Bringing Hope, Building Futures: Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2026-2031 – Easy read version

The Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan

This is an Easy Read document about the Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan.

Tackling means dealing with something.

Poverty means not having enough money to pay for basic things like food, heating or housing.

Child poverty means children living in a household where there is not enough money coming in from jobs or benefits.

A delivery plan explains what work will happen and when it will start.

Introduction

This is the final delivery plan due under the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017.

It gives information about our work:

• to have fewer children in poverty
• to make the lives of children and families better across Scotland
• to make sure that every child has a fairer future

Scotland is the only part of the UK to have targets to reduce child poverty.

A target is what the government is working towards to help make things better.

Since 2017 we have got a lot of data about what works to deal with child poverty.

Data means facts, figures and information.

We listened to the experiences of parents, young people, organisations and experts.

Experts are people who know a lot about a subject.

They helped us decide what should be in the plan which has:

• 4 main themes shown on pages 4 to 8
• 15 things we will focus on - shown on pages 10 to 16

Theme 1 – making it easier for people to earn money

• employment support, training and adult learning work well together to help parents and young people earn more
• having more flexible childcare for families that they can afford

Flexible means it can fit around people’s working lives and other commitments and can change if needed.

• making positive changes to:
  • support people to get jobs
  • have better conditions in workplaces

• making sure public transport:
  • is available
  • is not expensive
  • is accessible
  • connects parents and young people to work

Theme 2 – reducing the costs of living

• having more social housing for families and having more homes that families can afford

Social housing means housing for rent that is provided by councils or housing associations and is more affordable.

• making sure that every child has a home

  

• making homes cheaper to heat

  

• dealing with public sector debt

Public sector debt means the money people owe to public bodies like councils.

Theme 3 – making sure that people get the benefits that they are entitled to

• giving people support through benefits

Benefits means the money some people get from the government to pay for the things they need.

• making sure that more people apply for and get the Scottish and UK Government benefits that they need

  

• making it easier for families to get advice about money and debt

Theme 4 – supporting children and families to live a full life

• supporting young families by putting money into early child development services

  

• making sure children and young people can be the best they can be and live the life they want

  

• having Whole Family Support at the centre of our work

Whole Family Support means:

• listening to what a person needs and wants
• having services that work well together to give them that

• Making services available in the places those who need them often visit

This makes it easier for families across Scotland to:

• get the right support
• at the right time
• in the right place
• for as long as they need it

Making best use of data to support children and families and improve public services.

Other work

Along with this plan we have published an assessment that:

• checks how different policies together will affect different groups of people
• shows that Scottish Government policies are likely to keep 1 hundred thousand children out of poverty in the year 2026 to 2027

  

• shows how many children are likely to be in poverty up to the year 2030

We need all of Scotland working together on these actions to make a real, lasting difference for families.

Some of the actions we will take are shown in the rest of this document.

To help families earn more money we will:

1. Spend £11 million to support parents to get the skills and education they need to get, keep and progress in work.

This includes:

• £9 million for colleges to provide training and learning opportunities
• £2 million for a new Training Access Fund

2. Spend £100 million from 2026 to 2029 on breakfast clubs for primary school children – this means a place where children can eat breakfast together before school starts.

This will:

• support over 1 hundred and 25 thousand children each year
• make it easier for some parents to get to work
• save childcare costs for families

3. Spend up to £19 million to develop a new Transport to Employment offer for parents on low wages to:

• support them with transport costs to get training and work support
• give them different transport choices to get to work

4. Spend £10 million on a new Workforce Development Fund to help families at risk of poverty by:

• encouraging employers to support:
  • their employment
  • ways for them to progress in employment
• helping more parents get better skills
• making workplaces easier for parents to work in

To reduce the cost of living for families we will:

5. Spend over £4 billion on affordable homes over the next 4 years.

With other money this should provide 36 thousand affordable homes and give up to 24 thousand children a place to call home.

6. Spend £9 million to deal with the impact of Local Housing Allowance rates not going up.

This will support up to 18 thousand families to meet their housing costs and will help to prevent homelessness.

Local Housing Allowance rates means the amount of money someone can get through benefits to help with their rent.

7. Put £1 million into the Islands Cost Crisis Emergency Fund.

Working with island local councils this will give local communities support including with fuel and energy costs.

8. Give £2 million to the Council Tax Debt project across Scotland which will:

• provide support for up to 15 thousand people with council tax and water charges debt
• continue to share what works well across local councils to encourage change

To make sure families get the benefits they are entitled to we will:

9. Develop the systems and laws needed to increase the Scottish Child Payment to £40 a week for all children under the age of 1 that get that payment.

We plan to start this in 2027.

It will help around 12 thousand children and give them support in the important first year of their lives.

10. Deliver a national Parental Employability and Financial Support campaign to help families get the benefits and support they are entitled to.

11. Spend over £27 million in benefits, income and debt advice services over the next 2 years to:

• make sure there are enough of these services now and in the future
• make it easier for staff to stay in these services
• have better quality services

We expect these services will support at least 80 thousand households each year.

To support children and families to thrive we will:

12. Expand the Family Nurse Partnership Programme to an extra 500 first time mothers which will support young parents:

• to get support from early pregnancy until their child is 2 years old
• to build the confidence and skills they need to get the right support for their baby and give them the best start in life

13. Expand the MCR Pathway mentoring programme

This programme matches adult volunteers with care experienced and disadvantaged young people, to give them help and advice.

An extra £1 million will mean that up to more than 5 thousand young people in schools across Scotland can get support.

14. Start a £20 million fund to support charities to:

• give more community support for families
• support families to connect with public services

15. Spend £2 million on a Data Exchange programme so services share useful information and families are better understood and better supported.

A focus on people at greatest risk of poverty

We know that around 9 out of 10 children in poverty live in 6 family types:

• single parent families
• minority ethnic families
• families with a disabled adult or child
• families with a mother under 25
• families with a child under 1
• families with 3 or more children

Families often belong to more than 1 of these groups.

This plan looks at other things that affect family life so we can better support those at most risk of poverty.

The other things we looked at included:

• Gender

Many households at the greatest risk of poverty are led by women.

We can only make progress on child poverty by dealing with the things that make women's lives less fair.

• Groups of people who might be forgotten about or left out of making decisions

Many things affect how people and families experience poverty including:

• homelessness
• being a victim or survivor of domestic abuse
• living far from towns or cities, or on an island

  

• experience of the care system
• being kinship carers

Kinship carers look after the child of a relative or close family friend because their parents cannot care for them.

We must understand how these things link with gender, disability and ethnicity so we can design policies that work well for people in poverty.

• Deep poverty

Around 2 out of 3 children in poverty live in families with incomes well below an acceptable standard of living.

This plan will make sure that families get the help and services they need.

• Families at risk of poverty

Many families move in and out of poverty over time.

By offering support early to those who may be at risk, we can help families feel more secure and better able to handle future pressures.

And finally…

This plan builds on the actions taken since 2018 that have already made a real difference for children and families across the country.

If we end child poverty we can make sure that Scotland is:

• a fairer, healthier and wealthier nation
• the best place in the world to grow up, live and work

We will work in partnership with the UK Government, local councils and our wider partners in the public sector, charities and business.

We can then deliver the change needed to transform the lives of children and families across Scotland.