Cash-First Programme: interim evaluation - updated

1. Background and Policy Context

The Cash-First Approach

The ‘Cash-First: Towards Ending the Need for Food Banks in Scotland’ Plan (the Plan), published in June 2023, sets out the Scottish Government’s ambition for a Scotland without the need for food banks. The Plan contains nine actions over three years (2023-2026) to improve the response to crisis, using a Cash-First approach so that fewer people need to turn to food parcels. It is underpinned by a human rights approach that considers physical, social and cultural needs, and takes a twofold approach to tackling food insecurity:

• Prevention, by strengthening incomes through fair work, social security and reduced costs of living; and
• Response, which seeks to provide emergency financial assistance aligned with income maximisation advice and holistic support, with the aim of making food banks the last port of call in a crisis, maximising choice and dignity for individuals.

Action 1 in the Plan is to “support new local partnership work to deliver Cash-First”. This Cash-First Programme (the Programme thereafter) is a two-year fund of up to £1.8 million to support eight local partnerships to collaborate and deliver activities aimed at strengthening ready access to emergency income when someone has no money for food and access to welfare rights and income maximisation advice and support to prevent future hardship. This approach prioritises beneficiaries’ dignity and autonomy, enabling people to make their own choices to meet their essential needs.

Cash-First approaches do not stand alone in addressing reliance on food banks, however they can play a crucial role in making progress towards this and work alongside a range of other social welfare and anti-poverty policies.

Following a competitive process, the Scottish Government selected eight area-based projects to test a range of Cash-First approaches targeting people with different characteristics.

These selected eight area-based projects are referred to as Delivery Partners. Delivery Partners comprise a range of organisations from across the public and third sectors and have a lead partner who coordinates activity. These are:

• Aberdeen City, led by Aberdeen Council of Voluntary Organisations (ACVO)
• Aberdeenshire, led by Aberdeenshire Council
• City of Edinburgh, led by Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership
• Fife, led by Fife Council
• Glasgow City, led by Glasgow Centre for Population Health
• North Lanarkshire, led by North Lanarkshire Council
• Orkney, led by Voluntary Action Orkney
• West Dunbartonshire, led by West Dunbartonshire Council

A Programme Learning Partner was appointed to support Delivery Partners to develop and tailor Cash-First services in their area and share learning across the Delivery Partners.

Approach and interventions

The Cash-First programme is designed to be implemented and delivered through local Delivery Partners, reflecting local infrastructure, characteristics and need. It is intended to test different planning, management and delivery models. Reflecting this, each of the eight Delivery Partners is taking a delivery approach that is tailored to their local area, with different ways of understanding and assessing local need and priorities. Some are delivering direct advice and support, and others are focussing on mapping local pathways and undertaking smaller tests of change.

Glasgow and Edinburgh are primarily implementing a systems change approach to address food insecurity. These two Delivery Partners are developing relationships across a broad range of organisations to strengthen the overall ecosystem. They are providing information, delivering training and events, and undertaking 1-2-1 meetings with relevant services, and in the case of Edinburgh, with potential service users at food banks and food pantries.

With a total funding allocation across the two years of the Cash-First Programme of approximately £200,000 across each area, activity is driven by and shaped according to local context. Over the first year of the Programme, there have been 4,809 interactions with people. This includes repeat users who may have had multiple payments, or people sharing a household. Therefore, it does not reflect unique beneficiaries but shows the potential scale of such a Programme in its first year of implementation. Through these interactions, the Programme has distributed £195,530 in Cash-First payments in Year 1.

A range of models are in operation, including:

• A sustained, 6-month Programme of wrap-around support and payments, in specific localities and with defined target groups. Recipients are targeted, identified and supported by frontline workers.
• Access to cash in a crisis with the opportunity to apply up to three times over an 18-month period to a maximum value, with referrals to additional services.
• Cash disbursed through a network of trusted partners who report to the Delivery Partners. This means there is a wide range of recipients, pathways, and processes in place.
• A welfare rights approach that seeks to provide people with the wider support they need and move them away from food bank dependency.
• A ‘no wrong door’ approach that seeks to educate and engage all relevant service providers.
• A systems change approach that focusses on the system infrastructure and how this can be strengthened to achieve sustainable change.
• A series of small tests of change across defined areas and with specific groups. Activity is proposed, scoped and agreed with key partners to prevent duplication and maximise learning.

There are some very specific local characteristics that have shaped and defined activity in some Delivery Partner areas. For example:

• In Aberdeenshire, the mix of rural, semi-rural and urban areas, the area geography and size, can sometimes present a challenge to service awareness and delivery. A small number of local consultees also identified that there can be challenges where people do not have English as a first or preferred language.
• Some Delivery Partners report there are often assumptions made about the true extent of poverty and deprivation. This is especially true of Aberdeenshire and Edinburgh, who state they suffer from perceptions of consistent, area-wide affluence.
• Fife has high levels of economic variation across the area, and mixed demographics across urban and a rural area. The Fife Delivery Partner has taken the approach of planning different tests of change designed to address specific local challenges.
• The population across Orkney is both dispersed and small, and centralised services are not always the most appropriate or effective way to reach individuals. There can be a reluctance to access services or share information, due to a perceived lack of privacy and an associated fear of stigma. Bringing people together, which may be helpful in a different setting, is not always appropriate for Orkney and they need to consider more bespoke, 1-2-1 ways of working.
• The approach taken in Glasgow is driven by the large population size and the understanding of levels of food insecurity across the city. The Delivery Partner is targeting funding at strengthening the support ecosystem rather than directly distributing cash to individuals.

A detailed overview of local project approaches is included at Appendix 6.

A note on terminology

For the purposes of this evaluation, ‘partner’ refers to those organisations that form Delivery Partners; ‘local stakeholders’ is used to refer to wider organisations, many of whom may be, or may become, local referral partners. This is also noted in the glossary at Appendix 2.

This report

This interim evaluation report covers the first year of the Programme. For evaluation purposes, Year 1 covers April 2024-December 2024. Note that some preliminary activity was underway in some areas as early as October 2023 and all eight areas were operational by May 2024. The report is structured as follows:

• Chapter 2 - Approach and methods: summarises the research questions and the evaluation methodology; and highlights methodological challenges encountered, and the implications for Year 2 of the evaluation.
• Chapter 3 - Has the Programme been implemented and delivered as intended? Outlines the project governance, targeting and engagement with participants, partners and stakeholders, and use of data to date.
• Chapter 4 - What activities have taken place? Explores the approaches and activities delivered by Delivery Partners to date, as well as the strengths and limitations of these.
• Chapter 5 - What impact has been achieved and for whom? What difference has the Programme made, and for whom? Outlines the main impacts of the Programme to date.
• Chapter 6 - Key learnings from year one: Summarises key learning over the first year of the Programme.

Appendices include the study research questions, the Cash-First logic model, survey respondent demographics and other key documents.

This report covers the first year of implementation only. The evaluation is ongoing, and a final evaluation report will be produced in Spring 2026.