Engaging with families living in low-income households through system change, place-based initiatives

7. Conclusions

This report has drawn evidence from published reports and interviews with key Scottish Government colleagues working across a range of system change, place-based initiatives which seek to tackle child poverty. The primary focus of this report has been to understand the engagement of families across these initiatives, with an intention to better understand where more support is required to engage underreached groups, and identify lessons to share with other initiatives working with families across similar initiatives.

Across initiatives there are a variety of examples of dedicated and successful work in engaging, and maximising reach of services for families living on a low income. The positive value of staff, place-based principles and partnership working repeatedly came through. This, in combination can promote engagement and maximise reach of services across local communities.

The diversity of initiatives in their level of engagement highlights how initiatives can adopt different approaches to provide individuals with opportunities to engage, and be engaged, across service design, implementation, delivery and evaluation.

However, many of the barriers to successful engagement are systemic issues. For example, around recruitment and retention, or poverty stigma. This highlights the need for system change initiatives to provide the building blocks that create long-lasting change to structures and cultures.

Many of these initiatives are small-scale or in the early stages of implementation – and change takes time to embed and impacts for families, in terms of maximum reach and engagement, may also take time.