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

Chapter 2: How effectively have CPAF projects been implemented?

This chapter evaluates the implementation process of Round 1 CPAF projects, highlighting common themes, lessons, and barriers. It draws on data from key informants, family participants, and frontline workers. Key informants refers to any individuals participating in the evaluation process who were able to provide detailed insights into the implementation and impacts of CPAF projects. At the conclusion, preliminary insights from Round 2 projects are briefly introduced, with full evaluation planned for the final report. A summary of Key Points from this chapter are outlined below.

Key Points

• CPAF Round 1 projects effectively targeted three core approaches to reducing child poverty: Income Maximisation, Improved Use of Data, and Capacity-Building. This strategic focus allowed local authorities to test innovative approaches tailored to their unique local contexts and service structures.
• Strong leadership, existing relationships, supportive infrastructure, and targeted training programmes significantly facilitated project implementation. The ability to establish and sustain trusting relationships—both between services and families, and internally across different local authority departments—was crucial.
• Key barriers to effective implementation included restrictive data-sharing regulations, short-term funding cycles, complex procurement processes, and recruitment challenges. Addressing these systemic issues is critical for longer-term project sustainability and scalability.
• Families highlighted significant ongoing gaps in education, childcare, healthcare, and social services, particularly for families with disabled children. These systemic gaps exacerbate financial pressures and social exclusion.
• Complex, fragmented, and often uncoordinated public systems created significant barriers for families, limiting access to essential support. Streamlining and simplifying these systems is a key part of some CPAF projects, but further work is necessary to fully enable better targeting and delivery of services.
• CPAF’s principles of innovation, partnership, co-production, evidence-based practice, and person-centred approaches significantly shaped local projects, enabling flexible responses that were grounded in lived experiences and real-time data.
• Round 1 CPAF projects have begun to demonstrate the transformative potential of more proactive, integrated, and holistic approaches to poverty reduction, setting a foundation that Round 2 projects aim to build upon, particularly in relation to enhanced NHS engagement and data integration.

Core Issues CPAF Projects Address

A first finding of this work is that local authorities in receipt of CPAF applied for the fund for different reasons, and three core themes emerge regarding what they wished to focus on. These are explored below to give a flavour of the differing focus of the nine projects involved.

Income Maximisation

Many families entitled to financial support do not claim it. Research by the company Policy in Practice notes that there was approximately £24bn of benefits going unclaimed in the UK in 2024. Key contributing factors for this are complex application processes, stigma around state support, and lack of awareness of the support available. At the same time, some local authorities have identified that employability support may not be accessible to some families living in poverty. By maximising income, families can achieve greater financial stability, which reduces the need for crisis-based support and improves long-term outcomes.

While it is acknowledged that significant barriers to claiming support remain, the steps taken by Social Security Scotland to reduce them regarding devolved benefits should also be noted. This includes Adult Disability Payment, Child Disability Payment, and the Scottish Child Payment, amongst others of relevance to tackling child poverty. The steps include simplifying application processes, proactively promoting entitlements, and a strong emphasis on dignity and respect in delivery. Social Security Scotland’s examination of emerging evidence suggests these approaches may be helping to increase uptake and improve user experience.

CPAF projects have tested proactive approaches towards increasing uptake of income maximisation support such as simplifying processes, improving outreach, automatic benefit checks, and integrating financial support/advice with other frontline services (e.g., health and education).

Improving the Use of Data

Effective use of data allows services to target support more accurately for income maximisation and identify families at risk before they seek help. CPAF projects focused on data use aim to:

• Improve data-sharing across local authority, health, and third-sector services.
• Explore interventions that facilitate cross-system integration.
• Build local capacity to analyse and use data more effectively.
• Identify unmet needs and gaps in service provision
• Streamline data collection and service coordination.

