Bringing Hope, Building Futures: Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2026-2031 – annex 6: Impact of policies on child poverty

Making money and debt advice more accessible for families and tackling public sector debt

To enhance access to income maximisation and debt advice across the public and third sectors. This commitment: continues funding for advice services including specific support for those experiencing council tax debt; continues partnership working in different settings through the Advice in Accessible Settings Fund; provides specific support for maximising incomes of separated families; seeks to ensure other services can support families to access household financial advice; and supports the sustainability of the advice services sector. Improved data sharing between Social Security Scotland and Scottish local authorities may allow better identification and targeting of support to low-income households with children that hold Council Tax debt, enabling more informed and proportionate action.

Actions included

• Welfare, income maximisation and debt advice (Continuation) - £11.9m
• Advice in Accessible Settings Fund (New) - £2m
• Maximise take-up of child maintenance support (New) - £0.3m
• Review embedding advice in education and health settings (New) - £0.2m
• Advice services workforce development (New) - £N/A
• Council Tax debt project (Continuation) - £2.2m
• Council Tax data sharing (New) - £N/A

Total investment in 2026/27 - £16.6m.

Impact of actions committed

Type of impact

Improvements to the accessibility of advice and ability of other sectors to help people access advice will have a direct impact on cost of living and income from social security and benefits in-kind. The data sharing element is anticipated to have an indirect impact in its early stages of development.

Potential size

Funding of advice services will support households across Scotland in need. This is anticipated to be at least 80,000 households. Families will see financial gain through both appropriate support for problem debt and increased incomes through benefits and child maintenance. The scale of the benefit received will vary depending on individual circumstances. However, based on previous data, some families will see gains in excess of £4,000.

Data sharing will give an indication of scale, and inform the development of an approach in partnership with local government.

Certainty

Impact is certain based on evidence to date on the value of advice. Better data sharing should allow for targeted support, but evidence is unclear at this stage as to how it will specifically support reductions in child poverty rates.

Priority families targeted by the actions

This policy is targeted at families in poverty and on low incomes and aims to provide easier access to advice services. Services will be designed to ensure priority family groups are reached as part of this.

Tracking progress

Quarterly reporting on numbers of people supported and financial gains, including for priority families.