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

Expanding the availability of flexible and affordable childcare for families

We will further expand access to high quality, flexible and affordable childcare and a nutritious breakfast, prioritising low-income families, to realise outcomes for children and their families long-term. This will help reduce the costs of living and support parents and carers to enter, remain in, or increase their hours in education, training or paid work, contributing to higher and more stable household incomes and a reduction in child poverty. We will also increase access to school age childcare services for families most at risk of living in poverty, supporting them with free or subsidised school age childcare.

Actions included

• 1140 hours of funded Early Learning and Childcare (Continuation) - £1.03bn
• Early Learning and Childcare for eligible two-year olds (Continuation) - part of overall investment in 1140 hours Early Learning and Childcare
• Real Living Wage for childcare workers (Continuation) - £13.4m
• School Age Childcare Programme (Continuation) - £16.2m
• National Breakfast Club offer (New) - £15m
• Childcare Support (New) - £15m
• Increase wrap-around activity clubs (New) - £2.5m
• Work with UK Government to improve the take-up of help with childcare costs that they offer (Continuation) - £N/A

Total investment in 2026/27 - £1.6bn.

Impact of actions committed

Type of impact

These measures will have a direct impact through reducing costs of living by reducing childcare costs and providing free breakfast, and an indirect impact on increasing income from employment by supporting parents (particularly mothers) to enter, or increase their hours in, education, training or paid work.

Potential size

We estimate that if families paid for the full 1140 hours of funded ELC themselves, it would cost them more than £6,000 per eligible child per year. Just under a quarter of children eligible for the universal ELC offer, and the majority of those eligible for ELC at age two, live in relative poverty.

We expect more than 125,000 children to benefit from the free breakfast clubs. Cost reductions associated with a free breakfast club include the cost of up to one hour of childcare each morning and the cost of breakfast.

Certainty

Evidence shows that childcare policies make a contribution to reducing household costs and are an important enabler for parental employment.

Priority families targeted by the actions

1140 hours of funded ELC is a universal policy for all three and four year olds and has a targeted element for around a quarter of two year olds who are expected to benefit most (if they or their parent are care-experienced, or if the household receives qualifying benefits). The national free breakfast club offer is a universal policy. Increased access to school age childcare services is specifically targeted towards children most at risk of living in poverty, which will potentially include those living across the six priority family types.

Tracking progress

Our overarching evaluation report on the ELC 1140 expansion draws together findings from across the main strands of the outcomes evaluation for the period 2018-2025. We will carefully consider how best to monitor outcomes of the ELC expansion for children and families over the longer term. Evaluations of the childcare Early Adopter Communities and Scottish Football Association Extra Time Programme are ongoing. We expect to publish final outputs from these evaluations later in 2026. Plans for monitoring and evaluation of expanded school age childcare and breakfast provision will be developed alongside policy design.