Capacity-Building

Capacity-building projects aim to strengthen local services and empower families to engage with support systems. They focus on:

• Enhancing staff skills and knowledge.
• Strengthening collaboration between local services and third-sector partners.
• Creating more accessible and dignified support processes for families.
• Reducing isolation and improving social networks for vulnerable families.
• Expanding the pool of people who know how to make effective referrals to include other frontline workers (e.g. health workers and teachers).

Capacity-building projects often combine income maximisation with wider social and personalised support, creating a more holistic response to child poverty.

Factors Influencing Effective Implementation

Facilitators

CPAF projects benefited significantly from strong project leadership, existing partnerships, robust service infrastructure, and targeted training programmes. For example, Aberdeen City Council effectively implemented the Low Income Family Tracker (LIFT) platform in a context of supportive strategic leadership for trialling more effective and efficient ways to tackle child poverty, prior digital investment and a partnership with Microsoft, and a robust collaboration with its creators, Policy in Practice. LIFT is a digital dashboard designed to integrate and analyse administrative data, towards enabling proactive identification and targeted support for families experiencing poverty.

Similarly, Inverclyde Council leveraged existing trusted partnerships and shared local values to expand Home Start’s service offer to families, enhancing systemic integration. This sits within a context of Inverclyde Council developing ‘The Inverclyde Approach’ to tackling poverty, which began in 2021. This approach acknowledges that poverty cannot be alleviated through a single programme or intervention, but is enabled through a wider approach that puts individuals experiencing poverty at its centre and takes a relationship-based approach. In Perth and Kinross, effective training through the Support and Connect programme empowered frontline staff to overcome initial hesitancy in having discussions around family income and wellbeing. It provided them with practical tools for sensitive conversations, delivered through collaboration with the Citizens Advice Bureau as a trusted local partner.

The building of strong relationships with families was also a core facilitating factor for income maximisation and capacity-building projects. This generally took the form of sustained engagement, within community or home settings, and with familiar staff or volunteers. For example, a family focus group participant noted:

‘You know that you can talk about anything in here, naebody judges you for anything. And you can phone [name of staff members] and they don't judge either. And I wouldn't have got through the past like two years without being able to build that relationship—that's the key to it. It's the relationship we have.’ Family Participant

Key Informants also spoke of the strong internal relationships they had, and their commitment to cross-departmental working. These were generally facilitated by individuals or teams who have strong passion for their work in addressing and alleviating the causes of child poverty. They were also often facilitated by commitments within community or child services plans, Where these contexts were in place, there was a stronger sense of purpose in the project design and clearer routes for learnings to be integrated into existing services after the official project end date.

Barriers

Local Context

Local contexts were critical in shaping project design and implementation. Many projects were setup with the intent of navigating some of these challenges, for which they were at least somewhat successful. However, the complexity of some barriers and the level of control project partners had in alleviating them meant that many still impeded the level of project success project leads would like to be able to demonstrate. For example, geographic challenges prominently affected rural and island regions. Recruitment and staffing were notably more challenging in rural areas such as Moray and South Lanarkshire, impacting service availability and capacity. Additionally, there is more limited representation from national charities that often support struggling families in more rural parts of the country.

Physical infrastructure availability also emerged as a crucial contextual factor. Families we spoke to expressed frustration regarding closures of community facilities and libraries, significantly limiting accessible social spaces and exacerbating social isolation:

‘The government needs to step up and start funding the community centres more. Yeah. I mean, that's now half of them shut down because they're not getting funded enough and the kids have got nowhere to go.’ Family Participant

‘Cause systematically over the last five to 10 years, they've shut down libraries, community centres… groups are pretty transient and so they can't actually put down their own routes.’ Family Participant

‘I mean, all the libraries are in the schools then the schools are using them the majority of the time. So where do you then go?’ Family Participant

This made the meet-up elements of some CPAF projects all the more important. For example, some families described how the lack of accessible and affordable social spaces has increased feelings of isolation and loneliness in their communities:

‘I feel like there needs to be a certain way to try and get people that are stuck in their houses that can't socialise to try and get them away into the community centres, because I just feel like they're sitting at home alone like you know TV, and they havnae got any relatives or friends coming to visit them.’ Family Participant

Some third-sector partners involved in CPAF projects also noted that the lack of affordable and accessible premises limits their capacity to deliver services effectively. Affordable access to larger community centres could enable them to expand their services and create more consistent and stable support for families.

