enable local areas to build local service capacity for transformation. It also may be used to support the scaling up of existing, local transformational practice of holistic whole family support.

The WFWF programme is closely aligned with other national policy initiatives and legislation, including the Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) National Practice Model, The Promise, Best Start, Bright Futures: Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan 2022-2026, and the incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into Scottish law.

Through WFWF, CSPPs fund a range of activities aligned with the outcomes of the WFWF programme. These include recruitment of staff, procurement and commissioning of services, workforce training or skills development and system change activities, such as mapping, restructuring, and governance.

Each year, CSPPs are encouraged to share information on the activities that have been funded through WFWF with the Scottish Government, the outcomes the activities contributed to and additional details on local delivery of the WFWF programme. This information can be provided either by completing an annual WFWF reporting template or within their Children’s Services Plan annual report. CSPPs may also attach any supporting documents setting out relevant information in more detail.

In July 2025, the Scottish Government commissioned The Lines Between, an independent social research agency, to analyse the WFWF annual templates reporting on the programme’s third year (2024-2025). This analysis is distinct from the separately commissioned evaluation of Year 3 and 4 of the WFWF programme; it was not within the scope of this review to assess the programme’s effectiveness, contribution to outcomes, or critically review the appropriateness of the types of activities. Instead, the purpose of this review was to provide a timely and detailed understanding of CSPPs’ Year 3 WFWF activity and identify thematic insights to inform policy development and support future analytical work. Given the WFWF programme’s focus on gathering and sharing learning nationally, the report illustrates examples of local practice to support CSPPs to learn from activity in other local areas. The wider evaluation will draw on a broader evidence base, including primary research, to examine the programme’s impact, while this analysis provides foundational descriptive evidence to support and complement the evaluation work.

Methodology

A desk-based methodology was applied to review the WFWF templates and supporting documentation. To provide a basis for a consistent and robust approach, a secondary data analysis framework was designed using Microsoft Excel. The analysis framework was structured around the WFWF reporting template, with four sections: ‘Background information’, ‘Activities’, ‘Outcomes’ and ‘Additional questions’. Each section featured a series of information fields corresponding to the data requested in WFWF templates, including ‘activity description’, ‘target beneficiaries’ and ‘which WFWF Logic Model outcome(s) the activity contributes to’.

Analysts reviewed reporting templates and supporting documents against the analysis framework, collating quantitative and qualitative data and distilling key information from the templates. The information in the collated dataset was then thematically analysed, using a coding framework aligned with topics of interest proposed by Scottish Government and building on evidence from the evaluations of WFWF Year 1 and Year 2.

To supplement the desk-based analysis and gather additional insight, The Lines Between conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 stakeholders from four CSPP areas^[2]. Case study areas were selected using a purposive sampling approach, allowing for deeper exploration of innovative or distinctive practice described in CSPPs templates. Selections were made to reflect a geographic spread, while also avoiding areas involved in the wider evaluation to minimise burden. While eight CSPPs were initially invited to participate, several were unable to do so due to capacity constraints.

Interviews with local staff and stakeholders involved in WFWF activity led to the development of four positive practice case studies, each exploring the implementation of a specific initiative or workstream in their area.

Data limitations

When reviewing this report, it is important to recognise the data limitations which may impact the comprehensiveness and reliability of the findings. These include:

• Due to deadlines associated with delivering this research, it was not possible to include the analysis of templates submitted after 3 October 2025. The report is therefore based on submissions provided by 23 out of 30 CSPPs^[3], meaning that the analysis does not present a complete picture of Year 3 WFWF activity.
• The analysis relies on the quality and detail of information provided by CSPPs. The level of detail provided by CSPPs varied, therefore analysis is not consistent across CSPPs.
• A small number of CSPPs submitted their data as part of their wider Children’s Services Plan annual report. This led to some variations in the data available for analysis.

This report

This report provides a detailed overview of Year 3 WFWF activity, exploring key themes across activities, which targeted work with priority groups and aimed to progress towards programme outcomes. Insight is also shared on key successes and the challenges faced by CSPPs in the delivery of WFWF activity.

It should be noted that WFWF is a complex systems change programme and activities often cut across more than one core component in order to achieve their intended outcomes. To avoid duplication, findings are considered under the most relevant or pertinent core component.

Findings are structured as follows:

• Chapters 2-5 present findings about WFWF activities delivered in Year 3, themed around the WFWF programme’s core components. Each chapter has multiple sub-sections exploring the key themes across WFWF activity, followed by a summary of a related positive practice case study at the end.
• Chapter 6 explores challenges faced in the delivery of WFWF activity, and how CSPPs have addressed these challenges.
• Chapter 7 describes the key successes of WFWF activity, with commentary on the enabling factors underpinning these achievements.
• Four positive practice case studies are contained in Annex 1.