Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund (CPAF): evaluation - interim report

Executive Summary

Background and Objectives

The Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund (CPAF) is a Scottish Government initiative launched in 2023 to provide targeted funding for local authorities and health boards to reduce child poverty through innovation and evidence-based practice. CPAF funds small-scale projects that aim to:

• Generate new evidence on effective child poverty interventions.
• Adapt and scale successful approaches from other areas.
• Improve service delivery through better use of data and collaboration.

This interim report highlights findings from research aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of CPAF in supporting local approaches to tackling child poverty and explore how successful models could influence national policy. The evidence focuses on the first round of projects, which were funded during the financial years 2023-25.

The key evaluation objectives are:

1. Process Evaluation: How effectively have CPAF projects been implemented?

2. Impact Evaluation: What impact have CPAF projects had on families and services?

3. System Change Evaluation: To what extent have CPAF projects influenced local service delivery and strategy?

The report also touches on emerging insights from the evaluation support A Place in Childhood (APiC) have been providing to Round 2 CPAF projects, funded from October 2024 until March 2026.

Methodology

The evaluation is primarily qualitative, and based on analysis of the following:

• Desk-based analysis – Reviewed progress reports and monitoring data from project partners.
• Interviews – Conducted 18 interviews with 21 professionals.
• Focus groups – Held four focus groups with 38 parents and five frontline workers.
• Family interviews – Three one-to-one interviews with parents, plus three written responses.
• Tailored evaluation frameworks – Co-designed with each CPAF Round 2 project to reflect local context and goals.

Funded projects have taken varied approaches across Scotland, aimed at reducing child poverty by addressing systemic issues through innovative practice and strategic partnerships. Projects fall within the categories of Income Maximisation; Data Focused projects, and capacity building projects. For example, some projects focused on implementing new ways of combining income maximisation services with community support; others looked at how data could be better collected or used to provide more targeted support; and others focused on training and development opportunities for staff or for people with lived experience of poverty.

Implementation Effectiveness

CPAF Round 1 projects have been implemented effectively, though variability exists due to differences in local context, existing infrastructure, and partnership arrangements. Key facilitators include strong leadership, robust partnerships, tailored staff training, coproduction with partners and families, and effective data integration. Barriers include short-term funding cycles, technical complexities in data sharing, and wider issues around gaps in public service provision (e.g. education and social care).

The CPAF principles—innovation, collaboration, evidence-based practice, person-centred approaches, and sustainability—significantly influenced local practices, driving deeper cross-sector collaboration and person-centred service innovations. Projects consistently adapted their approaches based on real-time insights and lived-experience feedback, leading to more targeted and effective interventions. Scottish Government’s flexibility regarding how projects were implemented encouraged innovation and adaptation to project findings and local circumstances.

Impacts on Families and System Change

While CPAF Round 1 projects were small in scale, our qualitative fieldwork and quantitative evidence from some projects engaging directly with families demonstrated improvements in family outcomes, particularly in financial stability, wellbeing, and social integration. Some projects reported that for families taking part there had been significantly increased benefit uptake; streamlined access to financial and social support; reduced stigma associated with accessing services; and enhanced community connections, reducing isolation. Priority family groups - families with disabilities, large families, young parents, single parents, and minority ethnic families - were effectively reached.

Some projects strengthened local service delivery through enhanced skills training, improved data sharing, and expanded referral pathways. Multi-agency collaboration notably increased, resulting in more cohesive and responsive local services. For example, one project provided skills training and a simplified set of referral questions to a wider pool of staff than are traditionally involved in referrals. Meanwhile, another project used a data dashboard that pulled together a wide range of data held on family needs and circumstances, to help target outreach and support more effectively.

Many CPAF Projects also successfully engaged families experiencing poverty in the design and delivery of their projects, ensuring interventions aligned closely with community needs and priorities. However, research participants identified a need for clearer guidance and better support for lived experience contributors, especially regarding compensation and emotional support.

Sustainability

While local areas demonstrated commitment to embedding project learnings, short-term funding cycles posed significant challenges. For example, for projects trialling a completely new approach or service it was difficult to design, implement, and then meaningfully report on progress within the 16 months of funding. Some also found it difficult to engage third sector partners or recruit staff members on a short contract. Projects with strong strategic alignment, embedded partnerships, and integrated service models showed the greatest potential for sustained impact. This is evidenced by continued funding for the programme of work beyond the end of CPAF support and/or clear integration of project findings into ongoing or new strands of work.

The CPAF programme was developed with the intent of providing short-term funding for promising approaches to help tackle child poverty at the local level. Findings from this evaluation suggest that future rounds of CPAF funding, or similar approaches to driving forward more effective responses to child poverty, would benefit from the following:

• Longer-term funding timescales and cycles to support partners to embed, evidence and scale effective innovations sustainably. It is noted that the Scottish Government responded to feedback from Round 1 in this regard, extending the timescale for Round 2 from up-to-16 months to up-to-18.
• Clearer national guidance on data-sharing and consent processes to enhance cross-sector collaboration and targeted intervention efficiency.
• Continued leadership from the Scottish Government in sharing CPAF’s positive impacts and learning from challenges experienced by projects. This will help ensure future national policy and practice can continue to support effective local practice and future innovation.
• Continued emphasis on engaging and sustaining contributions from lived experience participants in local service codesign and delivery, recognising their vital role.
• Increased cross-project learning opportunities and structured knowledge exchange platforms to maximise collective impact and replicate successful models. There is significant potential to build this into CPAF Round 2.

Conclusion

CPAF Round 1 successfully demonstrates how targeted local innovation, proactive intervention, and meaningful collaboration can contribute to improved public services aimed at reducing child poverty and factors associated with contributing to it. Projects have generated valuable insights into delivering integrated, person-centred support, significantly benefiting families engaged, and strengthening local service systems. While there have been significant barriers to implementation in some cases, the relatively small investment in each CPAF Project has created new pathways to service delivery and significantly increased the knowledge base of local partners.

The next stage of this research will be for APiC to continue Evaluation Support to CPAF Round 2 recipients, reflect on end-of-project reports from CPAF Round 1 recipients, and draw together the final evaluation for both rounds in March 2026.