In rural areas, a lack of accessible central meeting points meant that projects which may have incorporated family meetups otherwise could not. Regional disparities further compounded these issues, highlighting inequalities in service provision across Scotland, forcing some families to travel extensively or bear costs for services otherwise freely available in other areas:

‘If we lived in Glasgow, we'd be able to access baby groups… meetups, we'd be close by therapy. We have to travel to Glasgow for physio… because we live here we have to fund ourselves.’ Family Participant

Cultural attitudes also influenced project implementation. In one project, for example, frontline workers initially showed hesitancy in raising sensitive financial issues with families, highlighting the need for targeted training to overcome underlying cultural resistance. One Key Informant suggested that this reluctance may reflect local sociocultural norms, observing that such resistance was less evident in their experience of urban settings elsewhere in Scotland.

Data Sharing

This includes internal and external data-sharing restrictions and interoperability issues. North Ayrshire, for example, grappled with aligning consent processes and developing shared systems to facilitate smoother data-sharing. Aberdeen similarly navigated complex data protection rules and legal gateways for internal and external data sharing. Though these factors acted or do act as barriers, it is vital to note that the work of these two projects is highlighting strategies and ways these might be mitigated, and that could inform best practice across local and national government. We draw out further information on this barrier in Chapter 3.

Funding Cycles

Key Informants were clear across multiple projects that short-term funding cycles significantly impacted project delivery. Procurement or bureaucratic delays, inflexible local processes around recruitment, and the difficulty of providing sufficient clarity or security regarding contract duration, hindered strategic planning and staff recruitment:

‘We get to the reporting and what we've achieved with it only being one year, that's quite hard as well because just to scope this out and get it set up, you've lost like six months.’ Key Informant

‘It wasn’t enough time to establish networks, connections, and get all our partners on board. That’s quite an ask to put on overstretched organisations.’ Key Informant

‘There was too much pressure on it. I’ll be honest, it was actually making me feel quite sick about how much pressure was being put on us.’ Key Informant

Staff turnover and recruitment challenges, particularly acute in early years and childcare settings, also undermined continuity of service delivery in some cases.

Gaps in Education and Childcare

Families described ongoing inequalities in education provision between disabled and non-disabled children. This acts as a barrier to effective poverty alleviation, as it makes the prospects of employment difficult. Some CPAF projects were initially looking to provide employment support to parents, however, through better understanding the barriers faced by recipients of their projects realised that there are significant barriers to do so for families where a child is disabled. Parents described feeling forced to sacrifice their careers and financial security to fill gaps in the system.

‘So even if the parents wanted to work, they can't. Yeah, because there's this reliance from the education system that the parent will always be available.’ Key Informant

‘I had to leave my job. So that's tight. That's really difficult. But we make it work because we have to.’ Family Participant

Families further highlighted the inadequate provision of educational support for children with additional support needs, especially following funding cuts:

‘This time last year, my child had a one-on-one [Pupil Support Assistant (PSA)]. He was in mainstream class four days a week. And since the cuts, he's got one teacher to two children. He's never getting into his mainstream class because they have no staff.’ Family Participant

CPAF projects have highlighted these particularly significant barriers facing households where a family member is disabled. Inconsistent provision for these families is a key contributor to poverty, and the core barrier to providing effective income maximisation services to parents:

‘You know, my daughter who is primary 3 is not disabled, if she had experienced the kind of education, for example, that [name of disabled child] experiences, you wouldn't stand for it. You know, the phone calls pick up your child… a lot of mainstream parents won't stand for that because they've got this right to work and I need to work and I can't pick up my child. However, we don't have a choice and the council relies on us giving up our jobs and being, you know, disregarding 4 years at university because we have to now care for our children and that's not fair… the amount of money we save the council is unbelievable and we just have to do it. And when we question it, we are just a nuisance. Yeah, and nothing changes. I think that's the thing as well — parents want and carers want to see a change.’ Family Participant

Gaps and Biases in Health and Social Services

Inadequate access to NHS services also left some families without essential therapy and health support, forcing them to navigate a fragmented system. In addition, Self-Directed Support (SDS) is designed to give families control over the care they receive, but many found it too complex and inflexible to meet their needs:

‘I've had a year of no respite because there's no space for [my child]. My social worker left last week. I don't have a new one, and before she left, she advised me to go down the [Personal Assistant] route. It wouldn't work for my child. He's very anxious. He wouldn't let anyone in the house. But I'm left with nothing.’ Family Participant

Parents expressed frustration with SDS being presented as a ‘solution’ without the flexibility to meet the specific needs of their children. When SDS failed, families were often left with no other options:

‘We've had no hands-on physio for over a year. And she's got a growing body with cerebral palsy… I've had a whole situation with this and it's probably one worth knowing that SDS said no, we're not paying for it. I went to the NHS and I said I think you should be paying for it, social work can't because to be fair it is a health issue. He said well no because we don’t have the resources for it, and I'm like "What!?"’ Family Participant

Families described feeling trapped in a bureaucratic loop, with healthcare, social work, and SDS services all denying responsibility for essential care. CPAF projects seeking to provide holistic support to families struggled to find resolution pathways through this issue, due to its complexity.

A key informant also described the challenges faced by a family with three disabled children after being relocated due to poor living conditions:

‘They got top-of-the-range equipment for their son that they need for him to stand, for him to walk, for him to sit. He's got a specialised pram, he's got a specialised bath seat, he's got a standing thing. That's all kind of to try and help him, train him. The house needs to have wheelchair access. The house they're currently in doesn't have wheelchair access so they can't get their son there. And because they've now switched councils and I mean they're on like the borderline; they have been told that they need to give their equipment back because it's [the old] council's equipment. The [new council] don't have the equipment that they need, they don't have budgets for the equipment that they need, so they couldn't buy that.’ Key Informant

This case highlights how poor coordination between councils and underfunding of services leave families without essential equipment and support. The CPAF project involved in this example was seeking support for this family, but struggling to find a satisfactory resolution.

Families also reported feeling judged or stigmatised when accessing social work services, which made them reluctant to seek help. The fear of being perceived as ‘bad parents’ or ‘incompetent’ prevented some from accessing vital support. Parents also described how the wider impact on siblings was often overlooked:

‘Our first introduction to social work was really bad. I had no wages coming in. Various other things were happening despite the fact I was working full time. Health just collapsed and I quit. Yeah - on the doctor's orders. And like, we were, we had no food, no money. The benefits told us, oh, he's earned too much. But I got paid 60 quid…. So I had no money for six weeks at all. They wouldn't even let me claim benefits. It was brutal. … and we phone up asking for help and next thing you know, there's a social worker sitting in front of us doing a full investigation that lasted for nine months… later, they're like, oh, you are competent. Oh, that's quite offensive, but OK.’ Family Participant

Instead of receiving support, families described how social work interventions often resulted in feelings of mistrust, humiliation, and added to their existing stress. CPAF projects supporting families needed to toe a fine line in ensuring the appropriate services were involved in the care of a family, while appreciating that negative past experiences and lack of support can, reasonably, effect the willingness of individuals to engage. Indeed, some frontline workers reported a hesitation in reaching out for support for families in specific circumstances when they were aware that the help on offer may not meet the family’s immediate needs.

Navigating Complex Benefits and Financial Systems

Complex and poorly integrated public sector systems create significant barriers for both families and service providers. The fragmentation of services and lack of clear communication make it difficult for families to access the support they need. Families described feeling overwhelmed and unsupported when trying to navigate these systems, particularly around benefits, housing, and social care. As one family participant explained, it can become very easy to feel like there is no genuine support available when systems are designed primarily to minimise costs rather than meet people’s needs:

‘Like the Job Centre, their primary goal is just to save money…. The NHS, their primary goal is to treat the most severe. But like I was identified as a child as very severe. I had very intensive treatment till I became an adult. Yeah. And my mum made me homeless and all my support disappeared and all my treatment went with it… And like the homeless system, for example, I never got any other support. They just watched me sort of manage to feed myself and no starve and said that's sufficient. But a couple months later I was evicted… It's like all these services are supposed to actually like sort the problems out and they don't. Or maybe they try to but they can't because of the way they engage.’ Family Participant

Meanwhile, Key Informants noted the difficulty in understanding the systems even as a member of staff:

‘I didn't fully understand the whole benefits thing. I've had to learn, you know, what does that mean? How does that fit with that? What about Carers Allowance? How does that fit in with Universal Credit? You know, and I used to see it as like pointless, like why would you claim Carers Allowance, because it just gets taken off your Universal Credit? So like, you're no financially better off. But actually, it means that your National Insurance payments are paid. So actually it's really important. But who tells the parents that?’ Key Informant

‘You're given training on these things. Families are given nothing. They're just expected to understand it.’ Key Informant

Key informants also described the moral challenges they face when working within systems that fail to meet families’ needs:

‘It does get tricky at times that you're hearing stories and you know that it's like morally not correct, but you're an employee of the council and you can understand how the process doesn't match the need.’ Key Informant

Service providers acknowledged the tension between their professional roles and the moral responsibility they felt toward families. This could impede how effective they felt their CPAF project was in tackling poverty, as compared to how they wish being able to help. They described feeling constrained by inflexible and often dehumanising bureaucratic processes. For example, referral, and assessment for multiple forms of support can place a significant burden of time and complexity on families. At the same time, frontline workers can find that their time to provide quality, more personalised, support is hindered by the need to guide families through these procedures.

Influence of CPAF Principles on Local Practice

The principles of the Fund are intended to be innovation, partnership and collaboration, evidence-based learning, person-centred approaches (with an explicit focus on the six priority families) and sustainability. Evidence shows that CPAF’s core principles significantly influenced local practices.

Person-centred Approaches

Inverclyde's CPAF project expanded Home Start services and effectively integrated welfare rights advice directly within trusted community settings, reducing stigma and improving accessibility. North Ayrshire built a strong case for a Single Shared Assessment (SSA) framework that could streamline consent and referral mechanisms for families seeking support. The project demonstrated multiple benefits of an SSA, including reducing administrative duplication and inefficiencies for staff members, and encouraging deeper cooperation between public services, NHS, and third-sector partners to deliver proactive person-centred support.

Furthermore, Midlothian and Moray emphasised the centrality of co-production. Midlothian notably implemented peer-led research where community researchers directly contributed insights that are influencing local policy decisions and ensuring project strategies are responsive to lived experiences. Moray’s project actively engaged parents from the Moray Additional Support Needs (ASN) Parent Carer Action Group across an extended period, using their direct experiences to highlight gaps and shape more responsive service delivery.

Across all projects, CPAF fostered a holistic understanding of poverty reduction, extending beyond standard service delivery. For example, South Lanarkshire adopted an intensive, personalised whole-family support model, addressing broader social, emotional, and practical needs in families with disabled members. Edinburgh's Chill 'n' Chat sessions similarly provided informal, family-friendly environments, integrating income maximisation support alongside wellbeing and social inclusion activities. This broader perspective on poverty alleviation encouraged projects to address underlying issues comprehensively rather than focusing solely on immediate financial relief.

Innovation

Projects consistently demonstrated innovation. For example, through proactive, data-informed approaches, simplified consent frameworks, and integrated referral systems. Aberdeen notably leveraged data the council already controlled to predict households you might need support, and offer targeted intervention. North Ayrshire identified and implemented new consent mechanisms which simplified benefit applications and reduced administrative burden for both service users and staff. Midlothian innovatively used peer-led research and is embedding lived experience directly within strategic planning. Inverclyde successfully experimented with integrating welfare advice within trusted community services, thereby facilitating much easier access to support.

The flexibility built into CPAF notably enabled projects to adapt effectively, responding to real-time insights and local evidence:

‘I suppose that flexibility of this is where it's kind of taking us. It might not be what we expected, but this is sort of the line we're going down and like that'd be OK because you can justify it with the discussions that you've had or what data has come out from your engagement.’ Key Informant

This adaptive, flexible funding approach fostered innovation, collaboration, and trust between project teams and government partners. Where projects deviated from their original design intentions, this frequently reflected purposeful innovation and adaptation to local circumstances, or the needs and input of participating families and partners. For example, while Moray initially set out to focus on employability support for households including a disabled family member, ongoing coproduction with this group broadened the focus to include other matters important to them such as education and health.

Partnership and Collaboration

Strong partnerships have been central to the CPAF approach, significantly enhancing project effectiveness and resilience. Effective multi-agency collaboration is clearly evident in Inverclyde, where the council, welfare rights services, and Home Start developed trusted, sustainable partnerships that improved family access to integrated support. North Ayrshire Council’s Single Shared Assessment project also demonstrated partnership-working across council services, third-sector organisations, and the NHS, contributing to a number of successful collaborative tests of change which built a strong case for integrated referral systems, consent mechanisms, and data sharing or exchange frameworks.

Projects like Midlothian’s peer-led research relied heavily on partnerships with universities, Sure Start, and council departments, significantly enhancing the quality and depth of insights generated. Aberdeen’s strategic collaboration with Policy in Practice underscored the importance of public-private partnerships to bring in digital capability.

Key informants highlighted the value of third-sector partners in building relationships and delivering services that local authorities and NHS partners might struggle to replicate:

‘The relationship between the third sector organisations and families seems to be really strong and that model of that approach and that informality and that accessibility is something that [name of partner] have brought to the project that I don't think we couldn’t have matched through the council or through our NHS colleagues. Yeah, that's for me. That's the key layer.’ Key Informant

The flexibility and informal approach of third-sector partners allowed them to engage more effectively with families, fostering deeper trust and improving outcomes. Third-sector partners’ deep understanding of local communities enabled them to adapt projects over time based on changing needs and insights. This led to some projects changing engagement targets and outcome measures, to ensure that services remained realistic and effective, even when initial assumptions about need turned out to be inaccurate.

Some projects took a co-production approach from the outset with their partners (organisations and families) in the design and delivery of services. This strengthened trust and improved the integrity of the results:

‘We took very much the approach that it would be jointly done at co-production between those with lived experience and our services rather than something in person. Right from the very start, the training, every aspect of the project has very much been developed in co-production, co-production between ourselves and the council, co-production between ourselves and the people that have been recruited and supported the project. And there's been a lot of kind of organic development.’ Key Informant

‘We're on a roll here due to the co-production. 'Ah buts' are neutralised because we can argue the outputs were designed by frontline workers and priority parents. Co-production legitimises the tool. Without the co-production it would have been a lot more challenging to persuade other stakeholders to accept and adopt the approach’ Key Informant

Co-production ensured that services were tailored and responsive to local needs and that families and front-line organisations felt genuinely involved and heard, building local buy-in and motivation. As such, this collaborative approach enabled more credible, adaptive and sustainable service delivery.

Despite strong successes, some areas faced partnership challenges. For example, Edinburgh’s targeted debt support project encountered procurement and partnership delays. While local partners were keen to be involved in providing the required support, the project involved working out new ways to work together as well as with service users. This took significant planning time, and partners then struggled with the short implementation period. This is in contrast to projects such as in Inverclyde and Midlothian, where partnerships on projects were already established prior to attempting a new model of delivery. This highlights that effective collaboration depends significantly on length of time funding is available, particularly when something new is being trialled.

Evidence-informed Delivery

CPAF projects explicitly adopted evidence-based approaches, responding dynamically to emerging evidence and local circumstances. Many routinely collected evidence of outcomes to understand the impact of the work they were doing. Indeed, some were initiated by the opportunity or need to gain evidence for a particular purpose. For example, Argyll & Bute systematically evaluated third-party datasets to establish their reliability for targeting local action. Meanwhile, North Ayrshire conducted several tests of change and refinements to systems and processes, which were able to build and demonstrate a persuasive case for an integrated Single Shared Assessment model.

Lived experience and co-production evidence were particularly critical in shaping project adaptations. For instance, South Lanarkshire tailored individual family support directly from observed needs, demonstrating the project's responsiveness to local insights. As already noted, evidence regarding barriers to employability support surfaced by co-production with families, resulted in the Moray project evolving beyond its focus on income maximisation, into a more holistic model encompassing a broader range of services.

Emerging Similarities and Differences Between Round 1 and Round 2 Projects

Early insights from Round 2 projects highlight both similarities and distinct differences compared to Round 1 in terms of what they are focusing on and their approach to implementation. A key distinction is the increased strategic leadership from NHS boards in Round 2, resulting in a stronger focus on the relationship between health and poverty. This reflects the strong response elicited from the Scottish Government publicising Round 2 and working with partners like Public Health Scotland to encourage health boards to apply. This is expected to generate new insights into how capacity-building, data-sharing, and income maximisation services can be more effectively interfaced with health systems.

Notably, four Round 2 projects are building directly on insights from Round 1. For example, Edinburgh’s project will use learning from Round 1, combined with the local authority’s broader work, to strengthen internal capacity to address poverty-related stigma. Aberdeen has identified a gap in its provision and is using Round 2 funding to target an underserved priority group. NHS Fife have expressed their interest in learning more about South Lanarkshire’s Round 1 project, on account of its potential relevance to their project aim of engaging with families with children with disabilities. There is also evidence of cross-project learning, with NHS Grampian and Aberdeenshire Council responding to health-related concerns raised in the Moray project, which focused on families with children who have significant health needs.

Similar to Round 1, some Round 2 projects have faced early challenges with procurement, recruitment, and broader financial pressures. Many Round 2 projects are adopting a co-design approach, exploring different models of best practice and working to embed this within services. Consistent themes across both rounds are the shift towards delivering support where families already engage with services, rather than expecting them to seek out support independently, and expanding the pool of people who can make effective referrals, through training frontline staff (e.g. teachers and health workers).

Round 2 also includes projects aiming to deepen and expand the data insights gained from Round 1. For example, West Lothian and the Improvement Service are focusing on improving data capabilities to support more effective delivery of financial and social support across Scotland’s local authorities. These developments suggest that Round 2 is not only reinforcing the lessons from Round 1 but also extending them into new strategic areas, particularly in relation to health and data integration.

Lastly, following the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities’ (COSLA) recent five-year agreement granting Scottish councils access to the private company CACI's Acorn and Paycheck datasets, there appears to be growing interest in the findings of the Argyll and Bute project—particularly in its critical assessment of the reliability of these products. Acorn is a geodemographic segmentation tool that categorises communities based on socio-demographic factors such as age, income, and lifestyle, helping councils identify community needs and allocate resources. Paycheck provides postcode-level estimates of gross household income, offering a broad overview of local financial landscapes. While the COSLA agreement does not provide data at the household-level granularity explored by the Argyll and Bute project, their systematic testing and conclusion that the data was unreliable in their local context has prompted wider interest among other local authorities considering use of these datasets to inform local policy and planning.